Away Does Not Mean Against You

Bex came round on Friday carrying two cans of lemonade and no sewing.

“I heard,” she said.

“From Mum?”

“From you. You sent me an emoji that looked like a person dissolving. Then your mum said you were home when I asked whether you'd arrived back safely.”

I let her in.

We sat on my bedroom floor, where the portfolio case occupied exactly the place it had before the interview. The room had become difficult to look at because every object appeared to remember what I had intended to do with it.

Bex opened a can.

“Have you contacted them again?”

“No.”

“Are you going to?”

“I don't know.”

She nodded. I waited for advice. She didn't give it immediately, which should have made me grateful. Instead I began filling the silence defensively.

“It wasn't just nerves. There was a lot going on.”

“I know.”

“The coat, the shop, the fair—”

“I know those things exist, June.”

“You make it sound easy.”

“I haven't said it was easy.”

That was true. I resented her for staying so close to the actual conversation while I tried to argue with a version of it in which somebody had already been cruel enough to justify my feelings.

She set the can on the floor.

“I'm not angry that you got scared. I'm worried you're going to spend the rest of the summer proving you had to miss it.”

“Not everybody can just go.”

The words came out sharper than I intended. Bex's face changed.

“Do you think that's what I'm doing?”

“I didn't mean—”

“Just going? As if I haven't worked or worried or had to work out how to afford my room?”

“I know you have.”

“Then don't make leaving something people do because they care less.”

I looked at the floor. A thread from the backdrop had caught in the carpet near my foot. I pulled at it until it came free.

“I feel like everyone knows how to move on except me.”

Bex softened for a moment. I could see the opening, and in my panic I made it worse.

“You'll have all these new people. You'll barely think about this place.”

She went still.

“That was unfair.”

“I know.”

“No. You don't get to say I know so quickly that it becomes the end of what I get to feel about it.”

I shut my mouth.

She stood, collected her bag and left the unopened lemonade beside the case.

“I love you,” she said, sounding tired rather than dramatic. “I'm also not going to make my future smaller so you can believe I do.”

After she left, I sat on the floor for a long time.

Mum came up to ask whether I wanted lunch. I said no. She brought toast anyway, then asked whether no had meant not hungry or not ready to come downstairs. I appreciated the question enough to eat half a slice.

“I was horrible to Bex.”

“Do you want to tell me?”

I did, though each sentence made me sound less like the misunderstood person I had tried to be.

Mum listened. When I finished, she rested her elbows on her knees.

“After your dad moved out, I leaned on you too much some days.”

I looked up.

“You helped because you're kind and because things needed doing. I let that become a habit. I should have asked more often whether you were helping because you wanted to or because you thought the whole thing depended on you.”

“It wasn't all you.”

“I know. I'm talking about my part.”

She looked at the portfolio case.

“I'm proud of your work. I'm also your mother when you don't go to an interview and say something unkind to your friend. You don't need to fix a chair before I remember that.”

I leaned against her shoulder. She put an arm around me and said nothing about the damp patch my face was making on her shirt.

That evening, I wrote to Bex.

I made your leaving into a judgment about me. It isn't. I was hurt and frightened and I used you to argue with it. I'm sorry. You don't need to answer tonight.

I read the message twice to remove the sentence beginning But.

Then I sent it.

She didn't reply that evening. I resisted sending another message to make sure she had understood the first. Understanding wasn't the same as being ready to make me comfortable.

I put the unopened lemonade in the fridge and took the portfolio out of its case. The work looked exactly as it had before Thursday. That was almost harder to bear than if it had become obviously worthless.

I left it on the table where I could see it. Hiding it had not made me braver.