Chapter 21

Kendall

“Right, well, if you’re up when we get home, I wouldn’t mind having a quick chat.”

I now understood men’s irrational fear of the phrase, ‘we need to talk,’ because nothing good could ever come from it. That same irrational fear ripped through me the moment Connor said the words, which had me ringing Barbie.

“Biiiitch, how did the glitter bomb go? I gotta admit I am feeling a tiny bit of sympathy for those boys right now, because damn. I have an arse crack that looks like it was made of molten gold and—”

“Connor said we need to talk.”

“He did what?” Her shriek had me jerking the phone away from my ear. “The fuck he did. Doesn’t he know that is a female-only prerogative?”

“What’s going on now?” I heard Alan’s muffled voice in the background.

“One of Kendall’s himbo flatmates told her ‘we need to talk.’”

“Right…”

“Girls tell boys they need to talk, not the other way around.” Her focus returned to me. “So what does that bitch want to talk about, and how much TP are we going to lob at his very nice house?”

“I don’t know.” I paced back and forth across the floor. All the feel-good stuff I was experiencing before mucking around in the kitchen was well and truly gone. ‘We need to talk’ was like the nuclear option a woman used when the relationship was almost beyond repair, and Connor and I didn’t have a relationship to speak of. “We were mucking around in the kitchen flicking tea towels at each other.”

“Uh huh. Did you get any of them in the ’nads? Maybe they want you to kiss it better.”

“No, I did not hit them in the gonads,” I shot back. “They made dinner and asked me to join them.”

“Uh huh.”

“And when I came home I found them in the shed, working on Daisy and building me…” I stopped myself, wincing as I realised what would come out of Barbie’s mouth the moment she heard the news. “So how did the photoshoot go? You had that nice female photographer, right?”

“Always. My agent knows I pretty much will only work with Dianne now, but get to the damn point, Ken. What were the three extremely hot housemates of yours building?”

“So you work exclusively with Dianne? Doesn’t that restrict you overly? Like what happens if someone booking you—”

“Nope, nah, no fucking way.” My heart sank as I caught her sharp reply. “You don’t give a fuck about modelling, like I would start yawning if you started talking to me about the differences between Arabica or Robusta coffee.”

I sucked in a breath.

“They—”

“Nope. Spill the fucking beans, Kendall, or I’ll just have to jump into an Uber and head out to the suburbs to find out myself, and you know how I hate leaving the city.”

My teeth ground against each other as I kicked my own arse for opening my mouth in the first place.

“They’remakingmeabedframe.”

“What? Unclench your damn jaw, bitch, and take a breath. As I tell you all the time, mewing is for boys, not girls.”

“Mewing?”

I knew what the viral trend for working your jaw muscles was, but I was ready to grasp at any straw here.

“Don’t you play dumb with me, Kendall Motherfucking Kennedy.”

“It’s Kendall Marie—”

“I’m calling an Uber.”

There it was, the iron will that lay beneath my best friend’s doll-like exterior. She would too, and then I’d be forced to confront a whole lot of other things I didn’t want to.

“They’re making me a bed frame.” I let out a sigh. “And they’ve already made some bedside tables.”

“Oh my fucking god! Alan. Alan! You owe me twenty bucks.”

“They hate fucked in a closet?” he said.

“No, dickhead, that was a fifty dollar bet. Twenty dollars was whether or not they liked her.”

“Have declarations of love been made?” he asked. “Because sometimes you get carried away. Remember when you thought that gay barista liked Kendall.”

“I’m pretty sure Kyle would’ve licked pussy for Kendall,” she replied.

“Ahh, Kyle was pretty upfront that he liked to bottom,” I said. “And I am missing the most important piece of anatomy to make that happen.”

“Strap ons, baby!” she shot back.

“Bottoming for big, burly guys with facial hair.”

A slut for truckers was how Kyle had actually put it, but whatever.

“OK, fine, fine, Kyle is out, and these idiots are in. Alan, they made her furniture. Do guys make furniture for women they don’t like?”

“Flatpack?” he asked, and she relayed the question.

“Um… no, from scratch using some really nice wood—”

“OK, fine.” I heard a slapping of hands down the line. “No guy is going to waste good timber on a girl he’s not into.”

Alan’s words felt like a punch to the guts because I had heard this line before.

“Maybe they like you,”one of my school friends had giggled during a sleepover.

“Yeah, right.” I raked my hair back. “Like to force me to smell their farts more like. Speaking of which, you’re going to want to make sure the door stays locked. They sneak in here sometimes and mess with shit.”

But she hadn’t. Instead, she’d snuck up the hallway sometime in the night, only to be marched back to my bedroom by Mum.

“I think those boys care about you more than they’d like to admit,” Mum said as I sat on the kitchen table, nursing a skinned knee. I’d dared to try and play whatever game they were focussed on, and that had resulted in me being shoulder checked and falling face forward.

“If they cared about me, they wouldn’t have laughed at me when I cried.”

I’d sniffed back tears, but that didn’t stop more falling.

“No,”I said, then, now. “No, Barbie—”

“Oh my god, that’s why they want to talk. It’s not the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ talk. It’s the ‘I love you and want you to have all of my very pretty babies’ talk. Alan. Alan!”

“Right here, Barbie,” he drawled.

“I’m going to be an auntie! We need to set up a baby registry and select all the cute things…”

Hanging up on someone was rude, and hanging up on your best friend as she rhapsodised about your future children was unforgivable, but I did it anyway. I just stared at the phone screen as a call from Barbie came through, but I didn’t answer it. The musical tones of the ringer echoed around in my head as I retrieved the bag of glitter I’d been forced to stash when Connor knocked on my door.

It was only now that I understood why they had pranked me so mercilessly. It wasn’t just the quicksilver pleasure of catching someone unawares, feeling like I was the most clever, most cunning in that moment. Instead, it was this sensation of being filled with too much and knowing all of that… stuff that was roiling inside me needed to go somewhere, because I couldn’t deal with it.

I marched down the hall, pushing the first bedroom door open and knowing instantly it was Van’s. It wasn’t just the predominantly blue colour scheme, but that scent. Of salt and pine trees on a summer day, the resinous oils released from the blanket of needles you traversed to walk deeper into the forest.

Place the glitter on top of the fan blades, one article had suggested, so when it was turned on, craft herpes was spread all across the room. I picked up an armchair that was left in the corner of his room and plonked it under the fan then climbed up with the bag of glitter in hand. My hands shook as I tore it open, then I forced them to still. I needed to apply a trail of glitter along the middle of each blade. Not too much, or it’d go cascading down before the prank was pulled, and I couldn’t have that. I covered each blade carefully, then glanced up at the light fitting above the bed.

He’d see the glitter if he turned the light on, and that’s not what I wanted. His bed lay open, the blankets all bunched up, inspiring me further. If I could send a cloud of glitter down from the fan and coat his sheets with it, it’d cover Van head to foot, but he’d never fall for it if he could see what he was doing. I jumped down, turned the light switch off, and then loosened the bulb until it no longer turned on. The rest of the glitter was scattered all over his pillow, between his blankets, even in his work boots until the bag was finally empty.

I surveyed the mess I’d created and then nodded sharply to myself, scrunching up the empty bag and tossing it in the kitchen bin as I left Van’s room.

“If you’re up when we get home, I wouldn’t mind having a quick chat.”

I wouldn’t be. My nightly ablutions were cut down to the bare minimum, and then I jumped into my bed, trying to ignore the groans from the frame as I snuggled down under the quilt. Trying to will yourself to sleep rarely works, but strangely, it helped tonight. Maybe this was the way other people lived. If you never were serious about anything, always mucking around and playing tricks on people, then you never had intrusive thoughts to keep you awake. I barely managed to get that thought out before dropping off to sleep.