Repeat After Me

Chapter 65

In my room, I made a series of stencils saying 'Blink, you don't see me', 'NOT down in the dumps', 'People stare, but they don't want to see me' and 'Fountain of age'. I undercoated a large piece of plywood in white and, using black ink, I drew a mound of garbage topped with a corrugated iron shack and a pole flying a facemask emoji flag. Working was like a beta blocker to my brain. It stopped me from overthinking, or overfretting.

When I wasn't working, I was thinking about Asten. And thinking about him thinking about me too. I wondered if I should tell him about my visit from Alicia – but she could easily intercept his phone. Since I'd seen him last, we'd only had a series of short text messages, including:

'My grandmother died.'

'I'm so sorry to hear that. I'm thinking about all of you.'

It felt too lightweight. He'd never met my mum or dad or brother so how could he think about 'all of us'?

In my darkest hours, it dawned on me, that really it was only my family who were here for me. Asten was just a name in my contacts list. He was deeply intertwined with Alicia and her family and her issues. He was with her, so he didn't have to worry about the bills. But he was still happy to flirt and declare his devotion to another girl. He was standing on the white knuckle of morality, tickling a girl with tenderness, without packing away his old toys first. And it made me question him. Was he the kind of person that I'd want to be with anyway, if he didn't know how to deal with such a situation effectively? Sure he was wanting to be the nice guy, but he was also being a not very nice guy to me at the same time.

Waiting in the wings, was like an understudy who had learnt all her lines, and was waiting for the main actress to get sick. But the main actress was already sick and still he was letting her perform. It was all too messy and confusing and not easy.

The longer I was in purgatory, the more it made me long for a straightforward relationship – a guy who would bring me flowers when my grandmother died and give his condolences to my mother. I wanted someone I could spend the weekends with. Someone who would pick up the phone whenever I rang. But the more I imagined this somebody, the more beige they appeared. Where was I ever going to meet someone like Asten? It felt like we'd clicked straight away, that there was some kind of energy charging between us, like we were the male and female version of the same being. We were into the same things. Would I ever meet someone like him again? And this feeling that I wouldn't meet someone who excited me so much, eventually made me feel like I should just keep on waiting. Just wait. And so, my thoughts were on a continuous loop of flee. No, stay.

I returned to my beautiful dead end with my backpack full of materials and a green Woolworths shopping bag, full of artworks. I'd pre-painted a street sign saying 'Overlooked Lane' on plywood. I superglued it to the wall where the L-shape intersected.

I painted a life-sized homeless girl lying in a sleeping bag in the centre of the laneway. She was wearing a pastel pink beanie, her face was resting on the concrete, one eye half open, as though she was looking out for the person who was about to walk right past her. I put her in the middle of the lane on purpose, because I wanted people to look at her, rather than look away. It's too easy to pretend not to see someone if they're lying in the shadows.

I superglued the plywood piece with the facemaskemoji flag onto a wall beside a drain pipe and spray painted the stencils threetimes each in lemon-coloured paint up and down the lane. I painted an oldlady's eye peeking out through a crack in the pavement and a silhouette of ahead barred behind a tennis racquet on the flat side of an airconditioning unit. I'd worked so hard and sofast I felt breathless and dizzy, but I felt as though Overlooked Lane wasstarting to take shape. Filled with adrenaline and excitement, I took my phoneout of my back pocket and texted Asten: 'I've got something to show you. Meetme in the city on Saturday at 1pm. I'll turn on my Snap Map so you can find me.It's a secret. I want to surprise you.'