SUGARCOATED - Chapter 1
Bad things come in threes, right? Isn’t that what they say? Whoever they are, the imaginary committee dispensing wisdom to the human race. ‘Good things come to those who wait’ they tell us, and ‘Bad things come in threes’. So considering I’d already hit my bad things quota just a few weeks before Christmas, I should have been off the hook for the rest of the year. There was absolutely no reason to feel nervous about my dad’s impromptu invitation for dinner.
I slid my phone into my pocket and leaned over to retrieve my paint pot from the floor. In my haste to check messages I’d accidentally missed the drop cloth when placing it down. A ring of green paint gaped up at me from the floorboards like a wailing mouth.
“Seriously,” I mumbled at it. “Don’t be so dramatic.”
There was really nothing in Dad’s text message to indicate I had anything to worry about. No sad-face emoji or overused capitals. No ominous lines like Sophie, we need to talk. Just because our regular Bay Cantina night was Tuesday, it didn’t mean Dad couldn’t get a craving for quesadillas on a Friday as well.
Still, my spidey senses were tingling. And if the last few months had taught me anything, it was to ignore those tingles at my peril.
Somewhere behind me, Kim Hoang cleared her throat, which meant she was about to call a crisis meeting or blast someone for not filling out the sign-in sheet. It was safe to say that as this year’s production manager of the school play, the power had gone to her head. Her sneakers squeaked in my direction, and I glanced over my shoulder to see her striding towards me clutching her iPad.
She stared pointedly at the paint ring on the floorboards. “I know you’re definitely not thinking of leaving that there.”
I continued dabbing at the canvas backdrop that hung precariously from its PVC frame. It would’ve been easier painting it flat on the floor, but Kim complained it wouldn’t leave enough space in the drama room for everyone to rehearse.
“Well if you know that,” I said, “why bother coming over here to point it out?”
From the corner of my eye I saw her mouth fall open.
I was doing it again. My sister Eloise claimed I had no filter, and admittedly it sometimes felt like my mouth ran on a separate circuit to my brain. I did feel bad for snapping at Kim, though. She was basically harmless. We’d shared classes since primary school, and she’d never intentionally tried to hurt my feelings.
“You’re such a smart-arse sometimes,” she said.
Okay, scratch that.
“It’s been mentioned to me once or twice,” I told her. “How about we leave the smart-arse alone to paint her vines?”
Kim scrutinised the backdrop. “You call those vines? They make my baby brother’s finger paintings look like Picasso.”
“Whoa, easy on the praise. You’re making me blush.”
“I’m serious,” she said. “I know everyone tiptoes around you because you’re all cynical about the world or whatever. But I’m not afraid to tell you this looks like some kind of Jackson Pollock vomit.”
“Jackson Pollock was a visionary,” I said. Probably. I didn’t really know much about him, but I couldn’t let on that Kim knew more about art than I did.
“Come ooon, Sophie. We’ve been in the same art classes for four years. I know what you can do. And this—” Kim flicked a dismissive hand at the canvas, “—is not why I suggested to Mr Denton that you help out with set design.”
I took a step back and assessed the forest scene I was butchering. The trees were basic and amateurish. The leafy forest floor was a massacre of paint splatters. I knew I was rushing it, but the bigger problem was I couldn’t seem to muster any enthusiasm. I’d always found solace in being creative, a way to celebrate when things were going well, and a good distraction when they weren’t. But lately I seemed to have lost my artistic rhythm. My brushes felt clunky in my hands, and my drawing attempts were awkward and forced. It had never happened before, and it had me worried.
“You remember I’m doing this as a favour though, right?” I tried to correct the shape of a leaf, but only succeeded in making it blobbier. “I didn’t want to be a part of this school production. I don’t even like Shakespeare.”
“Yeah. Shakespeare’s the problem,” Kim said. She threw a pointed look at the costume table where Sasha Harrison was pinning the hem of a chiffon dress. In all the years Sasha and I were friends, I had no idea she could sew.
“Anyway,” Kim added, “you’re doing a favour for Mr Denton, not me.”
Damn that Mr Denton with his grandfatherly smile. He’d caught me on a bad day when my defences were low. I’d just spotted Sasha and Adam hand in hand in the corridor for the first time since they’d gone public with their relationship, and I was bumping around in a mortified daze when my English teacher flagged me down and steered me into his classroom. Several well-placed compliments later, I found myself agreeing to three backdrops for A Midsummer Night’s Dream. It was embarrassing to think I was so desperate to feel wanted that I blurted “No worries!” before he’d even finished speaking.
“I’ve gotta leave early this evening,” I told Kim. “So the rest of your charming art critique will have to wait until Monday.”
“We finish at six-thirty.”
“I have a family emergency.” Although I really hoped that wasn’t the case. I thought about Dad’s text again and my stomach tightened.
Kim watched me re-lid the paint pots.
“So not only do we have backdrops that are barely usable,” she said, “they won’t even be finished?”
“What can I say? I’m an overachiever.”
Scooping up my dirty brushes, I headed towards the girls’ bathroom to wash up. A long strand of blonde hair stuck to my cheek like a wet noodle. I’d somehow managed to get green paint in it.
“Opening night’s in ten days!” Kim called after me. “You are sooo not a team player, Sophie Duchamp!”
I snorted. Team player? Yikes and no thank you. My sister suggested I needed to have Doesn’t play well with others tattooed across my forehead to give people fair warning.
Kim called out something else as I reached the doorway. A few students from the costume table glanced over at her shrill tone. Sasha stopped pinning for a moment, her attention falling on me. I almost smirked and eye-rolled at Kim’s outburst the way Sasha and I used to do with each other when we were friends.
Then it settled in my chest like a bag of wet sand: that afternoon at The Odeon. Sasha walking into Cinema Three with my boyfriend. Our eight-year friendship dissolved that very second, but sometimes my mind forgot, momentarily skipping over it like some kind of sappy mediator.
When it did remember, my brain liked to emphasise my public rejection with several embarrassing details. Like how I was wearing those faded yoga pants I swore I’d never wear in public, or how my hand was plunged inside a popcorn box at the time. And it wasn’t even a medium or large, it was a jumbo. The shame burned that little bit more knowing I was clutching enough popcorn to feed a family of five.
What exactly are you supposed to do when your boyfriend and best friend sit three rows in front of you and start engaging in public displays of disgusting? Finish chewing your mouthful of popcorn? Throw the box at them? Try to slip out without them seeing you like you’re the one who’s done something wrong?
In the end I made a weird strangled noise in the back of my throat and sat through two movie previews with blood swishing in my ears. Then I stood up, walked down to their row and handed them my popcorn before calmly leaving the cinema. By the time I’d reached the Esplanade, my hands were shaking so much that I had to crush them into fists to make them stop. I decided I was going to hold my head high and be rational about this turn of events, take a moment to process the situation and definitely, definitely not freak out.
Which went about as well as you’d expect.
As soon as I got home I sent them both matching texts (‘You’re dead to me’) and promptly blocked their numbers. Then I cut a jagged fringe into my hair, cried in the shower, and ate two packets of Tim Tams while binge-watching every season of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend. My guts churned all night long with rage and sugar overload before rewarding me with a particularly explosive case of the runs.
Four weeks on, I still hadn’t spoken to Adam or Sasha. I tried to pretend they didn’t exist, which was impossible when the three of us lived in the same small coastal town. And every time they looked at me, I was the one who felt pathetic.
“To be fair, you were already pretty pathetic,” my sister pointed out.
She was super helpful like that.
