We Go Forward Page 11

  How can I not have noticed? Of course I know how I haven't.

  I turn on the shower and wait, making the temperature warm enough, but not so it'll burn off her scalp.

  "Can you get some shampoo?" I ask her as I start to run the water through her hair, running my fingers through the knots.

  She complies and I scoop it into my palm.

  "Or maybe the most poignant. I haven't decided yet."

  I swallow. She's got it wrong, so wrong, but I don't think she's going to remember this conversation in the morning so I keep her barbed words in my lungs, don't breathe them out.

  "You're so fucking—" She hiccups again and coughs a couple of times and for a moment I'm worried she's going to throw up again. But the vomit stays down and I continue washing her hair. "Pretentious."

  "I'm not pretentious."

  Can't keep the barbs in forever.

  "Nah," she laughs. "You are."

  I shouldn't jab back, not when she's like this.

  "How am I pretentious?"

  "You think that everyone else's pain is less than yours."

  "And that makes me pretentious?"

  "It does."

  I sigh and get her to get me the conditioner. I smooth it onto her scalp and make sure I wash it all out.

  "You're probably right." I turn off the tap. "All done with the hair."

  "I'm always right," she says quietly, then starts to curl up.

  "No, no, no," I say as I bend to pick her up. "Come on, Roslyn, you gotta go to bed. I am not letting you sleep on the floor."

  She lets me wrap her hair in the towel and I take her to the bed. She lies down, closes her eyes, and pats next to her. "There's room."

  I turn off the lights and crawl in beside her. She wraps her arm around me. I'm still freezing from lying still in the dark for hours. She breathes slow and steady and adjusts slightly, our fingers wrapping around each other.

  "Sorry," she says. "That was mean."

  "I've never had a friend like you before."

  "A shit friend?"

  "You're very honest, but I think it's because you care. You don't tell me these things because you want to feel superior to me."

  "You are a bit pretentious." She squeezes my fingers. "But then, I'm an idiot. We complement each other."

  "Are you sad, Roslyn?"

  "Shhhh," she says. "It's time for sleeping."

  "All right." So that's a yes, then. "I'm sorry. I should have noticed."

  "Shh."

  After a while, her breathing changes and she's fallen asleep. Her grip on my fingers loosens, but she's still holding on, loosely in sleep.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Roslyn

  "We should definitely go to a gay bar," I tell Christie as I'm drying my hair after my shower a few days after arriving in Munich. "Haven't been to one in so long."

  "Like, I guess we should?" Christie says, looking up from her book. "I'm not exactly rushing out to one, though."

  "Not to pick up people," I reassure her. "I am so not in the mood to talk to anyone. I just wanna dance and stuff. I'm not gonna make you sit at a bar while I try and pick up randos. I'm not that cruel."

  "Not yet." She grins and puts down her book. "All right. Let's find us a München gay bar."

  We search the internet for some stuff, because there are no brochures on the subject in the hostel and we're both too tired to bother asking the staff. It's always tricky because you never know when someone's going to be a dickhead about queer things, so it's easier just to search through websites that are almost completely in German.

  "This one is apparently a jungle of women," Christie says. "That sounds up your alley."

  I look at her phone and the description—which is thankfully in English—makes the bar sound like the tackiest thing ever. I need to go. "This sounds amazing. I don't know if I have anything to wear."

  I have so much to wear that I don't know where to start. Christie ends up picking me a dress to wear: dark purple, loose, and wavy. She wears her black jeans and one of my plaid shirts and we both don our coats as we head outside after grabbing a couple of wines at the hostel bar to keep away the cold.

  The map's out and we start in what we think is the right direction. It's still freezing, but as we link arms we can't stop giggling and that makes everything a little warmer.

  @roslyn: getting lost in munich like what

  @roslyn: it's just, Melbourne is literally a grid??? literally. i am a small melbournian lost in the ways of Europe

  @ja7en: @roslyn ahve u heard of maps?

  @roslyn: @ja7en look i don't need ya sass, comrade

  @ja7en: @roslyn but u luv it

  @ja7en: @roslyn also i no u cnt use maps :( :( :(

  "Hey, it's okay," Christie says after the fifth time I've wailed out loud about Melbourne being a grid. "Let's find somewhere else and get some food."

  We find a vegetarian restaurant that seems to be populated solely by femme queer people with amazing outfits and stylish hair. My eyes are going to fall out from staring.

  "Is this the jungle of women?" Christie asks. "Because if anything was going to be a jungle of women, this would probably be it."

  "Well, it's far less tacky than the description said it would be." The waitress puts down our meals and we dig in. My mouth is half full of croquette. "More expensive, though."

  The food wasn't cheap, but it tastes amazing.

  "Have I died?" I ask Christie. "I've died. This is too good."

  "Shut up," Christie says, laughing. "Keep it in your pants, all right?"

  "I meant the food!"

  "All right, sure," she says, raising her eyebrows. "You should really close your mouth, though."

  "Shhhh," I tell her.

  "You're so thirsty, Jesus Christ."

  "Christie," I say, trying not to laugh. "Shh."

  "Okie dokie," she says, twirling some of her spaghetti onto her fork. "I won't say any more. But you're still staring at the girl behind me."

  "Oh, my god, you're the worst," I say, staring at my plate. "I'm never looking anywhere else ever again."

  We get through the meal without further incident and stumble out into the night that has somehow gotten colder than before. We link arms again and now we're just wandering because it's only ten-thirty and we've got nowhere to be.

  The Christmas markets are open and we wander through their warm light. The markets are wooden stalls through the main bits of the city that sell all kinds of Christmas-themed things, jewellery, food.

  I get us some glühwein.

  "I'm really starting to warm to glühwein," I say. "Pun not intended."

  "Pun should always be intended."

  This is how Christmas is supposed to feel, somehow. With snow and coldness and Christmas markets and glühwein and ice skating. It's weird how much pop culture and everything else has influenced me to feel this way, but it feels right. Of course it's going to be weird when Christmas comes round and I'm not in a singlet and shorts, sweating through a roast chook.

  "What did you do last Christmas?" I ask. We're both not religious but still celebrate the holiday, after a fashion. It's a public holiday and an excuse to give people presents and eat delicious food, so may as well, I figure.

  "Hm." She thinks for a moment, sipping her glühwein. "I think I was just out of Switzerland. Yeah, that's right. I walked to the bahnhof and caught the first international train I found."

  "Why'd you leave so quick?"

  "Switzerland is so expensive. I used to live there for a little bit."

  "You lived there? How'd you afford it, then?"

  "I was travelling with this guy, Luca, and eventually he had to go home, and that's where he was from. He invited me to go with him. Anyway, Lucerne is beautiful. You should totally go, if you can afford it."

  I shake my head. "Doubt it." I won't be able to on this trip, and I'll never be able to afford another plane ticket again. "Oh, man, these things are so cute." I point to the little wood-carved Christmas
tree decorations. "How long did you live there?"

  "Maybe a month or so." She sidesteps to avoid a group of loud tourists that almost run into us.

  We're still tourists, I remind myself. Loud, obnoxious, Australian tourists.

  "The Swiss dedication to cheese is something I can definitely get behind," Christie says.

  "Aw, shit." I pay for a few little decorations, all of them stars. I'll give them to Mum when I get back, continue the Christmas spirit a little when I get back because I'll have missed spending it with her and Jalen for the first time in my life.

  "I had to move out because he kept trying to make us like, a thing, even though I told him I'm aro ace," she says. "So I left, eventually."

  "Ew." I say instead of drinking more glühwein. "That's super gross."

  "He was a pretty good person, apart from that."

  We make it through the market and there are only a couple of other people in the street. It's starting to drizzle again.

  I stop to turn around and look at her. "Was he?" I ask, raising my eyebrows. "Was he really a good person if he kept pushing you for a relationship when he knew you didn't want one? Even if you weren't aro ace, that's still a fuckin' shitty thing to do."

  "He was my friend. Is my friend," she corrects herself. "He's not a bad person."

  "What if it was towards me? If I told you that I had a friend who was a biphobic piece of shit and said biphobic things to me, fully aware of how I am bisexual, would you call them a good person?"

  "Roslyn," she starts, then pauses.

  I know she's thinking it's not the same, except that it is. It's always different when it's about you, because somehow you aren't as important as the people you love. It's easier to protect your friends than yourself. But then she looks at me, really looks at me, and I think something clicks.

  "Oh."

  "Yeah." I drink more wine. "Dang. Almost gone."

  "His house was amazing. We lived in this valley and whenever the wind would blow... it was something else. Wind sounds so different when it's blowing through thousands of pine trees. It was terrifying. They sounded haunted."

  I grin at her. "Maybe they were."

  We eventually end up near the hauptbahnhof. It isn't too far from the hostel, but neither of us want to go home just yet, so we turn down a road neither of us have been down and catch a tram. I've still got no idea how the tram tickets work or if they're the same as the train tickets, but I figure if a ticket inspector comes I can try and convince them I'm a poor, lost tourist who doesn't know what she's doing.

  But we don't run into any ticket inspectors. We get off the tram when we see a building that a lot of people seem to be going in and out of. When we go inside, it's a huge room filled with long tables and so many people. The wait staff are wandering around and I can't see any order to it, but there must be, because they seem to know what they're doing.

  One of them, a short man with an amazing moustache, comes up to us and says something in German that I don't catch. Christie asks him in German if he speaks English—one of the few German sentences I recognise because she says it so often—and he says he does, though only a little.

  He confirms that it's only the two of us then directs us to a long table, sitting us opposite each other and in between a bunch of randos who all seem to know each other.

  He speaks to them in German, and they all seem pretty happy about it.

  "How much beer?" he asks. "A litre, two litres?"

  Sounds like a challenge. "A litre." That is so much beer and I don't even like beer, but bring it on. Christie gets a pint and shakes her head at me.

  "You're not gonna be able to walk home, you huge dork."

  *~*~*

  So turns out she's right, much like she always is. "Christie," I say. "Christie, you are always right."

  She drags me down the street while I try not to trip over my own feet. "Except when you're not, though, but that is a rare occasion, my friend."

  "Why did you think a litre of beer was a good idea?"

  "I didn't!" I protest. "But that guy was givin' me sass, Christie. I had to."

  "Oh, my god."

  "It was bigger than my whole head, but I drank it all; oh, my god, I need to pee so bad right now."

  "You peed three times in the beer hall."

  "I know but I need to pee more, wait a sec." I start to hitch down my undies.

  "Hey, hey, hey, at least pee in a laneway and not the middle of the footpath!" She laughs as she takes my elbow. "Come on."

  I am like, seventy per cent sure I don't pee on my shoes, which is handy. Future-Roslyn won't hate me as much in the morning. She's still gonna really fuckin' hate me, though.

  Church bells ring out over the town for some reason, despite the fact that it's like one a.m.

  "Take me to church!" I yell. "Come on, Christie, they're so pretty, ohhh, my god, especially here. This is, like, Catholic-mega-ultra-church place! Bavariaaaaa."

  "We can't go to church at one-thirty in the morning."

  "We should definitely get some Bavarian mousse or chocolate cake or whatever it is that comes from here that isn't beer."

  "A chocolate Bavarian is a type of cake, but I don't know if it comes from here or if it's an Australian thing made to seem like a German thing."

  We stop at the pedestrian crossing.

  "Y'know, it's weird that they don't make noise. I always feel so unsafe when I start to cross the road when they're not clicking."

  "Roslyn, you just started to cross the road without looking."

  And I look around and see that yes, I'm already on the tram tracks in the middle of it. "Oh." I pause. "Hey, why didn't you stop me? I could have died."

  "There are no cars, possibly?"

  "Sorry I'm so drunk," I say. "I didn't realise how much a litre of beer was."

  "It's a litre of beer, you dag. The name is very telling."

  "I know, I know, I know," I say, waving my hands around. "But how much is a litre, y'know?"

  "Fuck's sake, Roslyn," she says, but she doesn't sound angry. "You are impossible sometimes."

  "Impossible, perhaps." I muse over the word. "Impossible. Immmmposssssible."

  "I need to go to sleep; hurry up." She drags me further along down the road. When we get to the corner, I can see the hauptbahnhof. "Oh, I know where we are. Let's go to Austria, Christie! It'll be like thirty bucks to get there."

  "No, no, no." She points me in the direction of our hostel. "Sleep time, asshole."

  "You always know the friendship is true when asshole is a term of affection."

  "Sure, affection," she says wryly, but she's grinning as she says it.

  I insist upon using my card to swipe us into the room and it takes longer than it should. There are three people sleeping in the room, and the other beds are empty. I warn Christie that we have to be reaaaally quiet.

  I brush my teeth and hug her goodnight. "You're a good friend," I whisper to her in the dark. Not like Vee. "Sorry I'm so annoying."

  "You're not all the time, just when you insist upon drinking a whole litre of beer all at once with a bunch of strangers."

  "Okay. Sorry. Goodnight."

  "Goodnight, Roslyn."

  Chapter Fourteen

  Christie

  On our second last day in Munich, I wake up before Roslyn and my alarm at six-thirty. Everyone else in the room is still asleep and I lie awake for a while, listening to the chorus of breath and slight shifting of movements in the dark. There's no light coming in from the edges of the windows just yet. I quietly get my things and jump into the shower, taking a bit longer than usual because I know no one is awake and waiting to use it.

  Afterwards, as I'm brushing my teeth in the mirror, I can't stop staring at my face. Sometimes, when this happens, it feels like it's someone else's face and I am just a presence, watching. But now, it's so mine, too mine. My eyes are a deeper brown in this light, my skin redder on my cheeks and chin and the inner corners of my eyes. The pimples I can usually
see past stick out a little too much and my hair looks so dry. Should've washed it.

  I sigh, put on some clothes, and write a quick note to Roslyn and leave it on top of her phone because the first thing she does every morning is check the time on it.

  Just need a day to myself. Sorry. I'll have my phone if you need me for anything. Christie x

  I feel like I should say more, something about the nothing that has formed under my ribcage in the night, something about how my body is just too heavy to move to anyone else's schedule today, but I leave the note at that. I think she'll get it, anyway.

  I tie up my hair into a bun. It doesn't feel as dry as it looked in the mirror, but fingers lie sometimes. My beanie goes over the top and I tuck every single bit of loose hair under it, completely hiding my hair from sight. The only part of my skin exposed is my face, and I can't hide that, much as I want to today.

  When I get downstairs, breakfast has just been set up, so I pay my two euros and grab a coffee and some toast. There's cream cheese again today, and I slather that on the bread after I sit. There are only three other people here and they all look as haggard as I feel; I make sure I don't make any eye contact, because I can't stand having to talk because I'll be exposed as the fraud I am: a girl who can't hold a conversation to save her life.

  The street's still busy when I get outside, and there's a slight drizzle, but nothing major. I cross the road over the tram tracks and this guy gives me a dirty look. I sneer back at him and he visibly flinches. I've got my claws out early today, I guess.

  I haven't been to Munich's hauptbahnhof by myself yet, so I walk in and buy a pretzel at the closest shop. There's always movement at train stations—makes it easier to get outside myself. I wander through the back to see what other shops they have here. One's a souvenir shop, and I buy a postcard that shows Munich back when it was half-destroyed. I look out the main doors of the station at the old-looking buildings that are new, having been rebuilt. These cities are haunted. Countless years, countless people.

  I've got no one to send a postcard to, really. I could send it to my mum, but what would I say? The whole time I've been here, I've not sent one postcard. Sometimes I video call her, but the calls don't last long.