These Wounds Won't Seem To Heal

  I met Andren Jeremiah Braddock when I was nine. I met his little sister, Amarinda, when I was eight. She was five, and he was eleven.

  Amarinda and I were in her room, sitting on her bed in her grandparent’s Bach at Rangitata Huts. We were munching on chips and Lollies and sculling Sprite. Andren walked into the room after Amarinda had dunked a chicken chip in Sprite, bitten into it, and then left it to dry. We offered him the chip, and he ate it. He said, “Hmm...Not too bad, actually.” We thought this was SO funny when he left because Andren hated chicken chips so much, they usually made him puke. We listened carefully and soon after, he came through the room to go to the toilet, and we thought we could hear a retching sound. Quite awhile later, when I was still  about nine or so, I was at McDonald’s with my mum and my sister, when who  should we see but Andren, Amarinda, their mum and their Nana. Mum made me say hi to Andren and he smiled at me and waved back, and I blushed. It was then that I realised that I had developed a crush on a guy I barely knew. I had been hanging out with him for a little while, but still didn’t know much about him, only that he was kind and funny and extremely crazy. I told him the next time I saw him at Rangitata that I had a crush on him via a note with a pink love heart painted on the background in watercolour paint and written in puffy black marker. My ‘I’s were dotted with love hearts. He replied to the note that he had a crush on me too, and in his beautiful pencilled handwriting, continued that although he liked me, he wasn’t ready for a boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. I was sad, and now the quote, “Should I laugh because we’re friends, or cry because that’s all we’re ever going to be?” comes to mind. I was 11 and he was 14.

  Sometime later, after about a year or so, I came to the startling realisation that my crush had developed into something quite a bit more. I sent him yet another note telling him I loved him. He read it, and later that week, he told me, face-to-face, after coming to my parent’s Bach and asking for me to come up the Hill with him. We sat down in a secluded area overlooking the river mouth on a picnic table. I had my hair tied in pigtails that day, and I remember laughing as he playfully made fun of them, and he kept saying how cute they were. After my sister and my cousins had gone away and stopped pestering us (they had followed us up the hill and were spying on us, much to my annoyance and Andren’s displeasure), as I rubbed my hand absent-mindedly over the coarse and yet smooth surface of the wooden table I was sitting on, Andren told me the five words that were to change my life forever. “I already have a girlfriend.” He looked at me worriedly, as if he expected me to cry or hurt him or something. I didn’t, I was too numb. I felt nothing, not the blow of his words, not his hand on my shoulder, nor the cold, cold wind of New Years Eve, 2004. He asked me if I was okay, and I smiled and I said I was fine. We celebrated the birth of 2005 separated, me at my Grandparent’s Bach, telling no-one of my encounter, and Andren at his Grandparent’s Bach, racked with guilt and confusion over my reaction. Things were awkward between us for a few weeks, but for my 12th Birthday, he gave me a beautiful gold-plated watch that he had ordered online from a watch shop in Sydney some weeks previously, and a lovely card wishing me a fantastic birthday and an excellent year as a year eight. I didn’t have an excellent year, but it was mostly okay. I lost two friends, but gained three. About 3 or so days after he broke the news to me, I was listening to my new Avril Lavigne CD, Under My Skin. I listened to a song called fall to pieces, and burst into tears when I heard the chorus, ‘I don’t wanna fall to pieces, I just wanna sit and stare at you. I don’t wanna talk about it. And I don’t want a conversation, I just wanna cry in front of you. I don’t wanna talk about it, because I’m in love with you.’

  Later that year, I had been talking to Andren on the phone for a few months, when one day he told me that we were to sever all ties and break all contact, as he was a computer hacker at the time, sending viruses to people’s computers that would basically delete every file, and then crash the hard drive so that it never worked again, and I had unintentionally released his identity onto the internet. He said I was to forget about him, never call him again and act as if I had never met him. I cried and said nothing was the same anymore. “Well now you’re just being melodramatic.” He accused me disgustedly. I said I wasn’t, and he bade me goodbye before hanging up. I never really got over it; the wounds still haven’t completely healed. We didn’t speak for maybe six months or more, and during that time I successfully managed to create the illusion that I was a normal 12-year-old girl, and nothing had happened to me at all, that I wasn’t bleeding deep inside from a wound that cut so deep, I didn’t even know whether it was in my heart or in my soul, or both any longer. It was such a good illusion that I even managed to fool myself sometimes, until I got home and closed my eyes, which was when I saw his smiling face and heard his voice telling me over and over that I wasn’t to talk to him anymore. But then, last year or maybe the year before, I saw him through a medium thick fog, thin enough that I could see more than foot in front of my face, but thick enough that anything 7 or more metres away was just a vague grey-black shape. I was at the playground at Rangitata, just standing next to the swing, trying to decide whether to head back to my Bach or just sit at the top of the slide and try to get cellphone reception to text my friends, when I heard the roar of a quad bike starting up and then approaching the playground. After a few seconds, maybe two or so minutes, the bike stopped at the playground and died. The rider cursed and got off. They saw me standing there, and approached me to see if I was of any use. When the rider got to about 5 metres from me, I saw that “Rider” was in fact Andren. He approached me, because he didn’t yet know it was me, and when he got to about 2 metres from me, he stopped. He stood there, staring at me, and I stood there staring at him. The wind blew though my hair, ruffling it, and sending an ice-cold chill through my body, making me shiver involuntarily, but maybe it wasn’t just the wind. I was the first to speak, assuring him in a loud, clear voice that I was neither a mirage, nor a hologram, and he just stared at me, and then remarked, “Actually, I was just trying to remember your name. Natalia, right?” I nodded, but if my life was an anime cartoon, I would have fallen over. I wanted to burst into tears, I had been longing after him for weeks, months, even, and he didn’t even remember my name! I recall how my senses seemed to be heightened so much at that moment. I remember the sound of the wind making the rusty old swings creak and squeak shrilly, I remember the sulphur-y smell of burning Kauri wood emitting from someone’s chimney, I remember the sun shining through the fog, warming me and clearing the fog so I could see properly, I remember my legs wanting to give out underneath me, so I pushed past him and ran back to my Bach, nearly crying, my leg muscles sore and weak from the effort.

  I wrote him a letter saying something like,
“Dear Andren,
U CAN’T TOUCH DIS!!!          Ha, you thought this was going to be a mushy “I love you” letter, didn’t you?
It’s not, it’s just a letter saying I heard about your nana dying, and I’m sorry.
I missed talking to you, and how you always made me laugh.
If you don’t mind, I’d like to start over. I’d like to be friends with you again.
Meet me under the big slide at the playground at 4:00 on Sunday if you want to start over.
I’ll talk to you soon, OK?
By the way, my cellphone number is 0210607543, and my email address is [e-mail].
If we do start over, we could use false names on the internet to avoid this happening again. You could be Duck Master or whatever, and I could be Gothic Angel.
I hope to see you soon!
Natalia.”
After he received the letter, he didn’t show up, but I did see him later and asked him about it. As it turns out, he couldn’t read it, because my handwriting was too messy! I told him what it said, and he said it would be good to start over, and as far as anyone else knew, we had never not been speaking to each other.

  We have been close friends for a long time now, and have had some good times together. Andren always makes me laugh, and when I’m sad he cares, and tries to make me feel better by making a total fool of himself. On New Years Eve 2006, he and his friend Triton got wasted and I had so much fun, standing there, completely sober, watching them be total idiots. They were singing the Bohemian Rhapsody at the top of their lungs, and at 12:01 Triton yelled, “HAPPY TACO YEAR!” Much to the bewilderment of everyone at the playground that night.