Illustration by Anderson Lee
Hiruni measured the people on the train by how likely they would be to forgive her. She took inventory: a trio of high schoolers, very loudly discussing their hate of a supposed friend; a businessman on the phone, speaking jargon glazed with white-man confidence; a middle-aged woman with a struggling toddler in her lap; a young couple, giggling amongst themselves; an elderly man with glasses and a walking stick.
Hate, hate, hate, forgive, hate.
Hiruni was good at this. She was terrified, but she was good. She didn’t take chances. She studied other people. She dressed in neutrals and she spoke in monotone. She didn’t make eye contact. She carried her shame inside her like an undying ember. She was a perfect student of the average. Straight As, gold stars, a pleasure to have in class.
This was easy.
The train rattled on. They passed one stop, and then another. Hiruni watched the world blur through the windows, the neon of graffitied construction, the green of overgrown shrubs. The doors of the train parted, and a gust of winter wind blew in with the arriving passengers. Hiruni’s best friend, Eloise, was among them.
Eloise grinned when she saw Hiruni and slid into the seat next to her.
Eloise was beautiful in a way that didn’t make sense to Hiruni. She let her nails grow long and painted them a glistening pink. She had at least four piercings per ear. She straightened her hair in the mornings so it fell in three, perfect midnight sheets around her face. She floated above the rest of the world, wreathed in a cloud of perfume—something sweet and heady that made Hiruni feel a little drunk.
The part that didn’t make sense to Hiruni was that Eloise was brown. Admittedly she was much lighter than Hiruni was; the kind of brown that Bollywood preferred, which was barely. But still. Hiruni doubted that anyone who wasn’t brown would care for the colourism that all of her aunties did. Light brown was dark brown was brown. And yet Eloise existed in a place that Hiruni did not think she would be allowed to exist in.
Eloise was the exact opposite of Hiruni: Eloise was cool.
‘How’s it going, babe?’ She said, throwing a willowy arm around Hiruni’s shoulder in a one-armed hug. ‘It’s fucking freezing out there. My fingers were going purple this morning, I swear to god.’
‘Purple?’ Hiruni’s eyes widened. ‘Really?’
Eloise laughed, bright as a song. ‘No, babes, I’m fucking with you. Not about the cold part though. That was true.’
With Eloise settled in beside her, Hiruni forgot about measuring the people on the train. She stopped caring. In fact, she laughed at them with Eloise. The two of them invented embarrassing stories about what these strangers might get up to in private, shamed them for the things they wore, the way they carried themselves, the way their skins sat on their skulls. Hiruni got back at these strangers for the wrongs they did not have the opportunity to commit. She let them know that she did indeed possess venom, indulging in a satisfaction that was extremely temporary.
This was the kind of person that Hiruni turned into when she was with Eloise. Untouchable and young and mean, but ultimately forgivable because she was young and full of staticky potential. Hiruni didn’t care. What mattered was that she felt good when she and Eloise were together; safe. Eloise was perfect cover.
Eventually, however Eloise would leave. When they parted ways after school, Hiruni would become smaller. More shameful. Revert back to being herself: the saddest, most wretched person in the world.
*
Hiruni was not Eloise’s only friend, though that might be true the other way around. Eloise was part of a group with four other girls. The four of them swanned around school, feeding each other slice after slice of delectable gossip while Hiruni trailed behind in their wake, studying them to the muscle.
This was how Hiruni categorised them. First there was Cherry, an international student who had introduced the group to Korean facemasks and something called glass skin. Then there was Sammy, who liked bingeing true crime shows and wanted to be an actress. And then there was Alex, who liked to graffiti the anarchy symbol on desks and was very vocal about things everyone did that she thought was morally wrong.
They were eating lunch at their usual spot today, at the outdoor bench by the gym.
‘You guys will think I’m a bitch but have you seen Rachel’s music account?’
This was said by Sammy, who had a cucumber sandwich in one hand (butter and thin slices of cucumber on multigrain bread—she was very particular about her diet) and was scrolling through her phone on the other.
Cherry shook her head. ‘Show.’
Sammy leaned over the table, phone screen facing the others. Cherry, Hiruni and Eloise leaned forward to see. It was a video of a girl from their class, Rachel, plucking at a guitar. When she sang, her forehead wrinkled and she squeezed her eyes shut as if the sheer effort of singing sapped at her. Where Hiruni once might have appreciated that Rachel had put so much of herself into her song, she now understood that it was embarrassing to expose this much of yourself. Like preening for crows.
Cherry burst out in laughter, and this set the rest of them o. Hiruni laughed too. Alex was trying to twist her neck to see what was on the video, but she was too far away, and none of the others bothered flipping the phone in her direction.
‘It’s like some kind of mating call,’ Cherry snickered.
‘Mating call, oh my god,’ Eloise laughed. ‘Yeah, we’re about to get stormed by a bunch of horny parrots or something.’
‘I mean, how full of yourself do you have to be to post something like this?’ Sammy said. ‘Like at least be a little embarrassed.’
Hiruni slid the phone over to Alex, but didn’t meet her eyes. ‘You guys are going to hell,’ she said, because if she didn’t chime in once in a while she’d get asked questions.
‘Oh, come on,’ Alex said, watching the video. ‘She’s not that bad.’
Hiruni internally cringed at Alex’s mistake. Eloise turned to Alex and smiled. ‘Guys, looks like the mating call actually works.’
Sammy laughed. She had a very loud, squawky kind of laugh that was often funnier than whatever it was she was laughing at. Naturally, everyone else laughed too. Alex rolled her eyes. Hiruni wondered what it was like to be brave enough to roll your eyes in front of a group like Eloise’s.
There was more to the girls than this. Like the way they carried their secret shames and their sadnesses. None of them were happy with their bodies. None of their parents understood them. They were all anxious about the world, because it seemed to be burning before their eyes. They wanted things with a feigned dispassion, but they loved things with a white-hot fury. They discussed these things sometimes, but mostly they didn’t.
So when Eloise made little jabs at Alex, Hiruni reasoned that Alex just didn’t know how to be friends with Eloise. Hiruni did. She kept everything locked in a little box and only took things out when they were Eloise-approved. Hip-hop music was Eloise-approved; K-pop was okay, she guessed, but the fan culture was just too much. Italian food was Eloise-approved; Vietnamese was just too soupy. Some things went into the box. Some things came out. Sometimes things would stay in the box one day and come out the next. Eloise had such distinguished taste that even Hiruni sometimes had trouble keeping up.
One day after school, Eloise asked her why she bothered with Alex at all. Hiruni just shrugged her shoulders. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I just feel bad.’
At this Eloise had given her the gentlest smile and squeezed her hand. ‘You’re like, the sweetest person ever,’ she said.
Hiruni knew that this wasn’t true, but she liked that she tricked Eloise into thinking that it was.
*
Over the winter holidays, Eloise invited the girls to the beach for a picnic. The beach was not an ideal place for a picnic in the winter, but Hiruni knew that Eloise loved the beach no matter the season, and besides, it just meant that it would be less crowded.
Hiruni missed the train that everyone else took, so she waited twenty minutes until the next one. Then she took a bus, walked for fifteen minutes, and wandered the beach for seven before she found the group of girls huddled together under a beach tent. Eloise was there, wearing a Tupac hoodie and leggings with one airpod in her ear. Sammy and Cherry were there too, sharing a packet of Cheetos. The three of them seemed to have been in the middle of making fun of their matches on various dating apps.
‘Hiruni!’ Eloise beamed. ‘I was beginning to think you ditched us. Get in here.’ She shifted a little to the left and patted the space next to her.
Hiruni stepped over the awkward feast the girls had laid out before them. There was a carton of orange juice, two punnets of strawberries, half a Hershey’s chocolate bar, and a segmented Tupperware with carrot sticks and hummus. She settled beside Eloise, who squeezed her in a pleasantly warm and perfumed hug. It made Hiruni feel like a cygnet under her angel wing. Sammy and Cherry hugged her too, but it was an awkward, horizontal hug, where Sammy was sandwiched between Hiruni and Cherry.
‘Where’s Alex?’ Hiruni asked.
Eloise exchanged a glance with Sammy and Cherry. There was a beat. Then the three burst out in laughter.
‘Oh my god,’ Sammy said, pretending to wipe tears from her eyes. ‘Oh my god, that was good.’
‘Babes,’ Eloise said kindly. ‘You are way too good of a person.’
Hiruni was beginning to feel like she was the butt of a joke. She looked between the girls, trying to decipher what any of them were laughing about. She had a feeling, but she didn’t want to trust it just yet. ‘What?’
‘You didn’t hear?’ Eloise said quietly. She put a hand on Hiruni’s shoulder. ‘Alex died.’
Hiruni’s heart dropped. ‘What?’
More laughter.
‘Okay, okay, sorry,’ Eloise said at last. ‘You’re just so gullible! It was too good of an opportunity to pass up. Alex is fine. She’s just… probably too busy watching kids cartoons about dragons or some shit to come hang out with us.’
‘Oh.’
‘Nah, she’s probably watching My Little Pony.’ Cherry said, grinning.
‘Oh my god, no,’ Sammy slapped her lightly. ‘She’s probably playing with the ponies.’
‘She probably has them all locked in her basement so she can talk to them whenever she wants.’
‘Dude that is so messed up.’
Eloise shook her head. ‘You guys are terrible.’ But she was smiling too.
Hiruni didn’t like this thread of conversation. ‘I baked cookies,’ she said, pulling a plastic container out of her bag. ‘Chocolate chip. And some white chocolate too.’ White chocolate was Eloise’s favourite.
Eloise made a delighted noise. ‘Hiruni, I fucking love you.’
Which made Hiruni forget about why she had told them about the cookies in the first place.
*
They stayed at the beach for three hours because Eloise suggested they watch the sun go down. Cherry wanted to get drunk, so she and Sammy went for a walk to the nearest supermarket to see if Sammy’s new fake ID would work. Then it was just Hiruni and Eloise.
The sky was darkening, and the clouds overhead had grown fat with water. Waves clamoured for the shore. Wind swept salt and sand into the remains of their store-bought feast. Eloise and Hiruni huddled closer together for warmth. No one remembered to bring disposable cups, so the two of them had been drinking orange juice straight from the carton. It made Hiruni feel like an adult in an artful, messy way, like they were wine-drunk poets sprawled on the floor of a studio apartment. Instead, they were looking through Eloise’s Instagram mutuals and judging them. A man walked past the tent, golden retriever blurring ahead of him. Eloise quietened.
After he passed, she said at last, ‘We probably look like hippie lesbians right now.’
‘Mhm,’ Hiruni said.
‘You don’t care?’
‘No.’ Hiruni shifted so she could look at Eloise properly. ‘Do you?’
For all the times that Hiruni had studied Eloise, she couldn’t read the expression on her face. ‘Course not. It’s not the eighties or whatever.’
Hiruni elbowed her. ‘So you would hate hippie lesbians if it was the eighties?’
‘I would hate everyone equally.’
‘Aw. Even me?’
‘I don’t know. Would you be a hippie lesbian in the eighties?’
‘Maybe not the eighties. That would have sucked.’
Eloise paused. ‘What about today?’
Hiruni didn’t know how to answer. Her heart was a hummingbird. Her heart was a traitor. She looked from Eloise’s face back to the sea. ‘No.’
‘Hm.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Nothing. Just…’ She looked like she was about to say more. ‘Nothing.’
*
Sammy and Cherry got back, having failed in their mission to acquire any alcohol. They didn’t seem very disappointed by this though; instead they exchanged glances with Eloise, giggling amongst themselves on the walk back to the bus stop. Hiruni didn’t ask. She knew that she had failed some kind of test that the girls had set for her. She just couldn’t figure out which part had been the test.
It was getting dark out, and she was getting lonely. She was just realising how long she had been lonely for. The dusk was clearer than the day had been: sky a clean gradient, the gentle black descending over the indigo. She couldn’t stop looking at the perfect half of moon.
Hiruni wondered whether she learned something about Eloise. Whether Eloise had learned something about her. She wondered about Alex, whose worst sin was enjoying the wrong things. Hiruni had narrowed down her own worst sin to either her gullibility or the way she sometimes thought about Eloise. She wondered whether someone could have two worst sins.
Sammy, Cherry and Eloise walked ahead of her, silhouettes haloed by the street lamps like a couple of angels. Eloise turned. Her eyes met Hiruni’s.
‘What’s wrong? Fix your face, babes, you look depressed as hell.’ Then Eloise turned back. Hiruni barely heard what she said. Eloise’s hair was beginning to curl from the damp in the air. Hiruni liked it like this. She wanted to tell Eloise that she didn’t have to straighten it, but she knew how Eloise would react to that.
There wasn’t enough space for four people to walk together on the sidewalk. Hiruni drifted behind them, finally letting herself measure them the way she did everyone else.
Hate, hate, hate.
Maybe Eloise would forgive her one day. Hiruni knew that she shouldn’t hold out hope, but she had a traitor hummingbird for a heart.
She looked up at the seagulls circling the sky. She counts three. Forgive, forgive, forgive. She thought about Alex.
Forgive.
Neha De Alwis is a Sri Lankan-Australian writer based in Naarm. They are currently pursuing a bachelor’s degree in creative writing at RMIT University, and have been published in Kill Your Darlings, Nowhere Girl Collective,
and Myriad Magazine. They hate writing and love bunny rabbits.