By Anna Proctor

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It was a cold and dark winter’s Saturday night in Christchurch and Emily was invincible.  Jade had mixed vodka with orange juice in a big Keri 3L orange juice container, and Emily and her friends drank straight from it.  Emily enjoyed the warmth slowly flooding her body, not just warmth physically, but the emotional warmth too.  She loved her friends; she loved herself; she loved everybody – she was covered from head to toe in the warmest blanket of joy and optimism.

As they giggled and walked down the quiet, foggy Spreydon streets, Jade said that she hoped Jason was going to the party.  Jason was in Jade’s art class, and she thought his art was amazing because it was full of Samoan patterns, colours and beauty.  She had a thing for the cheeky and sporty Pacific Island boys.  Jade also liked to watch Jason play rugby and sit behind him in assembly so could admire him without him knowing.  But Emily held her secret close to her.  To talk about her crush made it real and she still just wanted to imagine what might be, without the unwelcome intrusion of facts or analysis.

“Smile!” Jade yelled, while balancing precariously on the kerb in her high-heeled boots with her phone in one hand.  Robyn and Emily jumped to get into the frame with Jade and they all switched seamlessly into selfie mode: the angles just so, with the skinny arm pose. 

Robyn had wanted to get an Uber; her shoes were new, and they hurt her feet.  Truth was though, they couldn’t afford one, so they decided to walk and anyway, it seemed like once you’d drunk enough you didn’t even notice the distance.  Emily was 16 and while she had a part time job at a pizza shop, that didn’t afford her the luxe life. 

They heard the deep beat of the music before they could even see the hall in the fog, and they sped up across the dewy grass towards it.  The heels of their shoes kept sticking into the ground as they walked but they soon made it into the old wooden hall with the strobe lights moving across their faces.

They stood at the entrance and squinted through the pulsing lights to spot their friends.  Across the room Emily saw him straight away.  It was almost like she had a locator beacon in her brain with his name on it because this happened all the time at school too.  Tonight felt different; charged.  It might be the night that Sam noticed her.

“Hey Emily!  You made it!  What are you drinking?” asked Sarah, one of her absolute best friends.  They hugged and Emily replied,

“Vodka and Orange!”

“Ew!” Sarah replied.  “Why don’t you have some seltzer?  They’ve got a keg of lime and soda!  Come with me!”

Drinks in hand and their bags in the middle of the floor, the girls danced to a P!nk song while Emily put all her efforts into moving her body in a way that she thought looked good and hoped would make Sam notice her.  She kept glancing at Sam to see if he had, but he looked like he was busy laughing and drinking with his friends, so she kept dancing.  She was drunk now, euphoric, slightly numb and totally bulletproof.  The seltzer was just like drinking sparkly water.  So easy to drink, hard to believe it even had any alcohol in it.  Then the songs started running into each other and people’s faces were blurring like Emily was watching a time-lapse video, so she went to the toilet to slow things down.

Emily sat on the toilet with her head in hands, absorbing the excited energy of the night.  A few moments passed before she stood on unsteady legs to exit the bathroom. 

“Hey”, said Sam as she was trying to walk instead of wobble back to the dance floor. 

“Hi”, Emily replied, head tipping slightly to one side. 

“Do you want to dance?” asked Sam.  Emily nodded yes.  Sam took her hand, and they started dancing together.  Emily grinned at her friends.  They looked surprised but met her smile with their own.  The words in the song Emily and Sam were dancing to felt like they were meant just for them, and it was like time stood still.

Emily remembered kissing Sam inside on the dance floor, and it tasted like beer, and she remembered going outside with him to the domain, waving at people and getting some cheeky words from his friends. 

She remembered the cold and wet ground and she remembered her friend Jade helping her up and getting her a lift home with a friend.   The seats in the back of the car were cold vinyl and she was shivering.

Her Dad had waited up for her.

“Emily, what’s that on the back of your jeans?”.  Emily looked and said,

“Oh no, I must have started my period”.

Emily could not grasp what the black bits in her memory held but she still knew what had happened. 

***

Emily’s Mum pulled the red Hyundai over beside Emily’s school.  I can’t do this, I can’t do this, I can’t do this, Emily thought in a loop that had firmly wedged itself in her brain and wouldn’t quit.  She hadn’t eaten breakfast.  She might just throw up, right here at the school entrance.  Wouldn’t that be something?  Emily forced herself to get out of the car.   One foot in front of the other foot.  She traced a small wave in the air with her hand to say bye to her Mum.

Emily hesitated for a moment – every tiny molecule in her body willed her to run away – and stared into the distance.  The jagged shapes of the white snow-blanketed Southern Alps were visible today in a cloudless blue Christchurch sky.  Her breath was quick, and she could see it; wispy in front of her.  She shrugged mentally and resolutely gathered all the strength she had left to face this mountain of her own making. 

“Emily!” yelled Jade.  Emily turned to face her, smiled tentatively and waited for Jade as she ran across the front entrance towards her.  They had Music class together first period on a Monday and the relief that Emily felt to see Jade right when she needed to was immense.  Emily hadn’t responded to any of her friends’ messages on Sunday; to do that would have confirmed that it was real, and she felt a deep embarrassment at letting herself get so out of control. 

“Hey Jade”, said Emily. 

“Hey!  Oh my gosh, what a crazy party! I didn’t know you liked Sam!  I was worried about you. Why didn’t you answer my messages?” asked Jade, looking at Emily with eyes full of concern and her head tilted to one side like the little blue budgie her grandma has.

Emily looked down at her black scuffed school shoes. 

“Sorry Jade”, she said.  “I just couldn’t.  I’m so embarrassed.  I really like him, and I shouldn’t have drunk so much.  What if he tells everyone what happened”?   Jade put her arm around Emily and squeezed her shoulder.  They walked to Music class together, an impenetrable unit.  Emily’s favourite teacher, Ms. Connelly, smiled at them when they walked in the door.

“Good weekend girls?” 

“Yes, Ms. Connelly, it was great” Jade said quickly and flashed a smile back.  Emily felt her teacher’s gaze on her, but she was careful not to meet her eyes. 

At lunchtime, Emily walked around the school with her friends, got a filled roll and a peanut slab from the canteen for lunch and then they sat in their usual spot.  They could see everything from there; who was talking to who and what was happening.

Emily was quiet as her friends chattered away. She tuned out and gazed across the grey concrete quad.  She saw her friend Sarah over by the school office talking to Sam and laughing. 

Sarah walked over to the girls and started talking about the party and how fun it was.  Emily looked at her directly and said,

“What were you talking to him for?”  Sarah replied,

“You know our families are friends Emily.  Our parents are planning the usual camping trip for summer and they’re trying to get us to come, but we were saying how we’d rather stay here for New Year’s Eve.”

“But you know what happened on Saturday night!”  Emily said. 

“You’re supposed to be my friend, not his”.

Tears escaped down Emily’s face and she ran off to the bathrooms.  Jade started to follow her. 

“Just please leave me alone” Emily said. 

***

A year later.

Night had fallen in Christchurch city and Emily was around at Aaron’s house.  Inside a small pokey flat, he was playing Xbox with his younger brother and his friends.  It was a fighting game where you could choose your character and that was the part Emily loved.  Not the fighting bit.  Putting on another persona. 

They were drinking 440ml cans of bourbon and cola and smoking weed from a bong.  Someone chucked her an egg and she caught it in one hand; strange because she was so uncoordinated when she was sober.  She had superpowers.  She laughed until she had tears in her eyes and her cheeks hurt.  Vaguely she thought she heard Aaron on the phone.  It sounded far away, and his voice was quiet; his head bent forward.  She tried to focus on him to guess who he was talking to, but the room kept moving.

Someone said let’s go for a drive.  One of the boys, Jamie, had an old school RX7; they piled in and sped down the triple laned streets.  So fast.  So much fun.  They picked up one of Emily’s friend’s, Gemma.  Gemma was into weed and she was into Jamie, although who Jamie was into was anyone’s guess.  They played Kanye so loud, windows down, and Emily knew all the words.  They drank more and smoked cigarettes and the night dissolved around them.

Eventually Jamie dropped Emily and Aaron off at Aaron’s house.  Aaron let Emily in, then he turned to her, his hand up – as if he were a bouncer at a club denying entry – and said,

“Actually, not tonight”.  Emily stopped, puzzled.  She heard herself pleading to Aaron to let her stay. 

“You’re so boring Emily, and you never want to have sex”, Aaron said.

“I do! Aaron, we have sex all the time!” shouted Emily.  Aaron looked at her with a sneer and shut the door.  She stood looking at it in the bitingly cold night, with its peeling brown paint and old amber coloured glass.  She banged on it desperately. Repeatedly. The neighbour in the flat next door yelled at her to shut the fuck up.

Crying, Emily walked slowly to her little white car and sat in the driver’s seat for a while. She looked up at Aaron’s bedroom window. It was dark. She drove off; her head numb from the tears and the drugs.  She drove home along Awatea Road, with paddocks on either side.  As Emily approached a corner, she realized she was going too fast to make it and her stomach clenched.  She skidded off the road and into a wire farm fence.  The car stalled after sliding along the fence for a few metres.  Emily still felt nothing.

***

Emily woke the next day with a sick feeling in her stomach.  She knew it well these days…. A heady combo of remorse, regret, shame and hangover with a neat pinch of self-loathing.  But this time she had bruised ribs and she was also trying to figure out how to tell her Mum and Dad about the car.  She really had no idea what state it was in, just that the left side was hit.

She walked cautiously downstairs, listening carefully for clues as to who she might find there.  Whistling. It was her Dad.  He was in the kitchen making his toast for breakfast.  She started talking before she could change her mind,

“Dad, someone damaged my car while I was at Aaron’s last night”.   He turned around, blue eyes bright,

“What happened Emmie?”

“It was parked outside Aaron’s house and somebody must have swiped the car driving too fast, and it’s dented on one side”, said Emily, heart racing.  Her Dad had already started moving into the garage from the kitchen and she followed. 

“It’s on the left side”.

Together they surveyed the damage and Emily waited for her Dad to speak. 

“Okay then. Where are the paint marks Emmie?  From the other car?” he said. 

“I don’t know.  I was inside the house for ages, and anything could have happened on that road, it’s so busy”, Emily replied, her ears burning. 

“Yes, it’s not a great place to park, but it doesn’t explain how the damage is on the left side rather than the right, or why there is grass in the door” he said, studying her face.

“Maybe they took it for a joy ride?”, Emily suggested.  Her Dad looked at her carefully before replying.

“Emmie.  We’re going to have to call the Police.  Or maybe there is something you want to tell me?”

Emily glanced at her Dad’s face and exhaled slowly.  Considering whether she had the guts to go to the Police for an imaginary auto theft case. 

“Okay”, she said finally.  “I fell asleep when I was driving home from Aaron’s last night and went off the road.  I didn’t want to tell you the truth because I knew you’d be mad at me”.  Her Dad looked at her.

“Were you drinking Emily?” he asked. There was the flicker of a heartbeat before she replied. 

“I had two drinks earlier in the night, but I waited until I was sober enough to drive home.  I had that exam yesterday. I was so tired, and I just fell asleep while I was driving”.

“Emily.  You could have killed yourself.  Or really hurt yourself.  Or you could have hurt someone else.  I am not mad at you, but I am worried about you.  You should never drive when you are in that state, ever.”  Emily nodded at him and mumbled an apology. 

“Can you please not tell Mum?” Emily begged her father.  He shook his head. 

“You need to face the music Emily.” Emily set about cleaning up her car as best she could.  The grass stains she could get rid of, but the marks and dents remained.

As she got ready in her room for her lunch shift at Lou’s Pizzeria, her phone started ringing.  Emily checked the caller ID.  Aaron.  She had been wondering when he would call.  Apologising?  He bloody well should be. 

“Hello.” She said, keeping her tone even.  Aaron’s voice said

“Emily!  Can you come pick me up from Tina’s house?” Aaron said.  Emily stopped breathing for a beat.  Was she hearing this right?  

“Aaron Taylor, I never want to hear from you or see you ever again.  Please do not call me or come around here again”. Emily’s voice was low and deliberate. She heard Aaron splutter, then, enunciating each word.

“You stupid fucking bitch.  You. Are. A. total. psycho”.  This time his words did not soak into her thin skin, and she almost laughed. 

“Aaron.  You are asking me, your girlfriend, to come and get you from your ex-girlfriend’s house, and you are calling ME a psycho.  YOU are the psychotic one.  Go to hell”.  She pressed end. 

She breathed out and looked out her bedroom window across the rooftops to the lofty willow trees in the park beyond.  She placed her phone down on her bedside table and finished getting ready for work.  She went downstairs and got in her beaten-up car.  It was a sunny and bright winter’s day, so she put on her sunglasses and drove slowly and carefully to work. 

***

Emily spent lunchtime on Monday alone in the common room, looking out from the second-floor window and trying not to cry.  Her sandwich was like cardboard in her mouth and chewing was a big effort.  No one noticed her absence.

When she got home from school, she went straight to her room.  Nobody else was home yet; her Mum and her sister were at the gym.  She wandered from room to room, not settling, not able to quiet her brain.  She went and started doing the ironing, desperate to focus on something else; to be busy.  She cried as she ironed, the hot tears landing onto the pillowcase, everything blurring in front of her.

She finished her blurry ironing and changed tack.  Maybe she could try doing something more physical.  Rollerblading?  She pulled on her skates in the garage and started going up and down their long smooth black asphalt driveway.  Her thoughts raced along with her, piling on top of each other until she couldn’t tease out one from the other: what was wrong with her why couldn’t she feel better why did no one seem ever seem to care about her why wasn’t she good enough why didn’t anyone notice her.

She heard the car in the driveway, and the sound of it then unlocked the floodgates and she stood still in her rollerblades, arms hanging by her sides, bawling like a baby.  Her Mum stopped the car, got out and rushed over to Emily, looked at her wet face and asked her what was wrong.  Emily said in a small strangled voice,

“I don’t know” and sobbed snottily all over her Mum’s old t-shirt.  Her sister was hazy in the background; there and concerned, but she didn’t say anything.  Instead she started helping her Mum take off Emily’s rollerblades.

Her Mum called Doctor Richards and made an appointment for 5pm.  Emily’s mum showered and changed, and they left Emily’s sister in the kitchen making her signature enormous blueberry muffins in the warm country-style kitchen.  Emily and her Mum drove to the doctor’s in silence, and Emily felt safe in it.  She didn’t know what she was going to say to the doctor, but she felt better just because her Mum was going to be there with her.

Their family doctor was Scottish, and Emily had always loved his accent.  He talked a bit about ‘low mood’ which sounded like ‘loh mude’ and he handed Emily a questionnaire to fill out.  The doctor left his office for a bit while she filled it out.  She looked across at her Mum who smiled and nodded at her while occupying herself flicking through an old copy of The Reader’s Digest.  Emily looked down at the clipboard.  The first question was ‘how often have you been bothered by feeling down, depressed, irritable, or hopeless over the last two weeks?’ She could choose from ‘Not at all, Several days, More than half the days, Nearly every day’.  Emily thought about the past weeks and circled ‘More than half the days.’  As she went through the list of questions, it was clear that the same answer applied to almost all the questions.  The only exception was when it applied ‘Nearly every day’. 

Doctor Richards eventually came back and had a look through her answers.  He glanced up at Emily and gave a brief smile. 

“Emily, looking at your answers, it would seem as though you are depressed.  The good news is that we can help you to feel better”. 

“With anti-depressants?” Emily asked.  She had a bit of knowledge about depression; it had been briefly discussed at school in Health class.  It was talked about mainly in relation to suicide and the teachers gave them all tools and resources to help if you were feeling like harming yourself.  But Emily had a good family, a happy non-traumatic childhood, good health and they had enough money to go around.  She didn’t have a good reason to be depressed and anyway, she didn’t want to harm or kill herself.  What was this for then?

“Yes, that’s part of the equation.  The second important part is talk therapy.  I have a special interest in it, and I’ve seen good success with Cognitive Behavioural Therapy, or CBT for short.  The medication generally takes about two to four weeks to start working; for you to feel better, although some people do start to feel better in a few days.  Once you are feeling better, you’ll be able to start working through some tools in the therapy to help you navigate this”.   He paused, then took a ballpoint pen and drew a picture for her (he often illustrated ailments and treatment with pictures) of how the drugs worked; the key role of serotonin in the brain and how the increased levels could help relieve symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Emily looked at his squiggles of neurotransmitters and then out the window at the purple hydrangeas outside and blurted “But I don’t want to take medication. What if people find out and what if I get addicted?”

“Ultimately it is your choice Emily and I know it feels like a big decision to make”, Doctor Richards replied. “But I will say that it doesn’t need to be forever, and what we’ve found that most people taking this medicine can go off it successfully by slowly tapering the dose.  Depression is more common than you think, and you’d be surprised at who needs some help with it at some stage in their lives.” 

Doctor Richards looked at her and hesitated before continuing, “I’ll tell you what.  I’ll give you a prescription, and if you like you can go home and make a decision about it with your family”, he said, gesturing towards Emily’s Mum.  “In the meantime, how about we book you in for a therapy session this week?”

As they went through to reception to pay and book her appointment, Emily thought about how tired she was of feeling like she was defective; of feeling so sad.  And now here was this explanation for why she felt so low.

On the way home, Emily and her Mum stopped by the pokey little chemist with the random trinkets like porcelain bells for sale and filled the prescription.  Getting back into the car, Emily noticed that the charcoal sky looked a little less foreboding. 

***

A few weeks later, Emily was at home with her family on a Wednesday night.  It was about 8pm and they had finished sticky chicken nibbles and rice for dinner, and they were about to continue watching ’13 Reasons Why’.  It was the most tweeted about TV Series that year, and the decision for Emily’s Mum and Dad to let the girls watch it was not taken lightly.  Especially considering Emily’s fragile new sense of being mentally ‘well’.

Emily curled up on the terracotta and forest green couch and put a blanket over her legs.  They all had cups of tea, holding them as though they got life force out of the cups.  Something had niggled at her since starting to watch the TV show and she was captivated.  Even though it was, at times, like looking into the sun. 

Tonight, they were watching Episode 9 and in it there was a scene where one of the female characters is passed out drunk on her bed and a male character comes in and has sex with her. 

Emily’s heart raced; her chest was tight, and her head spun.  She couldn’t focus on the TV screen, instead replaying the night in her head that someone had sex with her and therefore technically she too had sex with that person, but she could not remember it.  The night that she was so drunk, she blacked out.  The first time she had ever had sex.

She picked up her phone and typed into the search bar:  is it rape if you are drunk and blacked out nz?

The first result she saw was ‘Understanding Sexual assault and consent | New Zealand Police’.  She clicked on it, and scrolled down slowly, words jumping out at her.

Emily stared blindly at the phone.  Drop the mic.  It’s not consent.  It’s not her fault. 

***

She had researched all night, until she fell asleep just before dawn with her phone still in her hand.  She woke up in her clothes; her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth, and a major crick in her neck.

Emily was certain that she couldn’t go through with calling the Police and reporting Sam for what he’d done that night. 

But she’d found something she could do. 

***

It was a bright and warm Monday morning at school, and it was spring so the kids were all in their summer uniforms.  The Year 13 students were all in the hall and sitting in rows in the bench seats at the front.  Their heads faced forward and up towards the stage in front of them, expectantly.

The music teacher Ms. Connelly spoke from the stage. 

“Good morning, everyone”, she said. 

“Good morning, Ms. Connelly”, they drawled in a monotone back to her. 

“It’s with great pleasure that I introduce to you Grace Douglas and Max Kaufusi, who are the facilitators of the programme ‘Mates & Dates’.  I’ll let them speak to you in a minute, but first I want to say a big thank you to one of the students in this room who was instrumental in bringing this programme to our school.  I think you’ll learn a lot from this, and you will gain skills you’ll have for life that you can teach to others.  Over to you, Grace and Max.”

Grace spoke first,

“ACC developed Mates and Dates to help young people have healthy and happy relationships.  Mates and Dates is a five-year programme which is delivered at every year level at secondary school. The course covers information that young people like you told us that they wanted to learn about. So, it has five core themes that are repeated at each year. We discuss things like healthy relationships; consent; identity, gender & sexuality; violence awareness raising; and how to keep you and your friends safe.”

Max continued,

“Because you’re all in your last year at high school, the focus for all of you will be leadership; helping younger students to learn about the themes that Grace mentioned earlier, and you will get to work on your own projects to further your own learning …”

Emily sat in the back row and looked around her as Max spoke.  She saw all her ‘colleagues’ from the last four and a half years at school listening closely to what Max and Grace were saying.  To her right, a few rows up, sat Sam. 

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For those looking to bring Mates and Dates to their schools to further encourage proper consensual practice. Click this link.

For those struggling with depression and anxiety, it is okay to reach out for help.