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Sad Girl Novel
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26.08
Tuesday
Valentina’s new friends thought she was some sort of science major because she ‘studied drugs at university’. They never asked any follow-up questions, on account of them all being arts/humanities majors and deeply uninterested in anything so bold and plucky as to think it was above narrative, dealing only in the world of facts, like science. If Val and Baz had been in a quieter pub when they had met, or if he was simply better at paying attention, he would have heard that what she actually said was, ‘I sell study drugs,’ then after a pause, ‘mostly at the university, to students.’ But he had been cocking his ear towards her to indicate he was listening, while his eyes looked beyond her, through to the other side of the honey-coloured wooden bar, following the back of a young man. A young man whose lateral muscles somehow cut perfectly through the drape of his fine merino sweater as he cracked billiards balls around the table with a cue stick like they owed him money. Baz’s attention was thus waylaid, so in a neat spiral of aural miscomprehension, like a seashell or some sort of scientific spiral that Val ironically knew nothing of (Fibonacci … was that anything?), Baz twisted her words to mean that she was one of those rare beasts: a woman in STEM. Val only realised this error when the billiards boy came over and she was introduced as such. She did not fancy making the correction. Not yet. Val recognised the billiards boy—after a life growing up in this university suburb without any prospects of going to university herself—as the type who got around in a rugby shirt three quarters of the year while the main sport he engaged in was getting as perilously close to the edge of political correctness as he could. As the rest of Baz’s friends blew in with the odd Autumn leaf at their heel (pretty girls, emptying their coat pockets of paperbacks and dirty white corded headphones as they rummaged desperately for their vapes), Val went with the flow, hoping that none of her clients would turn up and blow her cover. She needn’t have worried too much, the lack of ketamine and other party drugs on her menu had so far kept her in the clear of this pub’s specific echelon. One thing led to another, and she let herself be ensconced by this crew of increasingly affable rich kids, until she found herself sitting on the floor of a dorm room on campus, accepting a red plastic cup full of ambiguous brown liquor, thinking to herself: ‘I don’t even go here,’ but not daring to say it. In theory, a supply issue had brought her here to scout for deeper pockets. In practice, and much to her surprise, she was having fun cosplaying as a different person, as Valentina. Pretending life was this easy. Demand for study drugs dexamfetamine, methylphenidate and especially lisdexamfetamine (as a woman in STEM, Val translates, that’s Dexies, Ritalin, and Vyvanse) was increasing by over 100% month on month. Her costs were going up. Way up. She sipped her strong brown drink and saw a new referral light up her phone. She could usually predict the whole transaction from the student’s chosen Signal username and this one was no different: Joy-cean Love Letters 2 Ur Mum.
Hey, can you deliver?
No delivery. Pick up on campus
I live out in the burbs. I’m still on my L plates.
Okay?
I’ve got a poem due on Friday. I haven’t started.
A poem?
WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL ME IT WAS AN EMERGENCY?
I’m on my way.
Really?
No. It’s called rhetoric babe. Look it up.
That was unnecessary but made Val smile to herself as she sent through the new hiked price list. In the long silence that followed, she felt Joy baulking. Val turned her attention back to those who could afford it. Valentina’s new friends.
Done reading