Gab lay on her bed that night with hot tears spilling down her face. There was a rending pain somewhere inside her—she didn’t know exactly where. It was all because of that stupid evening conversation with Mr. C.

Gab’s journal lay in front of her. She felt compelled to write about what had happened; she needed detangling. And she felt so guilty.

At the bottom of her journal entry, in big letters, she wrote:

I AM NOT REJECTING THE OFFER. I AM JUST DEFERRING. I’LL GO NEXT YEAR.

“I’m lying. It’ll never happen,” she said to herself aloud, slapping her journal shut. But Gina was in the room next door and heard.

“What was that, dear?” her mum squawked through the wall. Gab rolled her eyes.

“Nothing, Mum! Don’t WORRY!”

She flicked open her journal again and wrote words that didn’t even feel like hers. Would that woman just leave me alone and stop inflicting her anxieties on me!! It’s bloody stifling!

But then she felt guilty about that too.

“You’re meant to make me feel better,” she said to her journal. Then she threw it across the room and hid under the blankets, trying not to think anymore.

“What was that, Gabrielle?” came the inevitable inquiry.

***

It wasn’t unusual for kids at Gab’s school to take a gap year between high school and uni. Still, those who knew Gab—her teachers, her work colleagues, her peers—were somewhat surprised by her choice to do so. But this was the decision that didn’t feel like a decision. It may have looked like a choice to those on the outside, but to Gab, there was no question. Jack had turned seven and was starting Grade 2. Gina was as needy as ever, not that Gab would have described it that way. Gab felt needed and had a role to play. For some reason—one not even conscious to her, but perhaps having something to do with Mr. Cheng being an alumnus there—she had her heart set on a prestigious university in Melbourne. She didn’t want to think about other options; there were too many and it was overwhelming. This at least had narrowed things down. And the university she wanted to attend didn’t offer a Bachelor of Agriculture online or by distance. Being at home, she had more important things to think about anyhow. She had to look after Jack, and work. How else could they afford to send him to swimming lessons and to other kids’ birthday parties? Gab was aspirational and loved to challenge herself, but her own education could take a backseat. Her family gave her purpose. And work (and the money that came with it) increased her sense of independence. It didn’t bother her to stay in town working. What bothered her was when people around her talked to her about it and acted surprised that she wasn’t going to uni, especially after her Year 12 results. It annoyed her intensely; how could they understand the responsibilities that were hers? Who were they to judge?

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She knew her high school friends had whispered about her mother sometimes, with words like ‘needy’ and ‘demanding’; she had felt mortified and guilty of some unnamed crime when in Year 12 psychology class, they had discussed ‘co-dependence’. Then, that word was added to the arsenal of judgment used by the other kids as they tried to diagnose Gab’s situation for her, both secretly and not-so-secretly. What could Gab do about it? Why were her family relationships labelled as unhealthy when she didn’t know any different? And what would it mean for her future? Why did she feel like there was something wrong with her when she was just being herself? It was so unfair.

These thoughts and fears had been woven into her final year of schooling, sometimes surfacing visibly, but often running under the surface. Now, Gab’s work at the supermarket was a relief, a continuity. A relief all the more because she shrunk at the thought of spending countless days at home with her mother. But Mac had said she could work thirty or more hours a week, mostly during school hours and on every second weekend when Jack was staying with his dad in the next town along. And she was planning to help Tony on the farm with a whole lot of tree planting, in the hope of regenerating some of the areas decimated by decades upon decades of cattle farming. That was a plan, wasn’t it?