Jemma Green

I’m a weapon in Mario Cart—that’s what I always tell people when they ask me if I can drive. Unbeatable at Coconut Mall. Unchallenged in Moo Moo Meadows. Put a Wii remote in my hand and you’ll quickly know me as the best driver you’ve ever met.
But the fact still stands that in real life, I don’t have a license.
It’s something often mocked by my family, often brought up as a humbling joke by my friends when I get a bit too cocky on Maple Treeway. My dad is constantly slipping me reminders to buy some L plates so we can practice. My mum asks me when I’m getting my license more often than she asks me how my day was. Quite frankly, it’s embarrassing. I’m the eldest child in my family, twenty-two, with two jobs and (nearly) a degree. I’m always the one to dog-sit, plan birthdays, grab some groceries after work. I’m supposed to be the responsible one, the trailblazer-firstborn-girlboss who pushes ahead and gets shit done. And for the most part, I am, and I do.
Yet, I still can’t go on a late night Maccas run without bribing my younger sister to take me.
Izzie drives with blind confidence, with the smooth arrogance of a twenty-year-old on her P’s. She drifts through lanes in her two-door Mazda 2, silver-winged against rain, knowing she’ll be fine. She failed her first driving test, then barreled right into her second one where she snapped up a license before I had even finished my one hundred hours.
And now, while I sit in a freeze, putting off my test with excuse after excuse, my sister’s learning the roads of Brisbane in afternoons of hellish traffic and day trips to the coast. And I’m right there next to her, shouting wrong directions—a license-less passenger princess.
The first time we went on a drive, just the two of us—no instructor, no Mum or Dad to supervise—I was scared shitless. We were going to a café in Clayfield, and my knuckles were bone-white on the door handle, my heart racing at every yellow light and give way sign. It’s not that my sister was a bad driver, but she was still a child to me. She was still the little sister who needed me to proofread English assessments and hang up her washing when she was too tired to stay awake. I was sure that by the time we made it to Clayfield, there’d be six GTA stars flashing on the windscreen somewhere and a trail of pedestrian blood running in tyre tracks behind the car.
Thankfully, I was proven wrong.
Izzie parked on a hill beside the café, and we locked the car and walked into the plant-dressed morning rush of servers and little dogs under tables. I let my nerves settle over a hot mocha and soon I was relaxed enough to enjoy an overpriced sourdough toastie and chat with my sister. We spoke about uni. We spoke about work. She was planning a trip to Korea, to study the language, to get away from home. I was thinking about starting a book club. The more we talked, the more it felt like growing, like shedding the skins of childhood and seeing the people underneath.
From there on out, I became a permanent fixture in her front seat.
She picks me up from work, so I don’t have to take the bus and drops me off at my friends’ houses before a night of drinking. Always for a price, of course. More often than not, I’m picking up the tab for our brunch dates and coffees. It’s my job to run into woolies and buy her a pack of flashcards or some grapes. I’m never allowed on AUX because, as she often reminds me, she’s the one driving so she gets to pick the songs—always Gorillaz or Blur, Tame Impala, David Bowie.
She hates it when I slam the door too hard or yank the seat back. She despises it when I leave rubbish in her car.
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But for all my sister’s rules, I’m still grateful she drives me around. Especially when she’s driving me to Maccas.
We were sitting in my bed last Tuesday, House MD playing on TV, noise from the neighbours’ party refusing to let up, our dog—Sapphire—stretched out over our legs while we caught each other up on TikToks, when Izzie looked up at me.
‘I’m kind of hungry,’ she said. Her brow was raised, the hint of a conspiratorial smile in the corners of her lips. ‘Are you hungry?’ I smiled instantly and shrugged.
‘I could perhaps find room for a sweet treat.’
It didn’t take us long to hop in the car, speeding down the road through neon-streaked traffic lights to a pair of golden arches and a 24-hour drive thru. With her license, my sister could take us anywhere at any time. I loved it, the cool, dewy breeze on my cheeks from the open window and even the way she tried to humiliate me by playing her music full blast at stop signs. It gave me, not for the first time, an odd feeling—this commingling sense of immense joy, undercut by a deep, personal shame.
There was a fear within me then, as there still is now, of the unknown. I always order the same thing at the same restaurants, I rewatch the same TV shows over and over. To try something new, to do something I don’t know how to do—risking failure—terrifies me. In the six years I have had my learner’s, I have never made that jump to get my P’s. I don’t know if I can do it, and so in the absence of that surety, I do nothing at all. I am stagnant.
But as I watched Izzie, with a hot paper bag of nuggets warming on my lap, I realised I had never seen her give into fear.
I know she feels it. I know she has suffered panic and uncertainty. Unlike me, though, she turns to face her fears and walks straight toward them. She gets in the car and forces herself to drive. She, younger than me, the one who I should be setting the example for, has surpassed me.
On the way out of Maccas, I realised this. As we pulled up in the driveway of the house we were raised in, it hit me that I was a little proud. A lot proud. Proud of my sister, my little sister, for overtaking me. For being able to do what I could not. All our lives, I had been the older sister, the one to feel the burden of responsibility and care, and first attempts at everything, but in her blatant disregard for fear, Izzie grew straight past me. In this, she was my older sister.
I still have no license, and one day soon, I know I’ll have to face my fear of driving, jump into its anxious sea and let it swallow my body, close over my head. I’ll have to summon a measure of Izzie’s bravery, her self-assured, fast-and-furious-speed-racer courage, and I’ll get my license (if only to keep Mum and Dad off my back).
But, for now, I’m happy to let her be the older sister for a bit, and I’m more than proud to keep calling myself my sister’s passenger princess.
Author: Jemma Green is an emerging writer and editor based in Meanjin/Brisbane who is currently in her final year of a BFA Creative Writing at QUT. With publications in Glass, Forget Me Not Press, FROCKET, and ScratchThat, she is the winner of a 2022 AWC writing contest and is a facilitator for a pop-up salon at the QWC’s 2024 QPoetry! event. Working fluidly between forms, she writes both prose and poetry, focusing on a combination of intimate emotion and a lush use of language.
Artist: Callum Ross-Rowland (he/him) is a Meanjin (Brisbane)-based creative writing student at QUT. He was the 2023 Literary Salon’s Photographer with his recent Diploma in Photo Imaging from Billy Blue (Torrens). He was recently shortlisted for Photographer of the Year in the Animal and Nature category and regularly photographs for Artful Heads magazine, where he captures portraits of artists from different mediums. Find him on Instagram @alrightatart.
Edited by: Ricky Jade and Benjamin Forbes