Moonlight Sonata

by Eileen Merriman

  ‘Shit. What happens if— Shit!’ Noah tightens his embrace, but she can’t stop shivering. He calls out, making her jump. ‘Hey! Joe! JOE!’

  ‘Uncle Joe,’ Lola says, her words running together, her vision blurry. She tries to open her eyes, but she can’t seem to coordinate her muscles to do anything.

  Uncle Joe’s voice penetrates through the fog in her head. ‘What happened? Did you capsize?’

  ‘We lost the kayak,’ Noah calls out. ‘Can you take Lola with you? She’s having a hypo.’

  ‘How could you lose the kayak?’ Joe yells.

  ‘Hurry up,’ Noah yells back, and she hears a wave crash against the rocks below, hears her uncle say ‘Christ, don’t drop her’, and she falls into the abyss.

  And now someone is turning her onto her side, and she’s throwing up.

  ‘There you go, you’re all right,’ says an accented voice — English, maybe? Lola opens her eyes. A man in a green uniform is crouching next to her, holding a white container.

  ‘That glucose is magic stuff, isn’t it?’ He winks at her. Lola turns her head, staring up at the white roof. Moving, they’re moving.

  ‘Am I—’

  ‘You’re in an ambulance,’ the man confirms. Groaning, she puts her arm over her face and feels a twinge. ‘Watch the IV,’ he says, pressing over the cannula taped to the back of her hand.

  ‘Please don’t tell me you’re taking me to hospital.’

  ‘Mmm, yeah, sorry.’ The paramedic doesn’t sound sorry. ‘Let’s check that blood sugar again, shall we?’

  Her mother is going to kill her.

  Kiri glares at her in the rear-vision mirror. ‘How could you be so irresponsible?’

  Lola fidgets with her salty hair and gazes out of the window. Her skin prickles, as if she’s got a touch of sunburn on top of a mega dose of shame. ‘We didn’t know the kayak was going to drift away.’ The hills are crispy brown. Dry, everything is so dry, including the inside of her mouth.

  ‘Jesus, Lola, it’s the ocean, not a swimming pool.’ Even her father isn’t sticking up for her this time. ‘You could at least have left your life jacket on.’

  ‘No, Anthony, she should have stayed in the damn kayak,’ her mother snaps. ‘Noah should have known better.’

  ‘It was my idea,’ Lola flares.

  ‘Well, it was a stupid idea,’ her mother shoots back.

  ‘Yeah, I got it, OK?’

  ‘Stop!’ her father roars, just as he does when Lola is arguing with Austin or Tom. ‘I’m sure Lola has learned her lesson. Right, Lola?’

  ‘I’m not stupid,’ Lola mumbles, and they all fall silent. They descend into the bay, pohutukawa trees blooming crimson against the cloudless blue. When Lola looks at the dashboard clock, she sees it is half-past four already. Half a day wasted, because of her spur-of-the-moment decision.

  But for those few minutes, when she and Noah had cavorted through the glassy blue, everything had been so perfect. If only they’d kept a better eye on the kayak.

  Lola is jerked back into the present when her father pulls into Nana’s driveway and turns the ignition off. McKenzie and Tom are sitting on the front lawn, heads bent over McKenzie’s phone.

  ‘Hey, Lol, you all right?’ Tom asks when Lola loops around the front of the car.

  ‘I’m fine,’ Lola says and stalks inside.

  There’s no escape from the family, though. All Lola wants is to have a long shower and find Noah, not necessarily in that order. But when she walks into the downstairs lounge, Nana is sitting at the piano, Austin beside her.

  ‘Good,’ Nana is saying, ‘but this is molto vivace — do you know what that means?’

  ‘Fast,’ Austin says, fluttering his fingers in the air.

  ‘Yes, lively and fast, good,’ Nana says, lighting up the way she always does when she is teaching her students. She reaches for the metronome sitting on top of the piano and sets the pendulum going, tick-tick-tick. Austin starts playing again — a piece Lola recognises, but can’t name — Schumann, perhaps?

  Head down, Lola sneaks towards the bedroom, but is caught by her grandmother’s voice before she can dart through the door.

  ‘Lola, can I have a word?’

  Damn it.

  ‘I really need to have a shower,’ Lola says, rubbing the greasy-grainy skin of her forearm. An adhesive dressing covers the hole where the paramedic delivered the glucose she’d needed to drag her back to consciousness.

  Austin says, ‘Uncle Richard yelled at Noah for, like, half an hour.’

  Lola’s metronome-heart speeds up, molto vivace. ‘Half an hour?’

  ‘Austin,’ Nana says. ‘Why don’t you go and take the sausages out of the freezer for the barbecue tonight?’

  Her brother frowns. ‘I’m vegetarian.’

  ‘Yes, but the rest of us are not,’ Nana snaps, and Austin leaves, casting a baleful look over his shoulder. Lola sinks onto the couch, rubbing her aching forehead.

  ‘I’m sorry about the kayak,’ she says.

  Her grandmother moves to sit beside her.

  ‘It’s not the kayak I’m worried about,’ she says. ‘You could have died today. And not just from drowning.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘I’m not sure you do.’ Her grandmother’s voice is low, but firm. ‘If Beckett hadn’t taken his cell phone, the others might not have been able to get help to you in time. I know you didn’t ask to have diabetes, but you need to take responsibility for your own health. Your parents were besides themselves with worry.’

  Chewing her bottom lip, Lola looks down at her scraped knees. She learned a long time ago there is no point in talking back to her grandmother. It just results in a longer lecture.

  Nana tuts. ‘What did they say at the hospital?’

  ‘They said I was fine.’ Lola glances up. ‘I don’t know why the ambulance took me in when they’d already fixed me.’

  ‘Did they stick needles in you?’ McKenzie is standing in the doorway, her oversized sunglasses pushed on top of her head.

  ‘I stick needles in myself every day,’ Lola says tonelessly and stands up. ‘I’m going to have that shower now.’

  By the time she walks upstairs, it’s after five o’clock. Wine o’clock, her mother calls it. Sure enough, the adults are sitting on the balcony, drinking and snacking on cheese and olives.

  ‘In France,’ Austin says, eyeing up the Sauvignon Blanc bottle on the table, beads of condensation quivering on the glass, ‘the kids are allowed to drink wine with their meals.’

  ‘The legal drinking age over there is still sixteen,’ Molly says. In her floppy sunhat and flowery sundress, Lola thinks she looks twenty-seven rather than forty-seven.

  Joe leans against a chair and sips on his beer. ‘Thought they’d recently raised it to eighteen.’

  ‘Either way, you are only thirteen,’ Lola’s mother says, balancing a triangle of cheese on a cracker. ‘So you can have a taste from my glass and no more.’

  ‘How am I meant to develop my wine palate?’ Austin says, giving his mother a cheeky smile.

  Behind Lola, Beckett says, ‘You do such a great gay impersonation, Aus.’

  Austin, reddening, mumbles, ‘You know it,’ and squeezes past Lola and heads back inside.

  ‘Honestly, Beckett,’ Nana says, and Beckett, wide-eyed and innocent, says, ‘What?’

  ‘You’d do well to take some tips off Austin, no matter what side of the fence he chooses to sit on,’ their grandmother says. ‘He’s turning into a lovely young man, which is more than I can say for you sometimes.’

  ‘What did I do?’ Beckett asks, looking all sulky now. ‘And what’s that got to do with a fence?’

  Nana gestures towards the kitchen. ‘There’s a pile of dishes with your name on them in there, Beckett Mortimer. Now get moving.’

  ‘Why does everyone pick on me all the time?’ Beckett moans, and Lola, not finding whom she’s been looking for, traipses through the lounge and outside.

  ‘Hey,
Miss Lola.’ Sully passes her on the balcony stairs, a slab of beer in his arms. ‘I hear you tried to feed the whales today.’

  Lola forces a smile. ‘Something like that,’ she says. Then he’s gone, and all she can hear is laughter coming from the front balcony. Laughter and — music?

  She swivels her head, listening. The music is coming from one of the tents. Noah’s, she’s guessing, as she’d spotted Tom on the balcony just before, drinking a beer. Wandering across the lawn, she glances down at the adhesive dressing on the back of her hand and tears it off. After stuffing it in her pocket, she circles the tent and spots a pair of legs poking out of the entrance.

  ‘Noah?’

  No answer. Either he’s ignoring her, or he can’t hear her over The Chainsmokers, who are blasting ‘Something Just Like This’. After a brief hesitation, Lola crouches down and squeezes a big toe. The feet disappear and are replaced seconds later by Noah’s face.

  ‘Oh,’ he says. ‘It’s you.’

  Lola scuttles backwards. ‘Sorry.’

  Noah reaches out and grabs one of her feet. ‘No, don’t go. I thought it was Dad coming to hassle me again.’

  ‘Oh.’ Lola looks down. Noah hasn’t let go of her yet. He hasn’t let go, and she doesn’t want him to, either. ‘You got in big trouble, too, huh?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Noah runs his thumb over the sole of her foot before releasing it, and she feels something unfurl inside her chest. ‘You?’

  ‘I got a roasting in the car,’ she says. ‘And a basting by Nana.’

  Noah chews his lower lip. ‘I was worried about you.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ she says, for what feels like the twentieth time that day. ‘Really.’

  ‘Really.’ He shuffles backward, beckoning her in. ‘Want to chill out for a bit?’

  ‘Yeah, OK.’ After crawling in, Lola flops down beside him, half on and half off the sleeping bag. A portable Bluetooth speaker is sitting next to his pillow. Between the sleeping bag and the side of the tent is a pack, spilling its contents over the floor — t-shirts, an LED headlamp, roll-on deodorant.

  ‘Warm in here,’ she says, feeling sticky between her breasts.

  Noah stretches. ‘Cools down once it gets dark.’ His leg is pressed against hers, just like when they were sitting on the rock ledge earlier that day. She’d been so cold then, so cold and shaky.

  Now she’s feeling shaky again, but in a completely different way. Stupid, because she’s known Noah her whole life, and why is she getting all shy now?

  Because I can smell him, deodorant and salt and sweat, and I don’t know … I don’t know …

  ‘Tom found the kayak,’ Noah says.

  ‘No one told me that.’ There are a few wiry hairs on his chin, a tiny scar on his brow she’s noticed only in a subconscious way before. Noah turns onto his side, his nose millimetres from hers.

  ‘I think you were in the shower. When he brought it back, I mean.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Dad said I have to pay for the paddles and the life jackets.’

  ‘What?’ Lola sits up. ‘But it was my fault.’

  Noah takes her arm, tugs her back down. ‘I should have stopped you. I shouldn’t have followed you.’

  ‘I’m not a child,’ she says, and he says, ‘No, you really aren’t,’ and a flush spreads throughout her body.

  ‘I’m just repeating what Dad said,’ Noah says. ‘I wouldn’t have followed you if I didn’t want to. And the first bit — the swim — well, that was fun, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she says, still unable to look him in the eye.

  Noah takes her hand and strokes the red mark on the back of it. ‘Is that where they injected the glucose?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And they gave me some fluid through the vein.’

  ‘Did it hurt?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Really?’ She can feel his breath on her ear.

  ‘Lola? Noah, have you seen Lola?’ It’s her mother’s voice, a little high-pitched, like it always is when she’s worried. And even though they haven’t been doing anything wrong — have they? — Lola shakes her head at her cousin.

  Looking straight at Lola, Noah says, ‘Yeah, just a second ago, said she was going to the loo. Shall I tell her you were looking for her?’

  ‘Yes.’ Lola’s mother clears her throat. ‘Actually, no. I was just making sure she was OK. Are you coming up soon?’

  ‘I’ll be right there,’ Noah says. Lola waits half a minute before sitting up again, her head brushing the top of the tent.

  ‘I’d better go. Before Mum calls another ambulance.’

  ‘Yeah, I reckon.’ She’s just about to crawl through the tent flaps when he says, ‘But Lola?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘I was worried about you,’ he says, and when she looks back at him, he isn’t smiling anymore.

  ‘We should go swimming again,’ she says, fed up with being viewed as the sick one. I’m not the weakest link, I’m not. ‘At night.’

  Noah’s smile returns.

  ‘I’ll bring the barley sugars,’ he says.

  Chapter 7:

  MOLLY 1984

  One-and-two-and-one-and-two-and—

  ‘Damn.’ Molly slid off the E flat and thumped the white key down. E natural, E natural, why did she keep making the same mistake? She began playing from the top of the page again, counting beneath her breath. One-and-two-and-one-and-two-and—

  ‘Urrgh.’

  ‘Molly, how many times have I told you to practise both hands separately before you try to put them together?’ Her mother was standing behind her, a tea towel slung over her shoulder.

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Well, do it again. And have you done your theory homework?’

  ‘I will.’ Molly crossed her arms. Hazel crossed her arms.

  ‘So, what are you waiting for?’

  Molly let a slow breath out. ‘I’m waiting for you to go away.’

  Her mother’s voice sharpened. ‘I’ve had just about enough of your attitude, young lady. If you don’t start showing me some respect, you won’t be going to the movies tonight. Do you hear me?’

  Molly ground her teeth. Don’t say anything, just don’t. She was dying to see Footloose, had been looking forward to it all week.

  ‘You’ll thank me for this one day,’ her mother said, before turning on her heel and leaving the room.

  Scowling, Molly turned back to the piano and started again. One-and-two-and-one-and-two-and … Timing perfect, notes perfect.

  She hated it when her mother was right.

  Molly glared at her eldest brother. ‘But you promised.’

  ‘I didn’t promise.’ Sully pulled a rugby jersey over his floppy blond hair. ‘You just assumed.’

  Molly kicked at the curled-up edge of the hallway rug. There was a stain in the middle from when their father had dropped a cup of coffee on it last year. That had sent their mother into one of her rages — that was my grandmother’s rug — followed by an argument of monstrous proportions where their parents had dragged up all their grievances of the past twenty years.

  But you said—

  You always—

  I’ll never forgive you for—

  ‘Ask Ants,’ Sully said, chucking a tennis ball through the door of the bedroom he shared with his brother. Seconds later, the ball came flying back out and hit the wall next to Molly’s head.

  ‘Mum said I’m not allowed to drive until I pay off my speeding ticket,’ Ants called out.

  ‘That’ll teach you,’ Sully called back, dodging when a shoe came flying out next. He tugged up the zipper on his windbreaker. ‘Get Dad to drop you off then.’

  ‘He’s still at the pub.’ Molly wanted to scream. Who knew when their father would be home, once he started drinking?

  ‘Where’s Mum?’ Sully asked, walking towards the kitchen. Molly trailed after him.

  ‘She’s at choir practice. That’s why I asked you to drop m
e in the first place. I can’t believe you forgot.’

  Sully plucked the keys off the bench. ‘Well, I’m going in completely the opposite direction, and I’m late.’ He turned and ran down the back steps.

  ‘Bastard.’ After kicking the wall, Molly sat on the lino with a thud, tears springing to her eyes. She was meant to be meeting Claire at the movie theatre at eight-thirty. She’d already missed the seven forty-five bus into town, and the next bus was a whole hour away.

  Being thirteen going on fourteen sucked.

  ‘What’s up?’ Joe hovered in the doorway, blew a gum-bubble at her.

  ‘Sully is a wanker,’ Molly said as Sully’s V8 engine rumbled through the wall. ‘He said he’d drop me at the movies.’

  ‘What about Ants?’

  ‘He’s not allowed until he pays off his speeding ticket.’ Molly got to her feet and hobbled into the lounge, her big toe throbbing. ‘Anyway, Mum’s got the car.’

  Joe followed her, still blowing purple bubbles. ‘You could hitch.’

  ‘Are you crazy?’ She flopped onto the couch. ‘I could get raped and murdered.’

  Joe sat beside her. ‘I’ll go with you.’

  ‘You want to see Footloose?’

  ‘Shit, no.’ He sprang up and started prancing around the lounge, warbling ‘Footloose’.

  ‘Stop!’ Molly hurled a cushion at him, and Joe chucked it back. Growling, Molly leapt onto his back, her arms around his neck. Joe spun her around, dumping her on the couch before straddling her and holding her by the wrists.

  ‘I hate you,’ she spluttered.

  ‘Nah, really?’ Joe blew a grape-scented bubble at her, sat back on his heels. ‘I’ll ring Chris, see if he wants to hang out at the spacie parlour while you’re at the movies.’

  Molly sat up, rearranging her tangled hair. ‘Mum and Dad will kill us if they find out.’ Still, it was tempting. Maybe she could talk Claire’s mum into dropping them home afterwards.