A Shadow's Breath

by Nicole Hayes

  She thought back to that next day at school, after Nick had first kissed her, or she’d kissed Nick. How he’d approached her in the cafeteria, his eyes fixed on hers like no one else existed. He’d stood there, a smile playing on his lips, those chocolate eyes intense and bright. ‘Did you get any sleep?’ he’d asked without even saying hello, the intimacy beneath this disregard for niceties stealing her breath.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘Your mum okay?’

  And Tessa had offered a twisted, wan smile, an echo of Keiko’s ‘shouganai’. What can you do?

  He’d glanced up and down the cafeteria then, reached for her hand and led her out to the schoolyard. She turned to face him, his arms sliding easily behind her back. ‘Hey,’ he said.

  ‘Hey.’

  The kiss was long and sweet. When they finally pulled away, she found her eyes drawn to his lips again, incredulous she’d just kissed them. The colour so rich and ripe there would never be the right words.

  Except this language she knew, Tessa realised, deepening the hue of the pink until it was as close to Nick’s lips as she could remember it. And then she was ready. She pressed the brush to the canvas, the smooth white plain tempting and delicious, full of possibility. A steady, even stroke, then another and another. She rinsed her brush and touched the horsehair tip to her palette, filling it with the colours of a bruised winter sunset. Violet, burnt orange, pink and a sliver of liquid gold – she added each to the canvas, letting the warm tones eclipse the white so that soon it was aglow with a flaming sky.

  She had a lot to learn. She felt confident with a pencil and paper, but the permanence of paint on canvas stole that certainty. It ate away at her steady hand, so that she smudged and blotted where the stroke should be clean, or she layered and thickened where the paint should be thin. But she was getting better. And with her mum’s present, all she needed now were some canvases, an easel and maybe a couple more brushes to kit out a studio. She had money saved up – from birthdays and summer work helping Doug at the police station – but there wouldn’t be much left over afterwards.

  She felt the pressure of this in her gut. This was her secret stash, the one hidden away to avoid her mum’s midnight raids or when the arsehole was in a mood. It was her way out. The single thing that had given Tessa the energy to wake up each morning and drag herself to school. The need to get out of her house – out of Carrima – bearing down on her like a semitrailer. Every new day had brought her one step closer to the future, and she’d forced herself to dress, walk to school and get through each class just so she could mark off another day on the calendar. But that was before.

  ‘Got any black?’

  Tessa’s hand jerked, almost smearing her painting. Lara Hodge hovered beside her, her smock rucked up over one shoulder, a sky-blue streak of paint on her left cheek. Even with paint on her face she was gorgeous. How did she do that?

  ‘There,’ Lara said, pointing at the box of acrylic tubes beside Tessa’s easel. ‘Do you mind?’

  Tessa’s brain clicked into gear and she sifted through the tubes she’d separated out for herself. She found a charcoal-black and handed it to Lara. ‘This do?’

  ‘Ta.’ Lara smiled openly, her golden, tanned cheeks dimpling. She nodded at the canvas. ‘That’s good.’

  She was friendly too, which made it really hard to hate her. And she’d dated Nick. Tessa didn’t like to think about it, but she knew people didn’t understand why he was with Tessa and not Lara. It was getting harder to ignore. Tessa felt a wave of something she didn’t like course through her, and studied her feet to hide the colour in her cheeks. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Are you girls working or talking?’ Ms Alessandro called, her eyebrows arched in perpetual question.

  ‘Working!’ Lara said.

  ‘Good. It’s a chance to get started on your folio before the real pressure kicks in next year. Make the most of it, guys.’

  ‘Tessa will blitz,’ Lara said, loud enough for the class to hear. ‘You should come and see.’

  Every pair of eyes fell on Tessa and her canvas.

  ‘Let’s have a look, then,’ the teacher said, closing in on Tessa before she could protest. The other students formed a huddle around her painting, locking Tessa in place. She couldn’t have been more uncomfortable if she were standing there naked. Her vision swam before her, and she was tempted to throw herself at the canvas, to block it from prying eyes.

  Seeking escape, she focused on the opulent pink streaked across her canvas, and suddenly she had no desire to run. The fear of revealing this part of herself no longer drove her to hide, so she didn’t. She did something else, something that she couldn’t have imagined doing before – she stepped back to let them see.

  Her classmates huddled closer. She felt almost separate from the moment, as if watching from above. Her vision had cleared, her heart rate eased and she waited in silence, the clamminess of her palms the only evidence of the effort this took.

  Ms Alessandro nodded approvingly. ‘You’re right, Lara. There’s a richness there, a … depth.’ She smiled at Lara and then at Tessa. ‘Well done, Tess. Really. Well done.’

  She felt a change in the mood. The usual sneer or snigger absent, even from the Carrima kids. When she braved their gaze, instead of mockery she saw thoughtfulness, surprise, curiosity, as if they were seeing her for the first time. And she was letting them. Time stopped. A smattering of indecipherable murmurs that seemed to bear no malice heralded a shift, and then her classmates made their way back to their own paintings, and the hum of classroom chatter lifted to its usual strains.

  Tessa returned to her canvas and appraised it with new eyes. The blends were smooth but not precise. The stippling rougher than she’d like but somehow more powerful. It was as though the colours had got under her skin, the bright and hopeful tints had changed the very tone of her, inside and out. She shivered at the idea and took a long moment to gather herself. This, she realised, mattered. To Tessa, yes, but also, incredibly, to others. She’d spend some of her money – her escape plan – not on the future but on now. On this.

  Tessa stepped back, surprised by what she saw. It was beautiful but, also, a little frightening.

  It was, she decided, just right.

  Tessa’s backpack seems almost to draw her backwards. She wonders if she should lighten her load but worries she’ll discard something they’ll later need.

  The sun beats down on the back of her head. She touches the sliver of scalp along the part in her hair, and winces. They’ve been surrounded by thick, dry brush and canopies of towering eucalypts, and she’d tried to stay in the shade as much as possible, but obviously it wasn’t enough. It unsettles her how much worse she’s making things. She stops, feels Nick hesitate behind her.

  They have hardly spoken since they last rested. She tells herself it’s about conserving energy, but Nick’s voice had broken the silence several times and it was Tessa who shut him down. She tries not to feel guilty about this. What’s there to say? Haven’t they already said too much? And, out here, what could it possibly change?

  She drops the backpack, lets it slide to the ground. She doesn’t have a hat in there, but there should be sunscreen. Her mind is so thick and sluggish that she barely bothers to berate herself for not applying any earlier. When she extracts the small pump bottle, she discovers the source of the slime that now coats everything she owns. It’s virtually empty and there’s a wide crack in its base. She wipes the spilled contents off the bottle and rubs it across her cheeks, her nose, wherever her skin is exposed. Hands the bottle to Nick.

  ‘Does it hurt?’ he asks.

  ‘Compared to what?’

  A choked laugh. ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m worried we’re dehydrating.’ She says it matter-of-fact, belying the fear that’s eating away at her from deep inside. They need to find water and they need to find it fast. They’d driven over a bridge on the way up, but she didn’t actually sight the river, just assumed it was under them. It’s
been an early summer – drought conditions. Maybe it’s all dried up? How far down was it, anyway? How many hours or days at this slow, laboured rate will it take to find it? If they’re even going in the right direction –

  Stop. Just … stop.

  She forces her mind to the task.

  It is what it is, Ms Bainbridge was fond of saying.

  The slightest of breezes rustles through the trees. She closes her eyes, lets the brief respite energise her.

  ‘We have to keep moving,’ Nick says.

  She nods. Opens her eyes again and straightens. She scans the scarred bush, the ragged, sloping landscape below them. She wonders if there’s another cliff face they’ll have to tackle. The brush thickens further along in the direction they’re heading. They’ve encountered patches of what looks like a rough path, but too often it disappears beneath their feet or is swallowed by a prickly copse and they have to force their way through. It’s brutal, exhausting work.

  That’s when she smells it. A whiff more than a smell and so quick she’s not sure it happened, except for the rapid beat of her heart, the flutter of panic in her gut.

  Smoke.

  ‘Come on!’ Yuki cried, her face flushed scarlet and dripping with sweat as she rocked on the tips of her toes, ready for the next serve to come her way.

  Tessa grinned from a bench on the sidelines. No one took Year 11 high-school volleyball more seriously than Yuki Fraser.

  ‘Listen to your captain, team. Focus!’ Except maybe Zane Garlick, who wasn’t playing, but paced the length of the court, pausing beside Tessa occasionally to report on who was stepping up and who wasn’t. The unofficial coach of Yuki’s team, Zane was a newbie from St Kath’s but, unlike most of the others, had actually made an effort to mix with the Carrima locals. He’d gone so far as to volunteer to coach the Carrima volleyballers over St Kath’s, despite there being a good number of his friends on the other side. Or kids he knew, Tessa decided. Being lumped with a bunch of people for the term of your natural adolescence didn’t necessarily equate to friendship – Tessa knew that better than anyone.

  No one seemed to care about Zane’s allegiances either way. And he probably wouldn’t have cared if they did. Average height, narrow build, scruffy brown hair, a plain but friendly face, he looked just like every other seventeen-year-old boy in the district, except he wore a waistcoat and fob watch on casual days and sometimes walked with a cane. ‘Entirely for aesthetic reasons,’ he’d told Tessa without blinking. They didn’t really hang out, but he and Lara were friends with Nick, and Yuki thought Zane was fabulous. Zane and Lara were in Yuki’s drama class, and the three of them had begun to hang out more and more.

  ‘Dig in, guys!’ Zane cried out. ‘Into your heart of hearts!’ Although Yuki’s team mostly rolled their eyes whenever Zane opened his mouth, they all appeared to focus harder in response, bouncing on their feet when moments before they’d been flat-footed and distracted. ‘Oh my god,’ Zane whispered to Tessa, as they waited for St Katherine’s to serve. ‘How hot is Matt Colbatch?’

  Tessa startled a little, not used to Zane’s openness when it came to his sexuality, but pleased with the conspiratorial way he spoke to her. Everyone knew he was gay. In Carrima High of old, this would have meant social death, but since the merge everyone had been so thrown by the new dynamic that even old bigotries seemed to fade away – at least where the new kids were concerned. They still carried the sheen of novelty with them, almost ten months in. If only the same applied to the locals, Tessa thought. Then again, maybe if she hadn’t stuffed up at the fete, she would’ve been allowed a fresh start too.

  Zane made her laugh. He reminded her of Yuki but with less of the brashness and more of that quiet, steely confidence she’d always associated with her gran when she used to talk about the wars or losing Grandad. Tessa’s mum called it ‘Gran’s Survivor Face’. The lift of her wobbly chin, the careful, deliberate way she held her voice steady, the touch of a smile on her lips that carried a deep and abiding sadness but also, incredibly, hope.

  Tessa had wanted to ask Zane what it was he was surviving, what trauma had earned him an unlikely confidence, but he’d never once asked about Tessa’s home life. Never joked about it or referenced it. Yet three days after the fete, when she’d finally been allowed back at school, he’d sat beside her at lunchtime, offered her his sandwich and asked if she was okay. She’d smiled, shaken her head, and he’d simply said, ‘You will be.’ And had never mentioned it again. So she could hardly ask him about his stuff – if he wanted her to know, he’d tell her. She wished everyone took that approach.

  ‘Fuck this!’ Matt yelled, when St Kath’s called a potential winner out.

  Tessa was pretty sure it had landed before the line but it was fifty-fifty and the Carrima kids had called a similar lineball their way earlier.

  ‘It was out,’ said a stocky kid with a violent spray of pimples.

  ‘Definitely,’ another piped up.

  ‘This is bullshit,’ Matt snapped, before stalking off the court.

  ‘Excellent. Now we’re one short,’ Yuki said, not bothering to reason with Matt. He had form and was renowned for his tantrums. If they weren’t short of players, they wouldn’t have bothered to ask him in the first place.

  ‘Go on, Tess,’ Zane urged, his eyes following his current crush for a few long seconds before he turned back to her and grinned. ‘Your go.’

  ‘Yeah, come on, T!’ Yuki waved at her to hurry.

  ‘Let’s go, Tess!’ a couple of the others called out, including Tas Keene from the gamer crew, who’d barely spoken to her since the fete. Who’d laughed at how relaxed she’d been, who’d told her she should get wasted more often.

  She wanted to resist, but Yuki was waiting expectantly, and Zane gave her a gentle nudge, saying, ‘Go on. You’ll have fun.’

  ‘Why don’t you play?’ Tessa said, pretending to be more annoyed than she was.

  Zane lifted his chin and looked down at her, all haughty and outraged. ‘They are nothing without my guidance,’ he said theatrically. ‘Nothing!’ Then he winked at Tessa and added, ‘Besides, I just did my nails.’

  And although Tessa hated volleyball, and Zane had clearly not done his nails – they were bitten to the quick – she sighed and headed to the spot on the court, fighting the smile that crept across her face when Yuki high-fived her.

  ‘Okay – replay the point,’ Zane said, ignoring protests from the St Kath’s kids.

  Someone threw the ball over the net to Paddy Hanson.

  ‘You serve, Tess,’ Yuki said.

  Paddy shoved the ball into Tessa’s chest on his way to stand in the row in front of her. ‘Don’t fuck up, Gilham.’

  ‘Dickhead,’ she said, feeling the sweat bead on her forehead, the rapid rise of her heart rate. Despite not loving volleyball, she wasn’t terrible at it. For the year during the school’s extension, in readiness for the onslaught of new kids, Carrima didn’t have a functioning oval, and volleyball in the gym became the sport of choice in PE classes whether they liked it or not.

  ‘When you’re ready, Tess.’ Yuki’s voice held an edge. They were level, with only a few minutes left of lunch. First to fifteen or leader at the bell – whichever came first. She held out the ball, put all her focus on it –

  ‘Jesus, Gilham. Let’s go!’ Paddy crowed.

  The wave of anger that surged through her exploded out of her hand as she punched the ball into the air. Hard. Fast. St Kath’s scrambled for control, tapping it an extra time before sending it back over. Her team did the rest, with Yuki spiking the winning point deep into the opposing court.

  Tessa let herself enjoy a moment’s pride – she didn’t hit the winner, but her serve was good and fair. Despite Paddy’s general dickheadedness, and her reluctance to play, she’d done all right.

  Just as they were taking position for the next point, the bell rang. The Carrima kids fisted the air, cheering and whooping, and Tessa grinned at Yuki, who was victory dancing like they�
�d just won Olympic gold.

  As they collected drink bottles and moved off the court, Zane fell into step beside Tessa and gave her shoulders a squeeze. ‘Brilliant work, Gilham!’

  Tessa felt an unexpected rush of pleasure, and laughed. ‘Never underestimate the joy of not stuffing up,’ she said.

  Zane grinned. ‘Oh, I hear you.’

  ‘Missed you after school last night,’ Tessa said lightly as Yuki wiped her sweaty face with a holey school jumper. The locker room was half-empty, but the noise bounced and echoed off the walls, and it sounded like the whole of Carrima High had descended on them at once.

  Yuki glanced over her shoulder, checking the clock at the end of the corridor. ‘Yeah, forgot. Sorry.’

  Tessa waited while Yuki shoved her jumper back in her locker, the stale smell wafting past Tessa’s nostrils on the way. ‘Jesus. You should wash that.’

  Yuki shut the locker. ‘Thanks, Mum.’

  ‘Do itashimashite, smartarse.’

  ‘Funny.’ Yuki sighed, boredom all over her face. ‘I wish we had bloody showers.’

  ‘I wish you did too.’

  Yuki snorted.

  ‘Anyway … you were saying …?’

  Yuki blinked. ‘Saying what?’

  ‘What happened last night? What about your essay?’

  They started down the corridor towards their classroom, threading their way through the steady stream of senior students.

  ‘It’s no big. We had a drama thing. I told you.’

  ‘“Drama thing”. Is that code for something?’

  ‘You know what I mean. The guys – all of us – are working on the film idea together.’

  ‘You mean Lara.’

  ‘And Claire. Zane helps a bit too. Matt C, when he’s not being a turd, and Jack. There’s a few of us.’