‘What are these anyway?’ Ben asks, eyeing off the stack of papers.
‘Posters. For the school fair. Year twelve run it, remember?’
‘Yeah, but why are you advertising it now? I thought it wasn’t until spring.’
‘I brought it forward so it’s not so close to exams.’
‘You brought it forward? I thought the student council was a team effort,’ he teases.
‘Well, I’m the school captain. That makes me the boss.’ A grin cracks her lips for the first time in weeks.
Wearing one of my old wetsuits, Mia wades across the sandbank as we paddle alongside her. Diving under a wash of whitewater, she surfaces with hair slicked back, squealing as the icy ocean seeps through holes in the wetsuit’s worn-out shoulders.
It’s the first blue sky we’ve seen since the storm, and although the winter undercurrents remain frightfully cold, half the town is in the sea. Every man and his dog are celebrating this glorious Sunday morning, floating on kayaks, bodyboards, longboards, shortboards and surfboats. Two teenagers lounge in inflatable doughnuts.
I sit back on my single fin surfboard, close to the tail pad, allowing Mia to loop her arms over the board’s nose, her feet dangling in the tides. We rest like this, rising and falling with the tender swell for almost an hour, chatting and giggling while the boys muck around on playful waves.
Suddenly, Mia’s grip around my board tightens and her jaw drops. ‘Oh my god.’ Mia dunks her head underwater. Spinning, I spy a pack of boys, shoulders hunched as they stroke out to the line-up. Eric Rockwell leads the pack. I reach down and yank Mia to the surface.
Gasping for breath, veins bulging, she panics. ‘What do I do?’
Before I suggest it, she starts kicking toward the beach, arms thrashing the water, as Ben turns from his conversation with Jake to see what’s going on. Noticing Eric, twenty metres away, Ben’s jaw clenches. His eyes narrow and he paddles over to the group of twenty-year-olds, Harley and Jake in tow.
‘You’ve got some nerve showing your face out here.’ Nostrils flaring, Ben sits up on his board.
Salt on my lips stings.
‘Excuse me?’ Eric scoffs.
‘You heard me—’
‘Look,’ Eric interrupts, paddling up beside Ben. ‘You think you’re high and mighty because you’re Ben Walker, but I think you need to watch your fucking tongue, mate. Seriously, what’s your deal?’
Cold undercurrents pull at my ankles.
‘First of all, I’m not your mate,’ Ben spits. ‘Secondly, Mia Ellis, remember her?’
Eric laughs as he glances around his group, his friends joining in on the joke. ‘Mia Ellis? Are you serious?’ he puffs his chest. ‘She was begging for a root.’
Before Eric’s last word lands on the water, Ben has leapt off his board, his closed fist smashing Eric’s nose. I’ve never seen Ben hit anyone before, never even seen him fight. Blood streams from Eric’s nose, clouding the crystal water.
The boys jump off their boards and swim at each other. Limbs flay, lash, and smack, red water splashing high into the sky. Marlow’s older crowd paddle in from every direction, yelling and yanking. As they tear the boys off each other, I pull onto a wave and ride it to shore.
On wet sand, I gather my leg-rope as Ben washes in, throwing his board down on the beach. I wonder if he’s noticed the dent someone has punched in the deck of his favourite board.
He hurries toward Mia and throws his arms around her trembling body, holding her.
Skin, sand and bone.
He holds her in a way he’s never held anyone.
Eleven
BLOSSOM
‘So,’ Jake says as we sit under the pine trees. ‘My birthday is in three days, does everyone know what present they’re giving me?’
‘My divine presence …’ Ben mocks.
Ignoring him, Jake reveals his birthday plans. ‘The festival of Jake will be kicking off Friday arvo. We’ll bender into my birthday on Saturday. Bring everything you need for the weekend, and of course, my presents, because you won’t be leaving until Sunday night.’
‘Does your mum know about this?’ Mia asks.
‘Doesn’t need to. She pissed off last night with the new toy boy. Got a note saying she’ll be back in a few weeks – oh, and one hundred dollars. Enough for beer, ciggies, bread and some sausages – right, boys?’ Jake turns away and looks across the yard, his words lacking their usual punch.
‘Sorry to hear that,’ Mia says. ‘About your mum, I mean.’
‘Don’t be sorry,’ he says, hurling a pebble at the base of the pine tree. ‘Fuck her.’
‘So what’s the plan?’ Ben says. ‘What’s happening at this party?’
As they chat, I munch on my crackers, recalling the times when Jake would stay at Toby’s house, or with us, when we were all kids, sometimes for weeks at a time. I think of how we’d be excited by it, never quite understanding why his enthusiasm always fell short of ours. There were the times Ben had teased Jake for his nightmares, for wetting the bed, the times Jake was bruised.
‘So it’s decided.’ Ben claps his hands together. ‘Tents, sleeping-bags, the whole shebang.’
‘Fairy lights,’ Mia adds.
Jake negotiates with her. ‘You can only have fairy lights if you bring the bedsheets with the psychedelic prints and let me hang them in the trees.’
‘Deal.’
‘We’ll even have a bonfire.’
Mia frowns. ‘You could burn the house down.’
Jake snorts. ‘Who cares? I doubt it’s worth more than a bag of firewood.’
‘No one’s burning the house down,’ Ben says. The alpha male. ‘We’ll bring the empty barrel from our house for a fire.’
‘Sounds good,’ Harley says, his eyes wandering around the circle, coming to rest on mine like the sky on the sea. ‘Can’t wait.’
The sun dips behind the hills as we wander into a dream. In a few short hours, the yard has been transformed. Jake’s small weatherboard house, known to the group as the Fibro Majestic, sits on the outskirts of town, with a huge yard backing onto the bush. Wildflowers glimmer beneath fairy lights. Glow-in-the-dark paint drips from the bark of gum trees, streamers hang from branches, and colourful vines sway with the ocean breeze. We’ve set up the tents in a circle, with the fire pit in the centre, a bunch of logs and camping chairs surrounding it and bedsheets draped over the doorway to each tent. Inside the tent Mia and I are sharing, her toy kangaroo is nestled between pillows, quilts and fluffy blankets.
Toby and Harley collect kindling and wood for the fire, then use newspaper to light it and lay a grill over the top of the barrel. Orange flames dance on their faces, in his eyes.
‘Yew! That’s what I’m talking about!’ Jake shouts, walking in through the side gate with Ben, carrying an esky and a tray of raw sausages.
Before long, tails of smoke curl up toward a thousand distant suns. Mia and I drink apple ciders from the farmers markets that are sweet on the tongue and filling in the stomach. Ben tells Mia and me to stay away from the hotplate, that turning sausages is a man’s job. Mia, wrapped in a blanket on her camping chair, kicks her feet up on the esky. ‘Fine by me.’
When the sausages are almost done, Ben suggests we each take a roll from the bag. ‘There’s tomato and barbecue sauce,’ he says.
Everyone, bar Mia, takes a sausage. Then we drizzle sauce over the top, and take our seats once more to feast.
When he’s finished, Jake licks the remaining onion juice and barbecue sauce from his fingers before picking up a bowl and scissors and chopping grass between his fingers. From it he rolls two joints, laying one to rest in the bowl at his feet, lighting the other with a match. He draws back on the filter end and exhales a cloud of smoke, the smell pungent.
Inhaling again, he breathes out this time through his nostrils like a dragon, a cheeky grin plastered on his cheeks. ‘Happy birthday to me.’
Ben stands and starts to sing, waving his arms extravagantly
as he conducts the rest of us in chorus. We clap and chant happy birthday while Jake drinks a beer, throwing the can into the fire when it’s empty.
He hands the joint around the circle. Ben reaches for it first, draws smoke deep into his lungs, holds it for a moment and then exhales, blowing smoke rings in Toby’s face. Passing the joint on, Harley, Mia and Toby each take a toke or two, sucking lightly. When it reaches me, I glance at Mia and she giggles. I bring the filter end to my lips; hesitate.
‘I only turn eighteen once,’ Jake prompts.
‘Okay, well, I’m only doing this once.’
I suck on the now soggy filter end, the smoke filling my lungs, tickling, I start to cough. The boys crack up, teasing.
‘That’s my girl!’ Jake cheers.
My chest is tight, like someone is sitting on it. Breathing out, I can’t feel my fingertips, and I drop the joint.
‘Nice one, ya got dirt on the doobie,’ Jake says, picking it up and dusting it off. Ben cracks up and before long we’re all laughing, as if this is the most hilarious joke ever told.
‘Not my fault,’ I say, but the words stick to the roof of my mouth like peanut butter.
‘Grace has cotton mouth!’
Chuckling, we sit together around the fire, enveloped in its yellow haze, as blue dusk fades into the night. It’s our own little world, where colour drips from trees, owls hoot and parents don’t abandon their children, a haven at the end of the street, a hundred miles away.
Pink embers glow in the barrel as the birthday boy smokes a second joint alone. He stubs it out on the ground, littered with half-eaten packets of lollies and chips, then turns on a torch and shines it up at his face, eyes glistening, cheeks flushed. ‘Let’s play spotlight.’
Mia, chewing on a sour worm, says, ‘What are we? Seven years old?’
Jake shines the torch in her eyes. ‘My birthday, my decision. Everyone up, we’re playing spotlight.’
The fact that I can’t remember how many ciders I’ve had might explain why I’m hardly able to walk straight.
‘I’ll count to forty,’ Jake says. ‘Rules are, you have to stay on the block. Everyone go hide!’
Giggling at my buckling knees, I stumble down the side path and out onto the street, climbing over the fence into a neighbour’s front yard and ducking under a hedge.
Waiting, it smells of mulch and fresh turf. I hear a rustle of leaves and hold my breath.
‘Who is that?’ a voice whispers. ‘Grace?’ Harley falls in a heap next to me.
We hear footsteps nearby, someone walking down the road toward us. White torchlight filters through the leaves. I shuffle over so we can both fit beneath the hedge, giggling still.
‘Shh,’ Harley whispers
Jake wanders further down the street, until we can no longer hear his footsteps. Blind in the shadows, I smell honeycomb chocolate and musky sweat. Harley’s fingertips trace my jaw, his cool palm cupping my cheek. As he presses his forehead to mine, clouds of hot breath hang between us like a summer sea beneath a black sky.
‘FOUND YOU!’ Ben yells, the two words slurring together. A burst of light; Harley drops his hand immediately.
Crawling out from under the bush, we follow the others down the street in search of Toby, guided by the wandering light of Jake’s torch.
Where we touched, my skin stings.
Someone presses play on an iPod and ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’ by Wham! starts blasting through the speakers. Then I hear Ben’s voice busting out the opening verse.
Toby groans, rattles off a string of expletives. My eyelids are stuck together with sleep, my head heavy as a brick. The air inside the tent stinks of sweat and morning breath, and I don’t know if it’s the volume of the pop song or Ben’s tone-deaf singing that’s worse.
Toby climbs out of his sleeping-bag and crawls to the door. Unzipping the flyscreen, he hurls a shoe at Ben, who’s dancing around the yard.
Something moves, someone moves. Hot air brushes the nape of my neck, hot breath. I peel sleep from my eyes and look down. I’m in my pyjamas, in my sleeping-bag, with the dead weight of an arm draped over my waist. A tan leather bracelet is wrapped around the wrist.
I roll, look over my shoulder. Harley, in his own sleeping-bag, is cuddled up to me. Pulling me closer, he opens one eye, the stroke of blue brilliant in the green shade of the tent. He grins. ‘Good morning.’
As I rest my head back on the pillow, he holds me tighter still.
Outside, Ben wails and I hear Mia’s laughter as rich as a kookaburra’s.
My stomach grumbles, and I whisper that I’m going to start making breakfast. Harley squeezes me to him again then lets me wriggle out of my sleeping-bag. I pull on my ugg boots and join Ben at the hotplate, where he is frying eggs.
With a bacon and egg roll in hand, I climb into the hammock with Mia. In the morning light cutting through the tall gums, she looks alive, blue flames dancing in her eyes, her body weightless. The air at the edge of the forest is crisp. Wild birds chat in the trees above.
‘Did you kiss him?’ she says, a cheeky smirk on her face.
‘Shh!’ I whisper, looking back at the tent.
She kicks me. ‘Relax. He won’t hear us. So, did you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know?’
‘I mean, we were drunk …’
Mia rolls her eyes.
I peer into last night’s shadows and confess, ‘No, I didn’t. Almost, I guess, when we were playing spotlight. But he slept in the tent …’ I blush. ‘He spooned me.’
Mia giggles, clapping her hands together, silent applause.
‘Where did you sleep, anyway?’ I ask.
Mia glances at Ben. She starts playing with her bracelet, her rings.
‘Don’t make it a secret,’ I say and her face softens.
Mia tells me they kissed in the dark and that he held her all night. She tells me how in the morning, he brushed pink hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear, touched his lips to her cheek and whispered, ‘Wake up, Sleeping Beauty.’
I blink and tiny tears slip free, a warm, wet trace.
‘Are you mad?’ she says.
I shake my head, finding no words for this feeling.
Twelve
SUNSET
We stand with chilled bones and red skin, exhaling white clouds through teeth that chatter, the ocean, in all its glory, just waiting for us.
We sprint across grass, wet sand, and then launch ourselves above the tide. Hands grip the rails of our surfboards and for a brief moment in time our bodies fly over a roll of vanilla foam. Our torsos land on wax, we stretch our arms forward, we dig down and draw back, pulling ourselves through the cold morning milk.
White wash approaches and in unison we lunge forward on our boards, pushing deep beneath the turbulence. We ride up through the dark belly of the wave and emerge through its shoulderblade. With air expanding our lungs, this day is born.
We reach the line-up, the cold pinching every place our wetsuits cannot conceal: our wrists, our Achilles tendons, the napes of our necks. We sit up on our boards and, without passing a single word between us, float effortlessly. We have red-glass eyes and cheeks that sting, licked by the tongue of the winter sea.
As the sun catches fire on the horizon, Ben looks across at me and smiles.
Together we dance on waves of molten gold until our stomachs bring us to the shore, hungry for breakfast. Collecting our boards, wrapping our leg-ropes around our fins, we stroll across the sand.
Beneath the outdoor shower, I rinse conditioner from my hair and jump out, wrapping my body in a towel. Ben washes coconut soap from his torso, turns off the tap, dries his face on his towel.
‘Mia is asleep in my bed,’ he says. ‘She told me she loved me last night.’
‘What did you say back?’
‘I said I loved her too.’
Once, this field was inconceivably huge. Wafts of salted popcorn, hot toffee and vanilla made mouths wate
r. The Ferris wheel rode so high I was convinced it would touch the sky. Battered fish and chips with tartar sauce were a twice-a-year delicacy (the only other exception being Christmas). The fireworks, though deafening, entranced us. They were a kind of supernatural phenomenon.
Now, I can see across the oval to the school gates, knowing it’s only two hundred metres or so. I notice the spots where the clowns missed their make-up, and the hairlines of their fake wigs. I notice the rust on the arms of the Ferris wheel. Everyone grows up. Yet standing in a candy stall, serving festival treats to wide-eyed youngsters, a sense of the enchantment we felt as children filters through the years.
Jake waltzes up to my stall, leaning against the popcorn machine.
‘I know what this fair is missing,’ he declares.
‘What?’
‘A kissing booth. I would easily make the most money for the school.’ Grinning, he leans over the counter and grabs a lollipop. ‘Where’s Ben?’
‘He’s driving with Mia down to Port Lawnam to pick up the hampers for the raffle.’ Slipping my hand into my pocket, I touch the raffle ticket Harley bought me. If my ticket was drawn, would I find the confidence to kiss him, wrapped in the glee of winning?
‘Trust.’ Jake smirks, sucking on the lollipop, propping himself up to sit on the counter. I push him off but when Harley wanders over, both of them climb over to my side of the counter, reaching for treats.
‘My stall is not going to make any money with you two eating all the stock.’ I slap Jake’s sneaky hand and snatch a bag of fairy floss out of Harley’s. They laugh, stealing back their treats. ‘Don’t you two have your own stall?’
‘No one wants to play with water bombs in the middle of winter …’ Jake says.
Harley agrees, wrapping his arms around my waist from behind, hugging me tight.
‘Yuck, are you serious!’ Jake winces. ‘All this flirting is really making me feel sick.’
‘Maybe it’s the four cupcakes you’ve had in half an hour,’ I tell him.
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