‘What’d ya write about?’
‘A girl with an imaginary friend.’
‘Your hair is salty.’
‘Went swimming. Before school.’
From the way his eyes touch mine, I know he can tell I’m lying, but he just lies back on the wooden slats of the verandah, unfazed by my fib. As I kick my shoes off, Jake passes me the joint and I lie down beside him, eyes closed, drawing smoke into my lungs, as if breathing something else will make this life less real.
We lie there until dusk envelops us in shadows and I wonder if Mum will be home soon. Inside, Jake has brought with him peanut butter, choc-hazelnut spread, mini-marshmallows, sprinkles and a loaf of white bread. Licking our lips, we make sandwiches and end up with the kind of dinner you’d expect to indulge in somewhere far away, in a land where unicorns gallop through pink meadows made of fairy floss.
When Mum finally trudges through the front door, I don’t know if I’m more surprised that she doesn’t care about the spread of sweets across the kitchen bench, or that she takes a slice of white bread, slathers it in peanut butter, garnishes it with sprinkles and comes to join us in front of the TV.
With choc-hazelnut butter spread across the roof of my mouth, I watch the flickering blue light of the TV illuminating Mum’s flesh like lightning on grey clouds. I catch glimpses of the wrinkles carved deep into her skin in the bright bursts, in the electric moments before she disappears in black shadows.
As the credits roll, Mum asks how the exam went.
‘Fine,’ I answer.
‘That’s good,’ she says, and I look for a smile on her lips. Hoping, maybe.
Leaving her plate on the table, Mum says she’s going to bed, wishes us goodnight, and drags herself upstairs to her bedroom.
I sink back between the cushions. They still smell of Ben. Even after all these days, they smell of him. I close my eyes and picture him, idle, waiting for me beneath the moon’s silver rays.
‘I think you should go home now,’ I whisper.
Mountains of cushions move as Jake rises like a sleeping giant, waking after seasons underground. ‘Seriously?’
I don’t answer him. I just lie there, saying nothing.
‘Fine,’ he says, scrambling off the couch, shoving his feet into ugg boots. ‘Fuck you.’
On Saturday afternoon, my papers are sprawled across the dining room table. I’ve coloured in with highlighters a few paragraphs of the essay Mr Woodlow essentially wrote for me, underlining words like disenfranchised and upheaval and human condition. I sit back in my chair, spine straight against the hard wood, sipping on my orange juice, satisfied with the supposed progress I’ve made.
Mum pulls up a chair beside me, laying down two plates of overripe, brown avocado on toast, sliding one across the table to me.
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’
Ignoring me, Mum leans across my shoulder, eyeing my essay. ‘Sounding good.’
‘I wrote it myself.’
Whether Mum believes me or not, she draws her phone from her pocket and shows me a photo she’s taken of a store window in Port Lawnam. ‘Saw this on my way home from work the other day.’
I glare at the mannequin in the window and wonder if she’s embarrassed to be wearing that dress.
‘Pretty, huh?’
‘Pretty?’
‘Okay, fine – there are other dresses in the shop. I thought we could drive down today, pick one out. Don’t want to leave it to the last minute.’
‘How do you know I even want to go to the formal?’
‘Doesn’t matter, I’ve already bought you a ticket.’
‘I don’t have a date.’
‘Neither did I.’
I’ve seen photos of Mum when she was seventeen and highly doubt she went to her formal alone. But looking back at my notes, lines of fluoro pink, purple and yellow blurring together, I cave. ‘Fine.’
As we drive through farmland and bush down to Port Lawnam, I don’t think she’s excited to go formal dress shopping with me but rather relieved she’s got something to fill up her empty day.
For the first time in living memory, my chest is tight in a size six. I cup my hands to my breasts; they really are growing. I am growing. I am growing up.
‘That one looks great,’ Mum says as I step from the change room.
‘You’ve said that about all of them.’
‘Well, it’s true.’
The shop assistant holds up another dress. ‘How about this one?’ She has a slick black ponytail, fake eyelashes and a belt tight around her waist.
Inside the change room, light bulbs frame the mirror, like in Hollywood green rooms. Yellow light hits my body in all the wrong places. Behind me, the curtain is thick red fabric, imitation velvet – an artificial sense of luxury in this damp harbour town.
Shimmying into the dress, I stand up straight to face myself.
It’s not until the shop assistant calls out, ‘How’s it going in there, babe?’ that I realise how long I have been standing here. The dress cascades down my body, smooth arcs and gentle curves, all the way to the floor. The fabric is as smooth as the ocean at midnight, as deep blue as my eyes. A smile curls my lips as I step out, telling the shop assistant, ‘I don’t mind it,’ not wanting to give her the satisfaction of knowing it’s perfect.
Afterward, I sit in a cafe with the dress in its shopping bag held tight between my feet, sipping on a vanilla milkshake, sharing a banana muffin with Mum.
‘Today’s my last exam,’ I tell him.
Ben says he’s proud of me, that he loves me.
Only a few hours later I am sitting at my desk in the assembly hall again, looking down at the Extension English exam paper. The first section requires short responses to an excerpt from a novel and a quote from a poem. The second is multiple-choice questions. I fill in the half that I know and then go back to the beginning of the pamphlet to colour in my guess answers. The final section is an essay and I write down the parts I can remember from my practice essay.
Then, while everyone else races toward the end of their exam booklet, I try to work out what the odds are of getting the answers I guessed in the multiple-choice section correct. When I’m done with that, I take a nap.
A bell wakes me for the end of the exam, for the end of my schooling, the end of the paddle. I’ve reached the line-up.
One ring of a bell and it’s all over.
It’s as if the room lets out one big exhalation, and I try to imagine the relief I would have felt.
At home I find a balloon tied neatly to the front doorhandle, and I yank at it, snapping the string.
CONGRATULATIONS! it reads, the block letters printed in rainbow colours. Love Dad is scrawled in black permanent marker on the balloon’s side. He has always had shit handwriting. I dig my nails into the balloon until it bursts, sending the lorikeets in the fig tree into a frenzy. Tearing it apart, I notice another gift and assume it’s also from Dad. Daisies are tied together with a blue ribbon on the day bed. Grabbing them, I march with the flowers and the shredded plastic out into the street, where I chuck the plastic in the bin and rip the heads off the daisies, hurling them into the air. Then I spit on the mess, jumping and stamping until it’s nothing but a blemish on concrete skin.
Mum arrives home with pizza, somewhat soggy in its cardboard box because she bought it from a takeaway joint in Port Lawnam.
‘Congratulations, bub.’
As she lays the box down on the table, I don’t know what’s more foreign – the greasy pizza in her kitchen, or the way Mum ruffles my hair when she kisses my cheek.
Thirty-One
THE LEGEND
I find Jake in the skate park, smoking cigarettes and swearing at eight-year-olds wearing helmets, kneepads and wrist guards, who are riding the ramps on scooters.
‘Piss off, you little shits – it’s called a skate park for a reason. Kooks.’
One boy’s ears turn pink and I wonder how hard he’s trying not to cry.
‘Finished my exams.’
‘Cool.’
‘Want to be my date for the formal?’
‘No.’
Jake drops down the ramp, narrowly missing two of the eight-year-olds. I plonk myself down on the concrete slab and wait for him to skate back up. He deliberately avoids the slab for almost half an hour, grinding rails on the other side of the park before finally riding back up to land next to me.
‘Fine,’ he says, sitting down, offering me a cigarette. ‘But I’m not wearing a suit.’
Because he has decided to wear black skinny jeans, black Converse and a white T-shirt with a black bow tie drawn on with texta, Mum makes him at least shower and wash his hair, which Jake does only after an argument.
‘I’m obeying,’ he calls from the bathroom. ‘But only because you’re a MILF, Mel!’
Mum is attempting to style my hair with a curling iron. ‘A MILF?’ she whispers. ‘What does that even mean?’
I giggle. ‘You don’t want to know.’
By the time Jake emerges from the bathroom, Mum has sprayed my hair into place. The fumes make me cough.
‘Are you sure you’re supposed to use that much?’ I ask.
Mum laughs, opening the window. ‘Um, not sure. That’s what it says on the can.’
Jake knocks on the door.
‘Don’t come in! Not ready yet!’
As his footsteps tread back down the hall, he mocks, ‘Women!’
Holding up a mirror, my hair is not quite red carpet Hollywood, but it’s just about as good as it’s ever looked. I thank Mum as she helps me apply eye shadow and mascara and brush my cheeks with bronzer.
It is the closest our bodies have been in weeks.
My dress has a low back with two strings to connect the straps above my shoulderblades. Mum ties them together in a loose bow. ‘All done.’
My steps are slow and measured as I walk down the hall, careful not to trip in Mia’s old heels. Jake is sitting at the kitchen bench munching on pistachios and looks across to me as I enter the living room. His face softens around the eyes.
‘Wow.’
‘Shut up,’ I say, and he laughs.
Mum picks up her phone. ‘Photo! On the verandah, maybe?’
Outside, draped in November light, I discover that when someone has died, being told to smile is twice as awkward.
The upstairs hall of the surf club is used on occasion for elections, local council meetings, charity auctions and yoga classes, and, every year since I can remember, the year twelve formal.
Ben was one of the few from our year group who was taken to the formal last year. Jake mocked Ben’s date, saying she was a cougar, but we all knew how jealous he was, how jealous all the boys were.
Girls in frocks of all colours with make-up even more blatant than mine gather out the front of the club on the grass, posing for photo after photo. Jake and I sneak past, creeping into the boys’ public toilet, where we light a joint. I only take one toke, careful not to let watery eyes make my mascara run.
‘Seriously?’ Jake says. ‘Never thought I’d live to see the day when Grace Walker doesn’t want to wreck her make-up.’ Laughing, he smokes the joint right down to the filter, while I down a plastic bottle of cheap wine mixed with orange juice and stash a flask of vodka in my purse. I’ve cut a hole in the actual lining of the clutch and slip in the flask so it’s concealed.
‘You’re a genius.’ Jake laughs, kissing me on the cheek.
I unlock the cubicle door.
‘Just a sec,’ he says, reaching into the back pocket of his jeans and pulling out two pills wrapped in cling wrap. ‘Let’s save ’em for dessert, ay?’ He winks and shoves them back into his pocket, taking my hand, leading me to the surf club’s entrance.
As we cross behind a group of students, Jake photobombs their winning shot before helping me climb the stairs to the club in my heels. Our year group supervisor, Mrs Harold, is standing by the door with a security guard, who is actually someone’s dad dressed in black. I watch the colour drain from her face as she spies Jake in the queue.
‘I don’t think so,’ she snaps.
‘Tough luck, I’ve got a ticket,’ he says, waving it in front of her face.
‘Fine. But one wrong move, Jake, and you’re out. Do you hear me?’
‘Loud and clear.’
The security guard asks me to open my clutch, which I do, revealing my phone, ticket and a stick of lip balm. ‘All good,’ he says, and then pats down my waist and hips.
‘Hey!’ Jake jokes. ‘Hands off my lady.’
Mrs Harold glares. ‘One wrong move. Remember that.’
After Jake is patted down too, we’re permitted entry. He shows his ID to one of the mums inside and is given an over-18s’ wristband and a free beer. He grins. ‘Score!’
Gazing around the hall, I see silver streamers tacked to the walls, along with pictures of our year group at school camps, sports carnivals, discos. I spot a picture from the school fair, from the day night fell at noon.
White tables are positioned around the club’s perimeter with a space for dancing in the middle. There are candle centrepieces and silver glitter sprinkled on each table. Overhead, white balloons with silver strings dangle like fragile moons.
I spot Mia and Toby on the other side of the room, each holding a champagne glass filled with soft drink. ‘Some ploy to make the under-18s feel included,’ Mia jokes when we get close. Eyeing off Jake’s outfit, she chuckles. ‘Really?’
Jake pretends to adjust his drawn-on bow tie. ‘Tailor-made.’
‘Very handsome,’ she says, raising her champagne glass.
He laughs. ‘Fucking oath.’
Her face, naked of make-up, relaxes. ‘I’m really happy you both came.’
Jake surprises her with a smile. ‘Me too.’
Letting go of his hand, I excuse myself to get a soft drink, the taste of cheap wine and orange juice foul on my tongue.
A woman wearing a modest blue dress with a pink cardigan serves me. I can’t remember whose mum she is but her timid smile tells me she knows exactly who I am. ‘Here you go, honey,’ she says, passing me a plastic champagne glass filled with pink lemonade.
Turning, I narrowly miss stumbling into someone. ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘My bad.’
‘No worries.’ Harley steps back, eyeing me from head to toe. ‘You look so beautiful.’
As I look down at my feet, I wonder if he can see the pink in my cheeks beneath this make-up.
‘Hey,’ a girl says and I glance back up. It’s Maddie, the girl who dropped her books in the hallway. She walks up to Harley, loops her arm through his. Her dress would have to be the shortest here, the plunging neckline screaming for attention.
‘Excuse me,’ I stutter, pushing past.
I grab Jake. ‘Gotta show you something,’ I say, pulling him away from Mia and Toby, leading him to the end of the hall, into the shadows, where I reach into his pocket and pull out the ball of cling wrap. ‘Why wait?’
Swallowing the pill, it’s like watching a storm roll over the horizon. You see the whitecaps racing, the shadows moving across the sea. You hear the clouds growling and feel the temperature plummet. Burning sand beneath your soles begins to cool. You watch the storm thundering toward you and you brace yourself. You know it’s coming and that is as thrilling as it is terrifying.
Everyone is called to sit. Our names are written on cardboard cut-outs in metallic pen, placed on each dinner plate. Jake and I stumble around the tables in search of our seats. Pulling out a chair, I plant myself down.
‘Excuse me,’ a girl whispers, patting me on the shoulder. ‘You’re in my chair.’
I close one eye, and the name tag comes into focus. Gemma Wilkins.
Jake, giggling, hoists me up, and we continue our search.
‘Over here!’ Toby calls and we stagger to the table, flopping down in our seats. Mia pinches my cheeks and hisses, ‘Are you on something?’
‘No,’ I say and smirk at her as Mrs H
arold, standing at the front of the hall, sings out for Mia, school captain, to join her at the microphone. Looking across the hall, I spy Harley, sitting with Maddie on the furthest table from us, and I’m positive Mia put him all the way over the other side of the room on purpose.
‘Hey everyone, welcome,’ Mia says. ‘Food is about to come out, we’ll kick off the awards in half an hour and then Byron is going to DJ.’ Standing in the spotlight she looks beautiful, her curls plaited and twisted like pink vines, pinned into place with flower clips. Her dress is white lace, as delicate as her skin. My heart aches. I wish Ben could have seen her.
Everyone claps and the parents who have volunteered to help tonight start carrying out the food. Local fruit and vegetable farmers, Margie from the bakery and Rob from the fish shop have all chipped in to cater the event. I’m served a plate of roast veggies with a piece of grilled bream, a slice of lemon and sourdough. I say thank you, my speech a little slurred, and pick up my knife and fork with unsteady hands. That’s when I see it. I glance across at Jake and know he can see it too. The storm is coming, closing in on us.
With cheap wine already filling my insides, I can barely stomach my meal. Instead, I hold my soft drink under the table, pouring vodka into my glass as Mia strolls back up to the microphone with two prefects to give out the class awards … as Maddie touches his cheek across the hall … as Harley laughs.
I see whitecaps, racing across the sea. I see a smile stretch Jake’s lips.
‘The first award is biggest flirt.’ Mia steps aside so one of the prefects can announce the winner.
‘Gus Kelly.’
I feel the temperature drop.
‘Most likely not to remember this formal.’
‘Luke Palmer.’
‘The next is for the best looking,’ Mia says.
Breathing Under Water Page 18