When I’m done, my hands are black and there’s not much floor left to stand on. Landscapes, trees, breasts, skateboards, scary monsters. The new stuff is so different from his other work, so much more real. A few of them join together, making bigger pictures. There are two I can’t stop looking at. Cam wearing his hoodie, one hand covering his eyes and the other covering his mouth. And a bigger one of a girl. She’s leaning forward, her hair hanging over her shoulders—but her face is missing. All that’s left is an ear and a chin. It doesn’t look deliberate but I can’t find any more pieces of the drawing. Where is the rest of her face?
Why did he hide these away?
Under his bed is the bag he took with him on the trip. My stomach tightens. The things he had with him before he died.
I pull it out and run my hands over the stitching. I know what’s in here. The bag was unpacked and packed countless times, by us, by the police. There’s a typed list of the contents of this bag but I still want to look in it. I edge the zipper across, flinching at the sound.
T-shirts, boxers, pairs of boardies, a bent copy of Monster Children, Zippo lighter, pencils, deodorant—I take the cap off and breathe it in—toothbrush, socks, hoodie, jeans, zinc—we used to paint ourselves in that stuff, pretend we were warriors and run about in our undies. I run my hand along the bottom of the bag and my fingers brush over something cold and hard. His phone.
I take it out and stare at it. I know what’s in here as well. I press the home button but it’s dead.
A door creaks in the hallway and I bolt for the light switch. My heart pounds as I wait for more sounds but there’s nothing. In the dark I pocket the phone, stack the drawings, trying not to smudge or crease them, and put them back in the shoebox. Tucking it under my arm, I sneak back to my room.
3
By Friday, Auntie Deb has caught onto the fact I’m not going to training.
‘Were you just going to let everyone think you were still going?’
‘I don’t care what you think,’ I say, filling the jug.
‘Did something happen?’
I grab the English breakfast tea from the cupboard and smack the door closed. ‘No.’
She sighs. ‘It’s fine to have some more time off, Lucy. We all handle these things differently.’
I hate how she says it, as if Cam’s death is one thing on a long list of stuff to deal with.
‘Jim and I have started training for the race. Why don’t you come to the beach with us? Could be an easier way to get back in.’
I want to tell her to stop. Just stop trying. We are not friends and I don’t need her sympathy or good intentions. I don’t need anybody’s.
The jug boils and flicks off. I pour two cups of tea. I pick up the cups, heat burning my knuckles, and move to walk past her.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Bringing Mum her tea.’
‘I already made her one, Lucy.’
I stare at Auntie Deb, jaw clenched and heat boiling up my back, then I dump the tea in the sink and push past her.
I crack open Mum’s door: tea and toast are sitting on the bedside table untouched. Deb’s used the wrong mug. Mum’s is the blue and yellow swirly one, this one is just brown. When will she go home? We’re that well stocked with frozen lasagnes she can leave without fearing we’ll end up drowned in our cereal.
I inch the door closed. A family photo hangs on the wall outside their room. I touch the glass over Cam’s face. Eleven-year-old Lucy stares out at me, grinning with her crooked teeth and hair in braids. You’ll lose him, I try to tell her but she just keeps grinning.
I grab my backpack from my room and head out the front door.
The bus always takes longer than it should. Twisting and back tracking its way through the streets. I tuck myself into the corner of my seat, shoulder pressed to the window, and hug my knees.
I used to wish I could catch the bus. I’d imagine Cam running things up the back and the tingly feeling I’d get whenever I was in the same place as Ryan. This bus was always the one in trouble, having to stay back after assembly, and I had no doubt that was due to my brother and his friends.
Now a bunch of Year Eight kids have claimed the back seat and whatever mischief my brother left has been replaced by loud opinions on hairstyles and reality TV.
I stick my earbuds in and flood my head with The Jezabels.
Tonight my brother’s mates will light a bonfire and get drunk at the cove. And I want to go because Cam always let me—he wanted me to—so I always did.
The day spreads out long and hot. I spend my breaks hiding in the air-conditioned library. Most of my classes are in the newer buildings but my last class, English, is in an old demountable—nothing but a useless ceiling fan to stir the humid air. A layer of sweat sticks the backs of my thighs to the hard plastic seat. Megan keeps trying to catch my eye but I can’t look at her. She’ll be training after class, sixty minutes of laps in the cool water.
I’ve been avoiding her most of the week—not wanting to relive my episode at the pool. Normally, I’d ask her to come with me tonight, and a part of me still wants to. I don’t know what it’ll be like without Cam but it won’t be the same. Nothing’s the same.
I want to disappear, to sink into the edges of this room. I push back the layers and reduce myself to actions. Sit, stand, breathe.
After it happened I felt Cam haunting me. I’d catch him out of the corner of my eye as I closed the fridge door or walked out of the bathroom. His ghost burned into my memory. But now he has started to fade and the hole his absence created is swallowing me up all over again.
I rest my head on the desk, the cool surface offering a tinge of relief to my cheek. The noise of the classroom blends together until it’s just a whirr in the background. Someone taps my desk and I jerk my head up.
It’s the new guy, Evan—English seems to be our only class together.
‘Have you got a pen?’ he asks. ‘Mine just died.’ This is our first conversation since we swapped junk food slogans at the servo.
‘Ah, yeah.’ I hand him a spare from my pencil case.
‘Cheers,’ he says and goes back to his seat—on the other side of the room. He gives me a quick look as he sits down, then concentrates on his notes, my pen resting absently on his bottom lip.
Mr Matthews clears his throat and I blink at him. He holds up the book we’re studying. I shake myself and try to focus.
‘Chapter one, Lucy. Any thoughts?’
I give him a blank look and he lets out a long breath. I haven’t read it—I tried but I couldn’t make my brain connect with the words. He moves on to the next person.
The door opens and Steffi sneaks in. She takes the empty desk a couple of rows in front then turns around and stares at me—her eyes are unfocused and edged with red. I raise my eyebrows in response and she smirks and turns back.
At the end of Year Six, after the graduation dinner, Steffi and I snuck out to the bluff. We giggled at the cars parked there, the couples making out, grossing ourselves out with what they might be doing. We kicked off our shoes and lay in the grass. We talked about high school and all the grown-up stuff we’d do together. Steffi gave me our letter book—we swapped it between us every few weeks and it was my turn. Steffi always wrote way more than I did and most of it wasn’t addressed to me. She’d write to the neighbour’s cat, to the best climbing tree and to the dad she never met.
I had big plans for the book this time. My family was camping at Treachery for Christmas and I was going to write all my letters from the point of view of a sea snail, or a bluebottle, or seaweed . . . I hadn’t completely worked it out yet.
And I swear I packed it but when we got there I couldn’t find it. It wasn’t at home either—I’d lost it. It drove me nuts because I never lost anything. Steffi said it was no big deal but there was stuff out there somewhere that she’d only trusted me with.
We tried to start a new book in Year Seven but it wasn’t the same—we weren’t the same.
I’d been moved into the top squad for swimming and I was training twice a day. Steffi hated sport, all of it. She always picked ‘beach running’ for her elective and would lie on the sand and read a book.
When I made it to Zone for backstroke, Megan started talking to me.
I kept asking Steffi to sit with us but she refused. And I was a bit relieved. Steffi didn’t get it: the constant training and swimming obsession. But Megan did. We were wrapped in each other’s lives and there wasn’t much room for anyone else.
I glance at Megan. She’s absorbed in the lesson, forehead creased as she writes, her other hand on her head smoothing back nonexistent stray hairs. She turns towards me and I refocus on my own work. All I’ve written is the lesson topic and I’ve no idea what we’re supposed to be doing. I tap the page with my pen, underline the heading and draw a flower.
The bell rings and I escape the classroom before Megan can catch up to me. Everyone spills out into the quad and I join the swarm of students heading for the bus stops.
‘Hey Lucy, hey.’ Alix spots me in the crowd, bouncing over and linking arms with me. She slugs water from her sports bottle and offers me some. I squirt the lukewarm water in my mouth and hand it back.
‘You heading home?’ she asks, shaking her bottle over her head and sending drops of water down her face. ‘How hot does it wanna be? I need to get in the pool before I melt. Oh sorry,’ she lets go of my arm, ‘I didn’t mean to—’
‘It’s fine. You can mention the pool.’ I give her a reassuring smile. ‘I’m not gonna freak out.’
‘You’re sure?’
‘Yes.’ I steal her bottle and squirt her with it. She yelps and jumps back.
‘Oh, wait, wait,’ she laughs, tying her hair back and leaning forward. ‘See if you can get it in my mouth.’
We reach my bus stop giggling and half soaked. A bunch of boys near us cut off their conversation to check out Alix.
‘What are you doing tonight?’ I ask her.
‘Ooh nothing, why?’
‘Well, there’s this party and—’
‘There you are!’ Megan barges over to us. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you,’ she says to Alix. ‘Mum’s waiting in the car park.’
‘Oh, sorry. I was just talking to Lucy.’
Megan directs her glare at me.
‘Hi,’ I say.
‘So, you’re talking to me again now?’
‘I’m sorry, all right? It’s been a weird week.’ I don’t know why I’m apologising when she’s the one who barely spoke to me for two months.
‘Anyway, we should get going.’ Her voice takes on an odd, breathy note as if she’s forcing herself to be nice to me.
‘I’ll text you about tonight,’ I say to Alix.
Megan’s eyes narrow. ‘What’s happening tonight?’
‘We’re going to a party,’ Alix says, her face lighting up.
‘At the cove?’ Her eyes slide to me. ‘You have work to do. With Lucy out of commission you need all the training you can get.’
‘I’ll go after.’ Alix shrugs but her high voice betrays her.
‘What was your best time this week?’
Alix blows out a breath and focuses on the road beyond Megan. ‘1.16.’
Still so far from what she needs to qualify for Nationals.
‘You need to focus,’ Megan says, gently. ‘You’re not getting any faster, Al.’ Megan turns back to me. ‘Enjoy the party,’ she says and stalks off.
‘She’s right,’ Alix says, staring after Megan.
I squeeze her hand. ‘You’ll get there.’
She turns back to me with her big doe eyes. ‘I’d rather get drunk and kiss boys.’
4
The sun is dipping in the sky when I reach the bluff. A salty breeze snakes around my hair, and I pull the hairband off my wrist and tie it back. The bluff is the highest point of the headland, where the ocean stretches out and people come to hook up.
From up here the ocean looks like nothing but a blue sheet—but I can’t focus on it for too long before my insides wobble. Above me a lone hang glider circles in the darkening sky. Sometimes I’d see the gliders when I’d be swimming at the baths and I’d wonder how small I’d seem to them. How small everything would seem to them. The red and black triangle above me drifts in the wind and bleeds into the pink. So far from the ground. It looks peaceful and terrifying.
Ducking into the trees, I find the narrow track to the cove. I grip the ground as best I can with my thongs but lose my footing a couple of times on the loose sand.
Cam talked me into coming out here a couple of years ago.
He lay on my bed, tossing my rubber band ball in the air. ‘Come on, Lucy, just one night,’ he said, sitting up. ‘One night where you can have fun and not be so perfect.’
I eyed him from my desk. ‘What do you do?’
‘Hang out. Drink a few beers. Nothing major.’
‘At the cove?’ I’d heard about it but I’d never been.
He smiled. ‘It’s awesome. Trust me.’
‘Why do you want me to go?’ I was used to Cam ignoring me or telling me to get lost. Him wanting me there was confusing and amazing.
‘I don’t care what you do. But I think you’ll have fun—come on.’ He got up and placed the ball on my desk. ‘Do something you can’t tell Mum and Dad about.’
Megan came with me a few times last year and we’d sit on a log and watch, in awe of my brother and his crazy friends. The stories, the hookups, the pot. Included but not quite—there to watch but not to be involved.
The track levels out, which means I’m close. I wish Alix had come; I’m not sure I want to be here by myself. I push through the scrub, lantana scraping and stinging my shins. Cam used to say it didn’t feel like an adventure unless there was blood. I glance down at my legs. No blood but itchy as hell.
‘No, it was more like this.’
Laughter.
‘God. Shut up. You weren’t even there.’
I stand at the edge of the clearing. Music ricochets out of the cave, electro stuff jamming into my ears.
‘Don’t burn that yet, you’ll smother it.’
‘Ah, crap. Got a splinter.’
On the other side of the cave, casuarina trees make a skinny forest from here to the water. This is the cove. A wide-mouthed shallow cave back from the beach and far enough from the road to not draw any attention.
The fire pit smoulders, sending up smoke signals and very little flame. Casey feeds it scrunched up newspaper and twigs. Simmo and some other guys push giant logs into position around it. Simmo’s naked from the waist up, shirt shoved in his back pocket. He looks at Casey, then grabs a bottle of something from the ground and douses the fire. Flames roar up and Casey swears.
‘You nearly burnt me face off, you tosser.’ He pushes Simmo. Then Tara, Cam’s ex, walks out of the cave, hands on hips, and tells them both off.
I take a step back towards the path. I shouldn’t have come. Tara looks over at me.
‘Hey, thought that was you,’ she says, walking over, keeping me pinned to the spot. Everyone looks at me.
I fold my arms tight across my chest and clench my jaw. Cam and Tara dated on and off until Year Twelve. I used to think she was amazing, she was so pretty and could out-surf most of the guys. She called me her sister. She folded herself into our family without any of us really noticing. When they broke up the last time I didn’t think much of it—they were always breaking up. But then Ryan let it slip what she did, how she’d been seeing one of their mates at the same time.
‘You doing okay? Haven’t seen you in ages.’
I can’t believe Tara would show her face here. This place was always Cam’s.
‘Lucy?’ She moves to touch me but I flinch back.
‘I’m fine,’ I say then turn and storm back into the lantana.
I ignore any tracks, any easy path. The scrub scratches and digs at my skin and I hope there’s blood.
That drawing I found i
s probably of her. Cam left her faceless because she was heartless. But the girl in the drawing has long hair and Tara’s has always stopped just below her chin.
Footsteps crunch behind me. ‘Hey, Tiny Taylor.’ It’s Simmo. ‘Where you going?’
I stop walking and let him catch up to me. ‘Nowhere.’
He swigs his beer and grins at me. Simmo is short and stocky, calls himself a ‘power-pack’. I always think of a pitbull.
He was there that night, the night Cam . . .
‘It’s good you could make it. It’s weird with no Taylors.’ He’s drunk, or close to, his words slurring together. He stands close to me, the distance of the beer bottle he’s holding between us. ‘What are you doing out here?’ he asks.
‘Just needed some space.’ I fold my arms in an effort to put more things between us.
‘It’s getting dark.’ He glances up at the sky for confirmation. I look up as well. I wonder if that hang glider is still up there, pushing visibility to the last second, or if they’re already safe back at home.
‘We got the fire going, you should come back. Come on.’ He tilts his head in the direction of the cave.
A wind whips through the bush and shakes the trees. I rub my arms. I don’t want to make the trek back up the hill by myself in the dark.
Tara smiles at me when we come back. The music has settled down to a dull thump. I ignore Tara and sit on a log near the fire. Simmo sits next to me and hands me a red Vodka Cruiser.
‘So,’ Simmo says, ‘seen Ryan around?’
‘Is he here?’ I say too fast, straightening up and looking around. Simmo laughs. They probably all know about my stupid crush on my brother’s best friend.
‘Nah,’ Simmo says, ‘couldn’t get him to come. He got back a few days ago though.’
Days? Ryan’s been back for days? Why hasn’t he called or come round?
‘Can you grab me a drink, Case?’ Tara asks, her voice setting my teeth on edge.
Pieces of Sky Page 3