‘Yeah, but if you change your minds and want to come home. Anytime.’ Mum leaned across towards the passenger side door, which I held open, and she looked out at us with her most serious face on. ‘I’ll come anytime.’
‘Thanks, Libby. We won’t do anything you wouldn’t do.’ Mia had her reassuring ‘talking to grown-ups’ voice on, but a shimmy in her shoulders. She had clearly worked my mother out completely.
Mum just rolled her eyes and laughed, then drove away. Clover waved from the backseat.
In the end, Mia had decided to wear gumboots, silver tights, a short skirt, a black singlet and a big woolly jumper on over the top. She looked like some kind of hipster wannabe. She was so city, but she looked so weirdly beautiful. I just wore jeans, a top, my coat and a pair of canvas shoes. It had been raining all day, and it wasn’t long before my feet got wet.
‘This is gorgeous!’ cried Mia, spreading her arms as if to take the whole house in a giant hug. The McElliot house is big, with a wraparound verandah. It’s one of the original homesteads in the area. Down at the historical society, on the wall with the creeping mould, there’s a photograph in a big frame of the house when it was first built.
I had spent a lot of time here as a kid. Not only had my dad worked for Sam’s for a while, but our grandparents were friends.
Sam was my first real kiss, in year six. It was at the barbecue after the end-of-year bush dance, when all the parents came along and the kids ran riot all evening. Year six, even for the kids just going on to the local high, was a big deal, and we all had felt the importance of this barbecue particularly.
There had been a water-balloon fight and Sam cornered me by the office steps. He threw a bloated water balloon my way, a look of absolute boy glee on his face, and for some reason my instinct was to reach out and catch it. Which I did, and I remembered watching it wobble, intact, in my hands. I was absolutely amazed, and Sam did a double-take. And then I launched it back at him and cackled as it burst across his chest.
There, by the prep classroom bubblers, we put our hands on each other’s shoulders.
‘I like you, Adelaide.’
‘I like you too, Sam.’
And we put our lips on each other’s lips. It was wet, and brief, and a wholly new experience. I wondered if he had felt the same – that with one G-rated smooch we were putting the childhood part of our lives to bed.
We never kissed again and it would be four years before I kissed anyone else, so I was probably being a bit too philosophical.
I hadn’t told Mia the story, and I would make sure not to tell her tonight. She would make an unreasonably big deal out of it. And, for that very same reason, I kept any thoughts about another certain Emyvale boy to myself.
Sam’s mum, Laureen, had built a super fancy room-slash-wine cellar underneath the house and let him empty it out and rig lights and speakers up. The music was thumping. There was a tub of ice at the top of the stairs, filled with beers. Outside there was a fire in a 44-gallon drum and seats all around it. Sam’s parents had put on a huge spread of food and encouraged people to eat, eat, eat. I think it was an attempt to make us drink less, less, less.
Everyone I’d ever known from primary school was there. Also, everyone I had ever forgotten was there too. Sometimes people came up to us. ‘Hey, Adelaide!’ I’d reply ‘Heeeyyy …’ and Mia’d jump in and introduce herself.
‘Addie,’ she said, when we were alone again. ‘You suck. Would you forget me?’
‘I’ve already forgotten you,’ I teased. I was restless, ready for some dancing.
In that dark cellar the lights flashed colours across the walls, our bodies and faces. Disco blue, fierce magenta, and an orange that made us glow. The rough floorboards reverberated. I jumped up and down, I shook my hips to the music, I shimmied and laughed and shouted the words to the songs. There were elaborate interpretive dance moves, the stand-in-a-circle-and-sing-passionately dances, the shuffle-while-grinning-to-music routine.
‘Dancing’s the same everywhere, then?’ Mia said, into my ear, her breath hot across my neck. I slung an arm around her waist, so small.
It felt like the best kind of freedom. When the crowd is thick and the people are thinking more about their own moves than how they look or where they’re flailing their arms. When they’re inside themselves just feeling the music enter through their feet and rise up, up, up through their body into their heart-centre where the dance starts – this is when you can let go.
But by eleven, everyone was getting way too touchy-feely.
‘I’m too hot!’ I shouted.
‘Yeah,’ slurred Emma joyfully as she threw her arms around me. ‘You’re so hot!’ She pushed against me, trying to dance, I think. We bumped around; I tottered, she lurched. This was not dancing.
‘You’re hot,’ said Dan, in a fixated-on-Emma way, ignoring me. He pulled her back towards him and they started kissing, clearly thinking they were being really sexy. In the strobe light I just got shattered images of ugly tongues writhing like skinned snakes. Not sexy. Not even a little bit.
There was no one I could even consider dancing with in that hot underground room, let alone doing the writhing snake move with, so I ducked out the door, up the stairs and outside.
A fire burned brilliantly orange into the navy blue darkness. The stars were many and I could see my breath. There were a few people standing by the fire, silhouetted in the glow, and some sitting on a ring of fat log seats.
Jarrod was waving a long stick about, the end of it red-hot and making shapes in the darkness as it went. ‘See? I can do it just as good as you. Didn’t even have to spend any money.’
Mia scoffed. She and Jen were standing close to the fire, both with their arms outstretched towards the flames. They giggled and suddenly, with a fizz, four sparklers lit up all at once and they laughed – practically hooted – and started running loops around the fire, their arms out like children playing at being aeroplanes.
I walked closer and saw the packet of sparklers balanced on one of the logs. ‘Can I have one?’ I asked, tipping the open end into my palm.
Jen and Mia’s sparklers went out and they threw them into the fire and collapsed on the grass.
‘Oh dear,’ said Jen, emphatically. ‘This grass is all wet.’
‘Oh dear,’ echoed Mia and they both burst out laughing again.
They were so gorgeous. I loved them for being so gorgeous. Wasn’t the whole world gorgeous?
With a sparkler in each hand I held them against the coals, watched the tips start to blacken and then once they sparked into life, I began windmilling my arms and running around. I started to thrill, to bubble; my heart went pounding in time with my feet.
Jarrod flung his stick as far as he could into the darkness, then stood still as if watching its trajectory. He hoiked up his jeans and scruffed his hair with both hands, before letting them rest atop his head. As he did, his shirt rode up and there was a line of dark hair on his stomach, enough to make something wobble in me.
I ran a circle around him, making streaky, silvery figure-eights in the air.
He stretched a hand out. ‘Give us a go.’
‘No.’ I held the sparklers away from him, just to be annoying. I suddenly felt a rather French pout coming on, which was strange considering that it was Jarrod I was talking to. I really didn’t feel all that possessive of a couple of sparklers, but it was too amusing to be coquettish. I suddenly, furiously, wanted him to pay attention to me. So I amped up the rude. ‘Get your own.’
He looked so funny in the firelight and he came closer. ‘Go on.’
‘No! I’m being coquettish.’ I twisted away to light some more sparklers.
He reached his arms around my body and I felt his breath on my neck, so close. He was fire-warm and flannelette shirted, and he felt strong.
Afraid I might swoon and yet determined not
to, I turned and ran – waving my waning sparklers above my head as I went. That restless energy that sometimes keeps me up at all hours spurred me on and I just dug my feet in and sped into the dark.
I could hear Jarrod laughing and running behind me. I wanted him to catch me. I also wanted to run forever. But I reached a fence line and I had to stop.
The sparklers were both dead, and Jarrod had easily caught up. He and I just looked stupidly at each other for a moment. His grin in the moonlight was a little bit mesmerising. How could that be? I looked over into the next paddock and could make out the outline of a tree.
‘I could run to that tree.’
‘Hey, Addie—’
It didn’t look far away. ‘Do you think it’s electrified?’ I interrupted.
‘The fence?’
‘Yeah. I want to go there.’ I pointed to the tree.
Jarrod picked a long blade of damp grass, rested it on the wire and waited a few seconds. ‘Nuh.’
I put my weight on the second-to-top wire and eased my body through.
The jolt hit my hands first and then my knee.
I felt it ricochet along my veins and bones and I half fell onto the ground on the other side.
I couldn’t decide whether I was angry or thrilling all over. ‘You bastard.’
He laughed and jumped the fence, using the wooden post to get leverage, landing with a thud.
Still lying on my back, I turned my head to watch as he dropped to his knees and then lay down alongside me. The ground was rocky, but I was recovering and couldn’t think to move.
He looked up at the sky. ‘You’re not like I thought you’d be,’ he said.
‘What did you think I’d be?’ There were stars for days.
‘You know, too cool.’
I sighed, and tried to make it an epic one that conveyed just how wrong he was. ‘I’ve never been cool.’
He turned his head and we were face-to-face. ‘Yeah,’ he began. ‘I know that now.’
I smiled, he smiled, but it was greater than just smiling.
Our shoulders touched. I couldn’t tell if the thud going through me was from the fence or something else.
‘You’re different to what I’d thought, too,’ I said.
Something definitely tingled.
Everything felt twitchy.
Either I needed to go to hospital or I wanted to kiss him.
I chose kiss him.
We came back from the party late the next morning. Mia and I got a lift with Jenny’s parents and we three sat tucked into the backseat pretending to be on our best behaviour, trying not to look seedy and worse for wear. Even though we all felt very seedy and worse for wear.
Everything seemed surreal: saying thank you to Sam’s parents, the colours of the paddocks, the sensation of the car bumping along dirt roads. Everything was heightened and I wasn’t sure if it was from the hangover or something else.
‘Thank you so much for driving us back, Mr Dear,’ Mia said, leaning forward from where she was, wedged in the middle seat. The backseat was small and all of our thighs touched, but there was something comforting about the warmth we made.
‘No problem.’ He was a man of few words.
Jenny’s mother sat in the front passenger seat with a Tupperware cake container on her lap. ‘Are you enjoying your visit, Mia?’
‘Yes, I am, thank you. It’s so much fun to meet Adelaide’s old friends, finally.’
I kept flashing to bits of last night, and jolting back out of it again. I could feel a stone bruise up high on my bum, from lying on a stone on the ground. I had hardly noticed it at the time.
His tongue.
Our teeth bumping.
His breath on my neck as he kissed me just beyond my ear, near where my hair began.
An electric shiver pinged through me. I was spacey and highly strung, sick and nervous.
‘You girls are quiet.’ Jenny’s mum was chirpy, but I wondered if she was digging for gossip. ‘Tired from raging all night?’
‘It was so uncomfortable sleeping on the floor. I found it really hard to get to sleep,’ Jenny replied with the perfect combination of slow delivery (too fast and she would’ve appeared to be hiding something) and an answer so credible no one could have faulted her.
‘You could have called. We would have come to get you.’
‘Thanks, Mum. Maybe next time.’ Again, a delivery so deadpan I couldn’t tell if she was being genuine or just polite.
Mia laughed, unhelpfully, and put one hand on Jenny’s knee and her other on mine and squeezed them both. ‘It was a really nice party. Mr and Mrs McElliot were so nice about having everybody stay.’
‘That’s what it’s like in the country,’ said Mrs Dear, as though she was responsible for all rural hospitality.
‘It was delightful.’ Mia sounded so content, like it had all been organised just for her. I knew that wasn’t what she meant, but I couldn’t help finding her adorably annoying.
I watched the paddocks out of the window, my cheek smooshed against the glass, until I thought I would throw up with the motion sickness. Then I closed my eyes just for a second.
Mum came to the door to greet us and – groan! – she was wearing her voluminous apron again. Clover had her arms wrapped around Mum’s leg and she slid along the floorboards as we walked back into the kitchen.
Mum hauled her barnacle baby with each step. ‘How was the party?’
‘We drank too much!’ Mia sighed melodramatically, resting the back of her hand against her forehead.
‘Hey!’ I accused.
Mia had clearly decided my mother was not only a kindred spirit, but some kind of false mother, to whom one could tell any manner of secrets. I had made up my mind to be careful of leaving them alone together. Who knows what she’d come out with if I wasn’t there to stop it?
‘Hey yourself!’ She bumped me with her hip. ‘And Adelaide got electrocuted!’
‘I just touched the fence and got a tiny little shock. I’m fine.’ I turned a slow circle, shrugging my shoulders and letting her see I was unscathed, to somehow prove my fine-ness. ‘It was nothing.’
‘Oh, just some minor electrocution on a Saturday night.’ Mum acted blasé.
‘Exactly. Nothing happened.’
‘No, nothing bad happened,’ Mia sing-songed.
Mum hoisted Clover up in her arms and smiled a wry, not-quite-disapproving smile at us. She tutted and shook her head. ‘What are they like, Clove?’
Clover held out her hands. ‘What like?’ Her intonation was perfect, all serious and sigh-filled, and it cracked us up.
But, though I was amused, even my bones were tired and I had to lie down.
‘I’m weary,’ I moaned, and pushed Mia out of the room like I was pushing a stalled car off the road. I placed both my hands flat on her back, with my arms outstretched and we shuffled through the house, bed-wards.
Mia and I snuggled down under the doona and deconstructed the party. We were a little bit hungover, we were a little bit sleep deprived. Everything was hilarious still, but only because nothing really made a lot of sense.
My entire body (not just in my brain, not just in my pants) was swirling and churning with what had happened, there, on the other side of the electric fence, with Jarrod.
I felt languid, at last at ease with Mia in Emyvale, and felt so happy she got along with Jenny and the way that we had all become settled and comfortable somehow in each other’s company.
Mia fidgeted and wriggled as I tried to nap. Each time she moved cold air whooshed in and I wanted to kick her. ‘Stop, stop …’ I said, trying to get across a truly exasperated yet pathetic tone.
‘I have to tell you something,’ she whispered.
‘What?’ I whispered back, rolling over onto my side so I could look at her.
&nb
sp; She licked her top lip. It made me nervous. ‘I kissed Jenny last night,’ she said.
Never in my … Not in a million years. I stared at her. ‘You kissed Jenny last night?’
‘Mmm hmm.’
‘Jenny.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why? How drunk was she?’
‘She asked me not to tell you.’
‘So why are you telling me?’
She sat up, a strip of watery sunlight coming through the crack in the curtains and falling across her face. ‘Don’t say anything to her. Don’t tell her I told you.’
‘Don’t tell me!’ I put my arms over my face. They felt heavy. Mia was rarely this serious. ‘Why did you kiss her?’
‘Because I wanted to.’ This was Mia all over.
‘And then what happened?’
‘She kissed me back and we laughed a lot. And then she cried a little bit.’
‘She cried?’
‘Just a little – it seemed like happy crying.’
‘You made her cry? With happiness?’
Mia fell back onto the pillow. ‘I didn’t make her cry. She just seemed overwhelmed. You know. She’s new to people knowing she’s gay.’
‘How do you know she’s gay?’ I knew it was a stupid question as soon as I said it.
‘Because she likes ladies and she seems to like kissing them. Plus she told me.’
I dropped my arms down to my sides, pressing the doona down along the length of my torso, like a cartoon of a person tucked into bed. ‘Has she kissed lots of ladies?’
‘Just one.’
‘You.’
‘Yeah.’
We lay together very quietly for a while. My mind was not quiet – it was cogging and turning and wheeling around very noisily. ‘So what happens now?’ I asked, eventually.
‘I dunno.’ She sounded flippant.
‘It was probably really significant for Jenny, you know.’
‘Yeah, but you know …’
‘What?’
Rolling onto her stomach, she had to be thinking, or deflecting. ‘I don’t know her very well.’
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