by Sean Kennedy
The rest of the week had been pretty low-key. Emma was feeling a lot better now that she and Micah were talking again, but Emma had also received a couple of calls from Kyle that she let go to voicemail. He didn’t actually leave messages, so she felt justified in not having to return them. If Micah knew about this, he didn’t say anything, which was just as well, as it may have led to yet another argument between them. And they didn’t want that, it went without saying.
But shouldn’t she want it enough to actually play nice with Kyle? She did, but not really. Yes, Emma was contradictory. Maybe even hypocritical. But Micah had been done wrong, and she had to make sure Kyle knew that she knew, even though he already knew she knew, but now he had to know that she knew and she knew he knew… and just like that she had lost her train of thought. It was making sense up to a certain point.
Luckily she didn’t run into him on campus.
“Shall I come and see you off at the bus?” Jess asked. “Is that a thing?”
“Is what a thing?”
“Being the supportive girlfriend, waving off the champions?”
“It’s a scratch match, not a final.”
“Okay, am I supposed to come and meet you when you come back? All hail the conquering heroes? With a homemade banner and a box of biscuits?”
“You’ve obviously been watching too many American teen TV dramas.”
“Damn,” she sighed. “I was thinking of buying a really short skirt and some pom-poms.”
“On second thought, buy them, and you can answer your door wearing them when I come over that night.”
“You better be holding a trophy we can drink champagne out of.”
“It’s a deal.”
So she didn’t come to see Emma off. But thankfully nobody’s partner did, except Ruby’s soppy boyfriend, Dave. They had to endure several minutes of pained heterosexual PDA before Alya stuck her head out the window and yelled, “Get on the fucking bus!”
Dave stared back at her, the stain of pink lipstick around his mouth.
The girls started whistling at him. He blushed and fled to his car without giving Ruby a second glance. She was not happy as she stamped her way down the aisle.
“That wasn’t funny, Alya!” She chucked her bag under the seat in front of her and Emma. “How would you have felt if I’d done that to your girlfriend?”
“Wait for it,” Alya whispered to Emma.
“Oh, but that’s right! You haven’t got one!”
“So predictable,” Alya said. She smiled at Ruby. “Maybe I could just steal your boyfriend, Ruby. I mean, he is pretty cute. For a guy.”
“He wouldn’t be that stupid.” Ruby flounced onto her seat.
“I don’t know,” Alya said. “Look at his history.”
Ruby did a full Linda Blair head twist, and if she’d been able to, Emma was sure the puking would have followed. But Alya leaned in and gave her a quick kiss on the nose.
“Let’s not fight,” she said. “We’re better than that.”
Ruby rolled her eyes and turned back, but not before Emma caught the start of a grin.
“You are one powerful fighter,” she told Alya. “You manage to battle and then totally charm the opponent before they can strike back.”
“It’s a gift,” Alya said.
Emma laughed and leant down to grab her book from her bag. Across the aisle, Trish was looking directly at her. Emma gave a slight acknowledging smile and turned her attention to the adventures of Frodo and Samwise before she could see her reaction.
THE WEATHER turned filthy, and the game was filthier. Emma used to think Melbourne was bad enough with the winter—the Antarctic winds used to blow straight up into the port with shards of ice still attached. Okay, slight exaggeration, but those winds were a special kind of brutal. Canberra, however? Even worse. When it decided to get cold, it was that deep-set chill that buried itself in your bones and made you feel as if you would never be warm again, even when you practically burnt yourself on a fire trying to bring life back into your body.
It was downright torturous when you were on a hockey field in the rain, wearing only knee-length socks, a short skirt, and a sleeveless vest. Mud sticks everywhere and grows icy. The rain can’t even wash it off, and when you’re sliding about on a grass oval turned into a mud wrestling pit, you end up looking like Swamp Thing chasing a ball rather than a scantily clad woman.
So this scratch match was a war, although one more against the elements rather than another team of human girls who looked more and more bedraggled as time continued on. Emma’s red hair had turned black with the soaking it was receiving, and her ponytail had turned into a waterfall more forceful than Niagara.
“Can’t we just forfeit?” Alya yelled above the crack of thunder.
“Look on the bright side,” Emma yelled back. “The lightning may just kill us and put an end to our misery.”
It turned out she was right. The match got canned and a draw declared as the lightning and thunder grew closer. There were quick handshakes between the girls on both teams, and then they all fled to the showers. Emma stood under the head in her cubicle, too tired to move, letting the scalding spray melt the mud and wash it away. The water around her feet looked like sludge, and she halfheartedly kicked it to aid it in dissolving and disappearing down the drain.
Her skin almost pink to the point of broiling, Emma emerged into the change room, where a heavy fog from all the hot showers made her feel as if she were walking through ye olde London and Jack the Ripper was about to make her his next victim.
“That was a tough game,” Ruby said, towelling her hair and not bothering to cover the rest of herself up. Emma looked away and berated herself for doing so. Nobody else gave a shit about casual nudity here, straight or gay, and she still acted like a closeted high schooler desperate to give the impression that she was unaware of all the bare flesh around her—or if she was, she was totally cucumber cool about it all. Micah said she was a prude, but Emma knew for a fact he did the same. Not that she had been in his change rooms at all to make that observation. If Emma was nervous now, imagine being around all those dicks staring you in the face!
“I thought it would never end,” Jane sighed. She was already dressed and had layered herself up for the occasion so that even an Eskimo would judge her.
“I could take another ten showers.” Alya now joined them, her hair wrapped in a towel turban.
“Stop your bitching, girls,” Trish said from the other side of the room. “It could have been even worse.”
None of them appreciated being told off like naughty children. Emma thought even Trish could see she had overstepped the mark. Nobody would have thought twice if she’d just said It could have been even worse. It was the Stop your bitching, girls that made them all immediately think she was taking her new role as assistant to the coach far too seriously.
All of the girls were pretty subdued after that, and the noise on the bus back to the motel never escalated above a few whispers.
“What was that all about?” Alya asked Emma as they sought sanctuary in her room.
Emma shrugged. “Who cares?”
“She’s going to make it ten times harder to try and have a little fun tonight.” Alya checked herself out in the small mirror on the wall. “There better be some dykes in this town.”
“I think we’ve just increased the lesbian population about threefold.”
Alya grimaced at herself. “No offence, but this team is slim pickings as far as I’m concerned.”
“No offence taken.” Emma accidentally knocked Alya’s bag off the bed as she threw herself down on it and heard a suspicious clinking. “What’s that?”
Alya turned to her with a cheeky grin. “Just a little snicket to start the party off.”
“This is a party?”
There was a knock at the door.
“It is now!” Alya bounded over to open it. Framed in the doorway were Ruby, Jane, Flick, Sammi, and Brooke. There was yet another susp
icious clinking from the plastic bags they were carrying as they moved into the room and started making themselves comfortable.
“You don’t think Godzilla is sniffing around, do you?” Ruby asked.
“Did you plan this beforehand?” Emma asked Alya.
“Duh!” She unzipped her bag, and it looked like she had raided another hotel’s amply stocked minibar. Someone had obviously never told her about the danger of mixing spirits.
“I think she went straight to her room,” Brooke said to Ruby, continuing the previous conversation.
“Good,” said Ruby. “What a fascist.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Emma asked Alya. “I didn’t bring any booze.”
“God, you’re such a good girl,” Flick teased her.
“You’d think she’d never been on an away team before.” Sammi started pulling out her supply of liquor.
“I’ve never been on one that’s turned into an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting after hours.”
“This isn’t an AA meeting,” Flick said. “Because we’re drinking.”
“And that was back when we had Coach Hayes,” Ruby said. “She could have been a nun, the way she disciplined.”
“I think she did leave to go to a convent.” Alya passed Emma a baby bottle of Bundaberg and told her to get a Coke out of the fridge.
“You’re lying!” Jane laughed.
“Either that or to head up a drug cartel.” Alya shrugged.
“Maybe both,” Emma said with her head in the fridge.
By now they were being a little boisterous and started to settle again out of fear they would alert Trish or the coach—who, although she was no Davina Hayes, was still a force to be reckoned with when she wanted to be. The alcohol soon dried up, and they felt they needed more. It was immediately decided they were hitting the town to try to find some form of nightlife. Like schoolkids in an Enid Blyton book sneaking out of dorms to have a forbidden midnight feast, they ran under cover of darkness, in complete silence—except for a few uncontrollable giggles—past the rooms of Trish and the coach and down the motel’s driveway until they were on the main road of the town and freedom lay beckoning.
AS THEY had prophesised, there wasn’t much of a nightlife here. There were two pubs, and when they cracked open the door of the first one they immediately and wordlessly turned away. Everyone in the bar had turned to look at them. Emma could have sworn the needle on the jukebox even scratched to a stop. This wasn’t the pub for them.
The second and last-resort pub was much better. Okay, slightly better. At least they weren’t looked at with outright hostility from the outset. The back room had a jukebox, and that was chosen as their spot. Ruby and Flick were already feeding it money, and Whitney Houston started blaring, telling them she wanted to dance with somebody (who loved her).
“I don’t think there’s a song on there that was made past 1991,” Ruby said, coming over to their table.
“Sounds good to me!” Alya jumped up and shimmied over to the laughable excuse for a dance floor, a piece of lino with a wood panelling print. It was about the size of a slightly generous toilet. “Come on, Emma!”
“I need to be more drunk than this to dance,” Emma yelled back.
“That can be arranged.” As if by magic, Jane appeared with a jug of beer and a stack of glasses that wavered precariously. They all made it to the table in one piece, and Alya shimmied back to partake as well. And it only took a couple more drinks to make Emma join her on the lino. By this stage, Deee-Lite was telling them the groove was in the heart, and Emma had to agree.
The more they drank, the louder they were, and the more attention they got. Some of the local boys sidled in to try their chances, none suspecting most of the girls were more likely to go to a Tegan and Sara concert than a Bachelor and Spinsters Ball. But it was fun while it lasted, and Ruby adorably got flustered when she danced with a guy and ran off immediately to ring her boyfriend and pledge her love for him.
And as the clock struck midnight and all the Cinderellas had to go home, they stumbled back out onto the main road, trying to remember where their motel was. Seeing as they really only had two directions to choose from, they of course went the wrong way, and fifteen minutes later as houses turned to paddocks they turned on the spot and headed for town again.
By the time Emma made it to her room and got the key to work, all she was thinking of was falling on the bed and into a coma. Not even to change into pj’s. Just to collapse and dream.
She jumped as the light near the bed turned itself on and she realised there was a figure under the covers. It sat up, and a naked Trish was revealed to her.
“Why wasn’t I invited?” she asked.
Chapter 15
“WHY ARE you naked in my bed is the more important question!” Emma was still standing in the doorway, and slammed it before anybody could walk past and see in.
Trish sat up on her knees and the blankets slipped farther, past her hip and giving a slight tease of a part of herself Emma really had no business seeing anymore.
“When did you start shaving?” Emma asked, despite herself.
She smiled. “That’s your first thought seeing me like this again?”
Emma couldn’t lie. Trish had always been hot. And her body reacted to the nostalgia of seeing her in the flesh again, but Emma tamped it down. Although she was still focused on the hair thing. Who wants a girl who looks like a Barbie doll? Not that Trish had gone the full shave, but it was pretty close. Emma personally believed you let it grow like a rainforest down there. It was obviously meant to be like that for a reason, right?
“Trish,” she finally said, “Get your clothes on.”
“You can’t be serious?” It seemed Trish honestly hadn’t considered the possibility this would be the way her little seduction scenario would end up. She mustn’t have read any Choose Your Own Adventure books as a kid. They had taught Emma the world was full of endless possibilities. And never to drink salt water if you’re lost at sea.
“I’m totally serious.”
“But why?” Trish asked.
“Because I have a girlfriend, for a start.”
“Who you’ve been going out with for five minutes!”
“Who told you that?” Technically it was sort of true. They hadn’t even reached the stage where it was okay to fart or burp in front of one another, and that was the first milestone of any relationship. “Can you, like, cover up?”
Instead Trish got out of bed, and Emma was exposed to the whole shebang. She stood defiantly, her hands on her hips. “What are you afraid of?”
“That I can’t resist you.” Emma didn’t say it very nicely. She was openly mocking her.
Trish paled. “Jesus Christ, you’ve become one cold bitch since I last knew you.”
“Yeah, well don’t get your ego boosted thinking you had anything to do with it.”
Biting her lip, and Emma hoped it wasn’t to stop her from crying because she really didn’t mean to be that nasty—but it’s not like it was that comfortable a situation with her either!—Trish pushed past Emma and grabbed her clothes from the ancient wicker chair by the door.
“Everybody really hates me that much, don’t they?” She started pulling her underpants on, inspected her bra, and decided she wasn’t going to bother with it. She held it in her hand like a slingshot, ready to fire. “I mean, fine, I get why you hate me—”
“I don’t hate you,” Emma said, but she didn’t think she even heard her.
“—but what I don’t get is why everybody else does. All I am is a girl who took an opportunity to go to America for a year, and came out and came back. They treat me like I’m some queen bitch, and I don’t even know what I’ve done to deserve it.”
She could have sounded self-pitying, but she was genuinely confused. And Emma finally looked at it from her perspective. Emma had her own reasons for wanting to stay clear of Trish; Alya probably did so out of loyalty to Emma’s friendship; but what was everybody else do
ing it for? By all rights, Trish should have been a hero.
But that wasn’t 100 percent accurate either. The first-years loved her. They looked up to her, crowded around her at the coffee shop, and basked in her attention whenever it was directed their way. It was Emma’s year group that snubbed her.
And then it hit Emma. She felt stupid for never even considering it.
Jealousy.
Pure jealousy.
Trish was their direct competition. And she had already snapped up a part in an exchange program, was being taken under the wing of the coach, and who knew what else would happen in the future. She was a threat to everybody wanting to achieve their ultimate goal—of scoring a place on the Matildas and eventually the Olympic team.
Not that Trish was the friendliest of people either. That probably played a role.
“You just need to adjust,” Emma said. “They all do. You haven’t been back that long.”
They both knew it was a cop-out, but Trish nodded. “Can I ask you something?”
Emma wasn’t sure she wanted her to. But, okay. “Fine.”
“Why don’t you want me?”
She sounded a little lost, and although Emma did feel sorry for her she couldn’t lie. “Because I have a girlfriend. You know that.”
“And if you didn’t?”
Emma sighed. “The answer would still be no. We’re history, that’s all. Maybe friends, but I can’t go back there.”
There was one last bit of bluster from her. “I’ll just get back with Kelsey, then. She wants to try again. I just wanted to see if you were available first.”
“Thanks, I feel so special.”
Trish seemed to deflate. “I guess so.”
“And lucky Kelsey.”
She didn’t say anything.
“Can I ask you a question?” Emma asked.
“Only if you know I’ll be just as honest as you were.”
Emma wasn’t worried about that. “How come you wouldn’t fight for us back then? You didn’t even want to try a long-distance thing. Was I that bad a girlfriend?” It hurt to be so vulnerable, and she wished she could take the words back.