by Kylie Ladd
It had broken the ice. Everyone began dancing after that—girls, boys, even the teachers, and as long as the old songs kept coming they stayed on the floor. He and his mates had been idiots, Callum said later when they were out by the bubblers, getting a drink and catching their breath. They had thought they were so cool, requesting a playlist of Jay-Z and Limp Bizkit, but the trouble was no one could actually dance to that stuff. All you could do was stand around violently nodding your head until someone thought you were having a fit and made you lie down with a pencil between your teeth. Tess was laughing so much that she didn’t notice him leaning towards her until his mouth was on her own, warm and soft.
‘Thank goodness for ABBA, hey?’ he’d said, drawing back with a smile, and when she didn’t protest he leaned in and kissed her again, longer this time.
She’d been kissed before, of course she had, though mainly in public spin-the-bottle-type clinches at parties or as the result of some sort of dare. But she’d never been kissed like this . . . Callum’s lips pressed against hers, more insistent this time, yet still gentle. Before she knew what she was doing her mouth was open, and his was too; an electric shock went right through her as their tongues met, retreated, then touched again. Callum had his hands on her shoulders, then deep in her hair, pulling her even closer to him . . . and then they’d heard Stevie whistling as he came towards them and had sprung apart instinctively.
Still, Callum had danced with her for the rest of the afternoon, and had kissed her again too, when the bell had gone and she was meant to be walking home. She lingered with him at the back of the science block for as long as she could, until she knew her mother would be starting to worry and Janey would have stormed off, furious. Sure enough, when she finally checked her phone there was a text from her friend asking where the hell she was, and hadn’t they agreed to go to Westfield after the disco to do their Christmas shopping and hang out? Tess had texted back with a lie, saying that she hadn’t felt well and had had to leave the disco. She couldn’t tell Janey about Callum, couldn’t hold him out for her scrutiny. Callum was one of their classmates, someone they’d known since prep, and year seven boys were beneath Janey. She’d just laugh and tell Tess to get a grip or, worse, ridicule her choice. Anyway, it was only two weeks until she was moving to Kalangalla . . .
‘Tess!’ called her mother. ‘Are you ready yet? You’re taking ages in there.’
Tess dreamily reread the last paragraph. Write back. She would. She might even show Callum’s letter to Tia. Tia got it, she thought. Tia was a year older than her and had a boyfriend, an eighteen-year-old, Jago, who was doing an apprenticeship in Broome but visited her on weekends whenever he could hitch a lift. Tia understood. Not that Tess would call Callum her boyfriend, but maybe when she was back in Melbourne . . .
‘Tess!’ came a shout, this time with an edge to it. Tess shoved the letter under her mattress and grabbed her bathers.
Bronte trudged behind Morag, concentrating on where she was putting her feet. She didn’t want to trip over something and have them all laughing at her, but more to the point she was watching for snakes. Bronte hated snakes, and there were sure to be plenty here, it was so hot and grassy. She just hoped that Amira would know what to do if any of them got bitten, or could call in the Flying Doctor before the poison took hold.
The sun was stinging the back of her neck, and she pulled up her shirt collar to protect it. Caro had been right. She was going to have to watch it this week—she’d burn in a second up here. Morag too, she thought, studying the pale freckled calves striding away in front of her. Did Morag also detest it, all the mucking around with sunscreen, always having people asking if you felt OK or needed a blood test? Maybe she’d gone unnoticed in Scotland, but it was different here. Having a fair complexion in Australia was positively a disability.
Morag stopped so suddenly that Bronte almost walked into her. ‘Wow,’ Morag breathed, tugging off her daypack and reaching inside for her camera. ‘This is just amazing. I thought Cable Beach was incredible, but this . . .’
Bronte followed her gaze. She wasn’t a huge fan of beaches—too many visits had ended in pain and peeling shoulders—but Morag was right. This was something special. A crescent of white sand swept around a lagoon the colour of the sky; at the horizon it was impossible to tell where one finished and the other began. The water was so clear she could see something moving in it from twenty metres away. Something large . . . not a dolphin, but too big to be just a fish. Bronte ran forward to investigate; the tiny waves lapping at her toes were as warm as bathwater. ‘It’s a turtle!’ she cried, enchanted. She’d never seen one in the wild.
‘Shh, keep it down or it’ll be dinner,’ Amira laughed, appearing beside her. Bronte looked at her, not understanding. ‘Turtles are part of the diet here,’ explained Amira. ‘Pretty much everything is that comes from the sea, but turtle’s a particular delicacy. Don’t worry,’ she added, noticing Bronte’s frown. ‘No-one’s here to get this one. See if you can swim with it.’
‘Really?’ Bronte asked.
‘Sure,’ nodded Amira. ‘It’s gorgeous in . . . Give me your shirt and your hat. I’ll take them up to the shelter. But be careful—it gets addictive in there. Don’t be too long.’
‘I know—my skin.’ Bronte peeled off her shirt and dived in quickly before anyone could see her in her bathers. Silver fish darted by as she swam towards the turtle. It was even bigger than she’d thought—it probably weighed as much as she did. She trod water, watching it feed on seagrass.
‘Go on!’ yelled Amira from the shore. ‘Grab onto it. It won’t bite you.’
With her heart in her mouth, Bronte reached out for the turtle. The shell felt solid but also velvety soft, like a boulder swathed in moss. The turtle’s long neck craned around and it peered at her, seemingly in disdain. They stared at each other for a moment, then the creature slowly beat its flippers, moving through the water with Bronte trailing behind.
‘Wheeeeeeeee!’ she called out, as if she was a kid at Disneyland, holding on until the sea below her darkened and the turtle began to dive. ‘Bye,’ she said, watching it go, then slowly swam back to the beach.
By the time she stood up in the shallows, the others had spread out their gear under the two brush shelters further along the sand. Bronte shook the water from her hair and began walking towards them, wishing Amira hadn’t taken her towel. She hated the thought of them all looking at her body, at her ridiculous legs, her flat chest, the way her knees knocked together when she walked. She hadn’t even realised they did that until her mother had pointed it out. That was on the day Bronte had told her about the agent who’d approached her outside the school gates and asked her if she’d ever thought of modelling. The woman had handed her a card, which Bronte, thrilled, had shyly passed to Fiona as soon as she got home, but Fiona had just laughed and dropped it in the bin.
‘Probably some scam to get us to pay for pictures,’ she’d said. ‘Who’d want a model with pigeon toes and no tits? I can just see that on the catwalk.’ She’d smiled at her to soften the blow, but the memory still made Bronte burn with embarrassment. Her mother was right. It probably was just a scam.
She reached her towel and collapsed onto it in relief, pulling her shirt back on before she lay down on her stomach, her face turned away from the group. She was too tall and too skinny, that was the problem. A freak, just as Janey had said, a stick insect, a pipe cleaner. Funny how you weren’t allowed to call people fat anymore, but no holds were barred at the other end of the scale. God, Bronte, put some weight on, Janey had drawled when they’d met to go to the beach. You look like one of those kids in the World Vision ads, only taller. Bronte blinked, tears stinging her eyes. Dr Bennison at her mum’s work had told her that she’d stop growing once she got her period. Surely, at fourteen, that would be soon? She liked Dr Bennison; she was kind and approachable, she didn’t laugh at you or rush you out of the room. Ms Drummond was the same. She listened; they both did. Bronte felt bette
r just thinking about them. A thought occurred to her—maybe she was gay? Boys did nothing for her—they did nothing to her except tease and stare—but she often thought she loved Ms Drummond. She rolled onto her side. Great. Another way to stand out. She would be a lesbian stick insect.
‘Tess really is looking fantastic, Amira,’ said Caro. ‘Living here clearly agrees with her.’
Bronte lay still, careful to keep her eyes closed. Tess and Janey had run off to swim not long after she’d come out of the water. Maybe the mothers didn’t think Bronte was awake or could hear them. Maybe they didn’t care.
‘Thanks. It does, but she’s also at that great stage just before she starts getting fat like me.’
‘You’re not fat!’ Fiona protested. ‘You’re . . . comfortable. I’m the one who’s fat.’
Amira laughed. ‘Comfortable. Well, I’m comfortable with it, anyway, but there’s no escaping the Leb thighs. Tess will find that out.’ There was the tremulous sound of flesh being slapped.
‘Tess is only half Lebanese, though,’ Caro pointed out. ‘If she keeps exercising she’ll be fine. Look what it’s done for Janey.’
‘Ah, everyone admires Janey,’ said Fiona archly.
‘Tess is gorgeous,’ Morag quickly interjected. ‘You must be proud. They’re all lovely, every one of them—Tess, Janey, Bronte. They’re like . . . nymphs or something at this age, aren’t they? Ethereal. So beautiful they’re almost otherworldly.’
Fiona snorted.
‘Macy too?’ Amira asked.
‘I can’t tell under all that eyeliner,’ sighed Morag.
‘God, you give them everything, and that’s what you get in return,’ Fiona said. ‘They grow up and want to get their nose pierced.’
Bronte knew she was talking about Dom, Bronte’s brother. He’d mentioned it just before they left—his latest girlfriend had piercings in one nostril and her bottom lip, and Dom had said that he was thinking of getting one too. ‘Don’t be so stupid,’ Fiona had snapped, which of course got Dom’s back up. He’d told her it was none of her business, and she’d retorted that it damn well was—he still lived in her house, didn’t he, so she had to look at his ugly mug every day. ‘I’ll move then,’ Dom said, slamming out of the room without finishing his dinner, but they all knew he was too lazy for that. Now Bronte held her breath, silently praying that her mother wouldn’t share the story with everyone. She had a tendency to do that, laying bare the private details of their lives, laughing as if it was all some great joke. It wasn’t. It was awful—not just for Bronte and Dom and their father, but for anyone else who had to listen to it.
‘That’s Dom’s latest idea, anyway—did I tell you?’
Bronte pulled her hat down over her ears, but to no avail. Fiona’s voice always carried.
‘It’s his bogan girlfriend’s fault. She should have been given away at birth. Mind you, I almost wanted to do the same with him. He split me from arsehole to breakfast.’
Someone shut her up, Bronte thought, push a towel in her mouth or offer her a drink.
But to her surprise, Amira sounded interested.
‘How many stitches? I had twelve with Tess. I had to sit on one of those donut things for a week.’
‘Sixteen,’ Fiona replied, clearly proud to have bested her. ‘It was so bad I didn’t just have the donut. They also gave me a condom full of ice.’
‘Huh? A condom? What on earth for?’ asked Morag.
Caro joined in, her voice lit with glee. ‘Easy to see that you had C-secs. It’s to soothe the inflammation. You put it on your sore bits, you know, inside your . . . oh, I can’t say it!’
‘Prude,’ Fiona remarked, though fondly. ‘You shove it up your vajayjay. The ice cools everything down, makes you feel better. Or so I’m told. I threw mine in the bin. After all nine and a half pounds of Dom pushing his way out, the last thing I was going to do was put anything back in there. I told Todd that too.’
The four women erupted with laughter. Bronte stifled a groan. They were carrying on like idiots. Worse, teenagers.
‘You must have, though,’ said Caro slyly. ‘You had Bronte, didn’t you?’
‘Immaculate conception,’ Fiona answered. ‘I wasn’t there for it, anyway. I must have been asleep.’
‘Was Todd with you when you had them?’ Amira asked, then went on without waiting for a response, ‘Davis stayed, which was all well and good, but then he insisted on coaching me through labour. That was fine in the early stages when he could rub my back and get me cups of tea, but by the time I reached transition I just wanted to shove his CD of humpback whale songs down his throat. And forget the condom. When it was all over he handed me this jade crystal and told me that if I focused on it all my pain would be gone.’
Morag giggled. ‘Fat lot of good it was then. If it was so powerful, why didn’t he give it to you when you were still pushing?’
‘Exactly!’ shrieked Amira. ‘Probably because he was too busy waving herbs under my nose. I mean, yes, we had discussed it at antenatal classes, that we were both going to be calm and say no to drugs and just sort of draw the baby towards our energy . . . but I don’t think anyone told the baby that.’ Her voice sobered. Bronte could picture her looking around at them all, brown eyes serious. ‘I had no idea. Neither of us did. I mean you don’t, do you? No one would go through with it if they knew what it was like.’
There was a silence, predictably broken by Bronte’s mother.
‘I reckon one day scientists are going to work out what those whales are saying and all you hippy types are going to be disappointed. It’s probably just: “This water’s cold” and “Christ, I could go some krill right now”.’ She chuckled to herself. ‘Or, if they really do have higher intelligence, it’ll be: “Get the hell away from me. I might be a humpback, but I don’t want to hump you.”’
Bronte jumped to her feet and ran towards the water, looking for Janey and Tess. She couldn’t take any more. She’d rather be subjected to Janey’s snarky prattle than have to hear her mother talking about sex for a moment longer.
Morag rinsed the conditioner from her hair, but then stayed there, under the shower, with her head tipped back and her eyes closed. Were there water restrictions at Kalangalla? Surely not, given Amira had said that their wet season lasted three or four months. She sighed gratefully. There was no hurry to get out, and she luxuriated in the moment, in the rare experience of not having anyone to please but herself. It had been fun on the beach that afternoon. The four of them had shared their birth stories when they first met, a bonding ritual women seemed unable to resist, but that had been years ago. Morag counted them up in her head: eight, nearly nine. No doubt the details were the same, but the telling had changed . . . Amira letting loose about Davis; Fiona and her iced condoms; Caro confiding that her greatest fear regarding childbirth wasn’t the pain but that she might defecate on the bed while she was pushing. Then she’d leaned in and whispered, ‘And I did! I nearly died. As soon as I knew it had happened I sent Alex out of the room so the nurse could clean me up, and I didn’t let him back in again until Janey’s head was crowning and I knew there was nothing left in me except her.’ Caro’s cheeks had been red but her eyes sparkled, high on the thrill of sharing a confidence. Oh yes, their birth stories had definitely improved with age, Morag thought, their defences worn down by years of shared tuckshop duty and Friday night drinks and checking each other’s children for lice.
Ten minutes later she was combing her hair, towel wrapped around her, when there was a knock on the door.
‘It’s me,’ Fiona sang out. ‘I need a favour. Can I come in?’
‘Sure,’ Morag called back. ‘It’s unlocked.’ Amira hadn’t even given them each a key when she’d shown them to their rooms earlier that afternoon. ‘No-one locks their doors here,’ she’d said, ‘though I’m sure I could find keys in the office if you wanted to.’ Morag had said she was fine. She hadn’t brought much that was valuable, other than her camera, and she expected that that w
ould mostly be with her. Besides, her room was between Fiona’s and Caro’s. If anyone did want to steal anything there’d be much richer pickings in those.
Fiona shuffled in, also wrapped in a towel, clutching a plastic bottle to her chest. ‘I think I got burnt,’ she said, ‘on my back, but I can’t see it. Can you rub some moisturiser on for me?’ She handed the container to Morag and turned around. The skin from her shoulders to her lower back was a bright angry pink.
‘Ouch,’ Morag said, tipping some cream into her hand. ‘How did that happen? We spent pretty much all of the afternoon under the shelter.’
‘Swimming,’ Fiona said glumly. ‘I didn’t expect to stay in that long, and I thought I’d be OK if I kept my shoulders underwater. It’s not as if I’m as fair as Bronte.’ She groaned. ‘I’m an idiot—and there I was thinking what a berk you looked for wearing that rash vest.’