All At Sea
Page 15
It was a bet. Bang Dorothy on the yacht and win five-hundred bucks.
I should have listened to you but I didn’t. I’m an idiot. They don’t make gells dumber than me.
I’m trying to be a good sport so I don’t wither and die of humiliation. I’ve ordered Fat Yaks for you and Mr. Poker Face. Another Seasick Cocktail for me. Look up and to the left a little bit. Say cheese to the camera. Here’s to you and Lachie and every man on the planet being worlds smarter than me.
Friday 2nd May 9.25pm
—Star of Oahu Dinner Cruises—
MFG!!! What are you dojng!
Friday 2nd May 11.01pm
—near Honolulu Harbor—
In the ambo. If they ask you for a statement, say you didn’t see.
Saturday 3rd May 12.36am
—Pali Momi Medical Center—
Just out of X-ray. Fractured zygomatic arch. Everything else is just bruises. It’s fine.
Saturday 3rd May 1.39am
—Pali Momi Medical Center—
Lachie went home about an hour ago. I didn’t manage to land many blows and I’m assuming you saw that. But I’m awesome at ducking and weaving, right? Even carrying ten Fat Yaks. They’ve just given me some splendid drugs. Hmmm, hillbilly heroin.
Saturday 3rd May 3.12am
—Pali Momi Medical Center—
You’re going to be shocked, I know, but this is not the first time I’ve had my arse handed to me, and not even the first time it was Lachie. I’m actually really lucky he was so smashed, because he’s, like, a black belt.
I am shit at fighting. And you saw me get totally owned. Lachie was all grace and power, and I was like one of those beavers popping out of the holes in the arcade game.
Did they ask you for a statement?
Basically they said if they charge Lachie with assault then he gets deported, and if we get done for affray then we both do. Then I get to go back to Belmont, where I will be so warmly welcomed by my community! Hooray!
The cops were stunned to learn that two totally maggoted Aussie blokes snotted the crap out of each other over a sheila. Apparently this is a first for the Honolulu constabulary. We are such excellent ambassadors for our country.
I’ll find out tomorrow.
Saturday 3rd May 3.14am
—Private Residence near Honolulu—
I’m sorry I didn’t write sooner. I’m at Cristina’s and I just woke up. By the time I got back downstairs to the dining area, they had you two in boat jail and wouldn’t let me in. I can’t believe there’s actually a real life brig on the Star of Oahu Dinner Cruise. There’s a sick bay, too. I know this because after the dust settled, those Seaside Cocktails hit me between the eyes and they had to lay me down on a cot and pull a blanket over me. At least they didn’t turn the boat around. At least Cristina and Simon still got to eat some of that excellent sushi before carrying me out.
Saturday 3rd May 3.16am
—Pali Mali Medical Center—
Soooo.
Just throwing it out there.
Wanna go to Sydney Uni?
Saturday 3rd May 3.19am
—Private Residence near Honolulu—
You’re high on Vicodin or whatever dope they gave you. You’re drunk, high, and probably have a concussion, too. You probably won’t remember asking it so I’m deleting it. You do the same. We’ll pretend you never wrote it.
Saturday 3rd May 3.24am
—near Honolulu, HI—
We didn’t break up because it wasn’t working, Millsy. We broke up because it was. Come with me to Sydney. Just until your courses start.
Saturday 2nd May 3.27am
—near Honolulu, HI—
Please?
Friday 2nd May 3.31am
—near Honolulu, HI—
You’re always, always making me beg for you, Millsy.
Friday 2nd May 3.43am
—near Honolulu, HI—
Please?
Saturday 3rd May 3.47am
—Private Residence near Honolulu—
How’s your face? No better yet, how’s Lachie’s face? You landed a couple good ones. I hope you broke his jaw.
Saturday 3rd May 4.18am
—near Wahiawa, HI—
I’m in a cab headed back to North Shore. Winding through the pineapple fields.
I didn’t break his jaw but I did tell him about us. That you were special to me. You would have enjoyed the look on his face. He never saw it coming.
He thought I tried to smack three shades of shit out of him on principle.
We talked in emergency. For ages.
He is really angry with me about Fi. He loves her. They are really good friends and he said he feels like he has to choose, and he chooses her because I’m an arsehole.
Fair enough.
Lachie will be ok in the long run. We needed a break from each other anyway. It has been weird since I moved out. He’s not at my doorstep with a hacky sack or a beer or a board. We have to kind of make an appointment to see each other. It’s just wrong. Stale. Over.
Lachie and I are breaking up.
We had a long yarn about you.
About the bet. He said he couldn’t ever impress you. He was always slogging his guts out.
The Jac thing was easier, he said. He’s not a feminist, so I snotted him.
But it’s not just about how gross all that is. And shame on Olaf too. I thought he was better than that. But then, you know, Viking, so maybe not.
Because you see - the thing is, I called dibs. It was a silent dibs, but I called it all the same. I called it on day one. So it was deeply offensive to me that Lachie continued to pursue you. He violated the bro code!
You have always been my girl.
Lachie’s like, ‘but you can’t silently call dibs on a girl if you are engaged to a different girl’, as if the heart is so wieldy.
Maybe his is. My heart is a fcken brumby. Spry, crude, windswept, feral. I have no idea what it’s going to do next.
Saturday 3rd May 4.20am
—near Wahiawa, HI—
No seriously, wanna come and ride this brumby?
Seriously, Sydney is very civilised. There’s lattes and art and theatre and everything.
Come with me. Just for a little while.
It could be a holiday.
BYO yacht.
Saturday 3rd May 4.22am
—Private Residence near Honolulu—
*googles brumby*
A wild horse! We have those, too! MUSTANGS!
Yes, I will come with you. Until school starts. Then I have to get busy making my mark and leave all thoughts of love behind. But until then, I will pin you down and kiss your face and listen to you tell me you love me. Where are you? I don’t care if I haven’t slept yet. I want to come see you.
(My mother is going to throw a fit.)
Saturday 3rd May 4.42am
—Private Residence near Honolulu—
Hello? You there?
Saturday 3rd May 4.52am
—Private Residence near Honolulu—
Fat Yaks and hillbilly heroin have done their job, I’m guessing. Goodnight. I’ll be at Cristina’s for a couple days. Until the alcohol and antihistamines are done coursing through my veins.
Sunday 4th May 1.13pm
—Coral Café—
I went out with your mother. ;) No, just to talk about this. I had to win her over!
She said no.
Saturday 4th May 1.29pm
—Private Residence near Honolulu—
I know. She just called. Told me you’d met with her. I’m staying at Cristina’s a little longer. Hiding out until Lilah’s cooled off. It doesn’t matter what she says. I’m an adult and I’m coming with you.
Monday 5th May 9.50am
—near North Shore Hostel—
Sorry I haven’t been answering your calls. I turned my phone off for a bit.
I took Lachie to the airport yesterday. I had to kind of give that moment my full
attention.
We had this long clumsy man hug, because it’s over, and we both know that when we are old men this will be the year that makes us misty… what was it? Verklempt.
I had to draw a line under it. Do you get that? You know I’m into that. Acknowledging a significant moment in time with a bit of silence and stillness.
Yeah, your mum’s not so thrilled about you following a convict half way across the world. She just didn’t realise how many of us Aussie are! Or at least descended from one.
(An Aussie making a convict joke is kind of like Kansanite talking about twisters. Crikey!)
In the end it was disorderly conduct, which is a misdemeanour.
Anyway, when I took Lilah for coffee, I told her that I love you. I’m not trying to take you away from her. It’s just I have to leave. My visa is being withdrawn!
She told me about what happened when you were five. She said she was on the third storey of your house (your house has three storeys!) and you were right there one minute, and then the next minute she looked out the window and you were in the pool. There was a ball floating across the top of the water. Obviously the ball went into the pool, and you followed it.
You’re in the pool, face-down, wriggling and splashing, not making any headway. She’s leaping the stairs screaming. Each flight she glances out the window at you splashing and sinking. Writhing, sinking.
You didn’t drown, but it was a near thing.
She blames herself. For that – for not paying close enough attention - but also because for years after that, any time you were near water she would grab your arm, or blurt out, ‘be careful’. Lilah believes she basically taught you to be phobic.
She told me that you’d both been to therapy about it, and you were making progress, but then the other thing happened. The push.
And you got so stressed and freaked out that she withdrew you from the school. Lilah has massive guilt about it. You need to help her out with that.
She liked what I did with you in the water. Did you know she used to come and watch? Slouching on that bench, up near where that catamaran is parked, big sunnies on, peeking over a newspaper. She saw the noggin thing. She knew about me the whole time, Millsy.
She doesn’t approve, but I think she understands why you like me so much. I’m fckn adorable! And hot! And dynamite in the sack! What’s not to like?
I promised your mother I would start from scratch with the water therapy when we get to Sydney.
I promised you already. You will always be safe in the water with me. I am a really strong swimmer, and I can’t take my eyes off you anyway.
Monday 5th May 1.45pm
—Waikiki Yacht Club—
Guess where I’ve been all day? Getting my passport updated!!! Cheese!!! Don’t I look cute?!?! A lot better than when I was thirteen with braces!
I’m glad you talked to my mom. She’s starting to come around a bit. She’s definitely, definitely still not thrilled that I’m going with you but she’s slightly (ever so slightly...) less worried, I think. She has told me a dozen times at least: “If it doesn’t work out, you come home right away, Amelia! Don’t be embarrassed. If you’re unhappy you come home!”
She also made me swear on my life not to elope. O.o I assured her that we’re just spending time together until fall semester starts.
She loves me fiercely. She clings to me so tightly that I sometimes feel suffocated by it. She’s never gotten over the incident in the pool. She had the pool drained and broken up and filled-in the day after it happened. There’s a rose garden there now.
I don’t remember it at all. I only remember the fear part. She remembers it like yesterday. It wakes her up in the night still, nightmares of me at the bottom of the pool. I can feel the remembering of it in her hugs sometimes. She would send me to school and know that I was going to be forced into the water and her face would be aching about it. She tried to get me out of the swimming, get a note from the therapist, but he refused. He told her that it would only make it worse for both of us, that it was only feeding the problem.
We were kind of getting through it on our own. She would take me to the park and we’d feed the ducks at the pond or we’d walk over creek bridges and sometimes I’d look down. Then we went to that barbecue last summer and the push happened and it all started over, became worse than ever. Last semester was awful, my anxiety, the meltdowns and the bullying. It was like this cycle. You would think that by senior year people would have grown out of that sort of thing. If it was because they were jealous or bored or wanted attention, I don’t know, but they were altering my course like you said, making me feel like I was crazy and needing locked up. When the semester ended, I had enough credits to graduate anyway so my mom withdrew me. “Get bent, Mission Hills!” she said, when we were packing. Lol. Then we flew to Hawaii to live on the sea.
Tuesday 13th May, 8.24pm
—Private Residence near Sydney, AUS—
See, I can wash dishes!
But we have to take turns. Your new flat has to stay neat or I’m booking a ticket home immediately. We’re both feminists, remember?
You seem happy which makes me happy. You have a settled look like you’re glad to be home.
I will always write to you. Even if we are an ocean apart. Even if we are sitting on the couch and you’re kissing my neck and telling me to put my phone away, I will always write to tell you I love you.
About the Author:
Pepper Ellison was born in 1991 on a Royal Navy ice patrol ship stationed near Ross Island on the coast of Antarctica. Currently, she divides her time between Waipahu, Hawaii and Sydney, Australia. She has worked as a marine science research assistant, specialising in sea mammals, a brand ambassador for a craft beer company, and most recently, a Harley-Davidson joy-ride driver out of Kings Creek Station in Central Australia. She is a keen surfer and gymnast. ALL AT SEA is her first novel.