She nods. “You two can go anywhere you want, as long as you stay out of trouble and bring a mobile with you,” she says. Then she turns to me. “Hope, you will at least try to control him, won’t you?” her tone is almost pleading and I have to fight down the urge to laugh.
“I’ll try,” is the only thing I can promise. She doesn’t look very convinced and turns to her son.
“Just don’t annoy the neighbours, don’t attempt anything remotely dangerous and please don’t break anything.”
“Sure, whatever you say,” he waves her off, grinning in a way that clearly says he plans to do the exact opposite. She sighs in defeat, knowing it’s a lost cause, and proceeds to carry the bags into the kitchen. I feel sorry for the woman.
Once she’s gone Ash rounds on me, a mischievous smirk on his face. “Well, it seems we’re going to be having the house to ourselves for most of the day.”
I eye him suspiciously. “So?”
“Nothing,” he grins. “Nothing at all.”
The expression on his face says otherwise and I feel a shudder of fear at the thought of what he has in plan.
*****
I’ve never thought much of boys. I used to regard them as aliens, something in a world completely different from my own and safest to steer clear of. I could never understand why nature found it necessary to create boys; wouldn’t the world be a better place without them? All they seemed to do was push you into puddles and laugh when you tripped. I guess my eyes were opened when I found out about sex.
Strangely enough though, Faith was the one who first taught me that there is more to the male species than action figures and obsessions with guns.
That day, she had come home from school in a dream like state, an odd smile on her face and her eyes glazed. She’d almost walked into a wall, before Lily pulled her into the room they shared and demanded some answers for her strange behaviour. Curiosity had gotten the better of me and I’d managed to slip in as well, neither of them seeming to notice or mind.
“He did what?” A twelve year old Lily had gasped, looking truly flabbergasted.
“I know Lily, isn’t it amazing?” Faith, sixteen at the time, gushed.
Lily had stars in her eyes. “You are so lucky,” she pouted. “He’s one of the hottest boys in both of our years.”
“I know, and he asked me out. I can hardly believe it.”
I’d chosen then to make my presence known, not understanding what they were obviously so excited about. “What’d ya talking about?” I asked curiously, looking between them in confusion.
Faith just smiled, reaching across the distance to ruffle my hair, causing me to scowl. “Nothing, Hope, it’s nothing,” she said. “I’ve just made a new friend. A special friend, that’s all.”
Their ‘special friendship’ lasted only for a few weeks. They were a nice few weeks, though. Every night Faith would disappear upstairs after dinner and I would hear her talking on the phone in her room, to her ‘special friend’. I tried to listen in once, but got bored quickly. Still, I had never seen Faith so happy as in those few weeks. She walked around with a constant smile on her face and sometimes she would get that funny glazed look in her eyes.
She told me once that it was called ‘love’. “You get this strange feeling in your stomach when he smiles at you, and it just feels right,” she tried to explain to me one night. “You want to spend all of your time with that person and you feel warm inside whenever you’re with them. You want them to be happy and you want to protect them, no matter what.” The way she described it made it sound like something unreal, something too good to be true. Maybe it was.
One day I got home from school early, having run all the way back because I thought it would rain. No one else was home yet; mother and father were still at work and the others still at school. Or so I thought. When I made it upstairs, I heard quiet sniffling punctuated by sobs coming from Lily and Faith’s room. Curious, I pushed the door open, only to find my eldest sister curled into the corner of the room, hands wrapped around her legs and head buried into her knees as she sobbed into her jeans. Maybe I didn’t know the phrase for it back then, but I’m sure my heart had broken just a little bit seeing the sister I respected most in that way.
I tried to comfort her, in the only mediocre way I could, because I was still only six and I didn’t understand. I curled up beside her and hugged her arm, trying to quell the sobs. I remember feeling angry and upset at the same time. Angry because of whatever it was that had hurt my sister, and upset because her tears were not enough and I wanted to be sad for her.
We stayed like that for a few minutes, until she looked up and wiped her red eyes, mascara cutting black streams down her cheeks.
“Thank you,” she whispered, voice coarse and broken.
“What’s wrong, Faith?” I asked.
Another tear leaked out, making its way alone down her cheek. She only smiled sadly. “He cheated on me,” she said, laughing hollowly. “These past few weeks I thought he actually liked me, but all this time it was just a lie.” And even though I didn’t quite understand, I knew that whatever it was it must have been bad so I only hugged her arm tighter.
“I’m sorry,” I said quietly. “Please, Faith, don’t be sad.”
She made a mistake. She shouldn’t have trusted him. She shouldn’t have given him her heart, because when you give people your heart it doesn’t mean they will appreciate it. The strange thing is that Ryan managed to tear holes in it that no one else was able to, even though I didn’t understand why.
I still don’t understand. But what I do know is that I will never be foolish enough to make her mistakes.
*****
He asks me about my sisters on our way to Cleadon Creek, half way through babbling about some TV programme he’s fond of. His eyes are milk chocolate in the blinding sunlight and his hair bleached a shade lighter into warm sepia.
“You’ve got four of them, right?”
“Yeah,” I mutter.
“How old are they?”
“Faith’s twenty six, Lily’s twenty two and Dawn’s eighteen.”
“So they’re all at least three years older than you.”
“Nice to know you can do basic math.”
“Are they all as sarcastic as you?”
“Nah, it’s just me.”
“Then what are they like?”
I pause in thought for a moment, trying to think up an adjective that can sum all three of them up. “They’re all really hard working,” is all I can think of.
“So I’m guessing you’re the odd one out in that case.” Maybe not for that reason, but he’s right.
“Yeah,” I look away. “I am.”
He seems to sense my aura of despondency after that and stops asking questions.
By the time we reach the lake, it’s early afternoon. The sun hangs low in the sky, casting a pretty glow over the water and its various shadows. It would be a nice place to relax, if I had the lake to myself. But alas, we are not the only ones to take advantage of the cool breeze and perfect weather.
Perched on a rock on the far side of the lake is a certain girl with coal hair weaved into two long plaits and a pair of gentle, blue eyes that match the water. She is resting her chin in her hands, elbows propped up on olive knees. The same scarlet skirt clashes horribly with the forest green leg warmers she is sporting, the tattered sunflower shirt adding the final touch of disaster to her outfit. I can’t help but smile.
Standing nearby Claire’s rock, wearing Wellington boots and carrying a fishing net is a boy around the age of twelve, with hair the shade of burnt umber and jeans rolled up to the knee.
“Who‘s that boy?” I ask Ash discreetly, casting him a furtive glance.
“Daniel. He’s Claire’s brother, the girl sitting on the rock,” he explains. “Both of them go to my school. Come on, I’ll introduce you.”
I’m not so keen on the idea, but I don’t have a choice as he grabs my wrist and all but drags me out
of the trees towards them, ignoring my protests.
Claire is the first to notice the commotion and her idle gaze snaps up, a small smile immediately appearing when she sees us. “Oh Hope, it’s nice to see you again,” she says, eyes curving upwards. “You too, Ash.”
“Who?” Daniel looks up from peering through round lenses into the water.
Claire, ignoring him, leaps lightly off her rock and skips up to us. She gives us a large grin, braces glinting in the sun. “You really do live with him,” she notes, looking between Ash and I with interest. He looks puzzled.
“You two already know each other?”
“We erm…met a few days ago.” I try to resist the urge to let my gaze slip downwards towards the girl’s obscure caterpillar leg warmers. “No stripy socks today,” I observe.
She shrugs. “They didn’t match the rest of my outfit.”
How the two green obscenities wrapped around her legs do match, I cannot fathom.
However, before I have time to ponder over her strange fashion sense, Daniel has staggered out of the water and joined us, bucket still clutched firmly in his hand as the sunlight glints off his glasses.
“You caught anything yet?” Claire asks.
He gives a dejected shake of his head. “Nah, just a few snails and water beetles. No fish.”
“You’re fishing?” I ask.
He scrutinises me curiously for a second before answering, his tone patronising. “It’s for a school project,” he explains. “Biology. We’re studying aquatic ecosystems. I was hoping to catch a Pike. They’re supposed to be pretty tough, like piranhas.”
“I read something about them,” Ash pipes up. “They can get really big. To be honest, they’d probably tear your net up.”
It’s almost comical how three pairs of eyebrows raise simultaneously. “You read?” I voice all of our thoughts. “Books? And comics don’t count.”
He feigns an insulted frown. “I’ll have you know that I finished the last Twilight book a month ago, and it was long.”
Daniel scowls. “That book’s an insult to the vampire race.”
“And you’re an insult to the human one,” Claire gives us a sheepish grin and ruffles her brother’s hair in a chastising way. “Sorry about him. He’s going through, you know, mood swings.”
He pushes her hand away angrily. “Let off, Claire. It’s not like you can talk, being female and all.”
“He has a point,” Ash says, chuckling. He points his thumb conspicuously towards me and winks.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” I turn my best glare on him.
“Erm, your hair looks pretty in the sun?”
“I thought so.”
All three of them laugh, and I can’t help but laugh with them.
“How do you know Ash, anyway?” Daniel asks. “I mean, I haven’t seen you before. Have you just moved here?”
I shuffle my feet nervously as the previously light-hearted atmosphere dissipates. “Well, you could say that.” My eyes dart towards Ash uneasily. And, without any form of communication, he automatically picks up where I left off.
“Hope’s family are friends with my mum. They’re on a business trip at the moment, so she’s staying with me for the summer.” He grins a charming, easy grin as he says it and the lie comes across so smooth and natural, without any trace of hesitation, that we could have been telling people this all our lives.
*****
Later on, when we go out to a cheap noodle bar for dinner, I ask him about it. “Why’d you cover for me?” I inquire, chopsticks dangling limply in my fingers. “You didn’t have to. You could’ve just told them the truth.”
He shrugs. “I didn’t think you’d want them to know,” he says. “It would’ve made things awkward. They would have asked questions, and I know you don’t like that.”
I blush slightly at my bowl. “Thanks,” I mutter. “For not telling, it was oddly sensitive of you.”
“I can do sensitive,” he scoffs. “You just never expect me to be able to.”
“That’s not true-” I begin to protest, but one raised eyebrow from him silences me. “I guess you’re right,” I admit with a sigh. “You can be mature sometimes, just not very often.”
He smiles. “I like it that way. Being mature all the time would be boring. I’d rather live in the clouds while I still have the chance.”
“You remind me of Peter Pan, wanting to stay a kid forever.”
“I quite like that comparison,” he says. “But, just because I like being a kid, doesn’t mean I’m always one. I do read, and I do watch the news sometimes, and I think about my future like everyone else.”
“What do you think about then, when you think about your future?” I ask.
He sighs. “Nothing, really. I’ve given up trying to figure it out. I mean, my grades aren’t particularly good. I don’t know if I’ll even be able to get into a university.”
“You still have time to improve, if you work hard,” I try to persuade him. “And besides, why do you need to go to university? There are plenty of other things you could do.”
“Like what?”
I pause. “I can’t think of anything right now, I’ll get back to you on it.”
He laughs. “Very helpful. But the point is, when we’re young it seems like there’s so many opportunities out there, like we have everything in the world to look forward to. I’d hate to grow up and become disillusioned with all of that.”
“Yup, the world’s your oyster,” I agree sagely.
“What if you don’t like oysters?”
“Well, ‘the world’s your Chinese takeaway’ doesn’t quite have the same ring to it.”
He sighs dramatically. “You just had to say that. Now I’m craving pork dumplings.”
“With the noodles?”
“Absolutely.”
I shake my head in exasperation. “How do you manage to relate everything back to food?”
“You’re the one who mentioned oysters,” he pouts. “I was planning on having a nice mature, cynical conversation. I thought that’s what you wanted.”
“I did,” I smile. “Turns out though that I prefer you as an optimist.”
He rubs the back of his head sheepishly. “I’m not a completely naïve idiot, I just wanted you to know that.”
“Sorry,” I apologise, slightly guilty. “You know I don’t really think of you like that, it’s just that making fun of you is irresistible.”
There’s a pause for a moment then, tense, and I almost expect him to tell me that he’s fed up with me being so condescending to him all the time. But then he says: “You mean I’m irresistible,” in his usual cocky tone, and we both know that everything’s alright again between us.
“And modest, obviously.” I play along, to smooth things over, because it’s his way of doing things and I guess I’ll just have to live with it.
“Well, I have a right to brag. I bet you couldn’t finish a whole bowl of noodles in six and a half minutes.”
“Yeah right. Prove it.”
“You are so on.”
After that the evening dissolves into an epic race of who-can-slurp-fastest-without-getting-it-down-their-shirt and pointless banter. I love every moment of it. It’s as though all of my inhibitions, my years of self-seclusion are gone in a matter of minutes and I can laugh freely again without analysing why. I suspect Ash of spiking my drink with Sake, the Japanese alcohol, but I don’t ask about it. It would ruin the perfectness of the evening. I feel alive again, carefree, and I try to make it last as long as I can even though I know it will be over by morning. Everything is always different in the morning.
But for tonight, I grin and I live and I laugh as I watch him give himself catfish-like noodle whiskers and I try not to remember that when summer ends all of this will remain as nothing but a memory.
Chapter 10: Traitor
The next day I’m somehow coerced into going shopping with Claire. I don’t know how or why I agree to it, but li
ke most things I don’t seem to have much say in what happens. She just turns up on the porch, oddly dressed as usual, and demands that we absolutely must go shopping right now because the summer sale’s on and it’ll only last a week.
I make the mistake of asking her if there’s anywhere in particular she wants to go and suggesting we start with clothes. Immediately her eyes light up, like freaking headlights, and then she practically dislocates my shoulder as she drags me into ‘New Look’. According to her, it is a haven on earth. After trying on half the shop, I buy jeans and Claire buys at least five new pairs of luminescent socks.
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