by Claire Zorn
‘I’m okay.’
‘It’s really good to see you. Sorry to freak out on you, I just …’ He runs his hands through his hair, shakes his head again. ‘You really looked like Kate standing there. Sit down. Here.’ He comes back around the counter, pulls a chair from a table. ‘Want a coffee? I’ll make you one.’
‘Please. Latte, one sugar.’
I sit down. When he’s done he sets the coffee in front of me, takes the seat opposite.
‘It’s really good to see you, Hannah. I’m not, you know, just being polite. I often wonder how you’re going. Especially the last week or so. I just, I can’t believe it’s been a year.’ He looks out the windows on to the street. ‘If I think about it I get too angry.’
‘I get that.’
He clasps his hands on the table top, hunches over a little, head dropped.
‘I want you to know, Hannah, I never meant to …’ His eyes look up at mine. ‘I never wanted to hurt her. I really … She was wonderful. I’d never met anyone like her. I don’t think I ever will again. But she told me she was older, Hannah. And I just felt, when I found out she wasn’t even sixteen, I didn’t want to hurt her. I just wanted to do the right thing. I really cared about her. I thought that I should break it off. I didn’t want to. She was so young. I thought we could wait a bit. I could wait a bit. And you know, I was willing to do that. There wasn’t anyone else. There hasn’t been. And then she died … Shit, listen to me. She was your sister. You lost your sister. Who am I? Just some guy that she went out with. I’m sorry, Hannah.’
‘You don’t need to apologise.’
‘Well. We all need to apologise for something.’
‘Someone puts flowers at the intersection. All the time …’
‘Yeah. That’s me. I hope it’s okay, for you. Doesn’t upset you?’
‘It doesn’t.’
He takes in a big breath then looks up at the ceiling, squeezes his eyes closed.
‘Can you stay a few minutes?’ he asks me. ‘Just … Can we talk about something else, just for a bit? I’ve got another two hours to go here and …’
‘Sure.’
‘Good.’ A smile. ‘What are you reading at the moment?’
‘Aldous Huxley.’
‘The light stuff as usual, then?’
‘Yeah, just the light stuff.’
‘Your parents know you read that?’
‘They’ve kind of got other stuff going on. How’s uni?’
‘Hmm. Uni. Kind of dropped out. Or “deferred” if you will.’
‘You dropped out? Why?’
‘After Katie … I just couldn’t get my head in the right place.’
‘You can’t drop out. Do you know what I would give to go to uni, like right now? How bad is it? You have to read all the time and have intelligent discussions. Sounds horrible.’
‘Thought I’d work a bit. Travel.’
‘You have to go back and finish.’
‘If you say so.’
‘I say so.’
He opens the door for me and walks with me out onto the footpath.
‘Come back, hey? Don’t disappear on me. I want to know what you’re up to.’
‘What if you’re in Argentina or somewhere?’
‘I will let you know if I’m going to Argentina. Just don’t be a stranger.’
Twenty-five
We follow the track down the side of the gully. Josh is barefoot. The soles of my shoes slip on the rocks and eventually I give up, take them off and carry them. The others follow us; the only names I know are Sam Wilks, Maddie and Lola, but there are more. We carry plastic shopping bags of food: chips and chocolate and fancy cheese that Maddie insisted was worth paying ten bucks for. Sam has a sixpack of beer and Josh is at pains to assure me we won’t be binge drinking and going on a reckless crime spree like A Current Affair says we will. I would have been surprised if that was the plan because there’s only enough for half a beer each.
Our voices and laughter echo around the gully. A flock of cockatoos evacuates branches overhead, drowning us out in a chorus of screaming squawks. When we reach the bottom we drop our stuff on the rocks by the creek bank. Josh wades into the rushing creek.
‘Aww! Jeez, it’s freezing!’
Maddie scoffs. ‘You’re soft, Chamberlain.’
He kicks water over her, then catches my eye. ‘You wearing your swimmers, Jane? Hope so. I won’t feel safe, otherwise. You know, Jane here saved my life a couple of weeks ago. She fully jumped off the cliff.’
‘It’s not really a cliff, Josh,’ I say.
‘Close enough. I could have died.’
‘Wait,’ says Lola. ‘You did the whole drowning thing to Hannah?’ She laughs and I feel the familiar dread building in me. Maybe this is the point it’s revealed that everything Josh has done has been part of an elaborate prank. My brain lurches around grabbing at every horrible possibility – it was a dare to see if I would have sex with him, he was going to film me having sex with him and share it on Facebook, he was going to wait until I had my clothes off and then burst into laughter while simultaneously Instagraming the whole thing, everyone was going to point at me and say AS IF, HANNAH!
‘You are completely pathetic, you know that, don’t you?’ Lola says to Josh.
His cheeks flush red and he splashes us both.
‘He has a fantasy about being saved from drowning by a pretty girl.’
‘SHUT UP Lola! I will kill you.’
‘Not if you die of embarrassment first.’
I laugh. ‘Leave him alone.’
‘Yeah, leave me alone.’ He bolts off up the rocks that lead to the drop off.
I wait until the others are all in the water before I strip off my shorts and T-shirt. I have a new pair of swimmers, a fifties-style polka dot one-piece. I bought them on a shopping trip to Westfield which, for the first time, was not punctuated by a panic attack. I do my best not to think about it, I just run to the edge of the rock, squeeze my eyes shut and let my body drop into the water.
Acknowledgements
I could not do what I do without the love and support of my husband, Nathan. I must also thank him together with Marcella Kelshaw for their relentless enthusiasm for Hannah and her story, without which I would have given up long ago. Thanks also to Lauren McCorquodale for her insights into sisterhood – something I have no experience of – and her plot advice. You were the one who knew Hannah had to jump off that cliff which is not a cliff. For technical stuff to do with police and courtroom procedures, much thanks to Kelly Zorn for answering all my tricky questions. For technical stuff to do with paramedic work, a big thank you to Dean Zorn.
For some reason I keep writing stories that feature failing parents, this is in no way a reflection on my own parents who have been nothing but encouraging and supportive. So many thanks to Kaye and George Bryan for being the parents they are. Thanks must also go out to all my parents-in-law: Tine Ten Kate, and Ray and Jenny Zorn, for childminding so I can do my dream job and all the things that go along with it. Finally a big thank you to the people at University of Queensland Press who have helped me along the way, especially Kristina Schulz, Kristy Bushnell, Michele Perry and super publicist, Meredene Hill.
THE SKY SO HEAVY
Claire Zorn
Shortlisted CBCA Book of the Year Awards for Older Readers
Shortlisted Aurealis Awards for Best Young Adult Novel
Longlisted Inky Awards
For Fin, it’s just like any other day – racing for the school bus, bluffing his way through class and trying to remain cool in front of the most sophisticated girl in his universe. Only it’s not like any other day because, on the other side of the world, nuclear missiles are being detonated.
When Fin wakes up the next morning, it’s dark, bitterly cold and snow is falling. There’s no internet,
no phone, no TV, no power and no parents. Nothing Fin’s learnt in school could have prepared him for this.
With his parents missing and dwindling food and water supplies, Fin and his younger brother Max must find a way to survive … all on their own.
When things are at their most desperate, where can you go for help?
A haunting novel from a brand new Australian voice.
‘Move over John Marsden: Claire Zorn has arrived.’ Good Reading
‘A suspenseful first novel.’ Adelaide Advertiser
‘As post-apocalypse YA novels go, this one is scarily realistic … a powerful allegory with which to explain the asylum-seeker humanitarian crisis in Australia.’ Books + Publishing
ISBN 978 0 7022 4976 1
First published 2014 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
www.uqp.com.au
[email protected]
© Claire Zorn 2014
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Cover design by Jo Hunt
Cover photograph by Vectorig/iStock
Typeset in 12/16 pt Adobe Garamond by Post Pre-press Group, Brisbane
Printed in Australia by McPherson’s Printing Group
Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
National Library of Australia
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au
Zorn, Claire, author.
The protected / Claire Zorn.
ISBN 978 0 7022 5019 4 (pbk)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5287 7 (pdf)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5288 4 (epub)
ISBN 978 0 7022 5289 1 (kindle)
For young adults.
Girls – Fiction.
Families – Fiction.
Bullying – Fiction.
A823.4
University of Queensland Press uses papers that are natural, renewable and recyclable products made from wood grown in sustainable forests. The logging and manufacturing processes conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin.