by Sue Whiting
I prop my head against Oliver’s and play with the strands of hair that fall across his face. Two brains close together – and mine with the answers to Oliver’s worries.
I feel tempted. So tempted to divulge everything. To tell him what is really up with his pop. I just have to open my mouth and let it out. Unburden myself.
“Oliver …”
“Yeah …”
“It’ll all work out. Don’t worry.”
Oliver draws me closer. But his head hangs low. “There’s more,” he says. “When I got home last night, there was a note on my bed. From Pop.”
“Yeah.”
“It – I shouldn’t be telling you this!”
Dread tiptoes along my arms and legs. “What did it say?”
“I’m not going to do it, right? Know that first. But it said to stay away from you.” The last words come out in a hurry. “I don’t get it. He’s never been like this before. Why would he care about us seeing each other?”
Yeah. Good question.
Amelia swings a bat at the bouncing ball and misses by a mile. She tosses back her head and laughs. She sounds happy. It startles me.
“Run!” the shout goes up, as the guy behind her fails to retrieve the ball and it bumps and rolls towards the river’s edge.
Amelia squeals and takes off, racing for the garbage bin wicket.
“Amelia is playing cricket?” I whisper to Oliver as we approach. “Has the planet tilted off its axis or something?”
“Don’t be mean. It’s what we country bogans do to keep ourselves entertained.”
I poke my tongue out at him. A lame “Ha-ha” is the best I can manage.
Amelia and some other girl charge from bin to bin a half-a-dozen times, before the ball is retrieved from the river – muddy and dripping.
“Six. All run!” shouts another girl, who is sitting on the grass with a bunch of others. “You’re a legend, Mills!”
Mills? A legend? The world has definitely tilted. We’ll be hurtling into the sun before we know it.
Amelia is leaning on her bat, puffing, when she catches sight of Oliver and me. “Did you hear that?” she calls out. “I’m a legend.” Her eyes latch onto Oliver’s hand in mine, and she smirks. I wait for the gibe, but it doesn’t come.
“Okay, Mills,” the bowler says. “No Mr Nice Guy now.”
The bowler starts his run up. He is about to let the ball go when the sky is lit by a ragged spear of lightning that is followed far too quickly by an enormous blast of thunder.
“Whoa,” says Oliver. “Nasty.”
Large drops of rain plop down on us, and before we even take two steps towards shelter, the clouds let fly, chucking down rain.
There is much squealing and cursing and people flapping about grabbing their gear. Oliver tightens his grip on my hand and we sprint for his car parked up on the street. Amelia is beside us, already soaked, her clothes clinging to her. Mascara running down her face. But she is still laughing. What is she on?
The grass is slippery, especially uphill, and impossibly the rain seems to intensify. I couldn’t get any wetter.
We dive into the car and slam the doors behind us as lightning fills the sky again. We sit, drenched to the bone, wide-eyed, waiting for the next boom. The noise of the rain on the roof is deafening. The sky lights up again a couple of times, but the rumble of thunder is far gentler and further away. The rain stops as abruptly as it started. We look at each other, three drowned rats, and we burst out laughing, Oliver’s wheezing hiss louder than ever. Amelia and I make eye contact and we burst out all over again.
Oliver shakes his head and turns the key in the ignition. “Guess I better get you two home.”
Amelia pulls out her phone and checks the time, twisting her lips. “It’s only ear–” There is a loud bang on the side window.
Amelia winds it down and some guy stands there, ringing the water out of his T-shirt, water trickling off the rings piercing his nose. Amelia’s eyes light up and her mouth curls into a dazzling smile.
“You goin’?” the guy says.
“Probs. What are you going to do?”
“Dunno. Maybe go to Fitzies’. Maybe go home.”
“I better get back – get dry.”
“See ya later then?”
“Yeah,” says Amelia sweetly, and the guy bends into the car and plants a moist kiss on Amelia’s lips.
“I’ll message ya,” he says, running off and jumping into a car parked up the road a bit.
“I’ll message ya,” I repeat in a singsong voice as Oliver pulls out from the kerb. “Who is that?”
“Lee,” Amelia says, smug.
“So that’s Lee,” I say. “Does he go to Tallowood High?”
“No. He’s left – works at the supermarket. Reckons he can get me a job there too.” Amelia grins at me, then adds, “And don’t tell Mum.”
“Sure. But I don’t see why not.”
“You know why. Because Mum is psycho. Because she has it in for me. Because she hates to see me happy.” The bitterness in Amelia’s reply is hard to miss. “Lee is nice. I like him. He’s fun and that’s all there is to it, and I don’t need Mum wrecking everything, like she always does.” Her phone beeps. She clips on her seatbelt, turns her body towards the door and starts keying away a message and it is clear that the sisterly bonding moment we shared a moment ago has vaporised.
Oliver winks at me, takes my hand and drags it up to rest on his leg.
And with my hand soaking up the warmth of his thigh, I am willing to pretend that life is good.
thirty-three
When Oliver says he’ll pick me up at eight, and make sure I wear my runners, he has me wondering. So I am perched on the top step of the verandah, ears tuned in for the sound of tyres on gravel, and eyes trained on the bush for a glimpse of his battered Toyota through the trees, when I notice the rower heading across the lake, straight for the jetty. I should have known.
I grab my backpack and I am feeling so golden this morning, I almost skip down to the lake edge. It’s one of those utterly gorgeous days, the sky surprising me with its blueness and the water shining like polished glass.
“Where are we going?” I ask, climbing down the jetty ladder.
“It’s a surprise. If I tell you–”
“You’ll have to kill me, right?”
“No, if I tell you, it won’t be a surprise, idiot.”
I take the middle seat beside Oliver and pick up the oar.
I am so in the moment, so damn joyous, rowing with Oliver that I don’t even realise we are heading for Lakeside and almost there, until that awful sick feeling swirls into my stomach. This is the last place I want to be, and my happiness tumbles to my toes.
“Hey, what’s up?” Oliver frowns at me from under his fringe.
“Nothing. Why?”
“Ah – you’ve stopped rowing?”
“Oh. Have I? Sorry.” I feel a babbling-idiot moment on its way. I suck air into my lungs, give Oliver my most beguiling smile and sweep the oar powerfully through the water, concentrating on coaxing the yoghurt and banana I had for breakfast to stay in my stomach where they belong.
By the time we have grounded the rower and are on dry land, I am that churned up, I can’t look at Oliver. I am too consumed with thoughts of Bud. What if I see him? What should I do? How should I react? Will he know I know? I glance up at the old farmhouse. The place is ancient and crumbly, and it is obvious that Bud hasn’t spent any of his art fortune on his house. A torn lacy curtain in the front room swings down. Was that Bud?
“Come on,” says Oliver. He threads his fingers through mine and strides up the bank. He takes a few steps, then stops, gathering both my hands in his, bringing them to his chest. “Bails, you’re shaking. Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I croak.
Oliver brushes my hair off my face, and slides it under my scarf. “You seem kinda sick – like you did the other night when you were here. Are you sure you’re all right?”
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“Yep, I’m–” The curtain in the front window parts in the middle slightly. I imagine Bud in there, watching, and it terrifies me. “What about your pop?” I say.
“Pop?”
“The note – to stay away from me, remember?”
“I told you that I’m not going to listen to that. He can’t tell me what to do.” He pulls me up the grassy slope to the main house.
Loud music with a strong beat blares out at us as Oliver slides open the glass doors. Annie is sitting on a kitchen stool, giving a guitar some kind of violent workout, throwing her head back with a flourish. When she sees us, she stops mid-strum, and the ginger cat curled at her feet mews in disgust.
“Hi there, Bayley.” Her nose wrinkles as she smiles and reaches for the iPod dock on the bench and turns it off. “El porompompero. I love that piece. Get a bit carried away with it sometimes.”
Oliver slips into the kitchen area and starts filling a backpack with bags of chips and lollies, a large block of chocolate, and a couple of cans of drink. A health food feast.
“Fried chicken in the fridge, Ols,” says Annie.
“Ta,” says Oliver, head in the fridge.
My eyes flit around the room, half-expecting Bud to materialise through any one of the doorways. I fold my arms, tucking my hands up under my armpits, in the faint hope that I can stop them from shaking.
“Feeling fit?” Annie says to me, making me jump. “It’s a long way up there.”
I have no idea if she is teasing or not, but as long as “up there” is far away from “down here”, I really don’t care.
There’s the sharp clap of a door shutting and echoey footsteps on tiles. My fingers dig painfully into my armpits, and a tremble starts in my legs as the footsteps get closer. I study the shininess of the white tiles beneath my feet.
“Hello, Bayley.” The gravelly voice of Bob.
“Hi,” I manage. Bob’s smile is friendly but it doesn’t quite mask his face full of questions.
“Haven’t seen you since the hospital,” he says, and I am sure he is thinking about what I had blurted – Together forever, sweet pea – the words I shouldn’t know. “How’s Seth doing?”
“Fine. He’s fine. Totally. Totally fine.” There’s a large photographic book about Chile on a side table in the lounge area. I direct my attention to it, not wanting to make eye contact with Bob for fear of blurting out that his father’s a killer, the one and the same who killed his precious Celina and, in truth, for fear of my own emotions. The thought of how I was attracted to him before – even if it was Celina who was driving it – fills me with shame. “Thanks for helping us out and everything,” I mumble to the book.
“No problems. And you? Are you–”
“Fine. All good.” The blood drains away from my face and I become light-headed.
“Let’s go,” says Oliver, to my enormous relief. He slings the backpack over his shoulder and bundles me out of the house, Annie’s vigorous guitaring chasing us out the door. Oliver points north to a gate in the far paddock.
We climb over the gate and then over another gate and onto a track – a fire trail perhaps – leading steadily uphill into the bush. Each step I take is filled with the weight of my anxiety. I imagine Bud behind every bush, every rock.
“Come on, slowpoke,” says Oliver.
“Does your pop come up here much?” I say, cursing myself for giving voice to the thought.
“Jeez, Bayley. Forget him. I wish I hadn’t told you.” He forges on ahead.
This is absurd. I jog to catch up. “Where are you taking me, Mr Mystery Man?” My attempt at being cheerful. “Should I be worried?”
A cheeky glint lights Oliver’s eyes. “Maybe.” And he takes my hand.
The more twists and turns in the track we put between us and Lakeside, the better I start to feel and by the time we’ve made it to the top of the first rise, the eucalypts towering over us, a ribbon of blue sky above, I am feeling almost normal.
A steep ascent and then one last bend in the track and we come into a small clearing where grasses and low shrubs chase down to a cliff edge. It looks out over the gorge and the surrounding farms and properties. Below us, the creek is a thin grey worm wiggling its way to the lake. I had no idea we’d climbed this high.
Oliver’s face says it all: he loves it up here. He stands behind me and wraps his arms around my middle, rests his chin on my shoulder. “Well, what do you think?”
“It’s … it’s …” I am lost for words. “Awesome.”
“Like you.” It’s barely more than a whisper, but those two words sizzle through me.
His chin nuzzles into my neck. “You should see it at sunset. It’s even more awesome.”
“What’s this place called?”
“Top of the World,” Oliver states.
“Original.” I grin. “You Mitchells have a talent for naming places.”
“What do you mean?”
“What do you call the lake?”
“Ah, the lake.”
“And the circular lagoon?”
“The Circle. What’s wrong with that?”
I giggle. “And what’s the name of your house by the lake?”
“Lakeside.”
“I rest my case!”
“Well, Miss Anderson, at least our house has a name.”
“So does mine. Karinya: place of peace.” I feel like a thief, as if I have stolen the name from someone else’s life, and I wish I’d kept my mouth shut. I step out of Oliver’s arms and gaze down into the dark depths of the gorge.
“Karinya. What kind of weirdo name is that?” Oliver says and sits himself down on a boulder.
“At least it’s original,” I say softly, but my insides are quivering. The wildness of the gorge, its steep plunge to the rocks below, the deep shadows lurking at the bottom are all making me feel strange in the head, dizzy almost. There is something ominous about it. I step away.
Oliver leaps up. “Whoa. What’s up? You’ve gone all white.” He pulls me to him and holds me tight. I welcome the strength of his arms. “Hey, you’re shaking again. What gives?”
The concern in Oliver’s voice does me in. “Why do you put up with me?” I blurt tearfully.
“Bails, what are you talking about?” He scrunches his nose, like Annie does, and shakes his head, bewildered.
Why didn’t I keep my mouth shut? “I’m so flaky,” I try, terrified that I am over-sharing. “I’m worried you’re going to think ‘what the hell?’ and take off.”
“You’re the one who takes off, remember?” He lifts my chin with two fingers. Our eyes meet. “I know you have a lot to deal with at the moment. But I’m here for you. I want to help you through it.”
“I don’t want to be looked after.” But even as I say it, I know it’s a lie. I desperately want to be looked after, especially by Oliver.
“Not like that, Bails. I just want to be with you and I don’t care if sometimes you’re a little flaky. I like that you’re different. I even like those stupid things you wear around your head. That you wear blankets instead of hoodies.”
“Ponchos,” I correct him and laugh.
“Ponchos then.”
I snuggle into his shoulder, crazy with emotion, but before I can even start to unravel my jumbled feelings or process what Oliver has said, Oliver unfurls me from his embrace, grabs my hand and takes off at a run down the track we’ve only just climbed up. “Come on,” he says, grinning.
“Where are we going?” I stumble behind him, confused.
“You didn’t think I brought you up here to gawk at the view and eat junk food, did you?”
“Well … ye–” I don’t get a chance to finish.
“Got to earn it first.” Oliver drops my hand and diverts off the fire trail and onto a narrow winding path through the bush. “Keep up, slacker.”
“What the–?” I follow, tearing over leaf litter, leaping across fallen branches, ducking under low ones, and all the while climbing steadily back
up the hill until we have reached the top again.
But that’s not the end of it. Oliver touches the boulder he was sitting on before and takes off at a sprint all the way back down the hill again.
“What are you doing?” I say, copying his actions and tagging the boulder also.
“Cross-training!” he yells over his shoulder. “Thought you wanted to get fit.”
Breath heaving, I chase him down. This is ridiculous. But ridiculously, it is also great and we are all madness and squeals and laughter, until after about four circuits, Oliver surrenders and collapses on the ground beside our packs. He gulps down several large swigs of water, then passes the bottle to me. I am so thirsty, I devour what’s left and flop beside him, my face flushed, my lungs burning. Without speaking, we dive into our cache of junk food, relishing the immediate rush of a sugar high.
I rest my head on Oliver’s stomach, munching on a musk stick, stretch my legs out and watch stringy clouds scud across the sky then disappear behind the foliage. I acknowledge with some satisfaction the burn in my thigh muscles, savour the laughter ache in my cheeks, and for the first time in forever, I finally remember what real happiness feels like. And this is it.
“This is so great,” says Oliver, putting voice to my thoughts. “It’s a bugger that school will be back so soon.”
“Yeah,” I agree.
His fingers stroke the side of my face, tracing a line from my forehead to jaw. It’s so sweet and loving; if I was the ginger cat, I’d purr. “It’s going to be cool,” he continues, “having you at Tallowood – we’ll be able to see each other every day. Catch the bus together and stuff.”
Catch the bus together – just like Celina and Robbie. My inner warmth frosts over at the thought. Bristling, I rally against it. Rack off, will you! I am so weary of Celina.
“Hey, what’s up?”
I sit up and brush an unwanted tear from my cheek. “Nothing. Sorry. I’m okay. Really.”
“Is that what the thought of catching the bus with me does to you?”
“Don’t be a dick.” I nestle back into his arms, wrap my own arms around his chest and cling to him, like I’ve never clung to him before, trying to regain that beautiful sunshiny feeling of moments ago. And as I do so, the way forward illuminates with breathtaking clarity, as if I have broken free of the pack in the eight hundred metres and the finish line is shimmering before me.