Fly In Fly Out

by Evie Snow

  Her brow furrowed as she tried to remember her life here, but only a few meager memories floated to the surface: huddling with Amy in their bedroom one stormy night while Ken was raging at Shirley in the kitchen, watching Saturday morning cartoons with the volume off so they didn’t wake up their dad. She tried for more, but nothing was forthcoming. It was like Shirley and Ken had taken away all the shitty memories along with their crappy furniture. It was like she’d never lived here. Come to think of it, she’d barely ever been home as a kid. The house had been more of a pit stop to quickly fill up with food and sleep while dodging her dad.

  Most of the time, Shirley had been too occupied anticipating Ken’s every need to tolerate Jo and Amy underfoot, and the few times she’d spent quality time with them were so hard for Jo to recall that now she wasn’t sure they’d been real. Ken, for his part, had spent all of his time at home occupying an old armchair in front of the TV, getting up every now and then to piss, pass out, or punch something. Neither parent had cared if their daughters disappeared for hours, days, or even weeks at a time.

  Jo looked out the window at the land she and Amy had traipsed over so many times. That’s where she’d lived really. Out there, not in here. She’d never really lived in here.

  She exhaled as the realization sunk in.

  She had never lived here.

  She didn’t care where Ken and Shirley had gone or why they’d left so soon.

  They weren’t important, this place wasn’t important. Not really.

  Looking outside, Jo felt the rush of memories she’d been searching for only moments before flood her senses—making mud pies with Amy on newly plowed ground, walking for hours on end through wheat stubble in the moonlight, dreaming about what they’d do when they grew up, camping out, swimming, meeting Scott. Her eyes prickled. Out there was home. She’d missed it all these years but hadn’t realized it until now.

  She’d been so focused on this house, this town, this school that she hadn’t realized they didn’t count. She and Amy had survived and thrived in spite of them all, and they’d done it on their own. They deserved to be happy and proud of what they’d achieved. Suddenly, the confines of the house were too much. Jo didn’t want to be here anymore, didn’t need to be here. She wanted to be out there.

  Jo strode over to the bedroom’s crumbling sash window and pushed it up with a grunt, pieces of decayed wood and termite dung falling on the bedroom floor. Once she made enough of a gap, she squeezed through it and fell awkwardly onto the damp grass outside. Righting herself, she started walking towards the gate and the land beyond without looking back.

  It took her a lot longer than she remembered to walk to the dam at the back of Evangeline’s Rest, the same one where she’d met Scott in secret for years. The same one Stephen had been chasing his sister on when Jo and Amy had been spying on him the day Scott’d taken that first picture of them.

  She’d forgotten how to climb over barbed-wire fences, and her pullover had a few impressive holes in it after the first two attempts. Her jeans were looking the worse for wear too, covered with wet dirt and muck after a failed attempt to vault a particularly stubborn gate. The walk was worth it though. With every step, she could feel herself becoming lighter, the smothering shame and worthlessness that had been sitting with her all day—who was she kidding, for her whole life—dissolving, replaced with the smell of damp earth, eucalyptus, sheep and cow manure, and the faintest smell of the sea coming in from the west.

  By the time Jo climbed up the bank of the dam, which was smaller than she remembered, the sky had turned an ominous gray and the land around her had taken on an eerie gold glow that signaled a thunderstorm.

  It was perfect.

  Breathing the place in, Jo sat down. Oblivious to the rocky, rough clay poking at her backside, she gazed over the brown, muddy water and the bush she and Amy had camped in so many times before throwing her head back and looking up at the enormous brooding sky above it.

  Chapter 20

  “We’re going to get drenched in a minute.” Stephen’s voice shattered Jo’s reverie and she shrieked, spinning around, smile freezing on her face.

  “Stephen?”

  “Last time I looked,” he growled, bending at the waist, hands on knees as he puffed. His face was damp with sweat, his blue eyes standing out against his flushed cheeks.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Perfecting my sprinting technique in jeans,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm. “Looking for you, you idiot. I’ve just had two major coronaries in the past two hours thanks to you. Spanking has never been my thing, but I’m seriously thinking of taking it up just for you.”

  “You’ve been looking for me?!” Jo exclaimed, pushing to her feet. “I just spent the morning from hell thinking you’d left me, and you tell me you’ve got it rough?”

  “Yep.” He narrowed his eyes, hands on his hips, shoulders tensed for war. “Did you find my motorbike unattended at a truck stop and then have to worry that I’d been kidnapped by a serial killer or had an accident or something?”

  “No . . .”

  “After a lot of flapping around, did you then find out that I’d taken off on another bike only to abandon that one too?”

  “Well . . .”

  “Next to your bloody parents’ house, no less.” His voice rose to a roar that echoed over the vast, open space and scared off a distant flock of sheep. “Jesus, Jo, you can’t begin to imagine what I was thinking. Last time I saw you, you were a wreck. Luckily, it rained earlier and I could see a set of footprints heading up here, otherwise I would’ve had the entire farm, including anyone visiting the winery’s cellar door and restaurant, out here looking for you!”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. What the hell were you thinking? I told Scott to let you know I was coming back this afternoon to pick you up from Amy’s. I was so pissed off yesterday, yeah. It felt like a total fucking kick in the teeth that you’d kept it all from me, and you’re going to have to bloody well swear on all that’s holy you’re never playing with secrets like this again or so help me god—” He puffed out a breath. “Yeah, I don’t even want to think of that.”

  “I won’t—you’ve got to understand—”

  Stephen kept talking. “And I’m sorry I left you alone after what happened, so sorry, Jo, but I had to fix things down here and sort all this out in my head before we hashed it out. It’s like everything I thought was real wasn’t. I needed to make sure I didn’t lose it at you and say stuff I’d regret.” He closed the gap between them and hauled her roughly against him, knocking the wind out of her lungs. “What I really want to say is that I’m so sorry. Sorry I didn’t know. If we’d known about what was happening to you and Amy, my family would have helped you girls out. We would have done something. You have to believe me.”

  Jo tried to push away, but Stephen wouldn’t let her go anywhere, the heat from his body enveloping her.

  “What? What are you talking about?” she asked, reeling with confusion.

  “I came down to make sure your parents cleared out and . . .” Jo’s earlier words must have sunk in. “Why would you think I’m leaving you?” he demanded in an outraged roar.

  Jo pushed away again and succeeded this time. She raised a hand to her ringing ear. “We fought! You were angry at me. So angry you couldn’t even talk to me. You left! And then I couldn’t get ahold of you, and Scott said you’d left Boomba at his place and packed up to come down here. What else was I to think? It’s not like you were doing somersaults over what happened at Amy’s. I thought you’d decided it was all too much and . . . well . . .”

  “You’re insane,” Stephen said incredulously.

  “Thanks. Pretty insulting of you to say so,” Jo retorted.

  “Like you didn’t insult me just now?”

  “That’s different.”

  “Like hell it is!”

  “So you weren’t leaving me?” Jo demanded, feeling hope blossom in her chest. “I tho
ught you were so disgusted by everything that happened with my family that—”

  “Oh, for the love of god,” Stephen bellowed. “If I ever hear you say the words disgusted or disgusting again in relation to yourself, I’m going to strangle you. I was pissed-off furious you lied to me, Jo, but it didn’t take much to work out why. I was just trying to get some space so I could cool down and think things through. Next time, I’ll just stick around and yell at you like a total bastard.”

  “You were trying to be . . . considerate?” Jo asked, all worry obliterated by the vehemence of Stephen’s indignation.

  “Yes!”

  “Oh. Alright. Ah.” Suddenly feeling foolish over the panic that had driven her all day, Jo looked down at her muddy steel-cap boots, shuffling first one and then the other across the loose clay on the dam bank. “You forgive me?”

  “For the thing with your family, yeah. For scaring the shit out of me today? Not for a while.” Stephen’s eyes searched her face, his voice softening to a low rumble. “You really scared me, Jo.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Yeah, we just did that. Come here.” He hauled her into a warm hug that was much gentler this time. “No more secrets,” he said against her hair.

  “No.”

  The first raindrops fell, quickly turning into a deluge that drenched them completely. Grabbing Jo’s hand and running for the nearby trees, Stephen began cursing and didn’t stop. The entire time they ran, he bellowed his views on the weather, Jo’s choice of location, and the world at large in such theatrical terms that she started belly-laughing, tripping over her own feet twice before slumping against the trunk of the old peppermint tree she and Amy had stood under years before to watch Stephen from afar.

  “You alright there?” Stephen asked, half crouched in front of her, hands on hips, looking like a bedraggled avenging angel. “You enjoying laughing at my expense?”

  “Yep,” Jo squeaked before launching into another round of chuckles.

  “It’s alright for you. Some of us have to worry about chafing,” Stephen muttered, shoving her over and sitting down next to her.

  “Went commando this morning, did you?” Jo asked, wiping tears out of her eyes.

  “Might have.”

  “We’ll need a splint for your man bits by the time you walk back home in those wet jeans,” Jo said with a deliberately straight face.

  Stephen snorted and looked down his nose at her, the effect slightly ruined by the water dripping off the end of it. “You want to insult me some more? Take another chunk out of me? Anything else you’d like to say?”

  “No.” Jo pressed her lips together to suppress her grin. “Well, maybe.” She paused for dramatic effect, enjoying the way his eyes narrowed.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Bullshit,” Stephen scoffed. “Don’t make me get it out of you. If I remember rightly, you’re ticklish as anything.”

  “No!” Jo exclaimed and scuttled away from him, inadvertently knocking a branch and causing it to drop its entire store of frigid raindrops on her head.

  It was Stephen’s turn to laugh this time, and he only stopped when Jo pounced on him, wrestling him onto his back so that he was lying beneath her, a wide grin on his face as he cushioned his head with his hands.

  Jo looked down at him, her humor evaporating as her earlier worry about his safety resurfaced. “You scared the hell out of me, you know.”

  “You should have known better.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Want to tell me about your parents and stuff now?” he asked quietly. “Looks like we’re going to be stuck here a bit.”

  Jo thought hard for a moment then shook her head. “No. It’s not important anymore. Do you want to know?”

  Stephen studied her expression and then smiled a sweet smile that had her insides melting. “No. It’s not important if you don’t think it is.”

  “You want to tell me why you came down here in such a hurry that you forgot your undies today?” she asked him.

  He shrugged, causing his body to rub against hers in a very interesting way. “You really want to know?”

  “I think I can figure it out,” Jo said, remembering his interrupted comment about making sure her parents left. “Thanks.”

  “Welcome.” He gently stroked her cheek with his hand then cleared his throat. “Anyway. You were saying something the other day about how great you thought I was. Care to expand on it?” He raised an eyebrow, obviously going for a playful expression, but the vulnerability in his blue eyes gave him away.

  Jo shrugged. “You’re alright.”

  His expression turned outraged. “Alright? That’s all? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Means you’re alright. If I told you that I’m madly in love with you, it’d give you a big head, wouldn’t it?”

  His face relaxed into a smug smile. “Might do.”

  “So do you have anything to say to me?” She wriggled on him with impatience.

  He looked thoughtful just long enough for her to want to thump him before he said, “You’re alright.”

  “What?” Jo shouted, rearing back, offended to the core. “Alright?”

  “Well, if I told you I thought you were the most amazing woman I’d ever met and that I love you from your scruffy head to your stubby toes, you’d get all neurotic and clingy, wouldn’t you?”

  “Maybe. Take back the clingy bit though.”

  “Done.” They shared a wide smile.

  “So. Now that’s out of the way . . .” Stephen shifted suggestively underneath her before wincing and pulling a stick out from behind his back. “What are we going to do until this rain goes away?”

  “Well, I thought I’d teach you the finer points of chemical engineering since you want to know everything about my past,” Jo began, then shrieked as he rolled her onto her back, the sound of the pouring rain muffling her laughter as Stephen began showing her a much more interesting way to pass the time.

  There’d be time for serious talk and planning later. Today, she was just happy to finally be home.

  Epilogue

  “Who eats curried eggs anymore, Mum?” Rob Hardy complained over the roar of the fifty or so guests milling around his back porch, drinking wine and generally making a nuisance of themselves.

  “Everyone but you, ungrateful child.” Angie Hardy cuffed Rob on the head as she walked back into the house to collect the rest of the dishes they’d prepared for their annual Christmas party, her long white hair swooshing against her back.

  “Did you see that? Did you see how your grandma treats me, kids? Bloody criminal. I’m an abused child. Did you hear that, Angie? Abused child!” Rob bellowed at his mother’s retreating back.

  “You’ll be a sight more abused in a minute if she comes back out here with that wooden spoon of hers, Dad,” Mike said from the other side of the table. “Not that it’d matter. You’ve got such a thick head you wouldn’t notice.”

  “Don’t you start or you can go straight back to England,” Rob grumbled, emptying half a bottle of shiraz into a bulbous wineglass before offering the other half to Jo, who was sitting across the table, feet up on Stephen’s lap, enjoying the show. “Want some, Jo? These ingrates I spawned wouldn’t appreciate the effort I put into producing such a good drop.”

  “She’s had enough, Dad. I want her to be compis mentis when I bring out her Christmas present later.”

  “Keep it in your pants.” Mike batted Stephen on the head.

  “Could say the same to you,” Stephen scoffed back. “Considering what I saw you and that chick you brought along tonight doing in the kitchen earlier . . .”

  “Oi.” Jo narrowed her eyes. “Chick? I might need to borrow that wooden spoon off Angie myself.”

  “If you’re planning on beating him, can we watch?” Rachael asked. She’d come straight to the party from the restaurant and was wearing chef’s whites, her hair pulled back into a tight bun.

  “No, it’ll be a str
ictly private show,” Stephen said, leaning over to give Jo a particularly lascivious kiss for his family’s benefit. He was rewarded with an off-key chorus of groans.

  “Anyway,” Rachael interjected loudly, “Scott here yet? He said he wanted me here for a family photo.”

  “Just called,” Stephen said. “He’ll be here in a few minutes. Apparently, between Amy and Aunty Corrine, he got held up. Something about one of them trying to find the right shoes.”

  “That’ll be Amy,” Jo said. “She’s bought a bunch of new pairs after she broke up with Dwayne.”

  “Darren,” Stephen corrected.

  “I disagree about it being Amy, cute little thing she is,” Rob countered, his voice distinctly slurred. “Corrine’s always been a pain when it comes to shoes. Used to drive me and Les mental when we were all kids. Hey. Where’s Clayton? He should be here by now.”

  “He was grabbing more beer from town, Dad,” Rachael said. “Jeff’s with him for moral support.” The waspish tone in her voice when she mentioned Jeff’s name didn’t go unnoticed.

  “Knickers in a knot, Rach?” Mike asked.

  “You’re going home when?” Rachael countered.

  “What’s this about the luscious Amy being available again?” Mike asked the table in general, ignoring Rachael and earning himself a dirty look from both Jo and Stephen.

  “Don’t go there,” Jo warned. “She broke up with her latest boyfriend last week, and she doesn’t need you on the rebound. Besides, you brought someone. Bit of a bastard, aren’t you?”

  “Harsh,” Mike said, feigning hurt.

  “Accurate,” Stephen said.

  “Here’s to that.” Rob drained half his glass.

  “Welcome to the family,” Stephen whispered in Jo’s ear as Rachael and Mike began arguing again. “And you were worried your lot was nuts. In fact, I’m pretty sure you’re going to thank me for ruining the last time you were at one of these parties. You missed the insanity.”

  “Shaddup.” Jo grasped his chin in her hand and scrunched up his mouth so he couldn’t talk. “I happen to like your family.”