10
Friday, 7 pm
Green River Campground
Lyra
The mushroom looked like the tree’s tiny, exquisite ear. Its flutes of spongey white pleats were so close to the end of Trick’s nose Lyra thought he was going to snort it.
‘It’s not that kind of mushroom.’ She nudged him with her bare foot, rolling him slightly from where he was lying on the brown leaf carpet of the forest beyond the caves.
‘You don’t snort magic mushrooms.’
‘How would you know?’
‘I know.’ Tia twitched between Lyra’s knees. She was sitting on the leaves too, slapping ants from her thighs as Lyra plaited her long hair into tight braids. It was satisfying, this pulling and twisting.
‘As if you do.’
Trick stretched out on his back, right there in the muck and moss, and flicked the mushroom into an arc that landed in the leafy mess. ‘Whatever.’
As the light slowly leached from the forest, it felt like the trees above them were trying to close in above their heads. When Lyra and Tia were little, they were afraid of this space just beyond the rocks and caves, the place where the parents told them not to go but knew they would. The two of them would hold hands as Lyra trailed the boys along the path. It had felt so distant from the camp, with the chattering grown-ups and the plastic chairs and the gas barbecues. As the years passed, they would get bolder and dare each other to go further as if they were brave explorers.
Now, she knew they were actually only ever steps from civilisation. That her mum had been a ball-toss away when they’d all just heard her calling for them through the trees. That the kids needed to hiss and whisper and tread ever so softly, if they didn’t want to be discovered. She and Tia didn’t need to hold hands to step into the woods anymore.
This year something had shifted in the kids’ group. She looked at Trick looking at her. The purpose of the hide-out would morph again.
‘Nearly finished.’ Lyra fixed a thin rubber band around the last of Tia’s yellow plaits and rubbed her friend’s shoulders. ‘Done.’
Tia shook her hair to feel the braids fall about her. ‘Want me to do you now?’
‘No thanks.’ Lyra watched Tia’s smile falter just a little bit. ‘I mean, not now.’
‘It’s great for swimming,’ Tia said, quietly.
‘I don’t think Lyra wants your Bali braids,’ Trick told her from the floor.
It had only been a couple of hours but the group had cleaved into its inevitable cliques, and it looked like this year strange, awkward Trick had decided to be one of the girls.
Lyra looked over to where James and Bob were sitting on a rotting log, hunched over a phone in a cloud of vape mist.
‘Why don’t you go see what they’re doing?’
‘I know what they’re doing,’ he said, in that voice that was three notches deeper than last year. ‘Looking at porn.’
Tia squealed. ‘They are not.’
On the other side of the clearing the littlest girls, Gracie, Maya and Brigitte were building fairy houses and bee palaces from twigs and fallen orange leaves while Ollie tried to whack them down with sticks just as quickly. And the older girls, Lucky and Abigail, appeared to be teaching each other a TikTok dance, all jutting elbows and booty shaking, which Lyra recognised as so last year.
‘Bless your innocent soul.’ Trick rolled onto his side, leaves sticking to his black hoodie, tiny bits of grass in his hair. ‘What do you think fourteen-year-old boys are interested in?’
‘You’re a fourteen-year-old boy.’ Tia hooked a finger in his direction. ‘And you’re here with us.’
‘Yes, but I am more than my hormones.’
Trick was stranger than usual, Lyra thought. James and Bob and Trick were the exact same age as Lyra and Tia, but last year they’d still felt like little boys, wrestling each other in the mud, throwing crabs into the girls’ hair and peeing into the river off the rockpool edge. This year they were bigger and broader but also quieter, more self-conscious. Only Trick had really spoken, so far, and everything he said seemed deliberately cryptic.
The first day was always clunky. Lyra imagined the others felt like she did – fizzy with the excitement of seeing each other and for the freedom that came with distracted parents and safety in numbers. But also unsure. Most of the kids were strangers for the rest of the year. And everything was changing so fast.
‘Boys are so gross,’ Tia exclaimed, again, and Lyra wanted her to stop with the performative disgust. It could be useful to have a boy around. There weren’t any at her school, and there weren’t any in her house. Her friends’ older brothers were, apparently, always in their dark bedrooms, watching writhing bodies. It came over them suddenly, her friends said. Like a fever.
And there was Ollie, Tia’s brother, who she saw at Aunt Liss’s house. But he was eleven and didn’t count.
‘Do you know any girls, Trick?’ She poked him with her toe. She quite liked doing that.
Trick had grown about a foot since last year, and his curly hair was as dark as his mum’s was blonde. Quirky, Lyra’s mum had always called him. ‘And I say that with love,’ she would add, as if someone other than Lyra were listening.
‘Of course he knows girls,’ said Tia, standing up, arranging her braids and brushing off her denim shorts. ‘Bay High is co-ed.’
‘I know girls,’ he said.
‘Do you have . . . a girlfriend?’ Lyra knew her voice sounded teasing. She didn’t mean it to but she didn’t know how to ask a question like that without making it sound ridiculous. Tia was looking at her strangely now.
‘Why do you want to know?’ Trick looked right at her. It was the most observed by him she’d ever felt.
‘It’s time to go.’ Tia was obviously uncomfortable with this conversation. She looked over at the young kids. ‘Come on! The parents will be mad.’
Groans. Sighs.
‘Aren’t you hungry?’ Tia pushed. ‘I can smell sausages.’
Lyra felt her skin getting prickly under Trick’s weird stare. ‘You’re chaotic,’ she said to him, getting up to follow Tia. But it wasn’t true. He was more still than anyone she’d met.
‘Do you see your dad?’ Trick asked, causing Lyra to stop where she was.
‘Yes, when he’s here. You?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is he alright?’ Lyra knew a few things about Trick’s dad from a decade of listening in to her mother’s conversations. The vibe she’d generally got was pity. Was that because he had to put up with Aunt Sadie, or because there was something wrong with him? She couldn’t remember. Had she ever actually met him? Probably at a birthday party when she was little. She had a vague feeling that he was tall. Otherwise, he was a blank.
‘He’s alright.’ Trick shrugged. ‘He has a baby.’
‘Oh.’ That must be weird, Lyra thought, but didn’t say. ‘Let’s go.’
‘Yeah.’ Trick began to peel himself off the forest floor, bringing half of it with him. ‘Your mum will be freaking.’
Lyra thought of how they’d all watched her mum peering into the trees near the caves, looking worried, confused, trying to make out their shapes in the tangle of bush she wouldn’t step into. All the kids looking back, suppressing giggles, shushing the little ones. She felt a stab of guilt but also irritation. The other mothers weren’t stressed about the kids doing their own thing. They weren’t babies anymore. Mum needed to let them live. ‘She’ll be fine.’
Lyra walked over to Tia, who was pushing the littler ones towards the path. ‘You coming?’ she called to Bob and James, through the mist that smelled like sickly strawberry and sour chemicals. ‘Or are you too cool? Too stoned?’
‘Fuck you, Lyra,’ said Bob, but he was smiling a slightly dazed, goofy grin at her. Unlike Trick, they were dressed in the board shorts and T-shirt uniforms of teenage boys she saw around the eastern suburbs, even though James lived in some weird country place and she’d almost expected him to turn up with a mullet and one of those waxy-brim hats.
‘Fuck yourself, Bob. Your mums are going to kill you if they catch you with that thing.’ She nodded at the oversized silver vape canister. ‘Let’s go.’
‘He shouldn’t talk to you like that,’ Tia whispered to her as they began to follow the little kids through the trees towards the campsite. ‘He shouldn’t talk to girls like that at all.’
‘You can tell him that if you want to,’ Lyra said, knowing that Tia wouldn’t say boo to anyone. It was funny, because Auntie Liss was like the queen of everything. And Uncle Lachy was, well, Lachy was Uncle Lachy. But since they were little, Tia wouldn’t do anything until Lyra had done it first. Climbing up the slide instead of sliding down. Jumping from the edge of the rockpool. Stealing ‘adult’ chocolate from the fridge. Rolling up the waistband of her skirt to go to Westfield.
‘I think Bob’s turning into a bit of a dick,’ Tia whispered, knowing the boys were too far back to hear.
‘You’re right.’ It was Trick, right behind them.
‘Why aren’t you back there with the vape crew?’ Lyra asked, irritated and a little bit pleased that he was still tailing them. ‘Asthmatic?’
‘Lyra!’ Tia elbowed her. ‘He is!’
‘He’s not,’ said Trick. ‘Grew out of it.’
Lyra looked at Tia, mouthing, Yeah right.
‘What about you?’ Trick went on. ‘Asthmatic?’
‘Gave up,’ Lyra said, not looking back, and getting another sharp elbow from Tia.
‘You did not.’
Lyra shrugged, and then giggled. It really did feel different this year.
‘How would you know, Tia?’ Trick asked, his voice laced with a mocking he must have heard in movies. ‘You don’t go to her school. Lyra Martin has a whole life without you in it.’
Lyra did turn around then. ‘Don’t be a dick, Trick.’
‘Dick trick!’ called James, sending Bob into hysterics, and Lyra instantly regretted handing them that.
Tia was quiet now. Lyra could tell, by the set of her mouth and the tread of her foot, that she was upset. She had always been possessive of Lyra. She didn’t like stories about a world that didn’t involve her, or them as friends, or their parents and their shared history. It made Lyra feel both safe and stifled, to have her oldest friend love her so much.
‘These boys feel a bit like strangers now, don’t they,’ Lyra said to Tia, softly.
‘We’re only a year older,’ Tia replied, eyes still on the path. ‘Things were already different last year.’
It was true. That was the year that the mums had suddenly been very quick to throw the girls towels as soon as they climbed out of the rockpool. The year that they’d been told to stay out of each other’s tents, that co-ed sleepovers were no longer appropriate. It was the year that the boys, who had always wrestled Tia and Lyra to the ground in mud fights and jumped on their backs to dunk them in the river, had suddenly stood back. The year that they’d gone from being ‘the big kids’ to ‘the big girls’ and ‘the big boys’.
‘Yeah, but now they feel a bit like the enemy.’
‘Sometimes I wish we were still little,’ Tia said.
They were at the edge of the campground now. The smell of meat grilling and citronella burning rose into the dusk. Lyra watched Brigitte and the smaller kids charge down the path towards the twinkling fairy lights and faint bass pounding of HQ.
‘Ah,’ called Trick, catching up. ‘Disco night. When all the adults get smashed and call it family fun.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Lyra said, and Trick flinched at the words. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘It’s okay.’ But it wasn’t, Lyra knew, from the way the confident tone had left Trick’s voice, and his eyes had gone to the ground. She was sure that her words had taken him to the beach, last year. The full moon night. And no-one, especially Trick, wanted to think about that.
‘I’ve heard your mum’s doing well this year,’ Tia said, her voice high and bright.
‘Yeah. Well.’ Trick’s voice was deep, tired. He sounded old. Thirty.
The three of them were walking in a line now, Trick’s hands deep in his pockets. The other boys had stopped near the toilet block, still huddled over a phone, vapes now stashed out of potential adult view.
‘No thanks to your dad, Tia,’ Trick said, not looking up.
Lyra’s stomach lurched and just as she was certain Tia might burst into tears, her mother’s voice rang out from over their shoulders.
‘Lyra! I’ve been looking everywhere for you. Where’s Bridge? Where are all the little ones? Where have you been?’
Lyra grabbed Tia’s hand and they turned towards Dani’s voice. Trick kept on walking.
Dani and stupid Craig had plastic wineglasses in their hands. Her mum was all showered and Lyra knew that if they hugged she would smell like her favourite shampoo, her musky body wash and minty toothpaste. Her mum was always clean, tidy, put together. It made Lyra feel safe, and grubby.
‘We were at the beach,’ she said, taking hold of Tia’s hand and swinging it, like they were little girls, hoping to deflect from Tia’s face, which she was certain was still stricken.
‘You were not. We were just there.’
‘You must have just missed us. We went to the toilet block.’
‘Lyra, come on.’ Dani’s forehead crinkled. ‘We couldn’t have missed you, we were –’
‘Don’t overthink it, Mum,’ Lyra said, smiling what she hoped was her most winning smile. ‘We’re all fine.’
‘Don’t overthink it?’ Craig’s eyebrows were up, his tone joking. ‘Hear that, Dani?’
Shut up, Craig. Lyra waited to see if her mum was going to let it go. The chances felt fifty–fifty.
The way her mother’s eyes narrowed and the edge of her mouth twitched made Lyra’s stomach clench. She didn’t want to be responsible for that look. It was worry. And this was meant to be a time when her mum didn’t have to worry. A time she got to be normal, like her friends. She and Bridge had heard it enough. Can’t I just relax for a few minutes without you girls giving me a heart attack?
‘I’ve been braiding Tia’s hair.’ Lyra pushed Tia ahead of her, as evidence.
Her mum’s face relaxed. Anything Lyra used to do a year ago, three years ago, made her mum happy. Anything new made her worry.
Craig’s big man hand looked even bigger resting on her mum’s little shoulder. It was a mystery why her mum kept Craig around, with those big hands, and that fake voice.
‘Let’s get back to the party, shall we, ladies?’ he said now, his arm tightening around her mum’s shoulder.
‘Are you okay, Tia?’
Dammit, her mum didn’t miss a thing.
‘I’m fine,’ Tia managed. ‘Just hungry.’
‘Your dad’s been cooking sausages. They’ll be cold.’
‘We don’t care,’ Lyra chirruped. ‘We love cold sausages.’
Suspicion returned to Dani’s face and Lyra could have kicked herself. Time for the big guns.
‘Come on, Mum, let’s go and dance.’
She stepped up, gently pushed Craig’s hand off her mother’s shoulder and wrapped her in a hug, knowing it would make her melt. It was weird being as tall as the person who’d always been able to cover you with cuddles. It felt, sometimes, like someone who had always protected you was shrinking, and you were left exposed.
‘You can do better than this,’ her mum said into Lyra’s hair. ‘But let’s go find Bridge.’
Craig’s arms were left swinging, with no hands to hold and no shoulders to rest on. He took a sip from his plastic cup and followed a few steps behind them, as Tia and Lyra and her mum walked arm in arm. He was the tail, not the head. Always would be.
‘Is my mum worried?’ Tia asked.
‘No, your mum’s much better adjusted than me.’
Music started pumping towards them as the solar lanterns flicked on. Something old, something techno. Something that would have all the adults’ hands in the air in about two minutes flat.
‘Disco!’ one of the kids called towards them and Lyra could see, in the flicker of the fairy lights, Sadie with her hand on Trick’s shoulder, talking into his ear. She could see Aunt Liss, spinning one of the little girls around what passed for a dancefloor. And she saw Lachy Short standing near the barbecue, tall and upright, cheersing their arrival with the beer in his hand.
Lyra felt herself tense, and she could have sworn that her mum and Tia did exactly the same thing.