31
Sunday, 4 pm
Green River Campground
Lyra
Trick thinks hes so dark
I know rite
Lyra put her phone down on the log next to her as Trick re-emerged from the dark green of the forest, back to where the girls were lying on the mossy ground of the clearing, feeling the sun find its way to them through the shade of the canopy.
‘Golden tops,’ he was saying, ‘are the ones you want, but it’s totally the wrong time of year.’
‘As if you know what you’re talking about,’ Lyra said, extending a pointed foot towards Tia and poking lightly at her thigh. ‘There’s no way your Bay High friends are doing mushrooms.’
‘You underestimate me, Lyra Martin.’ Trick came to sit as close to her as he dared.
She’d figured out now that Lachy Short had probably been right, and Trick did like her like her. And she couldn’t decide if she liked that or not.
She spent so long looking at her own face these days. They all did, it was just there staring out of her phone all the time, and Lyra couldn’t really see what she looked like anymore. Well, she could see what was wrong with her face. How you could see her pores. And she had these weird dark patches on her cheeks. And her nose was too big. But the only way to tell if you did look at all decent was in knowing what other people thought of what you looked like. Working that out through people like Trick, she guessed, was better than through people like Lachy Short.
So it was interesting, seeing how Trick acted and what he would do. It was like learning the cheat notes for how to tell if a boy liked you, and what they would do if they did. If they were Trick, they would try extra hard to be funny, or deep, and they would hang around you but not so close that they wouldn’t care if they bumped into you. Trick, she could tell, would care a lot if he bumped into her.
And after the conversation she had just had to sit through with her mum and Auntie Liss, the idea of any person wanting to touch her felt very dangerous.
‘I’m worried your mum’s going to come and find us again,’ Tia said, grabbing Lyra’s probing toe. ‘She’s so mad.’
‘Can you even imagine what’s happening back there right now?’
She and Tia had been taking snaps of their newly unboxed chemist haul when both their mums came right into Lyra’s tent and started asking more questions. They were all about Tia’s dad and they were ten times worse than the ones her mum had been asking yesterday.
The words they wanted to hear were sort of stuck in Lyra’s throat. Like she couldn’t drag them out, and then Auntie Liss had lowered her voice, tilted her head while Lyra’s mum covered her face in her hands and Liss said, ‘I want you to know that whatever has happened, no-one blames you and you are not going to get into trouble.’
Pause. No-one said that kind of thing unless they definitely blamed you and you were definitely going to get into trouble.
‘Did Lachy do anything to you in that cave yesterday afternoon?’
And that question kind of blew everything open. Lyra knew, then, that Auntie Liss had been the person outside the cave. The one she’d tried to pretend she imagined.
‘Or any other time?’ Lyra’s mum added, pulling her hands away from her face which Lyra kind of wished she hadn’t. She just looked so worried, and so sad, and Lyra knew she had failed, again, to make her mum’s life easier, not harder.
Lyra knew what they were asking her. She knew the answer was no. She also knew that it didn’t mean there was nothing weird or scary about the things Tia’s dad did, and she didn’t really know how to say that. Especially with Tia sitting right there. She thought the adults should have figured out a way to let Tia leave. It really wasn’t any fun hearing people talk shit about your dad, Lyra knew.
‘Lyra?’ her mum had pushed.
‘No, he’s never done anything bad,’ she said, and watched the women exchange a look. Maybe they understood. Or maybe they didn’t believe her. ‘He’s never touched me, or anything.’ And then she remembered Friday, and it was confusing again. ‘Except when we were dancing, and Auntie Sadie saw.’
It made Lyra want to disappear even thinking about saying that now. It had made her mum put her face in her hands again.
‘I didn’t lie to you,’ she said. ‘When you asked me. I just didn’t know, wasn’t sure . . . I’m sorry.’
Auntie Liss had done her head tilt thing again. ‘You don’t need to be sorry, Lyra. Like I said, you’ve done nothing wrong.’
But the truth was, when Liss had told her that she had seen Lyra and Lachy leaving the cave, Lyra had felt a flood of relief. First of all that she wasn’t going crazy for feeling like someone had been there. And then she’d felt relief at telling them the truth. And then she’d felt relief at their faces, even though they were sad. Because they were expecting something worse. Which was so gross.
Honestly, adults could be so disgusting. Lachy Short was an old man.
So she told them the truth-truth. That she didn’t know what happened, that she was confused about it. But also that, yes, Lachy Short’s hand had done those things that Auntie Sadie said. Lyra just didn’t know what it meant, or whether to make a fuss. Everyone was so . . . much about it all. She didn’t want all that.
Her mum continued being a mess. Which Lyra hated but was also a little bit relieved about. Even her mum didn’t have it all together. That was the truth, too. And she’d cried, which Lyra hated but, again, it was kind of nice that she was so upset.
Tia, though. Tia was being really weird. Now she suddenly sat up on the forest floor. ‘Will you take my hair out?’ And she shook her head so her braids swung. ‘I don’t want it anymore.’
‘It took me ages!’ Lyra was annoyed, but also, she couldn’t blame her, they did look kind of basic, and she wasn’t sure why Tia had wanted her to do them in the first place.
‘Yeah, I’m sorry.’
The girls shuffled themselves together, Lyra sitting up on the log throne, as they called it, and Tia slipping in between her knees. She could feel Trick watching them.
‘You girls are so dumb,’ he said. Another way to identify if a boy likes you, Lyra thought. Insults. Which was so stupid because no-one liked insults. ‘Worrying about braids when dead-set your parents are about to divorce.’
‘What?’
‘Well, don’t you think your mum is going to drop your dad after all that?’
Tia went quiet. Pulled out her phone.
I hate him.
Lyra’s hands were full of Tia’s hair, but she saw the message flash up beside her where her phone rested on the tree.
‘Who?’ Lyra wasn’t sure, did she mean Trick?
Dad.
‘Shut up, Trick,’ Lyra said. ‘You weren’t even there.’
‘It’s a campsite, Lyra, everyone can hear.’
He’s ruined everything
‘Your mum can’t stay with your dad if he’s a pedo.’ Trick was talking to them but looking down at something he was turning over in his hands.
‘He’s not a pedo!’ Tia snapped.
‘Are you sure? Because it sounds like what he’s been doing with Lyra is grooming.’
‘Shut up, Trick,’ said Lyra. She’d heard about grooming at school. Was that what Lachy Short was doing? Showing an interest? Buying her presents? Winning her trust, her mum had said. Yes. All of that.
‘You know,’ Trick said, moving a little bit closer, squatting near where Tia’s legs were straight out in front of her. ‘My mum does some fucked-up stuff.’ He stopped himself. ‘Did some fucked-up stuff.’
The girls both looked at him. They knew, of course, that this was true. Lyra, unpicking a tiny, thin braid, looked back down at it. ‘That must suck.’
‘It did.’ Trick held up the thing in his hand. A long, thin silver vape pen. ‘It’s weed,’ he said. ‘I swiped it from James.’
Lyra laughed. ‘James is an idiot.’
‘I think they’re in the rainforest, looking for it. He dropped it near that fig tree.’
‘He’s going to kill you if he finds out you’ve got it,’ Tia told him.
‘I’m not scared of James and Bob,’ said Trick. ‘Meatheads.’
Lyra looked up at Trick, who was looking at her when he said that, just as she knew he would be.
‘Should we have some?’
‘No,’ said Tia.
‘Maybe,’ said Lyra, and Tia immediately looked up at her. ‘Hey, keep still!’ Tia looked back down.
NO WAY, Tia texted. Mums all over us
That was true.
‘Stop texting each other. It’s rude.’ Trick sounded like a whiny little boy.
‘It’s easier, isn’t it,’ Lyra said. ‘Talking is awkward.’
‘Tragic but true.’ Trick put the vape pen back in his pocket. Pulled out his phone.
Both the girls’ phones buzzed at once.
Should we get hi tho?
Lyra laughed. She couldn’t help herself.
‘I think,’ she said, a worried feeling fluttering in her stomach, ‘maybe we’re a bit stressed out for that. A bit . . . paranoid.’
Trick pondered, made a little hmm sound.
Relax us?
‘No,’ Tia said, frustrated. ‘I hate my dad. I don’t think getting high’s going to fix that.’
I hate your dad too. It was Trick.
‘Yeah, I guess I’m on board with that.’ Lyra tried to remember what it was that had made Lachy mad with Sadie, or the other way around. He always talked about her like she was disgusting or something. It was horrible, really. ‘Your dad’s caused a lot of drama.’
‘At least he pays you attention,’ said Tia. ‘That must be nice.’
Lyra didn’t know what to say to that. She squeezed Tia’s shoulders and kept going on the braids.
‘He thinks I’m boring,’ Tia went on. ‘And ugly.’
‘Whoa,’ said Trick. ‘That’s a lot, Tia.’
‘It’s true.’ Lyra had never heard Tia talk like this before. Tia didn’t talk a lot about her dad, and Lyra sometimes wondered if it was because she felt bad, because Lyra’s dad wasn’t around. ‘He makes me feel stupid. And he’s embarrassing, but he thinks it’s everyone else who’s embarrassing. And . . .’ Tia’s voice faltered, and Lyra stopped playing with the plaits and just rested her hands on her friend’s shoulders, hoping she could feel them like a hug. ‘My mum doesn’t deserve this. She’s a good mum.’
‘She is,’ Lyra agreed.
‘She’s not that nice,’ Trick said, but both the girls whipped around and glared at him so fast he put his hand up in surrender. ‘Okay, okay, she’s pretty nice.’
‘What’s it like,’ Tia asked, tipping her head up to look at Lyra, ‘to get my dad’s attention?’
Lyra really wished Tia hadn’t asked her that. She thought about it for a minute. ‘Uncomfortable.’
‘Yeah.’
There was a silence again. Only the birds and the leaves in the wind.
‘So that’s a no on the weed vape then,’ said Trick, putting it back in his pocket.
‘For the best,’ said Lyra, going back to Tia’s hair.
‘What do you think they’re going to do?’ Tia asked, looking down at her fingers and thumbs, which she was turning around each other in her lap.
‘The mums?’
‘All the adults. Do you think we’re all going home?’
Lyra looked up at the sky, above the trees. It was beginning to turn a little goldy. ‘I think they would have done that by now,’ she said.
I dont think I can go back there, Tia texted. So cringe
‘Worse than cringe.’
I wish he wasn’t around
‘Maybe they’ll ask him to go,’ Lyra said. ‘Maybe they’ll throw him out.’
Is life easier without a dad?
At that message Lyra and Trick looked at each other. It was weird, Lyra knew, that they had that in common. Bob, too, but that was different.
‘We have dads,’ said Trick. ‘They’re just not the main event. But I think maybe a lot of families are like that.’
Tia nodded.
‘I wouldn’t have said this,’ Trick went on, ‘if you hadn’t said you hated him, but once I thought maybe I might kill your dad.’
Lyra laughed. It was such a stupid, dramatic thing to say, she didn’t even look up from Tia’s almost-done head.
‘Why?’ asked Tia, and she wasn’t laughing, which freaked Lyra out a bit.
‘My mum,’ said Trick, shrugging and picking at some dirt on his black jeans. ‘After last year, she had a breakdown. I had to go live with my dad. And then there was all this therapy shit and she’s had to try so hard and work so hard and I see it on her face all the time, like she doesn’t think she should be here, or that it’s too hard to be here and . . . it’s your dad’s fault, I think.’
How?
‘How what?’
How would you kill him?
‘Tia, don’t be so dramatic, he’s joking.’ Lyra laughed again, although actually what Trick had said made her really uncomfortable, and a bit scared. And sad for Auntie Sadie, who was always so lovely to her.
‘Don’t know,’ said Trick, straight-faced. ‘All my ideas were terrible. I don’t think I’m cut out to be a master criminal.’
Surprise.
Lyra’s mum had told them they had to be back at camp at five. Lyra felt sick about what might happen when they got back there. Everyone would look at her. Would she have to speak in front of people? Would she have to speak to Lachy? She really hoped they had asked him to go.
‘It would be easier if he wasn’t there,’ she said, and tapped Tia’s shoulders. ‘It’s finished, shake it out.’
And she did, her mousy curls falling back around her shoulders, all angles and waves. ‘Better.’
Then Tia bent back down to her phone and began to type another message.
Lyra and Trick’s phones both pinged. This time, Lyra picked it up first.
Trick. What happened to your grandad?