2
L ITTLE kids crouch by the roadside using sticks to prod the tar, soft and pliable from the heat.
The sun has started its slow submerge into the ocean, but the air’s still, as if the sun’s heat is trapped within the atmosphere.
The day’s sluggishness refuses to give way to twilight cool.
I cut through a vacant block; its boundary defiantly marked by the sweet citrus smell from the gums standing guard by each corner.
I close my eyes and inhale the eucalyptus scent, so fresh, so clean, like the land’s counterpart to the ocean.
Batter’s Cove is full of empty blocks, most of which are unkempt, overgrown illegal rubbish dumps and fire hazards, the perfect hangout for tiger snakes.
Nonna forbids us to go near any of them in bare feet or bare legs, which we ignore as soon as the temperature rises, and the lure of a shortcut is stronger than the fear of venom-induced paralysis and possible death.
Poor Nonna. She’s convinced that Mum and Dad moving us out here was equivalent to their signing our death warrants.
If we don’t lose extremities from snakes, sharks will tear off our limbs and we’ll drown in a sea of our own blood.
Her words, not mine. She has conniptions if we walk on the rocks because of blue ring octopuses, not that I’ve ever seen one. She’s no fan of spiders, either.
I don’t think Nonna is much of a friend to any creature. Even her chickens, which she frets over and refuses to leave the house for more than a night because of their regimented feeding schedule, but the minute they stop laying, she goes all Mary Queen of Scots on them.
Only a month ago, I was in her living room, staring at whatever crap Matty had on the TV, trying to muster up the motivation to read my exam notes for the gazillionth time when Nonna appeared in the doorway holding a limp chicken by the claws.
A long strip of something gross petered out from where its head should have been.
I screamed.
Nonna laughed and shook it, then took it outside.
Two minutes later, we heard her singing.
I looked out the window and there’s Nonna, sitting on a deck chair under her fig tree, yanking out feathers with her bare hands.
Beside her, amid scattered white and brown feathers, was the tree stump used for the dual purposes of chopping wood and beheading chickens.
Leaning against it was the axe, blade shiny in the late afternoon sun, as polished as a samurai sword.
Tommy was poking the chicken’s head with a stick.
Its head lolled, horrible beady eyes staring into nothingness.
On Batter’s Cove Road, the citrus of the lemon-scented gums is replaced by the smoky, palpable smell of hot barbecues blasting the cells of helpless sausages and steaks, turning fragile meat into carcinogenic charcoal.
Music blares from balconies and I walk close to the shoulder of the road as cars drive past flicking melted tar.
Sadie’s , our local and only general store slash fish and chips shop slash hang out place, is the final of a strip of three shops.
I catch my reflection in the shop window.
My face is a glorious shade of scarlet and I can feel a moustache of sweat on my upper lip.
Sexy, and perfectly timed. The Neanderthals are sprawled across the picnic tables out the front, some bikini-clad girls in their midst. The remnants of what was a parcel of hot chips rests in the middle of the table, the corners of the wrapping held down by drink bottles.
A Neanderthal balances a skateboard on two wheels, flicking it up into the air and catching it. Ugh. Awesome.
I don’t know these guys very well and they don’t know me.
I mean they’d have a vague idea of who I am – you can’t live in a small town and not know people, especially when your dad’s a tradie and the likely career path for these guys is some kind of trade.
And while I’ve never spoken to any of them, I’ve been observing them like an assignment for years.
They’re quite the sociological phenomena, this subset of the human male species.
They travel in a pack, and if you do see one alone in the wild, they must let out a dog whistle, because within minutes, there will be the rest of them, draped en masse on the bonnet of a car, or perched at a lookout assessing the waves, or like now, taking over all available surface area outside Sadie’s.
When I was younger, I thought those guys were like gods, King Neptune’s offspring come to life.
Even the ugly ones have a certain something.
In basic terms, they’re a group of good-looking guys, perennially salt-encrusted with abs that come from hours of paddling a surfboard which you could.
.. well, there’s a few things you could do.
Picture tanned faces, white teeth, some in a better state than others, salt-dotted eyelashes which probably make them look longer than is fair and hair bleached by sea and sunshine.
Bottom line: they look like they’ve just walked straight out of a cheesy music video.
I’ll never forget Sal’s reaction the first time she saw them.
She’d come to stay for the weekend so we could work on our biology assessment task.
They were in the beach car park, gathered around the older guys’ cars, music blaring.
They’d just finished surfing, and the king of the Neanderthals, the hottest of the hot of them, stood under the beach shower peeling off his wetsuit.
‘Oh my freakin’ God,’ said Sal. ‘He looks like Adonis come to life. Is he even real?’
‘Are you okay?’ I mimicked wiping my mouth. ‘You’re not going to drown in all that drool?’
‘Who in the name of all that is holy is he?’
‘Paul Lightwood,’ I said. ‘He’s a chippy, like Dad. Although unlike Dad, he’s obscenely gorgeous.’
‘You know him?’ Sal asked. ‘How have you kept his existence such a secret?’
‘I don’t know him, he’s just a local. We’ve barely even exchanged eye contact.’
‘Cat, you need to exchange bodily fluids with that guy. It would be a crime against humanity if you didn’t. He’s almost enough for me to see a guy as doable.’
I walk towards their table, head down, ostrich-style.
If I can’t see them, they can’t see me, until I hear a freakin’ skateboard coming straight at me.
I’m no skater, but by some miracle of the sea gods, I manage to stop the skateboard from smashing me straight in the shins by blocking it with my foot.
I put my weight on one end to flick it up and I grab it. Maybe I should be a skater.
‘Is this yours, Einstein?’ I glare at the kid standing before me, a wild-haired teenager that is definitely not one of the hot ones. He smirks, lip curled.
‘Cheers.’ He reaches for his skateboard.
‘What, no apology?’
He snatches it from my hand and skates to the table.
One of the older guys sits facing me, leaning back, elbows resting on the table behind him, his legs outstretched. He yanks them out of the way of the skateboard as it careens towards him, partially dislodging the girl sitting on his lap.
‘Mate, seriously?’ He pulls the girl back against him.
She giggles, and as she flicks her hair, we lock eyes.
‘Oh, look, it’s Kitty Cat,’ Isabel Dillon drawls.
‘Didn’t see ya last night at the Pav. Where were you?
With your rich loser friends?’ She’s with some random girl from town with a high-pitched giggle like a drill in my ear.
They’re flicking their hair so hard it’s a miracle they stay upright.
In the late afternoon I find myself standing in their shadow.
If they were anyone else, I might see that as symbolic.
Isabel is like that feeling of sand in your sneakers.
No matter how much you shake it, there are always annoying grains rubbing against your skin.
We were friends once. We met when we were 13, both of us with a mouth full of metal.
For that first summer we were inseparable, hanging out every day, both of us trying to hide our crushes on the Neanderthals.
But then her braces came off, and she stopped being intimidated by them to the point where she was happier hanging out with them than me.
Scrap that: she wasn’t just happier hanging out with them.
She became actively nasty, vicious and vile towards me. Two can play that game.
I lift my sunglasses and make a show of looking at Isabel’s neck, a mosaic of purple welts speckled with red.
‘Classy. Which three were the unlucky guys?’ Stuff the sisterhood and the very concept of female empowerment and girls supporting girls – for her, anyway.
‘You’re just jealous,’ she snarls, smirk completely gone. ‘We were at the best party on the biggest night of the year and where were you? At midnight Mass? Were you praying for a personality?’
‘Maybe she was praying you’d grow some tits,’ a Neanderthal mutters.
I can’t help but laugh and Isabel gives me the middle finger salute.
‘Ooh, catfight!’ The skateboarding ignoramus circles me.
‘You know what that’ll turn into. Come on girls, give us a show.
’ He wriggles and thrusts as he skates, his hips jutting like razors from the top of his board shorts.
He wraps his arms around himself and his potato face goes side to side as he smooches the air.
‘Yeah right, Steve,’ says Isabel. ‘As if. Don’t you know SUBs don’t catfight?’ Leaning against a Neanderthal’s legs she takes his hands and tugs until his arms encircle her bare waist.
She, like everyone else in town, calls me a Stuck-up Bitch, SUB for short, just because of the school I go to.
It’s not just me. SUB is the collective noun for the girls at our school.
It’s very important and significant to note that this is only given to the girls and not the boys.
There’s the patriarchy hard at work. Given this is decreed by the type of girls who wear their uniform so short you can almost see their belly ring, it’s not hard to see Stuck Up Bitch as a source of pride.
And look, there’s me, also a slave to the patriarchy and a snob.
I am miffed, though. It’s nice to have your presence noticed, even if it is by one’s eternal nemesis.
I was at The Pav last night. There would have been a good two or three thousand people packed into the space that’s smaller than a football oval, but still, I’m not invisible, surely?
Although I didn’t hang around long. It was too depressing, me there all alone, completely sober with every second testosterone-filled and alcohol-fuelled dipshit between the ages of 12 and 42 shouting Happy New Year in my face, trying to follow up with a tongue down my throat. No, thank you.
Last year, I had such a great night with my friends, but this year?
Surrounded by people, I couldn’t have felt more alone.
I would have killed to have my friends with me to see in the new year at The Pav.
It was two hours to midnight when I saw someone give my 14-year-old brother a beer.
He wouldn’t have been the only barely adolescent puking his guts out on New Year’s Eve, but still.
I made my way over to him and the crowd surged as two men began fighting and wrestled each other to the ground.
The people around them took the brawl as an invite to throw punches so I grabbed my brother and we pushed through the crowd to the edge of The Pav.
We took a path to the beach and laid on the sand for a while.
Eventually he stopped his drunken jabbering and we watched the kaleidoscope of stars.
That’s one of the best things about this place.
At night on the beach, away from the streetlights, the sky forms a perfect arc filled with stars.
It would have been bliss, if not for the sound of people having the best New Year’s ever. Ugh.
Every year, I promise myself I won’t let Isabel Dillon get to me, and here’s that resolution broken already.
Steve keeps circling across the footpath.
Skirting him, I push open Sadie’s door. I pause to let a family exit and see Isabel reflected in the tinted window, laughing with her friend who has just started a sentence with, ‘I’m not racist, but.
..’ Steve is wheeling, swearing at the top of his lungs, and a woman holding hands with a little girl shoots him daggers before crossing the street.
I step into Sadie’s and crash smack bang into the chest of Paul Lightwood, aka Sal’s Adonis come to life, the hottest of the hot, the king of the Neanderthals, a beautiful, walking surfer god.