8 #2
‘Whatever? That’s not very convincing. Good thing the night is young, hey? Let’s go, yeah?’
He turns, and my hand goes cold at the absence of his heat.
He starts walking, and after picking up my sandals I trail him up the beach before remembering that this is not the twelfth century and that I, Cat Kelty, walk behind no man.
I scurry to catch him, kicking up sand, and match his step.
I mean I’m tall, but he’s taller and has a good thirty kilos on me, so instead of walking casually I’m doing a little half skip-limp thing.
Very glamourous. The music gets louder and as we follow a curve around the cliff, we enter the Gap, a small beach with a narrow bay formed by a split in two cliff faces eons ago.
The Gap’s lit with the orange glow of a huge bonfire. We’ve arrived.
Around a hundred people litter the Gap in groups.
Surfers, campers and locals alike sit sharing eskies, drawn to the ocean in celebration of summer and beach and surf, having drifted down from the camping grounds, the general store or the pub.
There are younger kids, Matty’s age, right through to some of the fossil surfers.
There’s the obligatory group of surfer groupies who turn up at all these things with the sole purpose of hooking up with a surfer.
Sitting to the side of the bonfire are the Neanderthals who hoot when they see Paul.
Across the fire from them is Isabel Scuzzbucket Dillon, sitting on an esky, drinking ouzo straight from the bottle.
We lock eyes, hers narrowing before she turns her back to talk to a shirtless guy next to her who is leaning back on an elbow, bare feet crossed at the ankles, a modern-day Jesus with his long shaggy hair and matching beard, if Jesus were in his twenties and used the f-word like punctuation.
Paul takes my hand and leads me towards his friends.
I discreetly shake free, and it flops hard against my body, as if it were a limb belonging to a stranger.
He sinks to the sand surrounding the fire and pats the space beside him.
I sit as gracefully as my short skirt and Paul’s giant hoodie allows me.
I didn’t think my outfit through at all.
Looking across the beach, I see many other girls clearly thinking the same thing, flicking sand off bare legs, doing that telltale short skirt adjustment, trying for subtlety but if they’re anything like me they’re feeling painfully obvious.
The heat from the bonfire is intense and so I unzip Paul’s hoodie to my waist.
A Neanderthal stands before me, three bottles in hand. ‘Hey, Paulie,’ he says. He tilts the bottles at us. ‘Beer?’ he asks. They still wear their metal caps. Mum would approve, slightly.
‘Thank you,’ I say, feeling prim. He wrenches off the top before handing it to me.
‘Paulie? Beer?’ He tosses the caps into the fire.
‘I’m Ant.’ He sits on the sand in front of me. Though we’ve never spoken, I know him as Antonio Scamporelli. His nonni go to the same Italian club as my Nonna.
‘Cat.’ I tip my beer in greeting.
‘You here for the summer, Cat?’
I look at him incredulously. ‘No, I live here.’
‘Really? You just move here?’
‘Not really. I’ve lived here since I was a kid.’
‘Hang on. Cat Kelty? Mick’s daughter? Signora Maria’s granddaughter?’
‘The one and only,’ I say, lifting my hands in a shrug.
Paul offers no comment, seemingly content to sip on his beer and listen to our awkward greeting. I glance at him, and he offers a quick smile.
Ant looks me up and down, his head tilted in confusion. ‘Man, I can’t believe I didn’t recognise you! What have you been up to? How’s JB? You catching up with him over the summer?’
‘I wish,’ I say. ‘He’s working with his dad all summer.’
‘Bummer,’ says Ant. ‘His old man’s a bit of a prick, isn’t he?’
‘Just a bit,’ I say, ‘but he pays well.’
‘I haven’t seen him since the season finished. How’d he go with everything?’
‘Really good,’ I say. ‘He works his arse off – he’s going for physio.’
‘He’s a smart one,’ says Ant. ‘Too smart for us dumbarses at the footy club, that’s for sure. Say hi to him for me.’
‘I will, but don’t you have preseason coming up? You’ll see him before I do.’
He takes a swig of beer, and his eyes do another sweep of me. He shakes his head. ‘I can’t get over how different you look.’
‘Different how?’
‘They’re called tits, Scampo.’ A Neanderthal flops on the sand in front of me, the little shitbag who nearly took out my shins with a skateboard at Sadie’s.
Steve. A wiry, short, towheaded, barely teenaged kid from an estate in town with the telltale black front tooth.
He openly stares at my chest. I try not to squirm under his insulting gaze but wrap Paul’s jumper tighter.
Of course, the loud-mouthed tool somehow managed to time that insightful comment right in the break of music between songs.
While the logical part of my brain knows that between the roaring of the ocean and the multitude of simultaneous conversations there’s no possible way he was heard by anyone beyond the people in my immediate vicinity, it seems that every person at the party turns their head to chance a glance at my (admittedly spectacular) rack.
‘They’re great tits. Give us a proper look.’ He reaches out and I slap his hand away.
‘Touch me, and I’ll break your nose,’ I say.
‘Come on, don’t be a Stuck Up Bitch all your life.’ He goes for me again.
Before I even register what’s happening, I punch him right in his face and he falls back against the sand holding his cheekbone. My knuckles throb but I keep the sharpness of the pain from showing on my face.
‘You fucking bitch,’ he yells. He gets to his knees and lunges, his fist clenched. Years ago, at a funeral, one of my cousins accidentally punched me in the eye and I’ve never forgotten the sound of her fist making contact, the pop, and that tear of pain. I brace.
Suddenly, I’m covered in sand as Paul leaps to his feet. He has Steve by the neck of his t-shirt, his feet lifted off the ground.
‘Fuck off, mate,’ he says, quietly.
‘The Stuck-Up Bitch just fucking punched me!’ Steve kicks in the air, trying to see past Paul. ‘You’re dead, bitch.’
‘Shut the fuck up.’ Paul shakes him by the shirt.
Ant moves across the sand, his back to me. There’s a high-pitched squeal. Isabel’s lying sprawled in the sand with another girl, laughing, kicking the sand with their heels, their underpants flashing.
‘You better watch your back, bitch,’ Steve yells at me over Paul’s shoulder.
‘Off you fuck, mate,’ Paul says. ‘You stay away from her, you hear me?’ He shakes him again, then shoves him away.
Steve stumbles from the release, looking around, almost pleadingly, but the party has continued as if nothing had happened.
Someone across the Gap sings along out of tune to the music and a group of people join in, arms around each other.
‘Don’t make me tell you again.’ Paul sits back beside me, brushing sand off my shoulder then wrapping his arm around me. ‘Mate, don’t even look at her. You see her, you walk the other way, you hear me?’
Steve turns and crosses the beach, climbing the stairs up the cliff face.
‘You okay?’ Paul whispers into my ear. ‘You’re shaking.’
‘I’m fine.’ I pull away and he drops his arm. ‘Just embarrassed. My Italian temper. He caught me off guard.’ A trickle of sweat moves down my spine and my teeth are chattering. I zip Paul’s jumper up to my chin.
‘Don’t worry about that dickhead,’ says Ant. ‘He knows better than to cross Paulie.’
‘What’s “Paulie” got to do with it. He should know better than to cross me.
Non ti preoccupare .’ I try to smile to bring down the tension, but it comes out as a grimace, my face burning all the way through to my ears.
What a goddamn scene! Although, I don’t know how much of a scene it was.
I nearly get bashed by a loser who would likely stab me with a dirty syringe and a group of girls danced right through the whole thing, completely oblivious to what was going on over at our side of the bonfire.
‘ Esattamente .’ Ant gives me a wink.
‘Don’t worry about Steve,’ says Paul. ‘He won’t go near you. Ant, grab us another drink, hey? Cat?’
‘No, thanks.’ I shrink a little into myself, grateful for the security of Paul’s jumper.
‘Hey, Paulie, how’s your new board?’ Paul turns to one of the Neanderthals.
Thankfully Ant joins in, asking inane questions about rails and outlines and about travelling the world, surfing every break they came across.
Across the circle, Isabel and her friend lean against each other, legs twisted, their faces lit by the fire.
Their gazes lock onto me and Paul. Her friend cups her hand over her mouth, whispering into Isabel’s ear.
Ugly laughter fills the cove. Isabel totters to her feet, heels sinking into the sand, and lurches around the fire.
‘You’re here!’ she yells and drops into Paul’s lap, her back to me, her hair whipping me in the face.
‘What the fuck?’ He rears back, but she clings to him, her arms around his neck.
‘We need to talk,’ she slurs.
‘Yeah, nah we don’t,’ he says, and stands, dislodging her into the sand in front of us.
The wind shifts, blowing smoke into my face. My eyes sting and fill with protective tears.
‘I’m just going to go chat to those girls over there,’ I say to Ant, coughing through the smoke.
‘Cat, wait—’ Paul puts his hand on my arm.
‘It’s all good,’ I say and make my way to a group of people in the shadows of the cliff.
Looking over my shoulder, Paul’s standing side-on, talking to someone, so I move behind the randoms under the cliff, following its curve to the edge of the Gap.
I’m not game to take on the bush path alone in the dark, especially if Steve is hanging around, so I walk back along the beach.
The moon lights up the sand and the tide’s retreating.
The clouds have parted long enough for the waves and the sand to reflect off the moon, giving me light to see my way.
Between the top of the beach stairs and the clubhouse the path curves around a bend, enclosed on each side by the dense tea trees.
I can barely see, and with the ocean roaring behind me I can’t hear a thing.
The path is a faint silver line. I sprint, only four or five seconds until I’m in the openness of the streets, but it feels so, so much longer.
It’s weird, but sometimes the streets feel safer here in the dead of winter when there’s no one around.
It seems like every second house was having a party tonight.
At one house I catch the attention of a group of losers who whistle and yell at me.
‘Hey, babe, where you going? Come have a drink? Don’t be shy, babe!
’ I keep walking, eyes straight ahead, my ears tuned to their laughter, waiting to hear footsteps behind me, ready to bolt.
As I move into shadows past the streetlights, they give up on me as quickly as they’d noticed me.
Mum and Dad are sitting in the dark watching TV when I get home. It’s just after eleven. Dad has an empty wine glass beside him, a faint tinge of pink around the rim. They startle as I open the sliding door, Mum spilling the water from the glass she’s cradling.
‘You’re early,’ she says. ‘Where’s Paul?’
‘At the party.’
‘He let you walk home on your own?’ Even in the low television-cast light I can see that Dad’s livid. ‘That little prick...’
‘No, Dad, it’s fine. I’d had enough so I just left.’
‘You didn’t ask him to take you home?’ asks Dad.
‘Why didn’t you call us?’ Mum stands and puts her hands on my shoulders. ‘Are you all right? We don’t like you walking around on your own at night, especially in the holiday season. It’s not safe, Cat. You know that.’
‘There’re people everywhere.’ I kiss my parents good night and go upstairs to my bedroom.
I hear the clink of glass on the granite bench and Dad’s footsteps moving through the house. ‘I’m going to strangle that little prick with my bare hands.’