34
‘I KNOW I’m going to regret this but if I tell you something do you promise not to laugh?’ Paul’s piggybacking me to the beach, his arms tucked through my bare legs.
‘Not after that,’ I say, ‘I promise nothing. Give it to me, Lightwood.’
‘Oh, so we’re going by surnames now, are we? Good to know, Kelty.’
‘Stop stalling.’
‘Picture this, Year Eleven English and we have to write a poem. I wrote about this walk, from the car park to the beach.’
‘Why would I laugh? I love that.’
‘I wrote it completely off my head and I got the best mark I’d ever had.’
‘I have to read it.’
‘No way would I let you read my high distinction Year Eleven poem.’
‘Wait, high distinction and you were on something?’ I mock-smack his shoulder. ‘That’s so unfair. Some of us have to work for high distinctions. Maybe I should just take drugs?’
‘Don’t even think about it.’ He hitches me up higher on his back and I lean my head down to breathe in that incredible space between his shoulder and his neck. ‘I’m pretty sure the teacher was on something. Want to hear something funny?’
‘Uh huh.’ I’m distracted. Maybe he could carry me around like this forever, his back hard against my chest.
‘She was my English teacher but also the careers teacher, right? She wanted me to go to uni open days and when I said that wasn’t going to happen, she was really pissed off.
She tried to make an appointment with Mum and Dad and everything, but you heard Dad.
’ He drops his voice to mimic his father.
‘ “No point wasting money on tradies.” She thought if I put my head down, I could have had a crack. Can you believe that? Me at Uni?’ He laughs.
‘Of course I can believe that, but why didn’t you? I mean your actual teacher was telling you to go for it. What did your mum think?’
‘She wasn’t keen either.’
‘Why not?’ I’m incredulous. I can’t even imagine turning my back on a ticket out of here.
‘She wanted me here.’ We reach the top of the dunes where the Neanderthals have gathered. The beach lays out below us, the sun starting its slow drop into night.
‘Hello, lovers.’ Tom passes Paul a couple of beers. He flips the lids off both, handing me one, pocketing the caps.
Clouds hover, the horizon a luminous thread between the sky and the sea.
There are some people surfing the last waves of the day and a trio of teenage girls swim in the shore break, fighting the rip.
Their laughter hits me almost physically; I hug my arms. I mean, some of these guys are all right, funny even, but they’re not Sal, Em or JB.
They’re still the Neanderthals, maybe not complete Neanderthals, but except for Ant, they’re Paul’s friends, not mine.
Cavey pretty much confirmed that at the pub with the bouncers.
I’m just a Yoko to them, and that’s fine.
I’ll have my real friends back as soon as summer’s over, but in the meantime I’ll have to make an effort.
If Paul didn’t get on with my friends I don’t know what I’d do, how I’d feel.
Devastated comes to mind, but it’s not even remotely possible to compare my friends to his.
The Neanderthals’ aura of confidence that borders on belligerence, their weird combination of aggressiveness and simplicity in the way they live their lives does my head in.
It’s so perplexing. They’re either picking fights with anyone and everyone or they embody a hippy, woo-woo platitude that you’d see on a sticker or a
t-shirt. They are completely different to any other group of people I know. All the times I’ve listened to their nonsensical conversations I’ve never heard one of them say, ‘Man, if I don’t get into industrial pharmacology, I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe engineering will have to do?’
It’s like the future means nothing to them, but sometimes it’s kind of refreshing to hang around people not completely preoccupied with what’s coming next.
This morning, after weeks of getting the timing wrong and missing each other, the stars aligned and I managed to talk to Em in London, and even on the other side of the world she’s ahead of me in the Year Twelve prep stakes.
I take a swig of beer and grimace. ‘You want?’ I say to Paul. I twist it to stand upright in the sand between us.
‘Want something else? Tommo, what else you got?’
‘No, thanks, I’m all good.’ I stretch his hoodie out over my knees, my arms crossed over my shins, my stomach cramping.
Great. Not that it’s a surprise; Em told me she had the angry pixies visiting her in London.
Seems that even with all this distance between us we’re still in cycle.
Sal must be suffering too. I wonder if Charlotte is, given she and Sal have been together night and day.
It was Sal that came up with angry pixies to describe our shared time of the month, saying cramps are like nasty little angry pixies using a blunt, rusty machete to hack their way out of her uterus.
The way I’m feeling right now I can almost hear the angry pixies’ high-pitched evil giggling.
Ant drops to the sand beside me, groaning.
‘What’s up with you, Scampo?’ one of the guys asks him.
‘Man, I am so sore. 10K run for preseason footy. I’m too old for this crap.’
‘Mate, you’re only as old as the girl you feel,’ says Cavey. ‘That makes me around about sixteen, fingers crossed.’
I flinch, the lingering taste of the beer sour in my mouth.
‘Mate,’ admonishes Paul, his hand stroking the back of my neck. I shift and pull my legs out from the hoodie, crossing them at my ankles, and turn towards Ant.
‘Did you see JB? How is he?’
‘He smashed it,’ says Ant. ‘Man, he’s fit. He’s training every day. I couldn’t catch him. None of us could.’
‘No way? That’s so good.’ I don’t add that he’s training hard just to get away from his father; it’s not my story to tell.
Anyway, if JB’s town is anything like Batter’s Cove, it’d be no secret what his dad is like.
I’ll never forget the mortification of that time on camp when we were talking about our parents fighting, and I realised that my definition of fighting and JB’s were on two different planets.
‘He said he was running, but ten kilometres? Amazing.’
‘Yeah, he said he spoke to you. Cat, he made it look easy.’
‘Great, just one more way for him to show me up this year,’ I shake my head. ‘He’s such an overachiever.’
‘Funny, he said the same thing about you.’
‘Bull.’
‘ Dici sul serio !’
‘N on riesco proprio a crederci .’
‘Would I lie? He’s your number one fan.’
‘Actually, that would be me,’ says Paul, his hand on my knee.
Music fills the dune, pumping through a speaker, the bass line deep. The girls who were swimming walk up the dunes, wrapped in beach towels, holding their clothes.
‘Mind if we hang?’
‘Go for it, ladies.’ Tom flips the lid of his esky. ‘Beer?’
One comes to sit opposite me. ‘I feel like I know you from somewhere,’ she says, ‘where do you go?’
I tell her and she snaps her fingers. ‘That’s it! You did that King Lear workshop in the city last holidays, didn’t you?’
‘Yes! Were you there?’
‘I was, Mel and I both were.’ She turns to her tall blonde friend who is grabbing them a beer. ‘Mel, come over here! I’m Jay, by the way.’
‘Cat,’ I shake her outstretched hand. ‘So, you’re going into Year Twelve, yeah? How’s your holiday homework going?’
The three of us compare subjects and holiday homework, finding the overlaps, grimacing in solidarity at the workload expectations, exclaiming at the serendipity of discovering we’re all aiming for the same university, if not the same courses.
Next year, I could feasibly be having lunch with these girls hundreds of kilometres away from this sand dune, and I grin at the thought.
‘Hey guys, can you turn it down a bit?’ An older guy, a tourist, crosses the dune. ‘We’re here for some serenity, not a nightclub.’
‘Are you kidding?’ says Cavey, ‘Mate, you want serenity? What if I knock you out? That enough serenity for you?’
Ugh, here we go. Jay’s head swivels from Cavey to the other guy before looking at Mel, eyes wide. I shuffle back a bit closer to Paul and put my hands on the tops of his thighs, palms flat.
‘Look, mate,’ the tourist says, ‘I don’t want any trouble, I’m just trying to watch the sunset with my friends.’
‘If you don’t want trouble, then pack up your shit and go find somewhere else to watch the sunset. This is our beach. Fucking terrorists.’
‘Terrorists?’ Jay mouths at me.
‘It’s what the locals call tourists,’ I explain.
‘Aren’t you a local?’ she asks.
‘Only technically from a geographic perspective, and only for another year, thank freakin’ God.’ I explain the great divide between me and the rest of the general population.
‘Is it like a money thing?’
‘It’s more like a dickhead thing. My dad’s a tradie too, but he’s nothing like them, so it’s a bit weird.’
‘Wow, sounds Shakespearean,’ she says, ‘so what, are you and your hot boyfriend like living, breathing Capulets and Montagues?’
‘Not quite. He’s nothing like them either. Anyway, how long are you down for?’
‘We’re heading back tomorrow,’ says Mel, and gets out her phone. ‘You have to give us your details so we can catch up when you move.’
‘Tomorrow? Bummer! And I’d love that. I was just thinking I was so jealous of you girls hanging out, I miss my friends so, so much. And this is the first intelligent conversation I’ve had in weeks.’
‘Sorry, what?’ says Paul, and tickles my ribs. ‘The dumb arse tradie not intelligent enough for you?’
‘You know that’s not what I mean,’ I say, ‘but you’re really bad at girl talk. Like really bad.’ I smile at Jay. ‘Devo you’re leaving tomorrow.’
‘It’s just enough time to check out the hot surfer boys.’ She giggles. ‘Come on, give me all the intel. Which should we go for? Who should we avoid at all costs? Please tell me they’re not one and the same.’
‘It depends. Are you into misogynistic racists?’
‘Hard pass. Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you nabbed the number one. Lucky girl.’
‘Tell me about it,’ I say. ‘I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and the hottest of the hot has just been a dream.’
‘Awww... that is so, so sweet! I wouldn’t be letting him out of my sight.
Especially the way that one’s looking at him.
’ She nods her head across the group. Isabel Scuzzbucket Dillon is shooting daggers at me while curled up in Cavey’s lap like a cat, her arms up around his neck.
‘Even though it looks like she’s already landed herself a surfer. Some people are just greedy.’
‘Man, she wishes,’ I say. ‘I think I’m safe.’ Paul’s grip tightens on my knee.