Chapter 9 Salt Spray
salt spray
Lingers long after the wave crashes. Just like the things we don’t say.
Another week of domestic rhythm slips by, measured in Grandpa’s morning grumbles, a daily-maintained studio wardrobe (which refuses to keep order), and the quiet presence of Trent, a fixture at the front desk.
I’m still not sure what he actually does on his laptop for that hour or so each day, but whatever it is . . . it involves very little tapping.
By the end of the second week, I give up any pretence of upright professionalism and finally surrender to the inevitable: a slow slide against the table, arms crossed, cheek pressed against my elbow.
Just five minutes.
Probably.
It’s his fault I need to nap anyway. Sharing a bunk with a sleep-depriving, too-close, way-too-warm presence is brutal.
When I startle awake again, it’s to find said torturer holding a pen at my nose, staring at me.
“That’s so creepy,” I mumble, even as a wild shiver slinks through me.
He shifts the pen and something slides off it to the desk.
“There’s been a stray feather in your hair all day,” he says. “You were about to inhale it.”
Waking up to that damn chicken sharing my pillow hadn’t been my finest moment.
I shrieked so loud poor Trent bolted up the ladder in a mess of tangled hair, a shirt rucked around his hips, and boxers covered in shrimp in sunglasses—and a very not-shrimp-sized bulge to go with it. I shrieked louder at that.
I scowl over a rising flush. “At least it’s not another spider.” I shudder, and then add, “But you know, Grandpa’s right to complain about that pesky chicken.”
Trent’s lips flatten. “You left the pen gate open.”
“I don’t leave my gate open willy nilly. And if you check, be warned, you won’t find any eggs.”
Trent’s gaze flicks, quick, but not quick enough. “That was not thinly veiled at all.”
“More veiled than what I saw this morning.”
Trent exhales through his nose. The slight twitch of his fingers against the desk is almost imperceptible. Almost.
He taps his pen against my chin. “None of that now, Ika.”
I feel it like a pull in my ribs. The warning. The step backward. Ika. If that wasn’t a bucket of frozen water.
I run my tongue along my teeth and glance at the stray feather on the desk. Trent’s already looking at his laptop screen—not tapping, of course.
“Back to the chicken,” I say. “If she’s so important, why doesn’t she have a name?”
“Grandpa forgets. So we just stick with Chicken.” He cocks his head at me. “What is it you do exactly?” he asks.
“That’s my question,” I mutter, playing with the feather as I explain how the studio works.
It’s a place for hire. Actors use it to run drama lessons, or as a rehearsal space, or even a place to hold events.
I run twelve to twenty hours of classes in a week and manage the marketing, bookkeeping, and organisation of the space.
“Us actors stick together and help one another out—whether it’s to jump in for line reading when someone’s sick, or to help set up for a production.
Whenever one of us lands a gig, the rest of us will run their classes. ”
“How supportive.”
“We’re the only ones who understand how tough it is.”
He eyes me, as if he’s tracing all the lines of my sleeve left from my snooze. “Very tough.”
I flick the feather at him, forcing a sharp exhale through my nose. “You know what, you’re just as annoying as the chicken.”
He tilts the pen at me, a quiet challenge. “Then you must like me. I too get rid of spiders.”
A traitorous laugh leaps out of me and I hurriedly zip it away.
Thankfully the kiddos are flurrying out from their lesson.
I immediately snag Moana into conversation, but I’ve used this trick too often.
She rolls her eyes, grabs her coat, and calls out, “Thank Gramps for the vintage stuff. I’ve passed it on. ”
She and the kiddos head outside to the parent-pickup spot, leaving Holly fussing with her school bag. She rises from it with sheets of paper and a pencil case and her nervous green eyes find mine with a wobbly smile. “Can I do my homework while I wait for Mum?”
I bolt off my chair and tell her to use my side of the desk.
Trent eyeballs this sudden move, but says nothing and resumes not tapping his laptop.
Holly settles in and starts sketching. She outlines the trunk and pauses after doing half of the branches, at which point she starts counting.
She opens an envelope and tips photos out over my desk. It happens so fast.
A blur of colour and faces.
I shift my weight slightly. Just enough to see better over her shoulder. Then just enough not to.
“What’s, ah, the homework?”
She lines the photos up beside her in a neat grid.
“Grandad, Nana, my other Gdad and granny, my aunt, uncle, and mum. Then there’s Dad.
Those are my cousins, and this is me, and .
. .” She hesitates and searches for a missing photo.
There’s one face down behind her pencil case.
She drags it across her tree—family tree, I get it now—without flipping it.
But her little frame folds in and mine folds with her in sympathy.
“Dunno about this one. It’s not like I ever met her. ”
Trent is taking far too much interest in Holly’s homework; or maybe he, too, reads the palpable shift in her mood. He turns in his chair. “Don’t do anything that makes you sad.”
Says the bottle!
I grit my teeth slightly. But mostly because he’s sort of right. I don’t want Holly to be sad either.
Holly flips the photo suddenly and a smiling teenage face beams up at us. The young woman has the same little freckle that Holly has between her eye and the bridge of her nose. The resemblance is obvious and her words make my chest ache. Not like I ever met her.
She slowly slides the photo alongside the others. It’s more faded. Bent around the edges. Under the studio light, there’s a splash milking the surface.
With a sigh, she pulls out scissors and I instinctively clutch her shoulder. “Are you cutting these?”
She nods. “For the project.”
“This photo looks special.”
Holly picks it up first. “It’s the only one of my dead sister I could find. The only photo since before I was born.”
She says this with a fascinated little laugh. But somewhere under it, she has big questions.
Trent’s hand hovers above the desk, too still. He swallows once, barely, like something thick is caught in his throat. Dead sibling. He knows this ache all too well. My chest is bleeding too.
“Mum says they all got burned in a fire,” Holly continues. “Lucky I found this, huh?” She goes to cut it and I halt her again.
“I have a better idea.” I take my phone and take a picture of the picture as clear as I can. “Start with the rest of your tree, and the next time you come, I’ll have this photo printed for you, so you have one you can cut up.”
“Not this one?” She waves faded green eyes and a beaming smile at me.
“None of the originals. Keep those, okay?” I hurriedly take snapshots of all the photos of Holly’s family. “When is your project due?”
“End of term.”
“Great. Focus on colouring the tree today.”
She nods and starts to draw an extra branch. In pencil, she lightly place-holds ‘Beth’.
Trent is still a picture of absolute calm with a stiffened, hovering hand.
With each breath, and each of Holly’s innocent hums, the air grows tauter.
It feels thin in my lungs. And . . . I abruptly lean in, asking Holly if she sees her grandparents much.
She nods without looking up. “They’re old. They never remember my name!”
A moment later, she reaches for her green colouring pencil . . . but it’s gone.
Instead, in its place sits a fifty-cent coin.
She blinks. “Huuuuh?”
I tap the green pencil on the far side of the desk innocently, and when she glances at me with an impressed twinkle in her eye, I hand it to her. “Maybe your family tree is richer than you thought!”
“Can I keep the money?”
Trent makes a sound. A huff. Possibly, a huffed laugh. His eyes are brighter when I look at him, and his hand is once more resting against the desk.
A loud honk-honky-honk sounds, and Holly stuffs her coloured pencils back into her case. She hesitates. “Can I keep it here?” She flushes. “Mum might be a bit sad if she sees it.”
My throat lumps, and I swallow hard. “‘Course. Off you go.”
When the door slams shut behind her, and with the prickle of Trent’s watchful gaze on my nape, I move into the practice room and peer out the curtain.
On street below, I see the passenger door open, along with the flash of Holly’s mum’s manicured fingernails. And Holly leaps inside.
“What are you doing?” Trent’s voice, his whole presence, has snuck up on me. I hadn’t noticed over the long-standing prickle I always have around him. The car below peels away. “Just making sure she gets in the car safely.”
I open the curtain and stare at the sea across the road, glittering in the late afternoon light, little peaks of white on the surface from strong winds we can’t feel behind glass. “Are you okay?” I dare to ask.
He nods quietly. “I told you. I’ve done my grieving already.”
“If you say so, Mr Bottle.”
“Mr Bottle?”
I tap his chest. It’s too close, too solid, too warm. I feel the slight shift of his breath and the faintest flex of muscle beneath my fingertips. I pull away. “Sooner or later, brother, you’re going to shatter.”
I walk out, and Trent watches me leave.
I’m only gone a couple of hours before I decide to return to Grandpa’s, but in those hours, the sky has brewed more and more clouds until suddenly it’s a torrential downpour. And I’m stuck on a large field under it.
My hair is matted and my T-shirt clings like a second skin, translucent, the scar etched too obviously beneath the fabric. My jandals slip with every step until I give up and go barefoot, muddy puddles sucking at my feet.
My phone, sheltered in my shoulder bag, won’t stop ringing. It vibrates like a heartbeat, relentless.
brOTHER.
I hunch over, shielding the screen from the rain. Grimace, hesitate. Then, like a good little brother, I answer.
At least it’ll keep him from pacing the path in front of the house, jaw locked, becoming equally drenched in his over-protective wait.
“Trenty.”
A sigh rumbles down the line, low and resigned. “Let me give you a ride home.”
I close my eyes, rain pressing against my lashes like the weight of all the things I can’t say.
And so I laugh. Lightly, distantly. “You’re becoming predictable.”
“You’re looking like a tragic haunting. Great look on you.”
I grip the phone hard, and a sharp shiver steals through me.
The rain comes down harder, like blunt nails.
Where—
“Look in the other direction,” Trent murmurs down the line.
Trent and his umbrella descend the sloped grass near the road and come towards me. A glorious sight that’s making my mind sin.
The rain keeps falling. Ika’s soaked fish-band has swollen, biting into my wrist. My skin stings beneath it, but I don’t take it off.
I keep standing there. Breathing heavily into the phone.
“A hot shower when we’re home,” he murmurs.
I take a breath I don’t need. “A cold one, you mean!”
There’s a crackle down the line, like a hitched breath, or possibly . . . could he have laughed?
And then suddenly, my knight in shining armour slips.
He goes down to the grass with a wet smack.
I drop my jandals and bound over to him; he’s pressing a muddy palm to his forehead, his eyes shut, the umbrella forgotten and dancing away across the field.
I drop to his side, knees squelching in the mud.
And for the second time today I dare to ask, “Are you okay?”
He keeps his hand planted at his brow, but opens his eyes, staring sideways to me. His gaze flickers over me and then he lets go of his head and holds out his arm.
I pull him into a sitting position. He rolls his shoulders and eyes me again before flicking away his gaze. “Thank you,” he murmurs.
Then, upon glimpsing one madly-keen runner headed in our direction, he unzips his hoodie and hurriedly whisks it around my shoulders.
He pulls it smartly over my exposed scar, his fingers combing my collarbone, and he holds it there tightly.
One, two, three long breaths before he finally loosens his grip and slowly lets go.
The hoodie shifts, exposing it again. Trent glances away, throat jutting with a swallow, and he tracks the path of his runaway umbrella.
“You need a shower now too.”
“What?” His eyes snap back to me.
And I gesture to him, steeping in a large muddy puddle, as I zip into his hoodie properly. His gaze traces the roll of the zip and skips sideways again.
“How’d you find me anyway?”
“I was coming back from the supermarket . . .”
When he spied me, pulled over, and called.
I murmur, answering the question still lingering in his gaze, “I just needed a walk.” And somehow ended up on the City to Sea walkway in only jandals. “I was also on my way back.”
He rubs his head again and pushes himself to his feet, then holds out a hand for me to take. He clasps my palm solidly and I spring up against the hammering rain. There’s a moment our hands linger. Just one beat too long.
But the tip of his finger brushes the fish band and I pull free fast. I start racing towards the umbrella. “First to catch the umbrella gets the hot water.”
“Careful,” he calls, chasing after me. “It’s a slippery slope. You might fall.”