Chapter Nine
Scratching on the roof. Footsteps up and down.
Clunks and creaks. A ladder? A soft string of curses.
Cameron’s voice. Half-asleep, it’s hard to remember why I hated him so thoroughly.
He’d never been one of the bullies. He doesn’t lie.
What he said was unkind, but he knew how important my glasses were and—
My alarm goes off and I scrabble for my phone. My abdomen is tender. I rub my side. Aching. But …
I push back the sheet and swing my legs onto the floor. ‘I’ll live after all.’
‘Keith Urban!’ Cameron’s hiss is loud. ‘Get out of my way.’
After brushing my hair and tying it back, I venture outside. Cameron, standing midway up a ladder, is holding the same canvas bag he had when he was up the tree. That was only yesterday but feels like a long time ago. His hair is wet and he’s shaved.
Do I stare like he stared when I was perched on the ladder that leads to the loft? This is a different kind of staring.
‘What are you doing?’
He lifts the bag. ‘Christmas lights.’
It’s his cabin so he can do what he likes, but are the lights for him or for me? ‘Are you going to decorate your house too?’
‘No.’ He looks at me critically. ‘How are you?’
‘Very well, thank you.’ An excellent response for a twelve-year-old. Keith Urban, lying on his back under the ladder, looks up and wags his tail. Without thinking, I kneel to pat him and pain shoots up my back. ‘Oh!’
Cameron jumps from the ladder. ‘You’re still in pain.’
‘It’s much better than it was.’ I take a deep breath before standing. My feet are bare so he seems even taller than usual. ‘It’ll be fine tomorrow.’
‘I’ll finish the lights.’ He lifts a hand then drops it. ‘Go lie down.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t—’
‘Tell you what to do?’ His brow lifts.
The first time I told him not to tell me what to do, I’d skipped another grade so I would have been nine and he would have been eleven.
Often paired in maths, we would sit at a table in an annex off our classroom and work our way through problem questions.
Our teacher, Miss Winters, a stern woman with a tight grey bun, put Cameron in charge of selecting the questions and how we’d go about answering them.
I tolerated this arrangement at first, but as Cameron and I were equals (in a mathematical sense), I didn’t particularly like it.
Did I sulk? I probably did, because we’d only worked together a few times when he asked me what my problem was.
‘Don’t tell me what to do,’ I said.
Clearly surprised, he’d sat back in his chair. ‘Why not?’
I don’t recall how I responded, but whatever I said mustn’t have satisfied him because he still told me what to do and I still didn’t like it. I still don’t like it, but—
Our eyes lock.
But then he turns his back and I move away.
When I’m safely in the cabin again, I sit on the sofa, one pillow behind my back and another at my side, a mug of tea on the small table next to me.
But after I’ve returned calls and updated my diary, the ache in the small of my back has travelled up and down my spine, so I rearrange the pillows and lie down facing the door. A car pulls up. Doors slam.
‘Tell Amelie we hope she feels better soon.’ Anna, Cameron’s sister.
A child’s laughter. Cameron laughs too.
‘Cam!’ Anna again. ‘You can swing Tara around as much as you like tonight. Are you sure you don’t mind babysitting?’
‘That’s why I shaved.’
‘My daughter must be the only female you know who doesn’t appreciate a three-day growth.’
The tree framed by the kitchen window has long and slender leaves and rough brown bark.
A peppermint gum. On this side of the window, the snowflakes on the Christmas ball glisten and sparkle.
Anna drives away, so Cameron might come back.
He told me to lie down, so I should sit up.
Were things always so complicated between us?
When we were at school, he was way too cool to even pretend to compete with me academically.
As to the rest, sports, friends, citizenship, there was no competition.
One teacher, believing I was out of earshot, described me to another teacher as ‘an odd little thing’.
The comment should have hurt, but I was numb to hurt by then.
Anyway, I’d topped the state in a maths competition and was about to go to high school.
Some teachers had reservations about me doing that, possibly on account of me being ‘an odd little thing’ and only ten years old, but my parents argued I didn’t need a friendship group (I didn’t have one now) and pushed for it.
Academically, I was happy at high school, and the kids there didn’t overtly bully me.
Maybe that’s why it went unnoticed for so long—it was mostly the twelve-year-olds still in primary school who harassed me.
The more I see of Cameron, the more likely it is that I’ll have to face what happened in the playground, and I’d prefer to get it over with. When I raised it a few hours ago, he told me I should rest, but it’s bound to come around again.
He said he wasn’t there. How did I get that so wrong?
It was a hot November day and the air conditioning on the school bus had broken down, so it was a relief to get off when it stopped at the caravan park.
‘You’re closer to town than you were,’ the driver said.
I’d moved the grey horse no one wanted (the horse I’d called Atticus) from our corner of the farm where we used to live to a vacant block of land next to the caravan park.
He had his head over the fence as I trudged past with my backpack.
I rubbed under his forelock and, as it would be cooler in the evening, promised to ride him after I was home from the library.
The library, and my favourite librarian Claudine, operated out of the community centre on the other side of the park from Dr McLeod’s terraces.
I wouldn’t usually have walked to the library via the play equipment, but there was no one in sight, the crickets chirruped and the eucalypts waved me in.
The roundabout, a large, circular, timber platform with metal railings on the top, would have been there for decades, as would the dusty track that surrounded it.
I’d seen what to do—grasp a railing and run around the track to gather speed and then leap onto the platform.
I’d always been curious and this was my chance.
I carefully placed my library bag near the see-saw and laid my glasses on top.
It was heavier than I’d imagined it’d be, but I turned the roundabout six times to gain momentum before jumping on.
It wasn’t moving quickly, but I clung to the railing with both hands as a kaleidoscope of trees spun around me.
It’s unlikely what happened was technically premeditated because the boys—some small, some tall, some I recognised, some I didn’t—wouldn’t have anticipated I’d be there when they ran across the park.
But once they saw it was me on the roundabout, it was The Lord of the Flies reimagined.
I’d read the book and hadn’t liked it. Maybe this was why.
Stop it! I’ll fall!
What’s new?
I’m dizzy!
I can’t see!
That’s because you’re cross-eyed!
I was spinning so fast and feeling so sick I couldn’t make out left or right or up and down and—
‘Amelie.’ A gentle voice. A man’s voice. ‘You’re dreaming.’
I hiccup and gulp and cough as I struggle to sit. I swipe at my cheeks and blow my nose. When I bury my face against my knees, Cameron crouches.
‘What did you dream?’
When I turn my head and breathe in, I smell his fresh clean pine scent. ‘I don’t want to think about it.’
His knee creaks when he stands. ‘Anna brought you this.’
When he passes the heat pack wrapped in a towel, our fingers touch. Index fingers and middle fingers. Two plus two, all lined up. His fingers are longer than mine. My fingers are warmer than his. He turns his hand slowly, a delicate touch, and our fingers entwine.
‘Cameron?’ My voice is wobbly. ‘Milly said you’ve been like a father to CJ. You’re close to Tara too, aren’t you?’
‘They’re great kids.’
‘Cameron?’
‘Amelie?’
‘I’ve had a very confusing day.’
When he smiles, it’s the bright-eyed smile I searched for all those years ago. ‘Me too.’
Intimacy. Me and Cameron. How could that ever work out? I savour his touch for one, two, three more heartbeats and then I draw away.