CHAPTER 26
So it’s not awesome. It’s fucked. It’s a giant pig pen of stormwater mixed with kilos upon kilos of churned-up topsoil.
Three hours of incessant rain has transformed the festival site into a dystopian moonscape.
The storm clouds have long since rolled away, but the sky is a sheet of white and the wide, grassy clearing is now slick and untrustworthy.
It feels like I’m dancing on banana peels, while the skin above my gumboots is a Jackson Pollock artwork of mud splatters.
It’s purifying, I tell myself firmly. Like a mud facial for the knees.
Around us, thousands of bodies undulate with the beat, stamping any last shreds of grass into a grey-brown sludge.
We’ve linked up with a random crew of Maxy’s uni mates, a couple of his colleagues from the mines and Jessie’s work friends.
We’re all of the age where we should probably be starting to think about investing in the stock market and podiatrist-approved footwear, but instead, we’re bouncing around in a quagmire while the DJ duo on stage plays an elaborate mash-up of early nineties bangers.
Despite the mud, Jessie is as surefooted as ever.
She’s performing graceful pirouettes, using the underfoot lubrication to garner extra speed.
Maxy is stationary from the hips down, pumping his hands like eggbeaters.
Their movements are joyful, their expressions beatific, both of them swept away in the music and the moment.
Meanwhile, I am definitely not worried about whether this mud is full of bacteria. I have no fear of waking up tomorrow with dysentery. Absolutely not. No way. I am having the time of my life.
Maxy wraps an arm around my shoulder. ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ he yells. ‘Wanna come?’
I nod, trying to match his smile. I am not caring about stupid crap today. (Though it’s very possible there is literal crap in this mud but I am DELETING THAT THOUGHT FROM MY MIND RIGHT NOW.)
We tramp through the soggy paddock towards the vans selling overpriced beers and seltzers. Mazes of portable steel gates are arranged in front of them, directing the foot-traffic through hairpin turns. We attach ourselves to the end of a queue and wait.
‘You right?’ Maxy asks, as I tiptoe on the spot to test the suction force of the mud.
‘Yep.’ I nod too quickly.
He pokes my shoulder.
‘Ow.’
Maxy’s mouth curves up. ‘Calm down.’
‘I’m super calm.’ I give him an exaggerated glare but it fades at his sceptical expression. ‘Sorry. It’s just the mud. It’s very …’
‘Muddy?’ suggests Maxy.
I ruffle his hair. ‘And that’s why I work in communications and you do … mine-y stuff.’ (I still have no idea what he does.)
‘The trick with the mud is to stamp through it,’ explains Maxy. ‘If you’re too careful, that’s when you slip up. You’ve got to be forceful. Dance as hard as you can. Full aggression.’
‘I can be aggressive.’
‘I know.’
I smile. ‘How do you know so much about mud dancing?’
Maxy shrugs. ‘Mine-y stuff.’
I giggle and we take two paltry steps forward. ‘These guys are awesome,’ I say, inclining my head towards the distant stage where a rollicking mix of Sheryl Crow and Smash Mouth is pumping through the speakers.
Maxy nods. ‘I’ve been wanting to see them for ages.’
‘Then why aren’t you back there dancing, you winkipop?’
Maxy pokes me in the shoulder again. ‘Because my little sister needed a breather.’
‘Maxy!’ I cry. ‘Go back to Jessie and the others right now and I’ll bring you your drinks. Go! Now!’
Maxy waves his hand dismissively. ‘There’s nowhere I’d rather be, Millsy Moo-cow.’ Then he pokes me again just to be annoying.
After we finally buy our six overpriced seltzers, I try to rush us back to the stage so Maxy doesn’t miss any more of the set but he leisurely trails behind me, as if to emphasise his complete equanimity.
‘Hooray!’ cries Jessie when she spots us.
Her hair is filled with sparkly butterfly clips that glint under the coloured lights.
She grabs two seltzers and slides them into the pockets of her bike shorts that are half covered by her rainbow crochet dress.
I briefly wonder whether she’ll stop the vigorous leg movements to minimise the drink shakeage, but nope.
Within seconds she’s doing more high-knees manoeuvres.
Maxy nudges me with his shoulder. Full aggression, he mouths.
At that moment, the opening notes drop on one of our all-time favourite anthems: gloriously cringeful Blink 182.
If there was ever a moment for cathartically aggressive dancing, I know with every molecule of my body that this is it.
In unison, the three of us soar into the sky and splash back down into the mud, our faces all assembled in the same crazed expression we implicitly understand to mean: How fricking good? !
As the chorus picks up, the crowd roars in approval. This, I remember, is what life is all about: dancing, singing, being total dipshits with my favourite people in the universe.
‘Nailed it!’ cries Maxy, hauling us towards him when the song ends. My mouth tips open, brimming with laughter, as we stumble into the group hug, and my neck swivels to avoid a head clash. That’s when I spot him about ten metres away.
My face-wide grin falls in disbelief. I crane my neck further and blink three times to check I’m not imagining things.
I haven’t seen Archie without a suit on in years. I wriggle out of Maxy’s embrace and march over. Archie spots me when I’m about five metres away and I watch his face contort in confusion, then disbelief, but by the time I’m next to him, his expression is one of wicked glee.
‘Why aren’t you working?’ I demand, pointing at his chest.
‘Why aren’t you working?’ he retorts, in a tone that indicates he is definitely playing the copying game. He grins and starts doing the robot. I pretend it’s not happening.
‘I’m going back over here to do my cool dance moves,’ I yell, turning away from him. ‘Don’t watch me.’
‘Don’t watch me,’ he calls as I stride back through the throng of bodies.
I lift my arms to get back to raising the roof but now I’ve noticed Archie, I can’t stop looking at him. I imagine this is what happens when Byron Bay locals spot a Hemsworth brother in town. It’s surprisingly difficult to play it cool.
Archie seems to be with his footy crowd. Big dudes, slim girls, everyone very shiny and hot, despite the mud. He keeps doing stupid dance moves like the lawn mower and everyone is laughing as though he’s hilarious.
I shimmy around to face the opposite direction and try to focus on the music.
This is my Zen place. Dancing. Whipping my hair.
Making eye contact with Maxy’s friends and smiling at them as if I’m the cool sister.
The DJ duo has finished up and now a rapper in a gold tracksuit is jumping on the stage while dancers in pink knee-high boots gyrate around him.
Suddenly the rapper is yelling, ‘I want to see every homie with a lady in the air!’
Out of nowhere, a guy in a stringlet plucks me off the ground and hoists me onto his shoulders. With a hammering heart, I strain my neck to see his face and the septum ring confirms it’s definitely not one of Maxy’s friends. I have never met this guy in my life.
‘Let me down!’ I scream, swinging my legs wildly, trying to wriggle off.
The guy is clearly off his face and hardly reacts when I kick my gumboot hard into his chest. It only takes a split-second for the fear to harden like ice in my throat. ‘Maxy!’ I gasp, but he can’t hear me. He’s too distracted by the performance, as is Jessie.
I feel anxiety rising through my chest but then suddenly an arm is around my waist and I’m being pulled off Stringlet Dude’s shoulders.
‘You okay, Millsy?’ Archie yells over the music.
I’d assumed it would have been one of Maxy’s friends rescuing me. ‘I’m fine!’ I snap, mortified.
‘This is where you say thanks!’
‘I didn’t ask to be saved!’
‘Millsy, you were about to have a panic attack!’
I feel tears welling in my eyes, which is such incredibly bad timing. I do not want Archie Cohen to see me cry, but a complete stranger just tossed me around like I was a rag doll. I have every right to cry!
‘Millsy, come here,’ he says, trying to pull me into a hug.
I feel his hands on my skin, which flares at his touch. My vision is clouding; my mind is turning to jelly.
I try to pull away but the ground is uneven—churned up by hours of rain and moshing—and I feel the momentum gather from the tips of my toes through the ball of my foot.
Suddenly my leg is sliding left, gaining speed like a Formula One car exiting the pits.
I pitch forward, trying to overcorrect, but the gravity-rush shocks me and I stumble backwards.
I see Archie’s eyes widen as my arms start windmilling madly, and there’s just enough time for me to think Fucking Archie!
before I fall straight back into the soup of gelatinous, grey-brown mud.
‘ARGH!!!’ I scream. My two braids are immediately trampled, pulling my head in opposite directions.
I try to scramble up but there are human legs everywhere, completely oblivious to the body beneath them as they stomp to the brain-rattling beat.
I swerve my head to avoid a giant Air Jordan that’s heading for my face and instead cop a mouthful of mud.
I choke, straining for air, but there’s too much dirt in my mouth.
I can’t breathe! I’m going to suffocate in this mud.
I’m going to be on the front page of the Telegraph: the girl who died at SoulFest!
The panic spurts through me. If they print my current Facebook profile pic, the one of me eating the democracy sausage, it’ll set me up for a never-ending legacy of Deep Throat jokes.
If Jessie is going to earn her stripes as a sister, she MUST give them a better photo.
Oh god, I miss her already! I hope she knows how much I love her.
And Maxy too! And Dad! My mind is spinning properly now; my thoughts are like a ream of A4 pages caught in a tornado.
And the mud! It’s in my hair and my ears and …
suddenly a pair of big bear arms are pulling me up and thank Christ Archie is such a sturdy bear of a man!
‘YOU MADE ME FALL!’ I scream. My fear has been replaced by a raging embarrassment that needs to be channelled somewhere.
‘Are you okay?’ Archie yells over the music.
‘What do you reckon?’ I yell, pushing ineffectually at his chest. He is so infuriatingly solid.
‘You’re really soaked!’ he yells back, unhelpfully.
He’s right, though. This mud is freezing and I’m pretty sure it’s seeped through to my undies. People will think I’ve shat myself.
‘Wanna go to my tent?’ Archie yells. ‘I have spare clothes! Clean ones!’
ARGHHHH. My brain performs some nanosecond calculations, which are heavily influenced by the mud that is inching alarmingly close to my vagina.
I look over at Jessie and Maxy. I can see them scanning the crowd for me. I don’t want to ruin their night too.
‘Guys!’ I call, smiling through the imminent hypothermia and death-by-sheer-embarrassment. ‘I had a fall! I’m gonna grab Archie’s spare clothes!’ I jerk my thumb behind me then turn back to Archie before they can argue. I am not letting them cut their night short for me.
‘Okay!’ I yell to Archie. ‘Fix this!’