Avalon Expandable Heart: The Wild Heart Series

by Shantelle McKinnon

I don’t sing for a moment as his calloused fingers swirl on my palm. I almost close my eyes.

  And if this is what it takes,

  Then let me be the one to bear the pain

  My fingers work their way down those little fingers of muscle towards his back, tingling as I slowly manoeuvre closer to him, the heat of him causing me to experience a little lightheadedness. His large hand creeps up my arm, trailing languid and exceedingly gentle fingertips over my skin, goosebumps flaring under their wake.

  Oh, and if this is what it takes,

  I’ll break down these walls, these walls that are in our way

  If this is what it takes (*1)

  I work my hands over his lats, just happy to be able to touch him, explore the soft skin. I’m lost in it, the feeling. My brain notices that his heart beats are gaining momentum way too fast, but my body doesn’t care as his hand skims my shoulder. The other strong hand reaches for me and slides me up against him, hard, he’s almost panting now as I look at him, our faces only inches away. The heat from his body is intoxicating, I feel like that girl on the gas. Reckless and out of control.

  Suddenly, I’m flipped, he is on top of me, pressing himself into me. The monitor beeps like crazy.

  His lips graze my ear, “Every urge I’ve ever suppressed is right here, right now, Thornie.”

  That husky sentence is a warning and desperate plea, but instead of seeing the danger he wants me to realise is right there, right now, all I see the excitement. “I like treading on the dark side,” I whisper but I get a grip knowing that he is fighting a demon much bigger than I can imagine and put my hands on that huge, hard chest to push him off.

  He doesn’t move, and I know it’s to demonstrate that I would have no hope if things went array. If he lost to that demon. His heart rate slows, deliberate sounding. Focused. I know what that means. I’ve almost pushed him too far. Flatline.

  Time for a track change.

  “You forget that while I have a peach, you can have a mashed banana in under one second,” I raise an eyebrow at him in challenge.

  He rolls off and with one hand draws me to his side, his heartbeat again racing against my cheek. He stares at the ceiling, and I see the small smile tip his full lips.

  “You did great,” I whisper.

  Note *1 – ‘If this is what it takes’ by Shawn Mendes – Watch it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uH9yOEAylKg

  HAmmerhead

  Noah

  A solid hand wraps around my arm with the crushing capacity of a 10-tonne vice grip causing me to wake in a nanosecond. All my instincts are raring to fight at the touch, I try to shove them down because I know who it is, but it is challenging because who is snuggled up to me. Who I feel the need to protect.

  I move my head carefully as Av is sleeping soundly, her breath sends wafts of warm air over my arm and tickles my hairs. I rip my gaze from her soft pink lips to face him.

  Nathan is shirtless, and his cold, blue eyes flick down to my hand. “Is that meant to be on my sister?”

  I do not move my hand from her waist but stare back at him, my eyes as icy as his. Chops plops on the end of the bed as an annoying beeping accelerates from somewhere close. He smiles widely, which makes me swallow involuntarily. He seems happy. Nathan misses nothing.

  He grabs my hand roughly, like he half wants to relieve me of it, and points to the heart monitor clip on my finger. Shit. We’d totally forgotten to take it off last night after Av’s... experiment. I snatch my hand back, and I shake my head. I gesture to the patient next to Av all while marveling how fricken strong Nathan is. Av has told me plenty of stories of what he has done with that strength, but I guess having never tackled a water buffalo, carried a calf ten k’s or wrestled a python off a cow myself, makes it seem like I didn’t fully appreciate it.

  Nathan eyes me for a second, then the heart rate monitor before breathing out a sigh. “My sister is turning into a girl,” he shakes his head almost forlornly. “Listen to your heart, bloody hell.”

  He disappears behind the curtain between the old lady and us.

  Listen to your heart; I mull over his words. I realise I didn’t understand the experiment at all. I thought it was just to see if I got out of control, to monitor myself... but now, I wonder. Maybe she wanted me to listen to it literally to take my mind off my father’s words that were trying to pour through my mind as her delicate fingers trailed over my skin. Maybe she wanted me to see that I would live through it, that something wasn’t going to kill me for touching her. Maybe she wanted me to realise that my heart doesn’t care about my father’s decrees.

  “Get up,” Nathan reappears. Chops is at Av’s side before I can even think of moving or that leaving her alone wouldn’t be a good thing. He nods, his melted face watching me uncertainly like I might recoil from his presence. That I might not let him near my girl. His eyes lose some of their brightness. The end of his mouth on his uninjured side droops. A strange tremble wracks his body as he steps back, his body language reminding me of a rejected dog I saw at the shops once. I go to take the clip off and hand it to him.

  “No. Bring that thing with you,” Nathan nods, vice grip hands reaching out to grasp the monitoring machine, his voice reeking of impatience. “We don’t want them to think she’s flatlined.” He mumbles something about red-haired pain in the arses.

  I don’t want to move, but I’m sure that it will be easier, in the long run, to just get this over with. I learnt that last night; Nathan and Avalon are identical in the way they immediately want to do the thing they’ve thought of, no matter how ‘out there’ that idea may seem to me or to anyone else in the general population.

  Av tenses and moans slightly as I lift her and carefully slide my arm out from underneath her but happily tucks herself into Chops’s large side when he settles next to her. She seems to know it’s him and immediately drifts back to deeper sleep. I’m envious. At least Chops appears more content than a few seconds ago, especially after he listens to her breathing and smoothes her hair back from her face before closing his eyes, his smile seems to infuse his whole body. I peer at Nathan and smile with the understanding he trusts me with her, well, enough to leave me in a public place with her. Although, there is also the understanding he would choose chops over me any day.

  “Come on,” he pushes me with his boot which makes a fire pulse to life inside me. I’m not used to being manhandled by my own gender. I grit my teeth and push it down remembering that I wanted this, someone to keep me walking the line. If I don’t...

  I tread quietly to the old lady, who appears to be in such a deep sleep that only probably a police siren... or Nathan as the Grim Reaper could wake. He slides the machine into place and indicates I remove the finger sensor and put it on hers.

  I do.

  Oh shit. There’s nothing; no pulse, no beep. Zip. My eyes swing up to Nathan’s who is frowning deeply.

  “I’m guessing Av took this off her last night, right?” he whispers.

  I nod, glad I don’t have the thing on, or it would be beeping crazily. I hate death, hate it. Instead of the old lady now I only see my mother, the gaping hole in her chest, her cold skin. Her ribbons soaked in her own blood. The white sticks of her ribs revealing her empty cavity. Clamminess washes over me. I struggle to get a grip.

  “Then no matter what, she’s going to live.” Nathan moves to her sheet, I close my eyes terrified for the sight that I think will assault me. “I’m obviously more equipped to do this part; you do the breaths.” He cracks open my eyes to see him place his big hands on her frail looking chest.

  Again, if I had that thing on now, it would be the same as the old lady’s pulse because my heart has stopped. I’m caught between two worlds.

  “Come on, Av will freak out if she carks it,” he stresses. “She’ll blame herself, and we’ll never get her out of here.” That thumps me back to this world. From the corner of my eye, I see him start pumping her chest. He starts bopping his hips to the side as he sings a song cal
led ‘Staying Alive.’

  “Two breaths. Go!” he commands.

  His voice holds that same iron will that Av’s does when she’s bossy, but I still hesitate. Everything screams at me to back away, to run, that again this is my fault.

  “Go!” he hisses.

  I need to fix this. I need to stay.

  I have never let my lips touch anyone but Avalon and my heart rockets into my mouth. I bend over and... her lips are wrinkly and parched. They seem to crackle and shift like old paper against mine. I heave a stuttering breath in through them only to hear a funny click that bodes ill. Nathan has stopped pumping and has his phone out filming.

  “Boy,” a dry, high voice says full of amusement. “I saw those looks you were giving me but didn’t think you were serious, what, with my urine bag and all. But each to their own... I won’t say no and boy? I never kiss and tell.”

  I stare down at the old lady, waggling her eyebrows, in horror. Nathan laughs his arse off and finally staggers over to give the lady a high five.

  He slips a cord into the heart rate monitor and the clip on the old lady’s finger. It happily beeps with a mocking steadiness.

  I draw a trembling hand over my lips, wanting to desperately wipe them. Then I shake my head and a rueful smile haunts my unbelieving and horrified lips, I can’t believe I fell for that.

  “Can’t wait to show this to my sister!” Nathan grins. “Fixed you, mate. Easy as.”

  “Yeah,” I drawl trying to appear unaffected when all I want to do is to never talk again. I peer at the old lady again, noticing the white globs on the sides of her mouth. “Totally fixed.”

  My hands drift to my lips and I wake only to remember that memory wasn’t a damn nightmare, I can imagine Av will want to tattoo that whole damn thing on my back, urine bag and all. I look over to see her bed empty; Chops is there... eating from her breakfast tray, he bumps it over to me and says something. Even though I spent some time with him last night, I can’t make out his words at all and just gesture a no thanks, guessing he was offering some food.

  Nathan is gone too. They wouldn’t have left, would they? Chops has his own thing going on and probably will disappear off somewhere to work, but I really would have loved to see that Av was well enough to go home. Maybe Nathan didn’t trust me. Perhaps he saw the horror on my face last night and thought I was too wracked with problems to be any good for his sister.

  A scrap of paper is pushed into my vision. Scrawled on it are the words. They never leave you.

  Chops smiles softly at me and then continues to eat. They never leave you.

  ‘Everyone leaves you in some way or other,’ my dad had said once. ‘You just have to find that place inside where it doesn’t matter.’

  My eyes lift to study Chops who seems unworried, whose face is that horrific that Av said his family feel so uncomfortable in his presence that he rarely ever goes home. I wonder if he has a place like that or does he need one when he has the two people he feels safe with on find my friends and is willing to walk aimlessly in the city to find them. Does he need one when he believes deeply that they’ll never leave him?

  I hear laughter echoing down the hall and move to the door to see what’s happening.

  Av and Nathan’s voices are easily identifiable even though they are giggling like maniacs and trying to sing and argue at the same time. They round the bend in wheelchairs.

  “Haaammmmmeeeerrr heeeaadddd,” Av sings her body contorting in weird ways as she pushes the wheelchair. It kind of reminds me of the time I watched her preparing for the ‘All the Single Ladies’ dance. I think she’s trying to be sexy. I can’t help the chuckle that escapes at the view.

  “Haaammmmeeerrrr hhheeeaad,” Nathan sings, one hand running over his body suggestively, his lips pouting. “I’d get the job.”

  Av slaps him, “Would not. Hammerheads don’t look like ducks. They look like this.”

  She proceeds to sing the hammerhead line but this time with chomping scary teeth.

  Chops appears beside me, grinning. He says something as he rubs his hands together.

  “Hammer hhhhheaaaaaaaaaad!” Av and Nathan sing, louder and louder trying to outdo each other. I’m not sure what is wrong with them, they both seem wildly off their heads. They get up from their wheelchairs and dance while singing that one line. Hammerhead. Over and over again.

  Their dancing gets sillier and sillier until they fall over. Giggling.

  The large matron rushes past. Only to stop and swivel on her heel to stare at Chops.

  Her mouth flops open, but no words come out. Chops look down at the floor and melt back into the room.

  Both Av’s and Nathan’s heads tilt to the side as they watch, but they are so out of it that they can’t seem to work out what they should be doing about what they just saw. Obviously, they know it’s something they react to but they can’t quite grasp it.

  They look at each other and start laughing again. “Haaammmmeerr heeeaaaad!” they continue with their maniac one liner.

  “It’s old,” I say coldly to the matron who is still gazing into the room behind me.

  “Surely there is something we can do about it,” The Matron finds her voice. “That is atrocious.”

  “She said you’re atrocious,” Av laughs at Nathan, “I’m the best backup singer.”

  “No way,” Nathan performs the worm on the hospital floor. “Haaammemmeeer head! I can do the hammerhead while singing it, so I’d get the job.”

  Nathan grabs the Matron’s leg and bites her. She screams and jumps back but after having a good eyeful of the shirtless Nathan, blushes madly. He grins up at her. He even holds out her skirt to peek.

  “Totally the best hammerhead, aren’t I?” he asks her.

  “Oh gawd, not the James Reyne backup singer contest again!” A gravelly but amused voice pipes up from behind me. Chops immediately emerges from hiding. “When will you two leave that song in the bloody grave it belongs in?”

  “Pop, we found pregnant gas,” Av giggles.

  “Pregnant gas? Sounds fascinating. Chops, G’day son,” Pop shakes his hand, then mine. “Hey, Noah. I can’t imagine the night you must have had but let’s get these two mega nightmares home, what do you say?”

  “Unfortunately, she has to see the doctor first,” the Matron sighs, half still throwing admiring eyelash bats Nathan’s way, who has decided to keep on with the hammerhead movement, he sometimes nips at her leg. I notice she doesn’t pull it out of his reach.

  Av has climbed up on the wheelchair and is trying to run him over like she is fishing. They are both still laughing almost hysterically. Over nothing. It makes me start to chuckle as well.

  “Best you get him down here soon, who knows what stunts they’ll decide to try in a place with this many people and props,” Pop surveys the area with a practiced and knowing eye.

  “Too late,” I breathe, suddenly tired.

  “Really?” He looks at me with interest. “What did they do?”

  skeletons

  D

  “Does it fit okay?” I ask through my fingers. My fingernails gnawed to the skin.

  Av chuckles and pulls my other hand away from my eyes. I gasp. Not at the bikini that indeed resembles real steaks but at the blue, purple and yellow mottled skin splattered all over her side like the spread of a slime bomb (I know these well, as they have plastered to my clothing and hair on many occasions). Huge spider webs of the bruising finger out from her ribs and down over her stomach. I wince, Av shrugs.

  “I’m all good,” She brushes at the colours like they should fly off like flaky, pastel chalk residue, turning her blue eyes up to mine, meeting them squarely without any hidden emotions. “They stopped the kidney bleeding. I can finally go to the toilet without feeling like an unbreakable water balloon. It’s heaven! People that can wee have no idea what they’ve been gifted.” Her smile seems genuine.

  I feel terrible, and I open and close my mouth not sure what to say. A low growl erupts from behind
me, and I see Nathan glowering. It’s scary and I feel my skin prickle all over. I don’t know how Noah made it through the night. “All good? I’d hate to see shithouse. I should have thrown him in front of a train,” he grumbles in a voice that says he had no other choice in the matter. “Or ‘weed’ on him with all my giftedness.”

  Sam, Nathan’s ever-present shadow, agrees, rubbing his beefy hands together. “Both, I reckon. I would have held his mouth open for you.” He winks at Av. “You better have bloody good aim, though... if one drop touched...,” he trails off at Nathan’s raised eyebrow.

  Av told me that Sam had rung bored and lonely as Seth had gone off with Kelsey to ‘study’ and they had picked him up after spending some time at the hostel practicing. Sam had been glued to Nathan’s side since then. She reckoned Sam would propose to either marry Nathan or start a cult in his name, Sam as the high priest.

  Av rang up after school and asked if we’d like to come over for a back from hell BBQ. I was getting nowhere with studying for English, the boring book losing its meaning from the endless amount of analysis, and that exam wasn’t tomorrow so agreed happily. I had been so worried about her, knowing she was in the hospital. Tina, Lucy, Wade and Jaime had picked me up to come as well. Roo had to stay home as her mum was hell-bent on her doing well in her economics exam tomorrow. It felt nice to be all together again. I really miss Av when I don’t see her.

  When Tina pulled up at Harry’s, we all literally sat in the car and stared, statues. I don’t think any of us had encountered anyone such as Nathan. Even from a distance, his blue eyes - the exact colour of Avalon’s - felt like they could laser the car we sat in, to smithereens. Even though he can be quiet, sometimes, his presence possesses something that causes me to always be hyper-aware of him. Everyone else, seems small in comparison, except Av, of course, not in stature but presence. The way he holds himself, moves, looks, has diminished a lot of the fear I had of Seth and Noah because I know that Nathan is capable, just like Avalon, of much, much worse. I don’t know what makes me believe that, but I just know it down to my bones. For some reason though, it doesn’t make me fearful. Wade and Jaime had swallowed audibly until Av had come to the car herself to cajole us out.