Roars of laughter sailed up from the water, getting louder as we bumped down the lawn. At least someone was enjoying this.
With a grunt, Cal launched me into the air.
I flew, my limbs limp like a ragdoll, unable to change my course. The water swallowed me, and I sank deeper than I expected, taking a huge gulp of water as I went under. I surfaced in a fit of coughs and the chill of the water stunned the breath right out of me.
Cal waded into the water laughing, but he was an idiot if he thought it was smart to be near me after that stunt.
‘You jerk!’ I yelled, and he laughed harder. I wiped my hair off my face and stumbled forward, the sludge oozing around my sock-covered feet. My hands clenched at my sides, and I gritted my teeth. The heat within me rose, warmed me, and I welcomed the anger. ‘You’re so gonna pay for that.’
The water rushed at me as Cal stepped closer, a big cheeky grin on his face; I refused to let it get to me. ‘You wouldn’t know payback if it hit you in the face.’
I frowned. ‘Really?’
He stared me down, the light in his eyes daring me. My lips twitched. Damn it, he was good. He might not think I had it in me, but if he got to dunk me fully clothed into an extremely cold lake, I owed it to myself to show him some of his own. I lifted my hands to the surface of the water and propelled them forward directing a missile of water straight into his face.
I caught him off guard and grabbed the opportunity to lunge at him. Placing my hands on his head, I pushed my body up and dunked him under the water. I immediately swam into deeper water where, finally, I laughed.
I pulled off my socks. ‘And Sean?’ I threw the wet ball across the water into his face. ‘Those are for you.’
He spat out the water they’d served him. ‘Gross.’
‘Max, help me with this, will you?’ I shrugged out of my jacket and she pulled it away. ‘Catch.’ I tossed it to Cal, who threw it to the shore. I thought about going down to my underwear, it couldn’t be any worse than a bikini, but I chickened out. If it weren’t for Tyler being here I may’ve done it, but his presence meant I wore an extra coating of self-consciousness.
The mood of everyone else lifted with mine, and the air filled with the sounds of laughter. The cool water rolled over me and it grew surprisingly pleasant. I floated on my back, enjoying the peace that came with being out on the lake. The voices softened as I drifted further away and surrendered to the calm.
‘Beautiful, isn’t it?’ I turned my head toward Tyler’s gentle voice. He floated beside me, not close enough to bump me but enough to hear him clearly above the ripples of lapping water. This is it, now or never, the moment of truth.
‘Sure is.’ I returned to admiring the changing sky; the darkening blue behind clouds that reflected the last of the sun’s light, transforming them into a delicate but bright pink.
‘I’ve never seen pink clouds like this before.’
I looked over at him. ‘Really? How is that possible?’
‘I grew up in the city. Too many buildings and lights, I guess.’
‘You live close to the city centre?’
‘Nah, not really. But obviously close enough not to see these. Or maybe I just never noticed them.’
‘I’ve never been to Sydney.’
Tyler treaded water and faced me. ‘How’s it possible to live in Australia and never go to Sydney?’
‘Not sure.’ I laughed. ‘But why would you when you’ve got all this?’ I swept my arm to take in the mountains on the other side of the lake. Just say it.
‘Fair point.’
‘Do you miss it?’ I inwardly groaned. Just rip the friggin’ Band-Aid off already.
‘What, the city?’
‘Yeah.’
‘The waves I do, but it’s not so bad here.’
I drew in a breath. One, two… ‘You saw me.’
As soon as the words were out I wanted to take them back. I’d fired the bullet without thinking of the consequences. What if he closed up? I kicked harder, moved my hands faster, as if I needed to stop them from reaching out and clutching at the words flying across the water.
Tyler questioned me with his eyes.
My chest tightened uncomfortably as I waited for him to say something, anything.
He didn’t. Instead, he bobbed in the water two metres away, staring at me intently.
I was back at the airport, gazing into those deep dark eyes.
A splash of water struck my face, and Sean burst up from under the surface beside us. ‘What’re you two doin’ all the way out here? The crocs’ll have a feast.’
‘Shame there aren’t any crocs then, hey.’
‘Shame for who?’ He crumpled his nose and swam away laughing.
Tyler’s eyes zeroed in on me. ‘I did.’
The air left me, and the vice around my chest squeezed harder.
‘Why didn’t you say something?’
‘Why didn’t you?’
I opened my mouth – because I’d been too scared, because all signs pointed to it only being me. I closed it again.
‘Exactly. I kept dropping hints, but I didn’t want to be the first one to say something…even if I did know you recognised me.’
Hang on, what? How?
‘Hey, you lot, time to head in,’ Max called from the bank. ‘Pizza’s nearly here.’
I shifted my attention to everyone swimming to shore and a chorus of ‘Awesome’ and ‘I’m starved’, leaving Tyler and I alone in the water.
‘I guess we should go in,’ Tyler said reluctantly and curled his lips.
No way, I wanted answers. We’d finally landed at the destination we’d been avoiding for days, and I wasn’t leaving till I’d checked out the sights.
I narrowed my eyes. ’Don’t do that.’
‘What? Look at you?’ He said it with a straight face but a tease flickered from his eye.
‘Aargh, don’t side step, how the hell did you know I recognised you? What else do you know?’
‘Nothing.’ He avoided my eye.
‘Now you’re being difficult.’ I kicked away from him, tired of this standoff. Pizza sounded good.
He swam to me, and I stopped kicking, began hoping.
‘Lucy, wait, I’m sorry. I’m not sure what you want me to say. Yes, I saw you in a dream, and yes I know you saw me too. If you want me to tell you why we were in each other’s dream, then I’m afraid that’s something I have no explanation for. I’ve got nothing.’ He wiped his wet hair from his eyes and held my look, his eyes softening the sharp lines of his jaw.
‘Are you like me? Do you dream like me?’ I whispered the words then held my breath.
His look of sympathy gave me the answer before he spoke. ‘No.’
I liked Tyler, and wanting him to be like me would be inflicting pain on a friend. Still, the rock, hard disappointment, settled in my stomach, and tears bristled behind my eyes. I slowed my feet and let the weight swallow me for a second, disappearing under the water.
I surfaced with a gasp, brushing my dark hair away from my face. A flock of birds soared across the sky. I concentrated on the dark shapes, clear even against the deep evening blue, before moving my attention back to the question and concern in Tyler’s eyes. ‘How did you know? I mean, how did you know I saw you too?’
‘I didn’t at the time, before I moved here that is. But when you bumped into me, when you looked up at me, nothing could be clearer. It was written all over your face.’ He smiled. ‘And then when you couldn’t get far enough away from me, well…it left no doubt.’
‘Why didn’t you want to stay away from me? I mean, this is scary as hell.’
‘Because it was you.’ He spoke with a hushed tenderness, and I caught my breath. What did he mean by that?
‘We couldn’t get you in the water, now we can’t get you out?’ Cal’s voice boomed. He stood twenty metres away on the shore, his hands cupped around his mouth, silhouetted by a backdrop of the golden glow of the house. ‘You get first shower,
Luce, it’s only fair, hey? But you gotta hurry.’ His wide grin was his attempt at a truce.
‘More than fair I’d say,’ I shouted. ‘Might take me a while to get up the bank in these clothes though.’
‘That’s your own fault, should’ve joined us when you had the chance.’
We swam to shore, and the soft mud of the lake bed squelched through my toes. I pulled my hair behind me and squeezed out the excess water.
‘Are you all right?’ Tyler paused and flicked his head, droplets of water arcing over him. He ran his hands through his hair, dark eyes piercing in the growing moonlight.
‘Depends. Are you talking about the clothes or the fact I’ve just discovered we have some mutual supernatural power?’ I smirked.
‘The clothes,’ he said. ‘But I think we should talk more about this super power you think we have.’
‘Super natural.’
‘Nah, just super.’
I really wanted to stay and talk more, but my body had other ideas. My teeth chattered and sopping wet clothes stuck to my skin, inducing an all-body shake. Cal called again.
‘Come on, let’s get up to the house, you need to change,’ Tyler said, raising an arm to wrap around my shoulders. He hesitated and dropped his hand. ‘Uh, sorry.’
I grinned. ‘It’s all right. I won’t bite.’
We walked toward the amber light and noise from the house. ‘It’s not your teeth I’m worried about. It’s those daggers you keep using on me.’
— 11 —
How could Tyler act so calm? I’d spent over a week in near apocalyptic frenzy over seeing him, and he sat there like a Buddhist monk, not a care in the world. His easy posture on the other side of the fire pit was clearly visible through the copper flames, and our shared glances warmed me as much as the heat from the glow between us.
My feet were tucked under me, and I clutched a blanket around my shoulders, savouring the scent of smoke and burnt marshmallows. Cal’s parents retreated inside, leaving the six of us staring quietly into the firelight.
The neighbours were too far away to be heard, and traffic had stopped hours ago. The only sounds came from the wildlife in the trees above and the spit and crackle of the fire. It was almost serene.
Almost.
It might’ve been perfect had it not been for the thundering turmoil spinning out of control inside my head. I tried to shut it out, but my mute button was broken. The flames and darkness were like a lullaby encouraging my thoughts to wander. How much longer would I need to sit in agony before we got the chance to talk?
In my frustration I impaled another marshmallow and poked it toward the coals.
A shadow appeared over me, and I turned as Tyler sat beside me.
‘I need one of those,’ he said, reaching into the bag of marshmallows and plonking one into his mouth. He lowered his head and whispered near my ear. ‘Actually, I just wanted an excuse to come sit beside you.’
I was immensely grateful for the darkness. ‘To talk about super powers?’
‘That might have to wait. It’s too quiet out here.’ Ah yes. Any conversation around the stillness of the fire was open for all to hear. He must have sensed my disappointment and leaned in again to give me a single word of hope. ‘Tomorrow?’
‘Tomorrow.’ I pulled the blanket under my chin.
‘Who wants to play fact or fallacy?’ Amber said to a chorus of groans. ‘Oh come on, guys, you know you want to – just one round?’ Her eyes pleaded, and Cal relented.
‘I’m a lost cause when you look at me like that,’ he said.
‘I know.’
Cal poked at the fire. ‘Fine. Fact or fallacy…I hate playing soccer in the rain.’
I laughed hard to a yelled chorus of ‘Fallacy!’
‘Too easy,’ Sean said. ‘You couldn’t pretend to hate soccer if you tried.’
‘Do another one.’ Amber tapped his knee.
He gave in. ‘All right. Fact or fallacy, I once killed a magpie.’
‘Fallacy. There’s absolutely no way you’d do that,’ Amber said.
‘I dunno.’ Sean bunched his eyes together. ‘Cal’s looking pretty guilty. I say fact.’
‘Me too,’ Max said and the rest of us followed suit; the guilt on his face plainly obvious. He sat quiet, eyes cast downward, and Amber waited for him to refute what now appeared to be fact.
She gasped and placed a hand over her heart. ‘No. When, how?’
Cal slunk his shoulders. ‘It was an accident. With a slingshot I made camping last year. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…well, I didn’t think I’d get it.’
‘I thought you’d at least say you did it when you were a kid! How could you?’ Amber pouted. ‘Sometimes I wonder about you, Cal Brooks.’
‘You wanted to play,’ Max said.
‘I know, I know, doesn’t mean I’m going to like what I hear.’
‘If it makes you feel better, I felt really, really bad.’
‘It does, I didn’t think you were that heartless.’ She placed a hand on Cal’s leg. ‘Okay. Dare I ask who’s next? Lucy?’
‘No way, I got nothing. You guys know me too well.’
‘Je ne – I don’t,’ Tyler said, and the gentleness of his words, as if he wanted to know me, tingled the skin on my arms beneath the blanket.
I was barely able to stutter my response. ‘Maybe later.’
Tyler lowered his eyes and the edge of his lips rose.
Sean moved quickly to my defence. ‘All right, I’ll go. Fact or fallacy…when I was younger I almost ran away to join the circus.’
‘Define almost,’ Cal said.
‘Bags packed.’
‘No way,’ Cal said. ‘Fallacy for sure.’ And everyone except me agreed with him.
‘Fact,’ I piped up, and all eyes zoned in on me. ‘I remember it.’
‘Really? It’s true?’ Max said, and Sean nodded slowly.
‘Ah, so there are some things you two don’t know about each other.’ Cal waggled a finger at the two of them.
My eyes met Sean’s. ‘It was right after your dad left. You wanted to run away, like he had. I was going to come too if I remember rightly.’
‘Yeah, you were.’ He waved his stick in the air as he told the story. ‘You wanted to be a tightrope walker, and I was gonna learn the trapeze.’ He sputtered out a laugh and I joined him.
We had it all planned out – as much as you do when you’re ten. The circus was coming to town in a week; it was the only detail we needed.
‘I can’t believe I knew nothing about this.’ Max put one hand on her hip and swivelled to face me.
‘Me either, I would’ve joined you.’ Cal laughed. ‘So why’re you both still here, what stopped you?’ he said mockingly.
Sean’s face fell. We exchanged looks, before he said in a soft voice, ‘Richie.’
If it were possible for a falling pin to make a sound on the soft earth at our feet, we would’ve heard it.
Richie died the day after we made plans to escape with the circus and, until now, those plans were forgotten like the little packed bag behind my bedroom door.
A tear fell onto my cheek, and I quickly brushed it away. I wasn’t the only one with renewed grief at remembering our friend, and Cal’s brother. A hush enclosed around us. It had been a shared loss and it would always be a shared grief.
Tyler shifted uncomfortably on the bench alongside me. Did he know the details or the gravity of the moment he’d found himself in?
‘Fact or fallacy…’ He gently broke the silence, and our tense shoulders relaxed as we moved our attention toward him. My heart fluttered when his eyes locked with mine, nervously anticipating what he might reveal. He paused as if undecided, if he should continue.
‘I’m secretly terrified about skiing tomorrow. Everyone thinks I’ll be a natural because I can surf, but I have a feeling I’m gonna be humiliated.’ He let out a big breath.
I covered my mouth to stop a laugh, but when Cal snorted and Tyler’s lips turned u
p, I didn’t suppress it any longer. It wasn’t something particularly funny, but off the back of the sombre mention of Richie, it was our undoing. Our unrestrained merriment echoed across the lake, and it didn’t take long for the kookaburras in the nearby trees to join us in the cackle.
The beds were all prepped when we headed inside for the night. It didn’t matter how old we got, or that the occupants had changed over the years, we still acted like six-year-olds as we dragged the mattresses out to the lounge room when we stayed at Cal’s. It was a small part of our childhoods we weren’t prepared to give up yet.
I changed into my spotted fleecy pyjamas before joining everyone in the lounge room. I stopped short at the edge of Sean’s bed. The only way to reach mine was to climb over the already occupied mattresses covering every available surface of the floor. Obstacle course style, I leaped and balanced from one bed to the next. I was doing well as I dodged Sean’s head and Tyler’s legs, but then I misjudged my footing, fell, and wedged myself between two of the beds. I was unflatteringly stuck, with not one of my friends ignoring the opportunity to laugh at my expense. I tried to laugh myself, but with the mattresses pressed into my rib cage I couldn’t move. Cal’s feet were on one side of my head and Tyler was, just my luck, on the other. He lay on his side smiling, his head inches from mine.
‘I feel I need to ask you again if you’re all right,’ he said.
‘Perfectly fine.’ I forced out a smile and tried to hide the embarrassment that flared inside me. ‘All this padding to land on helped.’ I patted the mattress beside me.
‘This falling thing of yours, is it a new habit?’ His grin radiated over my skin.
‘It’s not so much a habit, as a misfortune, I think, but yeah, it seems to be a more recent happening.’
His brown hair flopped over his creased forehead and rested right above his full eyebrows. And on his chin, right below his well-formed mouth, a tiny, dot-like dimple twitched when he spoke.
‘Need help to get up?’ His question dragged my focus back to his eyes. How long had I been staring?
‘Oh, um, I think I’m all right.’ I tried to bring my arms behind me so I could leverage myself up, but there was no space on either side of me and I felt like a beached dolphin as I flapped my arms and legs about. We both laughed, and Tyler knelt to give me a lift. I placed my hands into his offered ones and the tingling coursing through my body exploded. His eyes were full of a heat I’d not seen before now. It rushed to my fingers where our skin touched.
Lucid Page 9
