Zoë’s cheeks burn bright.
She climbs into the back of the police car and slumps down as low as she can while Kolovelonis and Inglis trade stories about their upcoming days off. Kolovelonis has a friend’s birthday party, while Inglis is going for a drink with someone she met on a dating app. For the officers, this is just another shift at work. For Zoë, it feels like one of the most humiliating moments of her life.
They arrive at the police station and Inglis offers Zoë a drink of water and a bathroom break. She accepts both, then splashes her face in the sink. As she washes her hands, she glares at her reflection in the mirror, stunned by her reddened eyes.
Then the officers take her to a cell.
Zoë freezes, staring at the tiny metal bench with a thin mattress in one corner, and the toilet and sink in the other. ‘In here?’
‘You’re not arrested,’ Inglis says. ‘We’re getting you sobered up and it’s safe here. Or you’re free to go if we can release you to a responsible, sober adult now. Would any of your friends fit the bill?’
‘I doubt it.’ Zoë pauses. ‘Definitely not.’
Kolovelonis steps in. ‘Anyone we can call for you?’
‘I don’t know anyone’s number off the top of my head except my parents’.’
‘We can try them?’ Inglis suggests.
Zoë’s eyes widen. ‘I’d rather die!’
The officers try not to smile and offer to charge her phone so she can get in contact with her friends later.
‘Rest up and count some sheep,’ Inglis says.
Her radio goes off and she says something into it that Zoë can’t make out. Inglis turns to Kolovelonis, who gives her a nod.
‘We’ll check on you soon,’ Kolovelonis tells Zoë.
As they walk away, Zoë feels like the last person left on earth. She sinks onto the bench, fingernails tracing over the jagged lines of the heartbeat tattoo on her wrist.
Dahlia
Day 4: 9.41pm
Dahlia sits near the edge of the cliff, glaring at the darkened ocean and twirling a blade of grass around her finger. In the quiet, it’s even more obvious Stevie isn’t here.
Her stomach grumbles, snapping her back into the moment. She reaches into her bag for her phone. It’s a black screen. She groans, remembering she turned it off earlier before she stormed away from Kiko and Florence. When she turns it on, the screen glows yellow. It’s 9.44pm.
‘What?’ She sits up, scrambling to piece together how so much time has slipped away. But she can’t remember. Her mind is too crowded.
It’s not the first time Dahlia has lost herself. Sometimes she feels so frustrated with her foggy brain that she daydreams of waking up as another person for a day, just to experience a different type of life. Or hurling herself beneath rolling waves and emerging feeling whole again. Or casting a magic spell to help her outrun the prison of her mind.
But wherever you go, there you are. Dahlia hears the echo of Stevie’s voice reminding her there’s no escaping yourself. I’ll believe in you for as long as it takes for you to believe in yourself, Dahlia Raine Valour, and then I’ll believe in you for a thousand more years.
Her inbox fills with notifications, missed calls and messages from Kiko and Florence. She replies with shaking fingers.
At beach, coming back now xx
She staggers through the sand, desperate to feel anything other than sadness and guilt for losing the list.
As she reaches the raging party, the flashing strobe lights and confetti and the sweaty mass of people dancing and screaming lyrics, she keeps her head down. Suddenly, a microphone is shoved in her face.
‘Want to win an amazing prize?’ a voice booms.
Dahlia looks up into the eyes of a man wearing a tie-dyed T-shirt. ‘I’m leaving.’
‘Why?’ the man laughs. ‘The night’s just beginning.’
Dahlia bites her lower lip as she sees a crowd surrounding them, hanging onto every word.
‘Who doesn’t want to win something?’ the man goes on. ‘You look like you could use a pep-up.’
Dahlia scowls at him.
‘All you have to do is compete in three simple challenges and the prize of tickets to the Alotta Peach concert could be yours.’
‘Alotta who? And this isn’t my thing.’ She gestures to the crowd. ‘I’m not a competitive person.’
‘An underdog — love it,’ he says, slapping a wristband on her arm. ‘Head past that barricade and up to the stage.’
Dahlia imagines Stevie at her side, nudging her, cheering her on. I’ll believe in you for as long as it takes for you to believe in yourself.
Swallowing hard, she moves through the crowd and climbs the steps like there’s a mysterious force pushing her from behind. On stage, she joins a line-up of people in swimsuits, board shorts, even a feathery chicken suit. Everyone except Dahlia is screaming with excitement.
The challenges are revealed. Round one: an eating competition. The referee — the pushy guy with the microphone — spells out the rules. There’s one goal: eat as many hot dogs as you can in five minutes.
Dahlia’s mind feels fuzzy as she ties the bib around her neck. The horn goes off and she lurches towards the plate. She stuffs the first hot dog in her mouth and crumbs from the bun spray everywhere. She keeps munching, slower now, but more focused. There’s cheering from the crowd but no-one chants her name so she thinks of Stevie instead. A small smile pulses at the side of her mouth as she imagines Stevie screaming, ‘Go, Dahlia!’ on repeat.
Tomato sauce is smeared all over her lips and chin and cheeks, but she pushes on, shoving another hot dog into her mouth. When the horn sounds to finish, Dahlia has managed almost two hot dogs. The girls next to her are still chewing their first, and two boys on her other side ate two and a half each.
The winner is a girl who ate three hot dogs in five minutes. She burps then rushes offstage holding her stomach.
The people in the crowd toss giant beach balls around while the contestants are ushered to the next obstacle. Round two: jelly wrestling.
Everyone is split into pairs and arranged either side of a row of small plastic pools filled with orange jelly. Dahlia’s opponent is the girl in the chicken suit.
Dahlia’s jaw drops as the referee rattles off the rules: no shoes, no kicking, punching, biting, choking, headbutting or hair-pulling. Winners proceed to the next round, losers are out.
Another horn sounds, then a voice shouts, ‘Get in there, underdog!’
Swearing, Dahlia kicks off her shoes and steps into the pool. The jelly squishes between her toes.
The girl in the chicken suit grins, like she’s been preparing for this moment.
‘What happens next?’ Dahlia asks, just before the girl charges at her and knocks her onto her back in the pool.
Her breath catches as the girl sits on top of her and pins her down. Jelly squelches everywhere. Its sweet stench is overpowering. For once Dahlia can’t think about the future or dwell in the past.
The referee’s commentary is muffled by the jelly squished in her ears, but she can still hear the crowd laughing and cheering. Dahlia wants to give up. But then she imagines Stevie beside her, loving the madness of it all. Stevie would have given anything to be alive right now, wrestling a girl in a chicken suit.
As the girl pushes down harder, a fire lights within Dahlia. She releases a guttural moan and drags the girl off her, flipping her onto her back. The girl bucks beneath her but Dahlia grips handfuls of feathers. Wriggling and jostling, they ram against the edge of the pool. Jelly flies out over the side.
The girl breaks away and lunges at Dahlia, who rolls to one side into the soft, sticky jelly. Gasping for breath, she struggles to her feet, but the girl tackles her around the waist. They slip and struggle in the pool, jelly crushing against their skin.
Straining, Dahlia manages to flip the girl over. This time, she stays on top. The referee counts down while Dahlia keeps the girl pinned. The girl protests, arching and writh
ing. Every muscle in Dahlia’s body burns and orange gunk coats her face.
Dahlia feels a tap on her shoulder, then she’s pulled to her feet. She can barely see through jelly-caked eyelashes. The referee holds her right arm high, pumping it and screaming ‘Winner!’ on repeat while the crowd roars. The girl in the chicken suit shakes her head in defeat and climbs out of the pool.
Dahlia tries to scoop jelly out of her ears while the referee nudges her along the stage for round three: podium dancing.
Dahlia calls to the referee that she can’t dance, but the music pounds so hard that it drowns her out. Swearing, she clambers onto her podium, her feet sticking and squelching from the jelly. There’s a girl in a retro one-piece to her left, and a guy with a jelly-stained singlet and board shorts to her right.
The music kicks up a gear but Dahlia is frozen on the spot. The girl next to her drops down, arching and popping her body like they do in music clips. The guy drags off his singlet and everyone cheers. He circles it in the air and tosses it to a girl bouncing on someone’s shoulders in the mosh pit.
Dahlia’s heart pounds as she runs her hands over her pink pixie cut. Her feet feel like they’re trapped in wet cement but she forces them to move, edging them side to side. This time, she hears people cheering for her.
‘Get it, Pink Girl! Do it, Bubblegum!’
‘Yo! Bubblegum! Move it, Bubblegum! You got this!’
‘Bubblegum! Bubblegum! Bubblegum!’
The chanting buoys her and, as the music pulses, her feet move faster. Her arms and shoulders relax as she whirls and twists and twirls. The crowd shout their support so loudly that she can’t hear the beat any more, but Stevie’s favourite dance track plays in her mind just for her. Dahlia’s smile stretches wide as she struggles to stay balanced on the podium while doing the lawnmower, the sprinkler, the chicken dance, the shopping trolley, the dice roll.
The referee screams that there’s only thirty seconds left. With the crowd’s chanting in her ears, Dahlia high-kicks then slides into a half-split. But she gets stuck halfway down, wobbles and slips off the podium, landing in a huge pit of foam blocks below.
Everyone roars.
Hiding her reddened face, Dahlia splays like a starfish in the blocks and imagines Stevie cracking up at her fall. A grin sneaks out the side of her mouth and she breaks into embarrassed laughter.
Moments later, strangers from the crowd pull her from the pit and direct her back to the stage. She joins the other contestants in line, and they give her encouraging high-fives while the referee announces the competition winner is decided by the crowd.
A wave of clapping rises as the referee passes the girl in the one-piece and the guy in the board shorts, and swells into an overwhelming rush of cheering and shouting when he reaches Dahlia.
He takes her hand and thrusts it into the air. ‘Your winner, everyone! Bubblegum! And if you missed the rest of the competition, snippets will be aired on the late-night news.’
Dahlia’s jaw drops. ‘This will be on TV?’
He thrusts an envelope into her hand. ‘Enjoy yourself.’
Dahlia is surrounded by cheering as she walks in a daze back into the party. People swarm her, asking for hugs and selfies. Some challenge her to a dance-off. Still stunned, she poses for a few photos with sunburnt strangers before she breaks away and squeezes through the crowd in search of the nearest exit.
She whips around when she hears her name cutting through it all. Kiko and Florence sprint towards her and she charges at them, collapsing into their arms. They hold each other tight, arms and bodies entangled, as the party rages around them.
Eventually, Kiko pulls back. ‘Where were you?’ she asks. ‘We’ve been stressing.’
‘It’s been hours,’ Florence adds gently.
‘I’m sorry,’ whispers Dahlia, bottom lip trembling. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
Kiko exhales and pulls both girls closer again. They sink into each other’s arms, buried in necks and hair and breath, ignoring everything and everyone else.
Dahlia doesn’t know how long they stand there. She’s the first to break away. ‘I love you both, but can we go?’ she asks.
They surge through the crowd, ducking and dodging flailing arms and elbows on the dance floor. Eventually they spill out the other side where the sand meets the grass. Florence gestures to an empty space beneath a tree, and they sink down onto it.
Kiko turns to Dahlia. ‘Are you okay? Really?’
‘I think so,’ Dahlia says, her gaze drifting to the stars.
Kiko gives her arm a little squeeze.
‘Now we know that Dahlia’s safe and everything’s going to be alright,’ Florence says, ‘can we talk about the thing that no-one is talking about? I mean, how are we not talking about it?’
Dahlia raises an eyebrow. ‘What thing?’
‘You were dancing on a podium,’ Florence hoots. ‘You!’
‘Don’t forget the hot-dog-eating and jelly-wrestling,’ Kiko adds, leaning in to wipe jelly off Dahlia’s jaw.
Dahlia cringes. ‘You saw all that?’
‘It was hard to miss . . . Bubblegum,’ Kiko says.
‘We’d been looking for you everywhere for hours, literally hours and hours,’ Florence adds. ‘And next minute, look who’s on stage: the dancing queen herself!’
Kiko laughs. ‘The winner!’
‘Dahlia won a jelly-wrestling competition,’ Florence says. ‘Now there’s a sentence I didn’t think would ever come out of my mouth.’
‘I don’t know what came over me,’ Dahlia admits. ‘Everything was a blur. But I felt Stevie with me.’
‘I don’t doubt it. I mean . . . jelly-wrestling? Doing the splits on a podium?’ Kiko exclaims. ‘Stevie wouldn’t miss that for the world.’
‘I still feel like I’ve let her down,’ Dahlia whispers. ‘The Too Late List meant so much to her.’ Her fingers nervously rake her hair.
‘You could never let any of us down,’ Kiko says. ‘Stevie’s nothing but proud.’
‘She’s looking down from her podium in the sky and shaking her bum with you,’ adds Florence. ‘Probably while eating a hot dog.’
The girls fall quiet against the background thumping of the party.
Florence looks up and traces the outline of the moon with her fingertips, while Kiko gently wipes jelly from Dahlia’s shoulder and points out a group of stars glittering above them.
Suddenly there’s a pop, and a fizz, and a shower of colour erupts and rains down. And another. And another. The girls cuddle in close as the fireworks crack open the sky, painting an effervescent rainbow across the night.
Samira
Day 4: 11.01pm
The limo follows the twists and turns of the highway as it wraps around the rugged mountainside looming above the beach. Samira rolls down a window, enjoying the feeling of the wind through her hair. With nothing but mountains and an endless ocean extending before them, Saldana Strip feels worlds away.
In the near distance on a hill stands the snowy lighthouse with red trimming that she and Anoush had planned to visit on what turned out to be their unsuccessful girls’ day. Its radiance cuts through the darkness, calling them in closer. Tony parks the limo on the grass at its base. They all tumble out and kick off their shoes to feel the grass beneath them.
Samira and Tilly cartwheel in sync before flopping onto their backs and contemplating the sky. As the minutes melt into each other, everyone lets slip little things about themselves; morsels that stretch a friendship into deeper territory. Samira’s love of watching kids’ cartoons in nothing but a T-shirt, undies and her mum’s old socks. Kris’s debilitating fear of snakes that left him shaking during a school excursion to the zoo. Tilly’s admission that she likes being an only child and gets sick of people asking if she wishes she had a brother or sister. Harry’s first crush on the girl who lived around the corner, who rejected him then kissed the school bully in Year Five. Samira overhearing Anoush, Claire and Ras
hida bitching about her. Tilly breaking down in tears because she knows how it feels to be excluded from a group too. They drain themselves of these little confessions, speaking until their throats ache.
There’s a lightness to getting lost in time with the Peachies that Samira isn’t ready to let go of yet. So when they beg her to stay on their couch for the night, she calls the rail company and swaps her ticket for credit.
Afterwards, she jumps to her feet. ‘I need a reset. Thinking what I’m thinking?’ she asks Tilly with a wink, gesturing at the wide-open area before them.
Samira drives her sword high, releasing an ear-splitting war cry into the night then she and Tilly run barefoot on the grass towards the lighthouse.
Day 5
Zoë
Day 5: 12.06am
Shouting from a nearby cell wakes Zoë up. She opens bleary eyes and rubs her aching neck. Another voice cries out, followed by the banging of a fist against a wall. Zoë shrinks into herself, bringing her knees up to her chest, and spots the heartbeat design on her wrist. It’s half-scratched off.
Sighing, she stands up and walks to the bars. She strains forward and spots Kolovelonis drinking a cup of coffee in the hall.
‘Hello?’ she calls out, voice cracking. ‘Officer?’
Kolovelonis walks over. ‘You’re up,’ she says. ‘Good sleep?’
Zoë nods. ‘Am I allowed to go?’
‘Remind me: are we waiting for your parents?’
‘No!’ Her heart rate quickens. ‘I need my phone back to call my friends. It was charging ages ago. What time is it?’
‘Past midnight,’ Kolovelonis says. ‘Big night, huh?’
‘Big year.’
Kolovelonis takes Zoë’s phone off the charger and passes it through the bars. ‘Well, if your friends are of-age they can come and collect you — but only if they’re sober. Otherwise we’ll drive you back to your accommodation. Remembered where it is?’
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