Summer Skin

by Kirsty Eagar

  The jersey was at the very bottom. She leaned further into the machine, her fingers scrabbling to get hold of the thick cotton, trying to reef it free.

  And that was when she heard someone clear his throat.

  CHAPTER 2

  ALPHA

  Jess froze. There was a guy. Watching her. Well, technically, he was watching her arse—of all the times to be wearing cut-offs. Worse, the guy in question was probably that guy. She didn’t know what to do, so she did nothing, just stayed in position, her heart racing like a mad thing. Absurdly, she identified LOLO BX playing on the radio and was glad they were getting airplay.

  But then he said, ‘Can I help you there?’

  Jess turned to look at the speaker, feeling woozy as the blood drained from her head. It was Blondie, all right, his bag of clothes and a box of laundry powder on the table in front of him. So that’s what he’d forgotten: laundry powder. His face was expressionless, but Jess had the feeling he’d been standing there for a while. She tugged at the frayed hems of her cut-offs, giving him a nervous smile.

  ‘You gave me such a fright!’ she gushed. Then she turned around and started pulling clothes out of the washing machine, piling them onto the lid of the machine beside her. Because what else could she do? She had to ride this one out, act like she was meant to be there. In an all-male college. Going through a stranger’s washing.

  ‘I said, can I help you there?’ The words were friendly, but his tone was not.

  As Jess straightened again she finally lost it, starting to heave and retch, puking onto the concrete floor. Each contraction wracked her insides so thoroughly that on the final violent heave she thought her actual stomach might make an appearance, but no, that seemed to be it. All that came up were the little-and-often handfuls of water she’d drunk in the bathroom.

  ‘Sorry.’ Jess wiped her mouth, feeling dazed. ‘What were you saying?’

  Most guys would have at least come closer and hovered helpfully, but Blondie hadn’t moved a muscle. He’d just watched the free show. Unimpressed.

  ‘Someone’s going to have to clean that up now,’ he said with distaste.

  ‘Oh. Right. Sorry.’ Jess patted her front pockets, finding a wadded tissue that she used to smear the tiny puddle. Then she suddenly wondered what the hell she was doing: squatted down, cleaning up a smidge of water, in a laundry, while he stood over her, inspecting the job. She straightened abruptly, taking aim and tossing the tissue at the bin.

  It missed.

  Jess glanced at Blondie, expecting at least a smirk, but he was expressionless. He should have been cute, with that blond hair, that snub nose, that body. But there was a hardness to his face and a tension in the way he held himself that meant he wasn’t cute at all. Or stupid, as Jess would have liked to have assumed; if a guy was rich, good looking and athletic, she usually drew the circle wide enough to include arrogant and stupid as well.

  His blue eyes were cold, the pupils down to pinpricks. ‘You should pick that up,’ he told her.

  Jess stared at him. Blinked once. Slowly. ‘Sure,’ she said with a sudden smile, and swooped on the tissue, dropping it in the bin with a flourish. She showed him her hand, fingers splayed, displaying her post-drinking tremors. ‘I’ve had a big night, that’s all. And it’s so hot today.’ She made a fist, rubbing it on her thigh, working sweet and ditzy. ‘I’m used to heat, not used to drinking.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘My boyfriend’s at that lunch? The inter-collegiate thing?’ That’s it, just keep talking, Jess told herself, stepping back to the open washing machine. Spray him with stupid. ‘And he asked me to put his washing in the dryer? But maybe I should have tried a Hydralyte or something first.’ She giggled—a high, clear bubbling sound. Seriously, she was like an Aero bar: full of nothing. If he hadn’t been making her nervous, she would have been impressed by her own performance.

  ‘You’re a fresher?’ he asked.

  ‘Hmm.’ Jess was expecting him to ask her which college she was at—she’d go with one of the all-female ones, the preferred hunting grounds for knights—but instead he seemed to dismiss her altogether, picking up his things and pushing past her. She flattened against the washing machine, aware of his body, sure it would brush hers. It didn’t. He stopped in front of an empty machine and tipped in the contents of his laundry bag.

  Jess watched him warily for a couple of seconds, then turned back to Mitchell Crawford’s clothes, hastily scooping them into her arms, careful to keep the jersey on top. She hurried to the dryer, walking the long way around, so she didn’t have to pass Blondie.

  ‘I know you’re lying.’

  Jess whirled around. ‘Excuse me?’

  Blondie wasn’t looking at her; he was measuring out washing powder. ‘The song,’ he said calmly. ‘They’re the words, aren’t they?’

  Jess realised he was referring to the song now playing on the radio. ‘Yeah, I guess,’ she said. He’d been repeating Meghan Trainor’s lyrics, but was there a subtext?

  ‘You should know. It’s one of yours.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  He sprinkled powder over his clothes, his tone dismissive. ‘It’s a chick song.’

  There was the subtext: he was a dick. ‘I didn’t realise music had a gender,’ Jess said.

  ‘You want me to open that for you?’

  ‘What?’

  Blondie slammed the machine’s lid closed and the noise made her jump. ‘The door. Of the dryer. Would you like me to open it for you?’

  ‘Ah, no. I’m okay, thanks.’ Jess dumped her pile of washing on the table and opened the dryer. For a fresher, somebody was pretty sure of himself. Come to think of it, he looked kind of old to be a fresher, but perhaps that was the stubble shadowing his jaw. Maybe he’d taken a gap year or something.

  She was hoping he would leave, but he didn’t. Instead, he sat on one of the plastic chairs at the end of the table, riffling through a stack of magazines before selecting a well-thumbed copy of MAXIM. Jess started shovelling clothes into the dryer and, even though he didn’t look at her once, she felt watched. Her nerves were shot. Soon only the jersey was left. Distract him, Jess thought.

  ‘How’s your O-week been?’ she asked.

  ‘Predictable.’

  ‘They haven’t been too rough on you?’

  ‘Not as rough as they’ve been on you, by the look of it.’

  Jess slammed the dryer door closed with more force than was necessary. The machine hummed into life, and she immediately felt bolder, shielded by sound.

  ‘You forgot the jersey,’ Blondie commented, turning a page. He looked up, meeting Jess’s gaze, his eyes weirdly bright. She noticed him swallow and she wondered for a fleeting second if she reminded him of somebody else, if that was his problem. But then the moment passed. He raised his eyebrows, an arrogance to the gesture suggesting he expected explanation.

  ‘He doesn’t want it going in the dryer. My boyfriend. He’s worried it’ll shrink.’

  ‘Well, aren’t you a good little girlfriend? Running around, doing his washing for him.’

  Jess gave him a good-little-girlfriend smile, and said, in a good-little-girlfriend voice, ‘I try to be!’ Then she grabbed the jersey and headed to the door.

  ‘Who’s your boyfriend? You didn’t tell me his name.’

  Jess stopped, conscious that she still had to pass him. ‘Oh, didn’t I? Mitchell Crawford. Do you know him?’

  ‘Not well, obviously.’ he said, dismissive once more. Did that mean he was a fresher? Jess wondered. ‘I’m curious, though.’

  ‘Hmm? About him?’

  ‘No, about you. How did you meet?’ Blondie put his magazine down, giving her his full attention. ‘I mean, you’re …’ he tilted his head to the side, eyeing her with an expression that suggested whatever she was it was lacking, ‘… a fresher. And he’s not. So …’

  ‘Actually, I met him on the holidays. He’s from the same town.’

  ‘Yeah? Whe
re’s that?’

  ‘Rockhampton. We got together one night when we were out. At the Heritage. That’s a pub there. I mean, a club. Well, a pub-club. In Rockhampton.’ Jess gave a little cough, covering her mouth. ‘Where are you from?’

  He leaned back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, letting his gaze come to rest somewhere below her eyes. ‘Not Rockhampton.’

  ‘Well, that’s lucky. For you, I mean,’ Jess said, ignoring the urge to cross her arms. ‘You know what? I’d better go. I think I’m going to be sick again.’ She said the words mechanically, pointedly, not bothering with the charade at all now. She expected him to stop her, or at the very least tell her to leave the jersey, and she didn’t even care. Let him try.

  But to Jess’s surprise, Blondie did nothing, just turned his attention back to his magazine. Maybe he had bought her act after all, and he was only giving her a hard time because she was a woman, and that was the Knights way. Only, when she reached the doorway, she couldn’t stop herself from turning back one last time. Because she’d won. And boys like Blondie always turned Jess into a bad sport.

  ‘Well, I guess I’ll see you round then,’ she told him, singsonging the words, a smug little smile of triumph pulling at the corner of her mouth.

  Blondie looked around in a way that suggested he’d forgotten she existed. His face changed as he processed what she’d said, and he let his gaze tally up each and every facet of her bedraggled appearance, his expression somewhere between amusement and … yes, it was pity.

  When he answered, he showed his teeth, like he’d enjoyed a joke. ‘I doubt it.’

  CHAPTER 3

  PICTURES

  Back at Unity, the first thing Jess did was take a shower. When she returned to her room, she left the door open, sliding one of the slatted wardrobe doors across to screen the doorway instead, hoping to generate cross flow—the wardrobe doors were on tracks for that very purpose. When none appeared, she scraped a coin from the pile of loose change on the desk and stood on the bed, setting to work on the screw that held the window’s tracking. Windows at Unity were immense, stretching the width of each room and over half the height. It was probably for safety reasons that they were restricted to only opening by a foot—unless of course you busted the tracking, in which case they’d swivel to horizontal and beyond. Everybody did it.

  Jess secured the window in its new position, using the belt of her dressing gown as a temporary tie, flooding the room with sky. As she did so, the sprinkler system on the oval below flared into life. Her room looked towards the river. An afternoon breeze pushed through the room, bringing with it the scent of water and a hot smell Jess associated with restlessness. Summer. It made the timetable she’d pinned to her corkboard dance.

  She ate some chips from the open packet on the shelf above her desk—salt and vinegar; good hangover food now that her nausea seemed to have finally abated—and looked at the bags clumped on the floor. She should finish unpacking. Outside, she could hear the voices of her floormates in the process of doing just that, doors open so they could shout to each other from their rooms—ten of the twelve of them had been on T-floor the previous year, so it was a reunion of sorts. But what Jess did instead was blow-dry her hair; properly, using a large rounded brush, stopping from time to time when her arms ached. When she was finally done, her long toffee-brown hair was at its full-bodied best, her fringe feathered. Then she tweezed her eyebrows, her dressing gown gaping as she leaned towards the mirror above her dresser. She stopped suddenly, studying her reflection. Made a face.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Her tone was sour.

  Dropping her gown to the floor, Jess rummaged through one of the bags and pulled on undies and a singlet top. Then she slumped in her study chair, legs up on the desk, examining the stolen jersey while she finished the last of the chips. It was still damp. The funny thing was, according to the tag, it wasn’t Mitchell Crawford’s but, rather, Julian Lloyd’s—whoever the hell he was. The person Jess’s thoughts kept returning to, however, was Blondie. I doubt it. Using nail scissors, she carefully unpicked the label, and then pitter-pattered her hand across the desk like a spider, finding her Zippo. She opened it with a flick of her wrist, spinning it around her middle finger, before hitting the flint-wheel with her thumb. Flick-spin-scritch! Jess did this so quickly it wasn’t a party trick anymore, but a twitch, a nervous condition.

  She smiled at the flame, feeling an answering glow somewhere deep inside her. Then she burnt Julian Lloyd’s tag to a blackened, charred crisp, holding it with her tweezers.

  She’d just dropped it in the empty chip packet when a military rat-a-tat-tat shook the frame of her wardrobe door. Jess hastily scrunched up the jersey and shoved it in the pigeon hole above her desk.

  ‘Still burning shit?’ Leanne asked, shoving the door aside with such vigour it rattled along its track and smashed into the wall. ‘You should get that looked at.’

  ‘Do you have to do that?’ Jess asked with a pained look at the door. She exhaled. ‘I thought you were Farren. Have you only just got back?’

  Leanne nodded, pushing inside the room with some difficulty, a large canvas bag slung over one shoulder. She pulled off the cap she was wearing, ditto the sunglasses, then slung the bag onto Jess’s bed and unzipped it.

  ‘Check this out,’ she said, sounding pleased. ‘It’s one of those cool retro ones.’ She held up an aqua toaster, showing it to Jess. ‘What? I needed a new one.’

  ‘You’re getting crumbs all over the floor. Did you even look for a jersey?’

  Leanne glanced at her, her face untroubled. ‘Yeah.’ Her voice suggested it was obvious. Over the holidays she’d had her dark hair dyed Rihanna-red and undercut. It made her startling green eyes even more startling. ‘Didn’t find one, though. Look! Got this for Allie.’ She held up a sandwich press, and Jess groaned. ‘Relax. No one saw me.’

  ‘There are cameras.’

  ‘I was incognito. Anyway, I went out by the river.’ Leanne stepped backwards so she could peer at Allie’s room, directly across the hall. The strumming guitars of Wish emanated from her open doorway. ‘Damn. Where is she?’

  Allie always turned her music up as she was leaving her room—like she could take the music with her, or she didn’t want her plants to feel lonely while she was gone. Jess wasn’t even sure it was a conscious decision. Leanne would know: she and Allie were both from Mackay, and had gone to the same high school, back when Allie was Allison.

  ‘No idea,’ Jess said.

  ‘Check Instagram.’

  Jess laughed. ‘Funny one.’

  ‘Yeah, because it’s true.’ Leanne snatched Jess’s phone off the desk. ‘Why’s it off? Who turns their phone off?’ She pushed the side button and Jess’s Nokia returned to life with a series of little chimes. Leanne studied the screen, laughed. ‘Okay, that makes sense.’ And Jess knew she’d seen the missed calls.

  ‘Use your own phone,’ she said sulkily.

  ‘The screen’s wrecked. I need a new one. Hey, on that—I think we should sell the Telstra shares.’

  ‘You don’t sell shares in Telstra just so you can buy a phone. That’s a terrible trade. This way you’re making money off all the suckers who do own phones.’

  ‘My share is only a couple of hundred bucks. Not like it matters. I’m skint.’

  ‘It will matter, though. Trust me,’ Jess said patiently. ‘They’ve just announced they’re doing dividend reinvestment. Do you know how big that is?’

  ‘I don’t even know what that means,’ Leanne said, her eyes still on the screen. ‘But, okay, Buffet, I’ll take charity then.’ She tapped away for a very long time before Jess processed what she was doing.

  ‘What are you up to?’ Jess tried to snatch the phone off her, but Leanne moved away. She showed Jess the screen, and Jess peered at it, starting to laugh at the comment Leanne had left on Allie’s latest upload: Show us yer personality! Then realisation hit her and Jess’s eyes widened, and it was Leanne’s turn to laugh. ‘
She’ll think I said that!’ Jess protested.

  ‘How’d you go, anyway? Score?’ Leanne asked.

  Jess felt a surge of pleasure that blew away the vestiges of brooding. She pulled the jersey out of the pigeon hole and unfurled it like a flag, trying to play it cool. Usually, Leanne did all the daring shit.

  Leanne gave an admiring whistle. ‘Way to go, Flash.’

  ‘Just got lucky,’ Jess said modestly, feeling stupidly pleased.

  ‘Here, put it on.’ Leanne held up the phone. ‘Let’s take a snap.’

  ‘What if Farren sees it?’

  ‘She’s not even on Instagram.’

  A slow smile spread across Jess’s face. ‘Okay. But make sure it’s not obviously a Knights’ jersey.’ She frowned. ‘And I want to look good. Allie good.’

  She pulled the jersey on and posed as Allie would have done: looking seductively over one shoulder, her long hair teased and arranged around her face, pouting even—and Jess never pouted.

  ‘Filter?’ Leanne asked when she’d taken the shot, like you might say, Sauce?

  ‘All the filters,’ Jess said. ‘I told you, I’ve got to look good. And caption it. Say, “Doubt this, wanker”.’

  ‘That’s a bit strong for you, Smiley,’ Leanne mused, tapping the screen.

  ‘Private joke.’

  ‘Done and done,’ Leanne said, finally handing over the phone.

  Then both girls froze, because from out in the hallway, a booming voice said, ‘Where’s Jess? Is she in there?’ Another voice answered in the affirmative.

  ‘Farren. Fuck.’ Jess ripped the jersey off, shoving it back in the pigeon hole. ‘Quick, hide that bag! It’s got the Knights crest on it.’

  But what Leanne did was throw the bag down on the floor with the others, kicking it over so the crest couldn’t be seen. Just in time, because Farren Ghosh came through the doorway like the human tornado she was—a tornado wearing purple Docs, a galaxy-print miniskirt, and a Unity jersey from two years ago—entering the conversation as she always did: as if they were midway through a different conversation.