Another prefect leans in. ‘Starting off with wet pants on the oval in year one, Harley Mathews is getting this award for his tremendous improvements.’
As Harley wanders up to collect his award, a guy calls from the back of the hall, ‘How is that even an award? This is a stitch-up! The formal committee’s all girls.’
Mia leans into the microphone and smirks. ‘Piss off, Dave.’
Harley collects the certificate, laughing, and that’s when the storm breaks over me, in a sudden turbulent rush.
I hear Mia say, ‘Class legend.’
‘George Collins.’
And then I hear Jake … ‘Are you serious?’ he bellows. ‘No offence, Georgie, but fuck that.’
Hopping out of his chair, Jake stumbles toward the prefects, pushing Mia out of the way as the parents watch on in horror, paralysed.
Jake takes the mike and rips it off the stand. ‘Testing, testing,’ he says, bashing his fingers against it. Mia lunges for it and they wrestle before he overpowers her and she staggers back, tripping, falling – landing heavily on hardwood with a painful thud. ‘Now,’ Jake says, his voice blaring through the speakers, ‘Georgie boy might tell a joke or two, but let’s be honest. He’s LAME.’
Mrs Harold screams, ‘JAKE! HOW DARE YOU!’ as she marches over to him.
‘Hold up, missy, I haven’t finished yet.’ He climbs onto a chair. ‘I think we all know who should be getting this award.’ There is a pause; the room holds its breath. ‘Ben Walker!’
Everyone chokes, and the next thing I know, the five dads dressed as security guards are charging toward Jake, yanking him off the chair, tackling him to the floor.
‘HEY!’ I yell, kicking off my heels and climbing out of my seat, over the table, my feet squelching in fish fillets, stamping on crusty bread, mashing potatoes. ‘GET OFF HIM!’ I fall off the end of the table, thump the floor, clamber to my feet and lurch across the dance floor to Jake, pinned to the ground by two of the guards.
Leaping onto their backs, I punch someone’s dad in the back of the head. That’s the only thing I remember before I black out.
Thirty-Two
PINCH AND A PUNCH
Walking along High Street, I pass our old primary school, just two blocks down. Kids with blue caps, scuffed shoes and backpacks far too big for their little frames spill out onto the kerb. Gertie, the lollipop lady who has overseen this pedestrian crossing for as long as I can remember, beams at them, her eyes disappearing between wrinkles as she smiles. A current of children, skipping and holding hands, flows across the road, bringing the traffic to a standstill. They are followed by mothers with prams or dogs on leashes and teenagers picking up their younger siblings.
Sitting on the ground, backs against the school’s white picket fence, kids wait in clusters for their buses. I remember how Ben and I caught the bus for a term in year four, although it was hardly necessary. Living on Walker Street, the first left after the main shops, we barely had time to sit down before pressing the button for the second bus stop. Nevertheless, I wrote my name on my bus pass, decorated the front side with frangipani stickers and gave it the front card space in my sky blue wallet. After a month or so, the novelty wore off. Ben and I returned to skating or riding our bikes to and from school.
Arriving now at a cross street, I lean against a telegraph pole, sunlight hot on my shoulders. Parents drive out of the school’s pick-up zone, and I wait for a clean break between cars, wiping sweat off my upper lip. Two kids race each other to the kerb, their mum calling out behind to make sure they don’t leap onto the road. One of them, a girl with a low pony and gangly arms, barrels into me. The other, a boy wearing his school cap backwards, catches up to her, pinches her on the arm, punches.
‘Pinch and a punch for the first of the month. NO RETURNS!’
Squealing, her tiny hand curled into a tight fist, she lunges back at him, narrowly missing his arm.
‘I said no returns!’ he yells. Crossing his eyes and pulling his ears, he jumps up and down like a monkey.
There’s a break in between cars and their mum takes them by the hand, apologises to me for their cheekiness, and leads them across the road. A car horn beeps and I glance up. A driver is waiting for me to cross, but I can’t. I’m stuck here, glued to the spot. I motion with my hand, encouraging her to drive on. She glares, shakes her head, and pulls out onto High Street.
Several minutes pass before I finally peel myself from the telegraph pole and cut through the procession of cars. A station wagon comes to an abrupt stop to avoid hitting me, a horn blares. I start to run, feet pounding the pavement, blood pounding in my temples. Tears blur my vision, but I don’t slow, I don’t stop, not until I am in our yard, kicking off my shoes and climbing high into the fig tree, perching on his branch, panting, skin red and sweaty.
The first of the month. December. Summer. Grevilleas, mulberries and fresh lemonade. Afternoons that stretch out forever. Cicadas, blue skies and honey bees. Our birthday.
Sitting in the tree until the sun sinks behind burnt orange clouds, I think I am finally starting to understand it.
They called his time of death, but it was not an end; it was a beginning. The afterlife is not so much a place but rather what happens to me, to the others left behind, after Ben’s life.
Beneath me, at the base of the trunk, Christmas flowers are beginning to blossom. Days are growing longer, grey sea waves will turn turquoise, and as much as I want to stay close to him, the world carries on, dragging me further away with every hour.
‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘Mia’s coming over soon. She went back in to school to pick up her art major work and talk to Mr Mitchell.’
‘The counsellor?’ Mum says, shoving undies and toiletries into a bag.
I nod, leaning against her dresser.
‘How did it go with him?’
‘He’s nice.’
Mum zips up her bag. ‘I have to go or I’ll miss the train.’ She still hasn’t looked me in the eye. ‘You and Mia will be at her house, like you said.’
‘Yessss.’
‘I don’t want you two here alone,’ she says.
Shifting my weight, palms clammy, I tell her, ‘We’re watching a movie in town – I think her dad’s coming.’
‘Oh yeah, what’s on?’
I pause for a moment. ‘Um … Knowing them, we’re probably seeing something foreign.’
Mum almost smiles, pulling on her coat. ‘A bit of culture won’t do you any harm.’
‘Yeah, but I’m too slow for the subtitles,’ I complain, adding texture to this fabrication.
She gives me an awkward peck on the forehead – no hug – and grabs her bag. ‘I’ll be back Sunday night. If I don’t pick up my phone for any reason, you’ve got Kate’s mobile and the number at her house.’
I follow Mum down the stairs from her bedroom, through the house, and onto the verandah where Monty stands at my feet.
Mum waves, but our eyes still don’t meet.
It’s been three days. Three days since she looked me in the eye and smiled and took my picture on this verandah – the day I wore curls in my hair and a midnight dress. Now she’s retreating to the city, and sending me to Mia’s place.
As she pulls out of the driveway, a thin cloud of dust rises above the gravel. I watch Mum turn in the cul-de-sac, waiting for the Range Rover to drive out of sight before falling back and lying down on the verandah steps. Monty rests beside me, relaxing his head on my abdomen. On the beach, waves pulse against the shore, rhythms beating through the earth. Pulling my phone out of my pocket, I punch in Jake’s number.
‘Hey, Mum just left. You can come over now.’
Chucking his skateboard on the ground, Jake stands over me on the verandah. Opening one eye, I peer up at him, squinting in the afternoon light. He lowers a string of saliva, slurping it up at the very last moment. I sit up, whack the backs of his knees.
Laughing, he plonks himself down beside me.
‘You’re gross,’ I snic
ker.
Unzipping his backpack, Jake slaps a bag of cinnamon doughnuts and white chocolate chip cookies onto my lap, still warm, condensation beading the plastic packaging.
I grin. ‘You’re forgiven.’
‘I thought you’d say that,’ he says. He has already taken out a bowl and scissors, a bag of herb, cigarette papers, ready to start rolling a joint. ‘Oh, and I got this.’ He reveals a chocolate coconut bar.
‘OH, JAKE!’ I say, eyes wide and hands on cheeks, like a woman who’s just been proposed to.
‘Ha, ha … shut up.’ He knocks me with his shoulder, lights the end of his joint, steals a puff and then hands it to me.
After three tokes, my head is butter cream running down my back, soaking my singlet. Grabbing the bag of treats, I take Jake’s hand and wander through the yard, through the rickety gate, giggling down sloped grass, along the rocks, coming to sit, at last, beneath cracked cliffs. Tearing open the bag, I bite into a cookie, gold crunch and gooey centre. White chocolate droplets turn to milk on my tongue.
Resting my cheek on Jake’s chest, I close my eyes, breathing deep his musk of sweat, tobacco and butter biscuit. His shirt, stiffened by salt crystals, grates against my cheek with the rise and fall of his chest. A wave devours emerald rocks, sand crabs scurry, foam spits.
‘Today’s the first of December,’ I say. ‘We turn eighteen in three weeks.’
‘Shit,’ Jake says. He brushes the hair off my face, wipes a stray tear from my cheek.
I begin to sob, my body shaking. ‘I don’t want to grow up.’
He laughs. ‘I’ve heard there’s some great anti-ageing creams on the market.’
I grin at him through my tears. ‘You know what, screw it. If I’m turning eighteen, it’s going to be how he’d have done it …’ I jump up, skipping across the rocks to the edge of the shelf. Raising my arms, I scream at a wispy grey horizon, ‘With FUCKING STYLE!’
Jake jumps onto the rock beside me, hurls half a doughnut into the sea. Gulls swoop, diving for cinnamon delight.
I turn to him. ‘Jake … I’m going to throw a birthday party.’
A grin creeps across his face. ‘Fuck it, why wait three weeks? Why not have a party tomorrow?’
Thirty-Three
WHEN SHE SINGS
We drive to Port Lawnam with the hundred dollars Jake’s mum has left him. He’s not sure where she’s gone or who she left with, but if Jake cares, he’s hiding it well.
Arriving before the bottle-o is even open, we hang in his ute, filling the cabin with smoke until the owner, tired and balding, traipses up to unlock his shop. Jake swings open the driver’s door, loses grip of the handle and falls from his seat flat onto the concrete. We both laugh, almost in hysterics, as he staggers toward the store.
He returns a few minutes later with our supplies, wheeling them into the car park in a trolley. As he piles it all under my feet and on my lap, I eye off the hoard. Three packets of cigarettes, a case of beer, five bottles of bubbles, two flasks of vodka, several packets of chips and salted nuts, and two casks of white wine.
As he climbs back into the driver’s seat, I turn to him. ‘You got all that for a hundred dollars?’
Ignoring me, Jake turns the key in the ignition as the door to the bottle-o flies open and the shopkeeper charges out. His bald patch shines as violet as his neck. ‘HEY!’ he screams. ‘YA LITTLE SHIT!’
‘Oh, crap!’ Jake sniggers, throwing the car into reverse. Revving the engine, he changes into first and we speed out of the car park in a cloud of brown exhaust.
A guy with a nose-ring and a black rose tattooed at the base of his throat leans his head in the driver’s side window. ‘How many do you need?’ he says with a sly grin.
Jake looks across to me. ‘It’s your birthday …’
I sink my gaze into the dealer’s murky green eyes. ‘How many can you get?’
He winks and tells me not to worry, he’ll get it sorted.
‘See you tonight, man,’ Jake says, slipping the car into gear, and we drive off down the street, weaving between abandoned factories and shabby, broken-down houses.
By the time the DJ has set up his decks on the verandah, I’m lying in a hammock strung between the fig tree and the fence, cradling a bottle of bubbles. I’m barefoot, with smoky eye make-up, dressed for the occasion in a black lace G-string and one of Jake’s grey T-shirts as a dress. Cigarette between my fingers, I watch a group of guys from Port Lawnam transform the yard – guys I’ve met in warehouses and at parties but never before seen during the day. I watch one of them spray-paint HAPPY BIRTHDAY GRACE onto the lawn and I clap, applauding his efforts.
The DJ plays his first set as everyone lounges on tattered couches under the fig tree, sinking beers until sunset, when dusk bleaches the sky and I send the first text. Like wildfire, the invite spreads.
By the time tiny fires appear in the sky, there is a whole bottle of bubbles in my stomach and over a hundred people in my yard. Fairy lights curl around the verandah banisters. Speakers throb and bodies bend like branches in a storm. There’s a tinny fishing boat at the base of the driveway, filled with ice, filled with alcohol, glass bottles. A strobe cuts through the night and as I weave through the crowd to dance, I notice guys sitting on the roof of the shed, guys sitting on the roof of the house.
A stranger slips his hand beneath my dress. ‘Hey, sexy.’ He grips my arse. Then I see his nose-ring, his black rose tattoo. He grins as he leads me from the crowd, behind the house.
‘Here,’ he says, pulling a zip-lock bag from his jacket pocket, packed tight with pills. ‘Take your pick. They’re complimentary for birthday girls.’
I wash one down with my cup of cask wine and cough with the bitter taste in my throat. Leading him back toward the party, I stop at the corner of the verandah. ‘Help me get up there?’
From the roof, I watch chaos unfurl. Music thuds, bottles smash, someone screams. Jake climbs up, crawling across tiles to sit beside me, our legs dangling over the edge. He hands me a flask of vodka and I take a swig, drawing a cigarette from his pack. Together, we bask in the anarchy, knowing that tonight we’re not alone in this vicious dream.
Soon I spot Mia, shoving her way through the crowd. It’s eight-thirty and there are two or three hundred people here, no doubt even more drinking in the street and on the grassy hill. ‘Oh shit,’ I say, nudging Jake, pointing her out among the dark sea of swaying bodies. We watch her climb onto the arm of a couch, supporting her weight with one hand on the fig tree’s trunk as she scans the party, looking for us.
Spying me on the roof, Mia charges to the verandah, where two guys help her climb the banister. Wriggling over the gutter, she shouts, ‘So your mum called my house to check up on you!’
I lie back on the tiles, looking up at the stars, wondering how many have already exploded, wondering how many are simply light that is only just reaching us. My eyes roll loose in their sockets. I almost smile.
She’s screaming at me, but I don’t know what she’s saying anymore, can’t make out the words.
‘PISS OFF, MIA!’ Jake fires back.
‘I’m calling the COPS!’ she shrieks.
I sit up, close one drunken eye to focus on her, suck air through my nose, pull phlegm from the back of my throat and spit at her.
Mia bursts into tears, her body quaking as she retreats, climbing back down to earth.
Five minutes later, they’re here. Whether she called them or not, they’re here – with their boots, their pepper spray, blaring sirens and flashing lights – but with every adolescent from here to the other side of Port Lawnam swarming in my yard, the police are severely outnumbered. They sit out front and wait for backup from our neighbouring harbour town.
Jake and I jump from the roof, landing in Mum’s jasmine bush, sprinting around the house to the back door. There are people everywhere, mud on the floor, upturned furniture, and then I see it, the door to Ben’s room, wide open. Jakes sees it too and I race in behind him, furious, not
stopping to think. I am suddenly standing on the clothes he never picked up off the floor, beside the bed he never made, under the roof we used to share. On his mattress, on top of the sheets he lay beneath with Mia in the days before the accident, a couple is now half-naked and dry-humping. Jake tears the girl off, and she falls to the ground.
I look at Ben’s desk. Sitting on it, sitting on his handwritten pages, two guys are smoking and laughing at the girl on the floor, high as kites. I bellow, ‘GET OUT!’ and punch one of them in the stomach. Behind me the guy on Ben’s bed leaps off, tackling Jake into the wall. They wrestle and the girl in her bra and undies screams for them to stop while the guy I punched gasps for air and his friend shoves me so hard I trip and slam my head against Ben’s wardrobe.
The next thing I know, glass shatters. Jake has thrown the guy out Ben’s window and leaps out after him, taking the fight out onto the grass. I crawl over to the window and pull myself up to see policemen rip them apart. The policemen yank Jake’s arms behind his back, fastening handcuffs tight around his wrists. I reach for the paper bin under Ben’s desk, hurling into it, wine and vodka and champagne and whatever else is in my stomach.
‘Ew,’ the girl beside me on the floor complains. ‘Gross!’
Wiping my mouth, I clamber to my feet and barge through the throng of teenagers who’ve gathered in the doorway to watch the commotion. Thundering blind down the hallway, I ram into the flyscreen and fly out the back door, stumbling across the lawn, struggling over the fence. My feet thud one after the other down the grassy hill to the beach, not stopping until I’m far enough away for salt waves to drown out the sirens and screams. I sink into the sodden sand and scream at the ocean until there is nothing left, my cries peeling flesh from the walls of my throat.
The moon bulges above a bitter sea and I wrap my arms around myself, shivering violently, though I feel nothing of the night’s chill. Starved and empty, I wonder how the moon rises each night.
That’s when I see him, out to sea, paddling into a wave. His drop is effortless, so much grace and yet so much power, spraying the night sky with flecks of silver as he rises and turns.
Breathing Under Water Page 19
