“Yep.”
“And how do you feel about this, Hazel? That he recklessly risked your life for an adrenaline rush?”
“A, I would never risk anyone’s life,” Luca said. “B, you know just as well as I do that the lightning never usually reaches the lake, and C, why don’t you just shut your mouth for once?”
“Did you hear that, Mum? He told me to shut my mouth.”
Claire turned around from the oven. “Luca,” she said wearily. “Please don’t tell your brother to shut his mouth, it’s not polite. Redleigh, please stop winding things up.”
“But everyone knows you should avoid water in a thunderstorm,” Red pointed out. “So what he did was dangerous.”
“Actually,” Claire conceded, “it was, Luca. Please don’t do it again.”
“Christ. I won’t.”
“So Luca,” Red asked then. “Are you, like, a legitimate storm chaser now? Is that going to be your new hobby? Chasing thunderstorms and purposely trying to get people hit by lightning?”
“I wasn’t trying to—”
“Maybe next time you could take Hazel out on a boat at Port Douglas,” he suggested. “Isn’t that where they get the most cyclones?” He turned to Hazel, his brown eyes impossibly bright. “Oh, Hazel, you’ll just love cyclones. They’re so big and bad and dangerous…”
Luca stood up angrily off his stool. “If you don’t shut up, I’ll—”
“Mum! Quick, where’s the stress ball?”
“Don’t push me,” Luca growled.
“Oh, here it is.” Red plucked a green ball out of the fruit bowl and threw it to Luca who, naturally, caught it perfectly. “Luca’s little gift from our tactful father. See, apparently Luca suffers from anger problems.”
“I swear to God, I will knock your skinny little ass out,” Luca warned.
“Now, now,” Red said. “Don’t get angry. Squeeze the stress ball.”
“If you don’t shut up about this fuc—”
“Language!” Claire snapped.
“Sorry,” Luca said, throwing the ball as hard as he could at Red’s face. Red let out an indignant squawk and ducked just a moment too late, but even with a red welt on his forehead, he was still grinning.
“Stop messing around, Redleigh, and set the table, please. Luca, you can sort out drinks for everyone.”
“Is there anything I can do, Claire?” Hazel asked.
“No, no. You just sit tight, young lady, and let the boys run around for you.”
Hazel settled back to watch Red and Luca bicker their way through their chores.
* * *
Marc returned from his trip to the store, and the five of them sat around the kitchen table and ate together. After filling Marc in on the storm debacle, Red started talking about a discussion he’d had with one of his counselors at school about his plans for when he graduated next year. He and Claire discussed it for a few minutes before Marc turned the conversation around to Hazel.
“What about you, Hazel?” he asked her. “What are your plans? Will you work with your dad, or will you go to college instead and study something else? And will you go out of state?”
Hazel just stared at him, hands balled into fists on her lap. She didn’t know how to answer. She could feel Red and Luca watching her, feel their eyes boring into her head.
“Because I know we’ve got some decent enough local universities here,” Marc continued, oblivious, “but places like Deakin or Macquarie are really great if you don’t mind being a bit farther from home. You know what I mean?”
Hazel opened her mouth and then clamped it shut again, standing abruptly. “I’m sorry, I need some air,” she said, and walked out of the room.
* * *
Relax, Hazel told herself as she sat on the stairs of the veranda outside, but Marc’s words kept repeating themselves over and over in her head. Will you go out of state? Will you go out of state? Will you go—
—No, she thought. I can’t.
She couldn’t think about that. She couldn’t think about a future here, not with how she’d left things in England. When she had first arrived, she was desperate for that call; she was constantly checking in with Graham to hear if he’d had any updates about when she could go back. But then a month passed, then two, then more, and the call didn’t come—and the worst thing was that there was a part of her that was glad. A part that wanted the call to wait just a little longer so that she could have just a few weeks more in Australia before she had to leave. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to go—she was just terrified that the moment she left Port Sheridan, she would go right back to being the girl she was when she left England all those months ago. Hazel didn’t like that girl. She didn’t like how unhappy she was. She didn’t like what that girl had to go through.
At the sound of the back door opening, Hazel jerked around. Marc was standing in the doorway, looking across the veranda at her with concern.
“Everything okay?” he said.
“Yes. Sorry. Everything’s fine, thanks.”
He shut the door behind him and came to sit down beside her on the deck.
“Did Claire ever tell you how we met your dad?” he asked after a few minutes, and Hazel shook her head. “We were in the same year at Finchwood, but we didn’t get to know one another until we were in our senior year. All three of us got roped into helping with a drama production, and we just clicked. Nothing really changed when we graduated, even when we all went our separate ways—I went off to college downstate, and Claire and your dad both went to cooking school. Even with our hectic schedules we still found the time to keep in touch. Then we all got jobs, and Claire and I got married, and then that’s when your mum showed up.”
You look just like her, Marc had said the first time they met. Hazel had assumed he’d seen photographs of her mother and that was how he had recognized the resemblance; she had no idea that he and Claire had actually met her. Hazel found herself leaning forward, listening closely, desperate to hear this side of the story.
“I was out of town when the two of them first met, but when I came back a few weeks later, he was absolutely smitten. From the first time I met her, I knew just how badly he’d fallen. I don’t know how, since your dad was ever so coy about the whole thing, but I knew.”
“Did you like her?”
“Like her?” he echoed, and then he laughed, a warm, booming sound that seemed to come from deep in his chest. “Oh, sweetheart. Of course I did. We all did. We all totally loved her to pieces. She was just that kind of person, you know? This little ray of absolute sunshine.”
Hazel smiled at that, because it was good to hear—even if it wasn’t exactly how she thought of her now.
“You really are her spitting image,” Marc added thoughtfully, and Hazel knew his words weren’t supposed to be insensitive. Just honest. “It’s funny, isn’t it? Everything coming full circle like this. Us coming back home. And you and the twins too … It’s just funny.”
And it was funny, really, but she also couldn’t help but find some comfort in it too. Marc knew her mother. He knew her back when she was young and healthy. He knew her when she was still the woman Hazel now struggled to remember. He knew her when all she did was smile and laugh and fall in love and make new friends and just live.
As she and Marc went back inside the house to finish up breakfast, Hazel thought to herself not for the first time how she would give anything and everything to have that version of her mother back. Even just for a day or a minute.
Even just for long enough to tell her that she missed her.
Dear Mum,
I remember the time I had my tonsils out. I was in hospital overnight, and I was put in a room without a spare bed for visitors. I was old enough for you to leave me and go to sleep back at the apartment, but you didn’t. You went to sleep in the creaky wooden chair in the corner with your coat as a blanket. It can’t have been comfortable, but you didn’t once complain.
In the middle of the night, I woke u
p in pain. You awoke wordlessly and slid into the bed beside me, curling your body around mine. There in your arms, I fell back to sleep.
You always knew how to make me feel better, Mum. I just wish I’d learned to do the same for you before it was too late.
I miss you, Mum, but I remember.
Love,
Hazel
37
Later that afternoon, Hazel, Red, and Luca left the Cawleys’ and went to meet Maddie and Hunter on the beach outside Graham’s house. Red had been going on for weeks about camping out together for the night, and after much protestation about the possibility of another storm and the sand and the insects, everyone had relented.
They’d come prepared with bundles full of food, drinks, and sleeping bags, and as soon as they’d decided on the right place to camp, the boys set about lighting a campfire while Maddie and Hazel organized all their supplies neatly to one side. Once everything was assembled, the five of them sat down around the fire to watch the sun sink beneath the line of the horizon.
It was a great night, filled with chatter and laughter and stories. They managed to stay up past midnight, eating s’mores and sharing bottles of beer. Maddie fell asleep first, nestled into Hunter’s side, and—careful not to wake her—he wrapped a sleeping bag around her and pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
“What?” he said when he looked up and saw everyone watching him. “I was just tucking her in.”
Red lifted up his camera from around his neck. “Do you think she’d mind if I…?”
“Go ahead,” Hunter said.
He snapped a few shots of her sleeping peacefully, before turning the camera on Hunter, who protested and shielded his face. “It’s like being stalked by the paparazzi when you’re around, you know.”
“Sorry,” Red said, sounding not very sorry at all. “It’s for something I’m working on.”
“What is it? A project on future athletic superstars?”
“Nah. It’s a collection of photographs of people who look like dogs.”
Hunter narrowed his eyes at him, and Red winked, snapping a couple more shots. He started taking photos of the others too, their faces glowing orange from the flames of the fire.
“Hey,” he said then, lowering his camera and turning to Hazel. “Maybe we could print all these out for you before you go back. Then you could have them to pin up on your wall when you get home to remember us by.”
In that moment the thought of leaving made her chest ache, but Hazel just smiled. “That’d be good. Not that I’ll ever be able to forget any of you.”
They didn’t talk much after that, each of them listening to the crackling of flames from the campfire instead. Hazel looked around, letting her eyes settle on her friends one by one. Red—the first person in this country to truly make her feel at home, even before Graham. Hunter—funny and charming and endlessly positive. And Maddie—fiercely loyal and so hardworking and caring.
Hazel looked across the campfire to where Luca was sitting, his head turned to the side slightly as he looked out to sea. Luca was the most surprising of them all. When Hazel first met him in the Cawleys’ sunny kitchen, she never would’ve imagined they’d end up on talking terms, let alone here, like this.
“Take a picture,” Red murmured from her other side, and she started, turning to face him.
“What? I wasn’t—” she began, her cheeks flushed, but he just smiled at her.
It wasn’t long before Hunter fell asleep too, his head resting on top of Maddie’s. Red followed suit soon after, wrapped up tight in a sleeping bag, and then it was just Hazel and Luca.
“This is nice,” Luca said quietly, after a while. “I’ve never really done this before.”
“What, camped out?”
He shook his head. “Had a whole group of friends. It used to always just be Ryan and me.”
“I never really did either,” Hazel said.
“Because you just had one best friend?”
“Because I didn’t really have any friends. It was my own fault. I just … I was so busy looking after Mum. Someone had to be there for her basically 24/7, and we didn’t have anyone else, so…”
“You have us, now.”
“I know,” she said softly.
They were quiet for a moment. Hazel wondered if Luca was thinking back to the years he’d spent with Ryan in Sydney the same way she was thinking about the years in London with her mum. She’d always known she was lonely there, but it hadn’t really hit her just how lonely she’d been until she found herself here, with more friends than she ever could have hoped for.
“He’d have loved this,” Luca said then. “He loved camping out and building fires and getting his hands dirty. And he really would’ve loved you guys.”
“I bet we’d have loved him too. He sounds wonderful.”
“He was.” Luca smiled, craning his neck to look at the stars above them. “And now he’s up there watching over me. Maybe he and your mum have found each other up there. Maybe they’re watching over us together.”
“Maybe,” Hazel agreed, ignoring the wave of nausea that passed through her at his words.
They were quiet after that. Hazel was so tired she could hardly keep her eyes open, but she felt too on edge to go to sleep. Eventually, the flames of the campfire started to dwindle, the wood almost gone, until all that was left was a pile of burning embers that glowed red in the darkness. Hazel stretched out on her sleeping bag, lying beside the remnants of the fire. Luca stayed sitting, sleeping bag wrapped around him, and rubbed his hands together.
“Are you chilly?” she asked. It wasn’t at all cold out, but the temperature had definitely dropped in the last hour or so.
“A little.”
Hazel scooted over on the sand to make room. “Here, come closer to what’s left of the fire.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to steal your space.”
“Get over here.”
Luca stood up, gathering his sleeping bag and making his way carefully around the fire toward her. He lay down next to her. Hazel suddenly realized what she’d been getting wrong this whole time when she’d been so focused on going back to England; home wasn’t a country, or a place, or even a person. Home was this. Home was wherever you felt happy and comfortable and fulfilled and safe and loved. And if home was here, with Red and Luca and Maddie and Hunter and Graham, then why on earth would she ever want to leave?
“Night, Hazel,” Luca said from beside her, cutting off her train of thought.
“Good night, Luca.”
There was a pause, a beat where no one spoke.
“I’ll miss you when you go,” he mumbled then, and when she finally shifted around to face him, he was already asleep.
* * *
Hazel woke to the gentle rush of waves, the distant chatter of seagulls, and the sound of Hunter and Red bickering loudly about breakfast. She gave herself a moment to enjoy the comfort of her sleeping bag and then pulled herself upright. The sun was burning its way through the early-morning wisps of cloud. Luca was still beside her, sitting up, and Maddie was on the other side of the fire ring, both of them watching the squabbling unfold with unbridled amusement.
“What’s going on?” Hazel asked.
“Red reckons we should try and catch some fish for breakfast,” Luca said. “Says he can catch them with his bare hands from the water.” He paused, head tipped to one side as he watched his brother gesticulating wildly. “Christ, he’s so full of shit.”
“Did you sleep well?” Maddie asked.
“Not too bad,” Hazel said. “You?”
“Until Hunter started trying to smother me in his sleep, yeah.”
Hunter halted his argument to turn around indignantly. “Hey! I was being affectionate!”
“Is that what you call attempted murder now? Being affectionate?”
“Whatever.” He scowled, brandishing the bag of leftover marshmallows as he addressed the others. “What do you guys think, then? S’mores for breakf
ast?”
Maddie let out a yawn and stretched her arms. “God no. I never want to eat another s’more again.”
“Until next time we camp out.”
“Yeah. Until then.”
“Well, we can’t cook anything until we get the fire going again,” Red pointed out, kneeling next to the pile of ash and digging around in it to see if there was any coal or wood left. There wasn’t. “All right, who’s on driftwood duty? Luca?”
“Piss off.”
“Fine, we’ll all just starve to death then…”
“There are some rolls in one of the bags that should still be edible,” Hazel said. “Or we could just go to the Anchor for brunch. Dad said he’d save us a table.”
Red let out a whoop of triumph, and the rest of them murmured their agreement.
“Your dad’s officially the best, you know that, right?” Hunter said.
Hazel just smiled down into her lap. “Yeah. I know.”
38
It was during lunchtime on the following Monday, at the beginning of their last week of school, that Hunter’s search for a sports team to join finally came to a close. He’d been quite positive about exploring running, but although Luca thought he showed some promise in their lunchtime practices, Hunter still didn’t think it would be enough to ever actually get him on a team. He’d been surprisingly chipper about it when he broke the news, and Luca had assumed it was because he’d already moved on to preparations for his next sport. It turned out there wasn’t going to be a next sport.
“What made you decide that?” Luca asked him.
“I guess I realized that I don’t need to prove myself to Callum or anyone else, and I don’t need to be part of a team to be proud of myself.”
“So you’re giving up?” Maddie said.
“I am. Are you angry? That you wasted so much of your time on something that never went anywhere?”
“Hunter,” she said. “Time spent with my best friend will never be wasted—and if nothing else, it’s been fun! Right, guys?”
“Right,” Hazel and Luca agreed in unison, and Hunter’s face flooded with relief.
* * *
Don't Forget Me Page 18
