I have a chocolate pudding, and some actual chocolate, for later.
As though they have competing gravitational pull, my big scaredy-cat terror of being alone in the wilderness is keeping my big boyfriend heartbreak and girlfriend betrayal at bay. And the food is a welcome distraction from both.
I eat outside the tent, feeling as brave as a sore-hearted wimp can feel. Which is very scared, because here they are, familiar fears, joining me around the edge of the fire. You can walk as fast as you like, in any direction you like, as far as you like, but they can always keep up with you.
Strange man, or men, rape, abduction.
Crazy anyone, murder.
Drunken hunters, accidental death by getting into the line of fire.
Snake bite, die before help can arrive.
Lose concentration and miss footing while having a wee in the night. Agonizing compound fracture, jagged bone sticking up through skin, fainting, sat phone out of reach. Gnawed by wild beasts (attracted by scent of blood) in the dark. Help arrives too late to save the limb.
Feral cattle stampeding through campsite, kicked in head, die of head injury before help arrives, or worse, live on, able to communicate only via blinking. One eye.
Late-onset asthma. (First time for everything.) Die from attack. No puffer, obviously, having never had asthma until tonight.
Is that it? Are we all here? All finished? Anyone else due to arrive? No? I take some deep breaths, tell the assembled guests that they are all highly improbable, and I don’t want to spend the night in their company. Sadly, they don’t leave, but at least I said it.
I let myself think about Holly, blinking away the streaming tears.
You were not always like this, Hol.
The summer after grade six you came with us to the beach, we said we’d be best friends forever.
We had three perfect weeks. Dad took us into deep water “out the back” and helped us catch proper waves, and showed us how to read the water. I already knew about rips and stuff, but it was all news to you.
Mom let us not wash our hair. We said we were the wild girls of Santa Casa Beach, and we loved the bushy Hermione Granger effect we got after days of sun and salt and no washing.
We sculpted sand mermaids, with flowing seaweed hair and shell-encrusted tails.
We checked out boys surreptitiously but were unimpressed with what the tide brought in. Besides, we were deeply in love with Harry Potter that summer, and what living boy could compete with the boy who lived? I did everything I could to try to forget that I was already taller than Daniel Radcliffe.
We stood at the green ocean’s edge in soft wet sand, giggling and wiggling till we sank down ankle-deep, shin-deep.
You couldn’t believe your luck at our holiday food policy of takeout at least twice a week, and variety packs of the sorts of cereal we were usually never allowed. We were starving at every meal. Reluctant to go home for our two hours out of the sun, but wolfing down our salad rolls. Growling and prowling for our dinner by seven o’clock. Easy to talk my parents into a drive to Queenscliff for after-dinner ice-cream cones.
We shared dreams and secrets in the dark, warm faces close on cool cotton pillowcases in the few minutes before we were sucked under the dark whirlpool of the exhausted sleep that only comes after a day on the beach.
You had fun with us, and I didn’t have to compete for your attention. Even Charlotte, who longed to have someone more like you than me for a sister, was with our Sydney grandparents.
When we started back at school, and Tiff arrived, your attention was always half on the group that quickly gathered around her. They were okay, I thought, but too cool for me. And even a little too cool for you till now. Pimples, glasses, zero sophistication, lack of designer clothes, nose that grew before the rest of my face, deathly white skin—still not the right look, despite the vampire books—friends with Michael… wow, I thought I was lucky that you still spoke to me at all.
Now when I look at the kids in grade six, I think, they’re babies. But back then, I had this idea that as long as we’d had our perfect summer together, it meant something, and that as long as we’d been so close, at least a kernel of our friendship would remain.
I thought of it as an invisible golden thread that connected us. I never told you that: you’d think it was so sappy. It is sappy. All the other stuff, I let slide. I didn’t get offended at my demotions because I really believed in us, and I knew you’d come back.
And you always did.
But, boy, was I wrong about the golden thread.
Nothing connects us anymore.
It’s just taken me a little while to figure that out.
To me that summer was magical. To you, it was just the best thing on offer at the time.
I can’t feel any sicker about it all.
I can’t feel any more afraid of the dark, and what I can’t see.
I can’t feel any sadder about what I did see.
I have a big, sturdy stick—more of a branch, really—to break over someone’s head if I have to defend myself.
I’m not even going to pretend I’m brave. I’m just going to sit it out.
Sometime deep in the hours past midnight, I crawl into the tent and go to sleep. In the new light of a new day, things look shittier than ever.
One more day to get through, and then home.
There is a “last night” tradition here. We get to spend all night in the assembly hall. Boys and girls together. Something that has been totally forbidden all term. Forget the one-foot rule. It seems like a thousand years ago that I was looking forward to spending this night with Ben.
Everyone brings a duvet or sleeping bag and pillows. The hall is soon transformed into a giant squirming seething mass settling into friendship nests. There is a little bit of surreptitious make-out activity, but it’s mostly a large and innocent interwoven snuggle.
The screen is set up; the lights are down. There are some awards to give out, a few people have prepared “entertainment,” there are movies to watch, and we have “our” song and a slide show of the term. We have argued over and voted on the theme song; it’s been a hot issue for some people.
Our song is “Changes.” David Bowie has ended up infiltrating and becoming indispensible. And he was the perfect compromise to the irreconcilable argument between hard-core and mainstream mush. Because his fans also happen to be the smart political people, they managed an effective promotional campaign for the song.
The photos show everyone in their respective house groups, dressed in aths gear, in pj’s, people dressed up for plays, all of us as human glue following the flour-bomb water-gun fight, people running back down the home trail from the final six-mile run, as “Changes” runs over these bits and snips of our time here.
As everyone watches, we pour our own memories and experiences and emotions into the little gaps between all those pixels, and we choke up a bit and become sentimental about the time here as it winds down. And despite all the words we have written to our parents complaining about absolutely everything expected of us up here, we will, most of us, come to believe that this was a term quite out of the ordinary, a time to grow up and become ourselves a bit more. Breathe the air of a place away from our families. Learn to be independent.
So there are a lot of damp eyes around. As our experience unfolds, revealing itself via this set of color-saturated panoramic dissolving frames, a shot of me and Ben sitting together eating lunch elicits a wave of sighs and awwws, a lament at something that no one—except, briefly, the two of us—particularly wanted or endorsed at the time, our aberrant relationship that broke the rules of cool and uncool. But the five-minute nostalgia loop has already tightened around us.
I can’t help but look for Ben. He is sitting with his rowing boys, carefully (diplomatically?) not with Holly. He’s looking at me, gives me the backward nod, smiles, and shrugs. His look says, hey, we had some fun. But dudes don’t rewind with the sex thing. Or maybe it is still saying, you just have t
o say the word. As usual, I have no idea.
My look back to him is situated somewhere between neutral and screw you, I hope. I fold myself into a thousand pleats to hide the wrenching disappointment—you were my beautiful boy for half a minute.
The lights come up a bit at the end of this digi-digestible mouthful guaranteed to warm parental heart-cockles, and Lou walks onstage. Another song? No.
“I promised a friend who is a filmmaker that I’d do something for her this term that would make her laugh. And so this is for Janie, who is somewhere else.”
And the lights are down again.
We’re in Bennett House. In stop-motion animation a blob of Blu Tack gathers itself into a ball shape, then a sausage shape, then is followed by a second, smaller ball doing the same thing. Girls appear and disappear in the background of shots, light flickers back and forth from morning to afternoon, but the determined Blu Tack sausages inch, roll, wriggle and squirm their way across the space from the kitchen, along the tabletop, down a chair leg, and across the floor to our sleeping quarters. They are cute; the way they move gives them real character; people are engrossed. As the shapes move along, they pick up bits of fluff and hair and fibers and grass till they finally take on a raggedy, dirty, furry look as they inch up a bedpost and along a rumpled duvet toward a sleeping—Holly? She looks funny, mouth sagging open sideways, a little trail of drool down her cheek, sound asleep. One caterpillar positions itself along the length of her eyebrows, forming a large, grubby unibrow. Now people are really laughing.
I look around to find Holly; she is sitting with Tiff, her face like thunder, till she sees me looking at her. It triggers her response. She has to get on the inside of this joke. Not be the butt of it.
The second, smaller caterpillar now forms itself as a mustache across Holly’s top lip, her face twitching and contorting slightly as she sleepily half feels it. The mustache ends curl up.
Laughter is building from bubbles to a roar, and I keep an eye on Holly, who is forced to match her amusement level to that of the room. It’s killing her. She hates looking foolish.
Lou’s little film ends.
And Lou says, “I have two comments: Beauty is as beauty does. And if you are planning to make a stop-motion film, it takes ten times longer than you think it will. So, be warned.”
While Lou is up there, someone asks her to sing.
She sings a wistful song, something about betrayal, and I’m pretty sure she is singing it for me. I look at Michael giving a slow nod to the stage, and I can see he’s pretty sure Lou is singing it for him. Holly is staring at Ben, looking hungry, being ignored: the song’s working for her, too.
So we’re all happy.
A few more people get up and do comedy sketches, sing, play their music, but I’ve zoned out.
The buses are coming at ten tomorrow morning to take us back to the city, back to civilization, and before that I’ve got a date to see the sunrise.
Lou and Michael and I tiptoe through the all-night tangle of sleeping bags and snores outside into the almost-morning of our last day.
The roof of the assembly hall is wet with dew as we scramble up, but the ridge is wide and comfortable and we can sit here, wrapped around by the mountains, without feeling like we’re about to plummet.
Michael smiles his dreamyvague smile, and Lou is wiping happysad tears from her face as the sun slices away the night.
I put an arm around each of them.
friday 7 december
Up on the roof with Sibylla and Michael, and wouldn’t you know it, I was sad that it’s our last morning despite having frequently and fervently longed for the term to be over.
What an impossible pair we are, quick and dead, two little syllables, never the twain, etc.
When I see the sun split the mountains from the sky on our last day… I see it with my new friends, and I see it for you, too, Fred.
I won’t ever let you die again. You will always be a part of me, and how I see the world.
The sky grows lighter too quickly. Time soon to eat our last breakfast and finish packing. As we stand and stretch, ready to climb down, the thought that we won’t see each other every day is unimaginable.
“You really should go out with Lou.” I am as shocked as the other two to hear the words coming from my mouth. The idea has been building for a while, but… I said that out loud?
Michael, better acquainted with my skills at the inappropriate blurt, recovers first. “Louisa won’t be giving her heart away for a very long time.”
Lou nods in grim agreement.
“Neither will I,” I say, thinking of Ben with the stab that happens every time he comes to mind.
“Me neither,” says Michael, looking at me.
“So—summer of the lonely hearts club, coming up,” says Lou.
We look at each other. It seems like the right thing to scream out to the mountains from the rooftop now that the sun is up.
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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Heartfelt thanks to Michael Brown, Andrea Claburn, Greer Clemens, Kaz Cooke, Claire Craig, Cath Crowley, Rosey Cummings, Katelyn Detweiler, Debi Enker, Jill Grinberg, Philippa Hawker, Nick Hede, Julia Heyward, Simmone Howell, Penny Hueston, Elizabeth Hunt, Farrin Jacobs, Alex Kay, Tessa Kay, Julie Landvogt, Louise Lavarack, Ali Lavau, Violet Leonard, Jo Lyons, Melina Marchetta, Alex McCombe, Olivia McCombe, Cheryl Pientka, Madeleine Ryan, Tom Ryan, Samantha Sainsbury, Jane Sullivan, Penny Tangey, Adele Walsh, George Wood, Zoe Wood, and especially Jamie Wood.
Thanks to Arts Victoria.
Writing this book overlapped with Six Impossible Things, and once again I thank Varuna, the Writers’ House, for The Eleanor Dark Flagship Fellowship; Iola Mathews, Writers Victoria and the National Trust for the Glenfern Writers’ Studios; and the Readings Foundation for the Glenfern Fellowship.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Welcome
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapt
er 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Chapter 77
Chapter 78
Chapter 79
Chapter 80
Chapter 81
Chapter 82
Chapter 83
Chapter 84
Chapter 85
Chapter 86
Chapter 87
Chapter 88
Chapter 89
Chapter 90
Chapter 91
Chapter 92
Chapter 93
Chapter 94
Chapter 95
Chapter 96
Chapter 97
Chapter 98
Chapter 99
Chapter 100
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2013 by Fiona Wood
Cover photo © 2014 Getty Images / Image Source
Cover design by Liz Casal
Cover © 2014 Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher at permissions@hbgusa.com. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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