I worked at the café down on the main surfing beach in town. It smelled like salt and coffee and sunscreen, even in the middle of winter when hardly anyone was brave enough to go into the churning, freezing water. Loretta, my best friend, said it didn’t really count as a café because it stayed open so late. She also said we shouldn’t be working there, given we were only seventeen and the establishment sold all sorts of booze. But we weren’t about to complain.
‘Slow night,’ Loretta muttered, yawning into her tea towel. She was tiny and fierce and dark-haired.
I leaned up against the counter next to her and sighed. ‘What time is it?’
‘Four minutes since you last asked.’
‘Are you lying?’
‘Very definitely not.’
I groaned. ‘It feels like an hour. You sure it wasn’t an hour?’
‘Four and a half minutes.’
‘How much trouble would we be in if we closed?’
‘Four hours early? I’d say a fair bit.’ She paused. ‘It’s tempting though. Isn’t it tempting?’
There were a few rugged-up couples sitting around, clinging to hot drinks and looking enviously at the display of beanies across the road. The same window had surfboards and bikinis during the tourist season, but always became more pragmatic during winter.
‘So tempting.’ A woman sitting at one of the tables caught my eye and smiled, and I wandered over, grinning like a maniac. Our supervisor sometimes sent in fake customers when he wasn’t around, to make sure we were being polite enough to them. He took smiling very seriously. One time a girl had been fired because she hadn’t smiled enough at two lots of fake customers. It just wasn’t worth the risk. There weren’t enough jobs in our town for everyone, let alone us teenagers who were only free outside school hours.
‘What can I get you?’ I grinned, trying to show as many teeth as possible.
The woman, her red hair up in a bun, sat back slightly in her chair. ‘Another flat white. Thank you.’
I went over to Loretta, who fired up the coffee machine. We’d been working there since we were in year ten and were now in year eleven. Loretta was going to the mainland once she finished school to study law. Melbourne or Sydney, she was still tossing up. It made my head spin, the idea of her living so far away from me. I tried really hard not to think about it. It was still more than a year away.
‘I think you scared that lady,’ Loretta said, nodding at the redhaired woman. ‘You smiled with too many teeth again, didn’t you?’
‘I did not! Look!’ I showed her my smile.
Loretta shook her head. ‘Oh, Gwen. Don’t do that.’
‘I’m just smiling!’
‘You look like you’re snarling.’
I pulled a face. ‘I do not.’
‘What’s that?’ Loretta asked, turning towards the door.
‘What’s what?’
‘That noise.’
I glanced up. There was a man outside, thumping one of the tables up and down on the pavers.
‘Um. I’ll go see,’ I said.
I went outside slowly. The man cried loudly, thumping each table and then moving onto the next. He was pale-haired and weepy-eyed. I felt my throat tighten.
‘Sir?’ I said, but my voice was low and the sharp wind coming in from the sea drowned it away. ‘Sir?’ I said more loudly, and he spun towards me. He wasn’t anyone I recognised and I knew most of the locals around here. In a place that became as quiet as ours did over winter, you didn’t have much of a choice.
‘I can’t find it!’ he yelled, taking a big step in my direction. His face was damp with tears and snot and I took a step backwards, every part of me ready to run. My body remembered this feeling.
‘What can’t you find?’ I asked, hoping Loretta was calling the police. My body remembered this, too. The calm voice, the gentle questions. ‘How can I help?’
‘You can’t!’ Bang went the table, flying end over end and onto the road.
I heard the door behind me clap open. ‘Mate, you need to relax,’ someone said. I glanced around. It was the woman who had wanted the flat white.
‘I can’t find it!’ the man roared, throwing another table.
‘Would you like a glass of water?’ the woman asked.
Suddenly, the table was coming towards us and the impact of it knocked the wind out of me.
‘Crap,’ the woman muttered. Her wrist was bleeding. She dragged me up off the floor. ‘In,’ she said. ‘We need to go in.’
We staggered into the café as another table hit the window, sending a shower of glass and metal all over the tables and chairs. The woman ducked towards the counter and I locked the door, although even as I did it, I knew it wouldn’t help that much.
‘The police are coming,’ Loretta said, hugging me. ‘Oh, Gwen!’
She and the other customers were behind the counter. ‘Are you guys alright?’ Loretta asked.
‘It’s not deep,’ the woman said, nodding at her wrist. ‘But a towel or bandage would be good.’
Loretta handed the woman a tea towel. ‘You were great, going out there to help Gwen.’
The woman shrugged. ‘No biggie.’
‘What’s wrong with that man?’ a guy with a beard and beanie grumbled, wrapping his arms around himself. He was shaking.
‘I’m not sure,’ said the woman. ‘Some sort of episode. The police will sort it out.’
‘Poor man,’ I said and felt everyone look at me.
And then there was the flashing of red-and-blue lights, blurred and fractured through the sheets of broken glass.
***
That night, I couldn’t stop shaking. It had been a long time since I’d shaken like this. Loretta’s parents were out of town so she slept over. Dad had hugged us both for a really long time and Biddy, my stepmother, made us five different types of hot drinks that we’d both drunk, because there was no point refusing Biddy.
‘What happened though?’ Evie, my half-sister, kept asking. She was eight but mostly liked to try to hang out with us like she was much older. ‘Dad, let’s go down to the café, just to check.’
‘Check for what?’ he asked, over the top of Loretta’s head. He wouldn’t let go, even though I knew she was having trouble breathing by the way she was waving her arms around. Dad was more unsettled than either of us and couldn’t quite bring himself to let go. He wasn’t there, but if anyone could imagine what had happened down at the café, it was Dad.
‘Just to check,’ Evie said.
‘Evie, don’t be nosy,’ Biddy said, setting down green teas for us. ‘It was just a sad, confused man. And he’s safe now. We’re all safe.’
‘But can we go check?’ Evie asked again, tugging on Dad’s shirt.
‘No!’
Loretta and I went to bed a little while later. I could still hear Biddy and Dad talking in the next room. We pulled the doona up to our chins and stared at the ceiling.
‘Is the window locked?’ Loretta asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘You sure?’
‘I promise.’ I shifted. ‘He didn’t mean to hurt anyone, Rets. Whoever he was. I could tell.’
Loretta sighed. ‘It just came out of nowhere,’ she said for the hundredth time. I’d noticed that, how mostly people said the same things over and over when something had shocked them. I didn’t. I always went quiet. ‘It just came out of nowhere.’
We lay still for a while, listening to the house grow silent.
The door cracked open and we both jumped. Evie came creeping towards the bed in her yellow truck pyjamas.
‘Did he have red eyes?’ she whispered. ‘Bad guys always have red eyes.’
‘He wasn’t a bad guy,’ I snapped. ‘He was just sick. Go to bed, Evie.’
Evie leaned close. Her eyes were very dark in the moonlight. ‘Did the lady cut her hand off?’
I rolled my eyes. ‘No, Evie! She got a graze! It was nothing. Go away or I’ll tell Biddy.’
Evie looked wounded. ‘I was just bringing you in a hot chocolate!’
‘You’re not allowed to make hot chocolate. You always scald yourself!’ I whispered at her.
She rolled her eyes and plonked down two cups on the bedside table. ‘Goodnight,’ she said.
‘Goodnight,’ I muttered.
Loretta and I stared at the hot chocolates, then Loretta reached for one and I reached for the other. ‘It just came out of nowhere,’ she said.
Neither of us said anything for a long moment. Loretta fidgeted. ‘Man. I need to pee.’ Then, in a softer voice, ‘Can you come with me to the bathroom?’
I groaned. ‘Seriously? I’m all warm and snuggly!’
Loretta looked miserable, so I grunted and threw the doona off my legs. ‘Alright. But just this once. I’m not running you to the toilet for the rest of the night.’
***
The next morning was cold and still and Loretta was clinging on to me like a limpet. It was always like this is part of Tasmania in winter. My breath clouded in front of my face. When I finally shook Loretta off, sat up and rubbed my eyes, I saw Evie curled up in a nest of blankets on the floor. I poked her with my foot.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked.
‘Keeping watch,’ she said.
‘You know you’re not allowed to sleep in here on the floor!’
‘It was an emergency.’
‘Was not. Go away.’
She scowled at me and dragged her blankets and pillow out into the hallway.
Loretta yawned. ‘What time is it?’
‘Seven-thirty.’
She pulled a face. ‘It’s too cold.’
‘We have to go to school. Get up.’
‘Nope.’ She buried her head under my pillow. ‘Nope, nope, nope.’
‘I’ll send Evie in to get you up.’
Loretta shoved back the bed covers. ‘I’m up!’
I walked Loretta home so she could get her school uniform and bag. She walked with her arms crossed, taking the tiny, stamping steps she always took when she was upset. ‘It just came out of nowhere,’ she murmured.
My stepbrother, Tyrone, pulled up in his car. He worked at the local garage in town. He wound down his window. ‘You right?’ he asked, his voice gruff.
‘We’re fine,’ I said.
He nodded, but kept idling along at a walking pace.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked, suspecting some sort of awful prank. Last month he’d attacked us with rotten eggs because I’d somehow managed to screw up his laptop speakers. ‘You and Evie are both driving me insane! Go away!’
He blinked. ‘You want a lift to school?’
‘We’re going to Loretta’s.’
‘You want a lift there?’
We stopped and stared at him. ‘Why are you being so nice?’ Loretta asked, her eyes narrowed.
He pulled a face. ‘I just thought you might like a lift after last night! Jeez!’ he said, winding his window back up and flooring it down the road.
‘Well, that was disturbing,’ I said.
‘You think he really was just being nice?’ Loretta asked. She sniffed. ‘I reckon I still smell a bit like rotten eggs. I’m never going to forgive him for that.’
‘You smell fine,’ I said. Tyrone was notorious for pretending to be nice just to add the element of surprise when he played an awful prank. Years ago, ages before the rotten-eggs incident, he’d cut off a chunk of Loretta’s hair with a pair of garden shears and she’d kicked him so hard between the legs that he’d had to go to the doctor. We stared down the road as his car disappeared, not relaxing until it was out of sight.
Our town, Clunes, was little and rundown and smelled of salt and wood. There was a pine plantation that ran along the back of it. Dad said if we ever got wind from the east instead of the gales that came in from the sea, we’d be very well protected. We didn’t get wind from the east very often, but when we did the pines made the town smell like Christmas.
We walked past the greengrocer, which had been run by the same family for fifty years. The owner, Glen, had no teeth, and eyebrows that Evie had once asked to plait. He came out, flannel shirt rolled up to his elbows, and gave us both an armful of turnips without a word.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Um. Thanks, Glen! These are great.’
Loretta held one up as soon as we were out of earshot. ‘Turnips are weird.’
‘He was just being nice.’
‘But why turnips?’ She held it up to the sky. ‘Why turnips?’ she yelled.
‘You girls okay?’ Tori Marks asked, popping up next to her letterbox, although most days, the postman didn’t get out on his scooter until lunchtime. Tori’s kids had been in school ahead of us. She owned a boat-touring company that travelled up and down the coast, but it was normally pretty quiet this time of year.
‘Yeah, we’re fine. Thanks, Tori,’ I said.
‘Want some turnips?’ asked Loretta.
‘You got Glenned, eh?’ She smiled. ‘Glad you’re alright. The café’s a mess.’
We kept walking and stopped on Loretta’s porch. She dropped her turnips into a bucket. ‘You want to come in or what?’
‘Nah, I’m going to go see Martin,’ I said. ‘Give him some turnips.’
‘Alright. I’ll meet you there.’
‘Cool.’
‘Gwen?’
‘What?’
She reached for my hands. ‘I’m super sorry I drank so much tea.’
I rolled my eyes. ‘You owe me.’
‘I’m sorry! I’m fine now. I just felt all weird and needy last night.’ She pulled a pathetic face. ‘And I’ve got a tiny bladder, Gwen. You know that.’
‘You owe me,’ I repeated. ‘Anyway. Catch ya at Martin’s.’
‘Alright.’
Martin Craig was the police sergeant of our little town and I’d known him, on and off, all my life. He’d been called around a lot when my mum had been alive. Not because she was dangerous or anything, just because she was loud and colourful, and people around here don’t know what to do with people who are loud and colourful.
I walked into the police station and he didn’t even glance up from his desk. Martin was short and narrow and had a mess of curling dark hair, which was lately becoming streaked with grey.
‘This isn’t a bloody teenage hangout. Scram.’
I dropped the turnips onto his desk. He peered at them. ‘You got Glenned.’
‘I did.’
He waved his arms. ‘Well, I’m sorry about that, but you can’t leave them here. Get them off my desk! This is a police station.’
‘I hear turnips make a lovely soup.’
He muttered something under his breath and went back to his notes.
I pretended not to notice and sat down on the couch. It was stained and grotty but insanely comfortable. Like sitting on a cloud. ‘How’d you know it was me?’
‘By the feeling of dread in my stomach.’ He put down his pen. ‘You right?’ he asked grudgingly.
‘What happened to the guy?’
‘What guy?’
I stared at him. ‘What guy do you think? The one from last night!’
Martin grunted. ‘Transferred to Hobart. We can’t do much with people like that down here.’
‘People like what?’
‘Like him.’
I frowned. ‘But what do you mean? What was he like?’
‘Psychotic.’
‘Oh.’ I drummed my heels against the couch. ‘What time did you get to bed after everything?’
He grimaced. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Have you had a coffee?’
Martin glared at me. ‘I hate coffee.’
‘Is that why you’re so cranky? I reckon you’d be much less cranky if you drank coffee.’
He put down his pen and elbowed the turnips away. ‘Is there something I can help you with, Gwendolyn?’
‘Nah. I’m just having a moment. You carry on with your work.’
He grumbled and picked up his pen.
‘Martin?’
He didn’t look up from his writing. ‘Hmm?’
‘Tyrone was really nice to us this morning. He offered us a lift. We reckon he’s up to something. You should bring him in for questioning.’
‘Thanks for the tip.’
‘Martin?’
‘What?’ He put his pen back down.
‘Do you like being a police officer?’
He narrowed his eyes. ‘Why’re you asking? What do you want?’
‘I need to work out what I’m going to do after school, that’s all.’ I blinked at him. ‘I’m getting so old, Martin!’
He grunted. ‘Well, if I have the office to myself, I like it.’
‘What do you like about it?’
‘The quiet.’
‘I wouldn’t think being a policeman was very quiet,’ I said.
‘It’s not,’ he said, looking pained. ‘You need to scram, kid. I’ve got a ton of paperwork to finish after last night.’
‘Do you need help?’
‘Go. And take your turnips with you.’
‘In a minute.’ I lay back and closed my eyes. ‘I’m just having a moment. I’ll go in a minute, once Loretta gets here.’
***
FROM THE DIARY OF GWENDOLYN P. PEARSON
I like that in our town people call you in bad weather, to make sure you’re okay. I like that Loretta and I can walk from one side of town to the other in half an hour. I like that sometimes you can see whales out in the sea. I’ve seen them a few times in winter, as they migrate up to the mainland.
I like being Glenned (although I’d never tell Loretta that).
I like how people do their best not to bring up my mum, if they can help it. Even if it kind of makes things harder, sometimes. I like that they all do their best.
I like the sound of the ocean.
I like that Martin sometimes picks me up and drives me home if I run too far, even if he does spend the whole time grumbling about it.
I like that our town is tidal. There are new people left behind after each tourist season and sometimes they stay and learn the way of the place and sometimes they wash away quickly to somewhere else.
I like that our town is famous for this artists’ commune that shut down years and years ago.
I like that there are places filled with memories and places that aren’t and that I can choose where I go when I run. I like that each Christmas Tyrone, Dad and I sneak into the plantation and steal a tree.
There’s a lot to like about Clunes.
***
‘They won’t fit,’ I said, glancing down at Loretta. We were in the cold, windy corridor at school by our open lockers, which were more rust than metal at this stage. Loretta’s was mostly held together by sticky tape and photos of Jeff Buckley, who no one else at school seemed to know, but she was completely obsessed with.
Loretta ignored me and kept pulling out her class folders. She had the locker below me, which she hated. She said I always dropped stuff all over her.
‘Rets?’
‘I’m busy,’ she said, squinting down at her timetable.
‘The turnips won’t fit.’
‘I thought you were giving them to Martin!’
‘He’d only take half.’ I peered down at her. ‘And only because I promised not to annoy him for a whole week. Please? I can’t bear to chuck them.’
Loretta swore under her breath and shoved a hand up for them. I started handing them down and dropped a couple on her head. She made a growling noise, which was drowned out by the bell.
‘Sorry, Rets.’ I patted her head and she swatted me away.
***
That day at school people kept looking at us, whispering about the café and the crazy guy. It had been like this back at primary school when everything with my mum had happened. People had whispered things about her being crazy back then, too. But in the years since people had sort of stopped noticing me. Stories couldn’t stay interesting forever, I supposed. Not that you could ever be entirely invisible in a school as small as ours. Sometimes, on television, there’d be schools in American movies bigger than our whole town. We only had around a hundred kids at ours and a lot of them were bussed in from isolated farms further to the east.
‘If one more person comes up to me, I’m going to scream,’ Loretta said at recess, after the fourth teacher for the day had checked up on us.
‘They’re just being nice,’ I said. ‘You’re such a grump.’
‘Hear you guys fought off a violent criminal,’ Gordon said, plonking down next to us with his sketchbook. Gordon was eighteen, but he’d been really sick as a kid and missed two years of school, so he was still in year eleven. He’d moved in next door to my house last year and was obsessed with anything to do with art and history. Everyone had been kind of excited when he started school, but pretty soon he was relegated to the little paperbark tree with Loretta and me. Apart from being a year older than the rest of us, sticking Picasso all over your workbooks is never going to get you into the cool surfer crowd.
He was always sketching, mostly objects but sometimes people and often us. We’d be mad at him, except he was seriously good. It made me a bit sad, though. It meant he’d get snapped up by a mainland uni. We loved Gordon the way you love a brother or a cousin or something. And I was pretty sure that my mum would’ve adored him, that she would’ve asked for copies of his drawings to plaster all over the fridge.
Sometimes, not very often, Gordon would show us some of his drawings and I’d always make a big deal out of them and tell him how good they were, but I was always a bit unhappy wondering what my mum would’ve thought. Whether she would’ve loved the shadowing or found it overdone; whether she would’ve loved the colours or thought that they clashed. It made me feel pretty down that they’d never met.
‘The guy last night was just sick. People in this town can’t stand anything out of the ordinary,’ I said, thinking of how they’d responded to my mum in pretty much the same way. And she hadn’t been sick. She’d simply been a creative type.
Gordon raised his eyebrows. They were very bushy, like an old man’s. He was a bit gangly and always wore this tatty old hoodie over his uniform. ‘People are saying he had a machete,’ Gordon said.
‘You see, this is why I hate people,’ Loretta said. ‘PS. Have you guys noticed Ruby May’s bikini top? She totally knows it shows through her school dress.’
‘Bright orange?’ I suggested.
‘I reckon it’s pink,’ Gordon said, not looking up from his sketchbook.
‘Oh no,’ groaned Loretta as Ruby May walked over. ‘Pretend we’re not talking about her bikini.’
Ruby May was short, brown-haired and one of the best surfers on the coast. She stood in front of us, hands on hips. Everyone said she’d get a sponsor soon. You wouldn’t think it, to look at her. She had a sort of ungainly way of walking, but once she was on a board it was a different story.
‘Did he, like, try to hit you?’ Ruby May asked Loretta and me, completely ignoring Gordon.
Loretta just grunted. I shook my head. ‘The guy was just mentally unwell, that’s all.’
Ruby May blinked at us, clearly unimpressed. ‘I heard there was a cricket bat.’
‘There was no cricket bat.’
‘And that some lady got beaten up really bad and had to go to hospital.’
‘She got a graze!’ I snapped.
Ruby May heaved a massive sigh and turned to Loretta. ‘Why’s your locker full of turnips?’
‘The real question,’ said Loretta, completely deadpan, ‘is why isn’t yours?’
Ruby May studied her for a moment and then wandered off. We watched her go back over to her gaggle of friends and Loretta made a retching sound. ‘She’s such a stickybeak.’
‘She’s alright,’ Gordon said, still not looking up from his sketchbook.
‘She’s an idiot.’ Loretta dug moodily into her tabouli salad. She was always on a health kick. Sometimes she wouldn’t let me eat chocolate in front of her.
The bell went and we all groaned. ‘Please, please, don’t let it be PE.’
‘It’s PE,’ I said. I normally quite liked PE. I’d had an awesome teacher in primary school, but the high school PE teacher who’d started last year was a pain.
Loretta stared at me and I swiped at a bit of tabouli she had stuck to her cheek. ‘It can’t be PE,’ she said.
‘It’s PE,’ I repeated. ‘The world’s an unfair place.’
‘We’re doing that gymnastic stuff today. I’m going to injure myself!’ She buried her head in her hands.
‘We could probably get out of it,’ I said. ‘Plead trauma or shock.’
Loretta snorted. ‘Mr Hounds would never buy that.’
‘Say you jarred your shoulder or something,’ I suggested.
‘It’s alright for you! You actually like athletic stuff!’ She rounded on Gordon. ‘And it’s alright for you, too!’
‘My ankle’s still sprained,’ he said smugly, tucking his sketchbook into his bag. He’d spent the whole term in PE either sketching on the bench seats or being Mr Hounds’ assistant.
‘You are such a liar,’ said Loretta. ‘I hate you. I hate both of you.’
‘See? You need chocolate,’ said Gordon, prodding at her tabouli. ‘All this green stuff? Bad for the soul.’
‘It’s excellent for the soul, thanks very much.’ Loretta batted him away from her salad and glared across the schoolyard.
PE was mostly held in the hall during winter. If it wasn’t raining or blowing a gale, the oval tended to be too much of a bog to do anything on, anyway. During PE, Angela Mack came over to me. She was massively into surfing, so she hung out with Ruby May and the other surfer girls. More than once, Loretta had said I would’ve been one of them if Mum hadn’t been so weird about me being near the ocean when I was little. But sometimes I watched Tyrone or some of the other local kids out on the waves in a big swell and I’d feel sick. The waves didn’t exhilarate me the way running did. They just scared me – even from the beach.
We all stood around, watching Gordon swearing and trying to heave the vaulting horse into place. Sometimes I thought Mr Hounds was pretty clever. Loretta was skulking up the back. She hated PE so deeply that she rarely talked for the whole hour.
‘I heard about last night. You okay?’ Angela asked, but not in a stickybeak sort of way. She sounded like she cared. I’d read books where schools were lorded over by a horrible group of superficial girls, but our school wasn’t like that. There was a hierarchy, I guess there always was, but our school’s cool group was all surfers; they talked in serious circles about the best healthy eating plans and sometimes, when I was running, I’d spot them all out doing push-ups and jumping jacks on the beach.
Angela was tall with beautiful, dark hair that she kept in a thick braid, which I’d always been jealous of.
‘Yeah.’ I smiled at her. ‘I’m fine. Thanks.’
‘Must’ve been pretty full on.’ She wrapped her arms around herself. ‘All the smashed glass and everything.’
I shrugged. There’d been all sorts of stuff being smashed when my mum was around. My only problem was that this smashed glass reminded me of all that, and what a big deal everyone had made of it.
‘If you ever need to blow off some steam, you can come train with us in the morning, near the pier?’
‘Thanks, Ange,’ I said, already knowing I wouldn’t go and would never, ever tell Loretta that I’d been invited. She often said awful things about the surfers, even when they’d done nothing wrong.
‘And, guess what?’ Angela leaned in. ‘There’re two new kids starting in year eleven tomorrow!’
‘Really?’ New kids at the school were pretty rare. Gordon had been the only newbie in years and most people classified him as a deep disappointment.
‘Yeah. Brother and sister. The guy’s really tall and hot, apparently. But Nina’s the one who saw him and she thinks everyone who’s tall is hot.’
I was glad Loretta was out of earshot. The news of a hot boy arriving at the school for Ruby and Nina to fawn over was probably too much for her to handle in the middle of a PE class, particularly when she’d spent most of last night peeing and also had a locker full of turnips.
‘Why are they moving here?’ I asked. There was always a reason. Whether it was work or the surf or the way the town was isolated from everyone and everything. People always had a reason to move to this place at the bottom of the world.
Angela bit her lip. ‘I dunno! Probably the super-rich kids of celebrities looking for the quiet life.’
I snorted. ‘Well, that’s one thing we’ve got going for us.’
Loretta was glaring at us from across the hall. I knew she’d be demanding a full debrief as soon as the lunch bell went.
Angela was nearly bouncing with excitement. ‘They’ve moved into Songbrooke! With that lady who’s been there for the last year. Must be their mum or something.’
‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I don’t know much about her, but she doesn’t have kids. She told Biddy that she didn’t.’
Angela shrugged.
I found the idea of more people moving into Songbrooke way more interesting than whether or not this tall guy was actually hot. Songbrooke was this huge, neglected property not very far from where I lived. It had been empty my whole life until last year, when a woman had moved in. We didn’t know anything about her, other than that she was really arty and rode a grey horse up and down the beach most days.
‘Okay, Loretta! You’re up,’ said Mr Hounds, eyes glinting. He had a knack for singling Loretta out for everything she sucked at. Angela went back over to Ruby May and Nina.
Loretta sniffed. ‘Mr Hounds, I hurt my shoulder last night.’
‘No, you didn’t. Off you go.’
Loretta sighed. We were meant to bounce on the springboard and then flip over the vaulting horse onto the landing pad. Through seventeen years of friendship and shared PE classes, I didn’t think I’d ever seen her make it. Ever.
People were already giggling and nudging each other. Loretta’s gym fails were kind of legendary. Once she’d knocked herself out and had to have two days off school. She’d missed the swimming carnival and said it was totally worth the sore head. Another time we’d had to do PE in a classroom because of a storm and she’d headbutted a hole in a load-bearing wall and the classroom had been shut for weeks. Mr Hounds had competed in pole vaulting at the Commonwealth Games when he was younger, so he was pretty obsessed with gymnastics and athletic stuff, which was really bad news for Loretta. Most of us could sort of muddle through, but it was like Loretta’s arms and legs just wouldn’t listen to her brain. I told her it was because her brain was so impressive, it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of us if she was able to coordinate herself, too.
‘I can do this,’ she muttered, although not very convincingly. She glanced at me and I forced a smile and gave her a thumbs-up sign. ‘I can do this!’ she said, a bit more loudly.
She sprinted towards the springboard, reached out her hands for the vaulting horse and – for a moment – I thought she’d finally done it. Then she kept going, managing to do a superman dive under it and headbutt the side of the landing mat.
‘Ouch,’ murmured Gordon, who’d come to stand beside me, his leg cocked out pathetically in front of him, like it was about to fall off. ‘Not as good as when she demolished the classroom, though. Eight out of ten.’
Loretta got up and dusted herself off, although she must’ve been really hurting. She never did things by halves.
She turned to Mr Hounds. ‘Look, even if my shoulder didn’t hurt before, it sure does now!’
Mr Hounds was trying hard not to grin. ‘You can sit out the next round.’
Loretta went and sat down on the bench, staring straight ahead, ignoring all the giggling and shuffling and everyone calling out scores and fake judge’s comments and things about turnips. You had to hand it to Loretta. She was tough.
***
At lunch, people were staring at us less and talking more and more about the new kids instead. We hadn’t met the new kids or anything yet, but given that they’d distracted the entire school off the subject of the café, I was already half in love with them.
The three of us sat under our scraggly paperbark and I pulled my phone out of my pocket. We weren’t supposed to have them at school, but everyone did anyway. Although reception was pretty awful in our town, there were a few spots around the school where a couple of reception bars could be coaxed out. Our little paperbark was one of them.
‘They’re probably really boring,’ Loretta said, straightening the corner of the rug she always brought from home for us to sit on because she hated being damp. Gordon said she was like a lizard and that living her best life would involve sunning herself continuously on a rock in a desert somewhere.
‘We haven’t even met them! You’re so judgy,’ said Gordon.
Loretta swallowed a mouthful of yoghurt. She hadn’t stopped frowning since PE and had made me get her an icepack from the sick bay, which was now tied on top of her head with a skipping rope Gordon had found out the back of the history classroom.
I read the message on my phone. Max, the manager of the café, had texted me back, accepting my resignation and offering to give me a couple of weeks’ pay. I flipped over to Facebook, where pretty much everyone at school had posted statuses about the café. I cleared my throat. ‘So, it’s official. I’ve quit the café.’
They both stared at me and Loretta put down her yoghurt.
‘Are you crazy? Everyone wants to work at the café!’ Gordon said. His expression brightened. ‘Actually, can you call Max? Wrangle me a trial shift?’
‘Are you sure, Gwen?’ Loretta asked, her voice unusually quiet.
‘Yeah,’ I said, trying really hard not to think of the shattering glass and red-and-blue lights; of those moments behind the counter when we didn’t know that everything was going to be alright. Of how I felt different, now. On edge again, like I had as a little kid. ‘I’m sure.’
***
Later that afternoon, Tyrone, Gordon, Evie and I snuck down to Songbrooke. Loretta had been in a foul mood since headbutting the landing mat and had gone straight home after school, telling us we were nothing but a pack of creepy stalkers and that she was not going to involve herself in our despicable spying.
If the new kids were big news in our little town, it was nothing compared to how excited we were about having them as neighbours. We didn’t have many. Our little beachside street was mostly full of holiday homes that were crowded with raucous pink people from the mainland for the two weeks over Christmas and New Year and then empty the rest of the time. Nobody wanted to be in our town over winter. Or spring or autumn, for that matter. Not that I really blamed them. It felt pretty wild and sad here, sometimes.
It wasn’t that the town was super cold. It was more to do with the wind. It had to do with the sea mists and the clear, freezing nights. We weren’t high enough for snow; although Loretta had been dreaming of it happening since she was tiny. She still got cross each winter when snow never came.
Songbrooke had been empty for years and years. It wasn’t strictly a house. It was a farm that had a whole stack of vacant cottages and shacks. Biddy always talked about how it used to be an artist commune. And then that woman moved in with her horses. And now the new kids had also moved in. Tyrone sometimes talked to her and said she was really nice, but I always felt too shy.
‘Songbrooke!’ Gordon hissed in my ear. ‘What do you know about it?’
‘Not much,’ I said. ‘This was a bit of a quirky kind of area before the tourism stuff took off. It’s been abandoned for years. How’ve you heard of it?’
‘It’s only like the second most famous artists’ commune in the country!’ Gordon said, his voice cracking. ‘I want to say hi!’
‘Don’t you dare,’ I warned. I glanced at Tyrone. ‘If Gord looks like he’s gunna blow our cover, get him in a headlock, would you?’
Tyrone nodded. ‘Done.’
We snuck along the driveway and peeked at the house through thick paperbarks.
‘Townies,’ Tyrone said in disgust. He thought everyone was a townie. Loretta had once demanded to know what townie even meant and he’d just gone kind of red and cranky. ‘Someone from the city,’ he’d said, crossing his arms.
‘They’re not townies! Townies don’t enrol in the school,’ I said, grabbing hold of Gordon’s sleeve to stop him wandering any closer.
Tyrone grunted. ‘Whatever. I’ve gotta go,’ he said, but didn’t make a move to leave.
‘Neighbours,’ Evie said. ‘Finally, we’ll have some real neighbours, Gwen!’
Evie had a thing about neighbours.
‘What about me?’ Gordon demanded, looking wounded.
‘You don’t count,’ Evie said. She’d been excited when Gordon had moved in, but lost interest when she couldn’t convince him to be her date to her year-two graduation. He’d been in Sydney having some sort of medical check-up at the time, but Evie hadn’t felt as though that was a valid enough excuse.
The new kids came out of the house and Evie and Gordon both made eager squeaking noises. A fit-looking dark-haired girl who I could tell would immediately join the surfer girls and a boy with brown hair. Who was, as Angela had said, both tall and handsome.
‘He’s like a movie star,’ said Evie, sticking her head through the fence.
We inched further along. Evie stood on a branch, snapping it in two, and the boy glanced up. He looked right at me through the trees. I thought he’d point us out to the girl, or – even worse – call out for the woman they’d moved in with, but he just sort of half-smiled and went back to unpacking a car.
‘The reception out here is crap,’ the girl said, prodding at her mobile phone. ‘How am I supposed to stay in touch with Milly and the rest of them?’
‘That’s the point of being here,’ he said. ‘Remember?’
‘I didn’t realise I’d have no reception.’
‘So? Write some letters,’ the boy said, very cheerfully.
‘You’re such a pain.’
‘You asked.’
The girl sighed and tucked her phone away. She crossed her arms over her chest and peered towards the ocean. ‘It’s so . . . wild out here. And did you see the town? It’s tiny. It’s even smaller than home.’
‘I like it,’ the boy said, looking around. At the paperbarks and pine trees, at the tiny bit of beach that could be made out over the cliffs. ‘It’s beautiful.’
The girl just stared at him very sullenly for a moment. ‘Thanks for coming with me,’ she said finally. I had to strain forward to catch the words. ‘You didn’t have to.’
‘Of course I did!’ he said. He gave her shoulder a squeeze. ‘It’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.’
I clasped my chest. ‘He thinks Clunes is beautiful! My heart!’ I squeaked to Gordon, who dragged me back towards the road. Evie and Tyrone followed.
‘That girl is hot,’ Tyrone said.
Evie smacked him. ‘You can’t go out with her if I’m going to marry the guy,’ she said, her voice very practical.
‘They’ll both be wankers,’ Gordon said darkly. ‘You’ll see.’
***
FROM THE DIARY OF GWENDOLYN P. PEARSON
I think a lot about our house. We live by the beach in a ramshackle wooden house that Dad and Biddy are slowly doing up. They loved the house, even when it was in ruins, with possums crawling through the walls and the roof leaking heavy puddles onto the floor when it rained. But I guess even back then it was a pretty place – all wooden shingles and a wide verandah. It’s nestled along a quiet, narrow road that runs parallel to the shoreline. It’s close to a few tourist hot spots, but the beach itself is wild, even when the weather’s calm. It’s not a beach for swimming or even surfing; it’s a beach for watching and walking. Or listening. That’s what Biddy always says anyway. And like most things where Biddy’s concerned, I can’t decide if I agree or whether it makes me mad. Tyrone ignores her. He surfs there all year round.
There are trees along our salty road. Evie likes to climb them and Biddy always laughs. ‘Make sure you fall on your head, E! Nothing in there to damage!’
Evie hangs upside down and lets her hands go. ‘Look! No hands, Mum! Mum! Are you looking? No hands, Mum! Mum!’
Biddy always smiles, but if you’re standing close enough, you can always see the worry creases around her eyes.
***
‘What are the neighbours like?’ Biddy asked us when Evie and I got home. Gordon had gone to his house and Tyrone had taken off somewhere in his car.
‘What neighbours?’ I babbled, embarrassed to be caught snooping.
‘The Songbrooke ones,’ Biddy said impatiently. Evie plonked herself down at the island bench and grinned. ‘I’m going to marry the boy,’ she said. ‘When I’m older, obviously.’
Biddy raised her eyebrows. ‘Pretty?’
‘Kinda pretty,’ I said. ‘He thinks the town’s beautiful.’
‘Well, that’s nice to hear! It’s not everyone’s cup of tea. What else did you talk about? Where’d they come from?’ Biddy asked. ‘I heard Sydney, but that was from a kid at school who wouldn’t stop picking his nose.’
‘Ew,’ said Evie.
I shuffled in my seat. ‘We didn’t talk to them. Exactly.’
‘You just stalked them?’
‘Kind of.’
‘From the bushes?’
‘We didn’t want to intrude.’
Biddy rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. ‘What did Loretta think?’
‘Oh, she went home in a huff straight after school. She headbutted a landing mat in PE and was still super cranky about it.’ I fiddled with a loose bit of nail. ‘It’s nice having new people around,’ I said.
***
It rained a lot that night. Tyrone came home late and started playing noisy videogames in his room. I stared up at the rain speckling my window and wondered what it was like down the road at Songbrooke. Whether it was warm and cosy or cold and damp. Whether they could hear the wild ocean from their beds, or whether the wind muffled it out.
I heard the phone ringing, on and off, over the sound of building wind. Glen checking to see if we were flooded out by the rain. It had happened a lot, when we first moved here. The roof giving way and leaking in different rooms until Biddy and Dad had saved up enough to get it all redone.
And then I heard the sound of Tori calling to see if our power was still on and then Chris, Gordon’s mum, popping in to put things in our fridge because her power had gone off.
The strange storm murmurings of our little seaside house late at night.
‘Psst!’ Evie called, pushing open the door.
I glanced at her. She was wearing one of Tyrone’s huge t-shirts and a pair of rainbow leggings. ‘Go to bed, Evie. It’s late.’
She ignored me.
‘Evie! I’ll tell Biddy.’
Evie looked wounded. She curled up at the base of my bed. ‘Wonder what it’s like at Songbrooke,’ she said. ‘That house looked pretty old. You reckon it leaks?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I hope it doesn’t leak.’ She pulled her blanket over her. ‘I hope they’re cosy.’
I kicked her off my feet, but she didn’t budge from the bed.
‘Night, Gwen,’ she said.
I relented and gave her a pat with my foot. ‘Night, Evie.’