Fly pounded up the beach. She wasn’t thinking about how fast her ‘little’ legs could carry her. She was only thinking about home. She belted up to a surprised Simmo, thrust her board at him, and slipped through the glass doors, dripping all over the floor as she raced for the phone in the corner of the kitchen. Her hands shook as she jabbed in her phone number. She stood there frozen, the ring tone bonging around her brain, willing someone to answer. She tapped impatiently on the list of Emergency numbers pinned to the noticeboard – numbers for Deb and Simmo, for parents and Jilly. Numbers they weren’t ever supposed to need.
Finally she got through. She heard her mother’s voice and was about to let loose with her flood of questions when she realised it was the answering machine.
‘Hello. This is Sandy!’
Fly had always got a kick out of her mother’s name. Her mother hated the beach more than life itself, and yet her name was Sandy. Today Fly only cared that it wasn’t her mother’s real voice on the phone. She paced some more, waiting for the message to play through.
‘You’ve reached the Watsons. You can leave a message for me …’ There was a pause while Sandy passed the phone to Fly’s dad, George, who said his name in that soft, gravelly voice she knew so well, and then on to each of Fly’s sisters to do the same. First Kate, then Josie, then Liz, then Jen, then Nell, in chronological order – oldest to youngest.
Fly remembered the first time they did it. She remembered the scuzzie answering machine they picked up on the street on hard rubbish day. Her sister Liz had fixed it, though the messages they got always sounded like they’d come from aliens. The phone was in the kitchen and there was a patch of worn lino the exact length of the phone cord. Her mum was a pacer. The minute she opened her mouth, Sandy’s legs would take off. One length of the phone cord in one direction, then back the other way … until the lino had worn down to the boards. They knew there was no point replacing it, Sandy would just wear the new stuff down with her talking too.
Fly waited impatiently for the phone message to end.
‘Hi. It’s me. It’d be really good if someone picked up the phone … Mum? … Dad? … You said it was urgent. Is anyone hurt? Can you call me back, please, as soon as you get home? I’ll be right by the phone.’
She hung up and just stood there. She didn’t know what else to do. In the so-not-dramatic Watson house, ‘urgent’ was one of those words not tossed about lightly.
She turned around and saw Heath dripping in the kitchen. Jilly would have a fit at the amount of the Pacific Ocean the two of them had invited into the house. Heath just looked at her questioningly, wanting to know what was going on. Fly’s head was ramping forward like a freight train, so fast that she failed to start at the beginning …
‘They took my name off the answering machine.’
Heath frowned. ‘That was the emergency?’
Fly shook her head. She didn’t know what the emergency was, she just knew they’d taken her name off the answering machine and it didn’t feel right.
‘You’re not there. You don’t live there anymore.’
It was true, but after today, after feeling like maybe she was way, way out of her depth, Fly didn’t want that to be true. Nothing seemed to be going right here, and something was clearly wrong at home and she just wanted to be back there. Right now.
She looked at the phone, willed it to ring. But the phone didn’t care what she wanted. Fly slid down the wall, ending up sitting in the puddle of water she’d just dripped onto the floor. The clock ticked loudly. It ticked … and ticked … and ticked some more.
It kept right on ticking until it was dinner time. Fly hadn’t moved an inch – even when Jilly threatened to mop right over the top of her. She sat there on the floor watching Bec and Edge arguing about the best way to cook sausages. They were rostered to cook in pairs and these two were off to a feisty start.
At 6.45 the phone rang. Fly sprang on it like a cobra.
‘Hello?’ She could hear how desperate her voice was.
It was for Perri, who lounged at the kitchen table flipping a fashion magazine. As soon as Perri heard it was for her she started frantically pointing at the fluoro pink list tacked to the noticeboard. Perri had been very specific about how they were to handle her messages. If Jason rang, she was home. Mark Fisher – she was out. Derek – she’d moved interstate. It went on and on like that. She knew it looked complicated, but if they just followed the chart it would be fine. Fly didn’t understand why she’d given out her number to people she wasn’t sure she wanted to talk to in the first place. To Perri, it was completely obvious – she wanted to keep her options open.
This call was from Aaron, someone who made it onto the list of people Perri was home for. Fly told Aaron that he’d have to make it quick because she was waiting for an urgent call.
Perri took the phone and gave Aaron her mobile number.
Bec shot Fly a look. ‘Aaron must be something really special to get the mobile number.’
When Bec and Edge brought their smouldering plate of sausages to the table, Fly was still pacing around the phone. As she put the plate down Bec announced to them all that Edge reckoned they could cook the sausages in half the time at twice the temperature – she would let them be the judge of whether he was on a winning idea there or not.
Heath picked up one of the sausages and snapped it in half. ‘Wow. That’s quite a feat.’
‘Someone told me eating burnt stuff gives you cancer,’ Perri added.
‘I mean,’ said Heath, ‘to cook them to the point of being snappable without actually causing a fire … Amazing, really.’
Edge glared and shoved some more of the black sticks of meat into his mouth. Fly could actually hear the sausages crunching in there.
Bec clearly wasn’t going to touch hers. She was sending a text instead: an emergency call to home. They needed something decent to eat, and they needed it now. Fly wished that the emergency going on at her house was the same level of importance, but she doubted it.
The phone rang again at 7.30. This time it was for Anna. Fly could hear a leathery old woman’s voice, but she couldn’t tell what she was saying … She stared at the noticeboard again. She saw the word Grossmutter and put two and two together. It was Anna’s grandmother calling from Germany. Anna didn’t want to talk to her caller either; she loved her dear granny, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend an hour on the phone every day assuring her that she was looking after herself.
Fly peered at the note Anna had left and clumsily started to speak the German words. Anna gave her a smile, and a thumbs-up.
‘Um … Anna est im … bahn wahn! ‘
And then Anna’s face changed, she was waving her arms in alarm. She jumped up and grabbed the phone from Fly, talking away in high-speed German.
Fly looked to the others – she just said that Anna was in the bath, didn’t she?
Matt shook his head. ‘You said bahn wahn not bad wane … Anna’s in the railway for mad ideas.’
Fly just nodded slowly. Everyone was staring, waiting for her to say something. ‘I just don’t understand why they’re not calling back!’
Jilly marched through. ‘Why don’t you have a shower, Fly. If they call, I’ll come right up and you can wet my floor all over again.’
She could see them all feeling for her. And it was enough to send her up the stairs. If she was going to cry she didn’t really want an audience.
Heath came and sat on her bed after she got out of the shower.
‘Thought you might like a wrestle.’
‘A wrestle?’ It was the weirdest suggestion Fly had heard in a while.
Heath bounced on the bed a bit, like he was warming up.
‘Always helps me when I’m feeling a bit toey. Or a pillow fight. Excellent for getting rid of some antsy energy.’
Fly let herself think about it for a moment. Her and Heath, rolling around on the floor … She didn’t think so …
She was about to politely decline when she copped a pillow – BAM! straight in the face. It shocked her into a laugh.
‘See? You look better already.’
He was right and she suddenly liked him enormously for it. It seemed that Heath was going to be an excellent friend to have.
Jilly appeared in the doorway. ‘Your mum left a message on the phone while Anna was talking to her grandmother.’
Fly could feel the laughter falling away fast.
‘She doesn’t want you to panic. Your sister Nell has glandular fever. Maybe also hepatitis …’
Fly’s stomach sank. ‘She’s in the middle of doing her final exams!’
She was off the bed in a flash, headed back to the phone, but Jilly barred the way.
‘They’re at the hospital. The results will come back at nine and they’ll call you as soon as they know anything.’
Fly was already doing the maths. There was a three-hour time difference between Sydney and Western Australia. Nine o’clock there would be midnight here. She was going to die waiting. But unless she could work out a way to reach up into the night sky and give the world a bit of a spin, she was just going to have to wait.
Those snail-paced numbers, slowly ticking over, were all Fly could think about. She knew every time she looked at the clock she was making it worse but she couldn’t help herself. She tried to eat. Bec’s emergency call had delivered excellent results. Within half an hour Bec’s little brother Ben appeared in the doorway with a basket from Bec’s mum. There was a seafood bonanza, including crumbed prawns and calamari and the sweetest little pieces of fish – all those critters the Tangaroa was supposed to be protecting. For dessert there was a blueberry crumble and ice-cream. Jilly pretended not to notice, but as they were finishing up she passed by the dining table and let them know this was a oncer. She hoped they’d enjoyed it, because tomorrow the chef’s hats were on Perri and Matt. Bec’s mother was not going to be taking over cooking responsibilities for a year.
Bec’s mum rocked up after dinner to pick up the plates. She was a carbon copy of Bec, just a little bit worn around the edges. She was wearing shorts and a tank top that Fly wouldn’t have been surprised to see on Bec. She was sure there was probably a fair bit of wardrobe swapping in the Sanderson household. It made her miss her mum, standing there watching Bec and her mother gossiping about family affairs. Not that she’d be seen dead in anything she’d raided from her mum’s wardrobe. Sandy Watson was seriously addicted to beige. But it didn’t matter, Fly missed her all the same.
By 10.30 she was exhausted with worrying and crawled into bed. She knew she wouldn’t sleep till she’d had the phone call, but at least her body could pretend. Anna headed in, toothbrush still in her mouth. She put her mobile phone down on Fly’s bedside table.
‘Call the hospital and leave them the number.’
Fly hesitated, she wasn’t used to taking favours, especially ones that cost money, but Anna insisted.
‘I’ve got cheap rates at night. And let’s face it, I don’t know anyone here yet to call.’
Fly smiled. ‘If I had a mobile, you could call me.’
Anna smiled back. ‘Better get you one, then.’
Fly left the message and then, too restless to stay in bed, got up and wandered the house. She didn’t turn any lights on in case she woke the others. After that morning’s torture session with Deb and Simmo, Jilly had been proved right. No-one needed to be talked into the sack that night. Even as she thought that, there was an explosion of boys’ laughter from upstairs. She couldn’t help herself, Fly found herself magnetically drawn to it. As she moved up the corridor she could hear a truly awful sound.
Fly had been around the land long enough to have watched big trees being felled. It always made her want to cry, when the giants came down. And it was one of the only things she and her father argued about. They argued until they were black in the face. They argued until Fly’s mother made a rule that there were to be no environmental discussions inside the house. It was hard, loving your parent and hating what they thought. Fly’s dad had been brought up in a different time. In a time before global warming, before wildlife funds, before it was reasonable for grown men in koala suits to harass you in the street for money. In Fly’s dad’s opinion, the land served the man, not the other way round …
Anyway, the point was that she’d seen enough tree felling to know that, without a doubt, the noise coming from the boys’ bedroom was exactly the sound a woodchipping machine makes as it tries to break the evidence of the crime that’s just happened into a million little pieces.
Fly arrived in the doorway. It wasn’t a woodchipper. It was Edge. Snoring like – well, like a woodchipper. Heath and Matt were in the middle of something they were clearly very pleased about. Heath was holding Matt’s phone close to Edge’s mouth. Matt had one of those fancy-shmancy numbers which had a video camera on it and the boys were recording Edge’s woodchipping. Fly watched them, conspiring as if they’d been friends since kindy. Everyone seemed so settled here …
After a moment of fiddling with buttons Heath placed the phone on the pillow beside Edge’s ear. He and Matt exchanged a last glance of pure pleasure before Edge’s snoring erupted and he shot up in bed like he’d been zapped with a cattle prod.
Edge did not have a long fuse. When he was woken from sleep it was even shorter. But Fly couldn’t stay around to witness the fallout because Anna’s phone was ringing, and that could only mean one thing. Either Anna had a friend in Australia she didn’t know about, or it was news from home.
Fly sprinted up the corridor into her room and pounced on the phone.
‘Hello?’
‘Hello, Sis.’ It was Nell. Fly was sure she’d never heard a sweeter sound.
‘I’ve been so worried!’ Fly said.
‘Everything’s alright. No hepatitis. I’ve got glandular fever but I’m allowed home tomorrow.’
‘That’s great.’ But Fly couldn’t help feeling, somewhere deep in the pit of her stomach, a glimmer of disappointment. Had she been hoping for a bigger drama? A reason to have to go home? She threw it out there anyway, just in case.
‘You don’t think I should come home? ’Cause I can.’
Nell clearly did not think her sister should come home. She just wanted Fly to relax. She couldn’t talk long on the hospital phone because they charged a fortune, but Fly wasn’t ready to let go. Remembering Anna’s cheap night rates she told her sister she’d call back. It wouldn’t be a long call, but she wasn’t ready to let go of this voice from home. Not yet.
Fly called back, nestled in bed properly now. She kept her voice low, careful not to wake Anna. Nell pummelled her with questions about what it was like, and Fly did her best to sound cheery, to hide the homesickness.
‘I’m loving it, Nell,’ she said. Yeah right, if you love coming last.
‘School’s great,’ she said. If you love people thinking you should be in Year 10.
‘The other guys are great.’ She meant this bit. She really thought they were. She had no trouble talking them up at all. She told Nell about what a wicked freestyler Edge was – that he’d been followed around by surf magazines for years. He mightn’t have always been on the podium but Fly knew that surfing photographers only hung around people whose stuff was spectacular to look at. She talked about Bec, who was one of the most hardcore, together girls she’d ever met. Not frightened by anyone or anything. There was no question for Fly that Perri was a goddess. She’d been modelling for five years and if she didn’t get a place on the circuit she’d basically already sewn up a career in sponsorship. Matt was the King Island brainiac – completely fearless. His home break was the heaviest wave in Australia. Then there was Anna – the full kiteboarding professional and kind beyond words.
Fly trailed off.
‘That’s only five,’ said Nell. ‘I thought there were seven of you.’
‘Oh yeah, I forgot Heath.’ As if. Fly just didn’t know what to say. Nell always knew when Fly wasn’t telling the absolute truth so it made her nervous. ‘Heath’s … a nice guy … He’s part Maori. And he’s making a doco about the year. Everyone reckons if he doesn’t make it onto the circuit he’ll be like a surf director or something.’
Sounded alright to Fly; maybe she’d actually pulled it off. But Nell knew her too well. ‘And?’ she asked.
‘And nothing.’ Fly sounded defensive, but she couldn’t help it.
‘He’s nice. He’s been a good friend to me since I got here.’
‘Good,’ said Nell. ‘Though at some point you’re going to have to move past the “good friends” thing with guys.’
Fly knew Nell was probably right. But she wasn’t ready. Not yet. Heath was a friend. End of story.
Nell finally let the Heath issue go, and she and Fly chatted about life on the farm and what was going on around the town. It was good for Fly. It made her feel real. When they’d been on the phone for twenty minutes, she very reluctantly admitted that it was time to go. She sent Nell the biggest telephone hug imaginable and told her to have sweet dreams.
Before rolling over to sleep, she pressed the button to end the call. At least she thought that’s what she’d done.
But she hadn’t done that at all.