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Twenty minutes on a bus to Harry’s place makes for a forty-five minute bike ride. No buses on Sundays. Half-a-dozen galahs forage in the scraggy bush beside the road. A few lift their fairy floss heads to investigate as I pump past on the sticky asphalt. Their beady eyes follow my motion. Nothing to see here. Just me and my sweaty efforts. Exercise is good for taking your mind off things, they say. And they may be right. Once I get to Harry’s I know he’ll distract me too.
I think about yelling or throwing something at the flock, for the sheer joy of seeing a cloud of pink and white take to the sky, but I leave them to their business while I keep huffing.
Up ahead is Barry Coleman’s property. You can’t miss it – behind the wire fence sits his annual hay sculpture. Last year it was a giant wombat, big as a barn. This year, it’s a teddy bear that must be at least twelve metres high, its head, body and legs made from huge rolled bales. He’s even put a happy face on it, and square ears. So cute.
When I get to Harry’s drive, I stop to remove my helmet and run a hand through my sweaty hat-hair. Pushing the gate open, I try to walk-wheel my bike through without getting off it, but when I turn to shut the gate, I lose my balance. Crap! Good thing paper daisies give a soft landing. I dust my shorts and set off the few hundred metres to the homestead.
Clack, clack, clack. A twig has worked its way into the spokes of my trusty bike. The sound flashes me back to the day my dad pegged a playing card to the wheel strut of my new bicycle. I remember laughing at the rhythmic rat-a-tat-tat as I skimmed down our driveway, hair flying, sun on my face. Huh. I flick the memory away. That was another life. Besides, there’s no hair-flying now. Not with Samuel. No helmet, no bike.
Harry strolls out onto the veranda. One hand holds his guitar, the other is raised to his eyes, fending off the sun’s glare.
‘Hi.’
‘Hi, yourself,’ I call from the bottom of the steps.
He always looks different out of school uniform. Older. Kind of dishevelled and ... sexy. I blush at my own thoughts.
‘You’ve got bedhead,’ I tell him.
He reaches up and ruffles his hair more. ‘Freedom of expression I believe it’s called.’
‘Freedom to bullshit, you mean.’
‘Freedom to smack you one.’ He grins.
‘Spell wanker.’
‘Fork you.’
I rest my bike against a corroded wheelbarrow that’s serving as a garden planter. It’s crowded with jasmine in flower and my disturbance releases a sweet fragrance. I climb the stairs and join Harry on the porch.
‘You can’t talk,’ he says.
‘What?’
‘What have you got in your hair?’ He reaches to pull something prickly from the side of my head. I get a whiff of his deodorant. It smells nice. Everything here smells nice.
‘I fell off my bike.’
‘Hang on, you’ve got some more here.’
He moves closer, and there, sticking out between us, like two camel humps, are my breasts. My new bra is making them stand to attention, and Harry’s staring. And I’m staring at him. And praying that Mary, being his grandmother, hasn’t let the cat out of the bag. Not that the cat isn’t well and truly out, right here, right now. Harry flushes when he realises what he’s doing. I’m withering with embarrassment myself, though it’s somehow good to know I can have this effect on him.
‘Klutz,’ he says, flicking away the twig he’s pulled from my hair. He clears his throat, then goes over to his favourite wicker chair and sits, resting his guitar on his lap.
Awkward moment over, I climb into my favourite place: the hammock. One foot on the ground, I push off to get a good swing happening. ‘I’m going to ask Samuel for one of these for my birthday.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘So, what’s this surprise you’ve got for me?’ I ask.
‘Patience.’ He strums a few chords before starting his ritual of minute twists on the knobs – machine heads, he calls them. His tongue is squished between his teeth while he concentrates on tuning his Maton. Temperature screws around with the strings. Moving from the cool of the house to the warm shade of the veranda can make a huge difference.
I relax, chewing on a long bit of dead grass I’ve yanked from the garden, and look up at the porch’s roof, it’s pretty ironwork and peeling paint. Once upon a time, it would have been pristine, but with Harry’s parents often away doing their voluntourism trips to Third World countries, they have bigger priorities when they get back. Keeping their cattle alive through droughts, outweighs aesthetics. A-E-S-T-H-E-T-E ... no wait ... I-C-S.
It reminds me of how our family farm got run down after Dad died and how Mum lost heaps of money on it. Still, I’m glad Samuel didn’t try to take it over. I can’t imagine him trying to look after both Mum and the farm at the same time. Better that it was sold. And besides, if all those things never happened, I might not have moved schools and met Harry.
‘So how are things going with Jessica?’ I ask.
Jessica is Harry’s latest. She’s in his year at school, and pretty, like all the other girls he’s been out with. I shouldn’t be envious, because I know he’s never been serious about any of them, and he’s always got time to hang with me. Still, they’re girls.
Harry keeps plucking. ‘Who?’
‘Wow! Are you kidding me?’
‘What are you, my mother?’
‘No, but you go through girlfriends quicker than I go through Chupa Chups. What was wrong with this one?’
‘Nothing. Spell inquisitorial.’
‘I-N-Q-U-I-S-I-T-O-R-I-A-L. Give me my Chupa Chup, and don’t change the subject. Why’d you dump her?’
I wait for his answer, so I’ll know not to do whatever it was Jessica did. I’m compiling a list of things he doesn’t like: heavy make-up, silly laughs, airheads and neediness – girls that can’t go one night without a phone call or text message from him. Which confuses me, because that’s what I see when I look at all the girls he’s been with.
Harry pauses his tuning, his fingers still. He looks up, annoyed. ‘You really wanna know?’
‘Yes.’ I really want to know.
‘She wouldn’t put out.’
I’m stunned. He’s kidding, right? I watch his face for signs of a tell-tale smile, a giveaway smirk. But no, he starts on his strings again. I can’t believe those words came out of his mouth. Not my Harry. And it shocks me to think I’ve never seen this side of him before. Is that why he’s never made a move on me? Because I’m not the kind to ‘put out’? Or will he see me differently now that my body is changing?
It’s ridiculous to think that a pair of lumps could change our friendship, but ... isn’t that what I’m wanting? Closer attention – the stuff I think about when I’m alone. In bed. God, what happened to the simple life when we used to rough and tumble play fight and never give a thought to what body parts were touching?
‘Ha! You should see your face.’
‘Arsehole!’ I could thump him. I actually think about doing it, but that would mean fumbling out of the hammock and making an idiot of myself. And it might lead to one of those play fights that seem too weird to contemplate now. Then again, would that be so bad?
Once Harry’s finished cracking himself up, he picks the same string a few times, his ear turned towards the guitar. ‘Nah. She kept bugging me for it.’
For some reason that makes me even more angry. ‘So?’
‘So, I couldn’t help wonder who else she’s been with.’
‘Hypocrite!’
He shrugs.
‘And how many girls have you been with?’ I ask.
‘Not that many.’
‘So, there’s a number on what makes a guy or a girl a ... slut?’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘Yes, it is.’
‘Look, I just wasn’t that into her. Anyway, it’s my business who I sleep with. And for your information, I was the dump-ee, not the dump-er.’ Harry whacks his hand across the strings. ‘Done. So, here’s what I’ve got. It’s an original.’
I shake my head at the speed of conversation change. I’m not ready to let it go; I’ve learnt more about Harry in these last five minutes than I have in the past five years. I do know enough about him, however, not to push or he’ll clam up. And there’s this new revelation that has my attention. I sit up and grab both sides of the hammock as it teeters.
‘You wrote a song?’
So far, we’ve only concentrated on covers: acoustic musicians like Ed Sheeran, Colbie Caillat and Jason Mraz. Or Sarah McLachlan when Harry wants to play piano instead.
‘That’s so cool.’
‘I thought we’d use it for the school comp. Give us an extra edge.’
At the mention of the competition my heart skips. I seriously wish he hadn’t pushed me into signing us up. I’m an okay singer, I know that, but I’m not great in front of people. Bria Thompson, or even Keira Black, will blow me away. It’s only Harry’s amazing guitar that’ll save us from being trodden into the mud of last place.
‘Yeah, I’m still not that keen,’ I whine. ‘I mean ... not your song, I mean me. You’d be better off performing it on your own.’ I know what he’s going to say. We’ve been through this before. He says his voice isn’t as good as mine. I think he’s in denial. His voice is fine.
‘Give it a rest,’ he mumbles through the plastic pick he’s shoved between his lips. For a second, I wonder what it would be like to have my mouth there, instead of the pick. Would his lips feel like mine? Soft and warm? Or would they be firmer, slightly rough? I turn away in case he reads my thoughts. The most he’s given me is a peck on the cheek for my birthday. Maybe turning sixteen next February will be the magic number.
‘They’re going to wipe the floor with me.’
‘Get over it. We’ve got a month.’
Nice. Still, if it means I get to spend more time with him, it’s okay for now. Maybe I can feign a cold just before the competition. ‘Whatever. Let’s hear it.’ I flop back and stare at the cobwebs on the ceiling. Some sort of small brown spider is working back and forth, repairing threads where a larger insect’s struggle has torn webby moorings away. I wish I had that spider’s resilience and confidence.
I melt as soon as Harry picks out the melancholy intro. Eyes closed, I listen as he switches to chords and sings the melody. It sounds familiar already, but new. It’s not hard to imagine his deft fingers moving across the strings, gently teasing the music from his instrument. I imagine his hands strumming my skin.
Suddenly he stops and whacks a piece of paper onto my stomach. The lyrics. ‘Sing.’ I swing my legs over the side of the hammock and wait while he strums over the verse and chorus a couple more times, until I’m able to hum the whole thing. When he gets around to the opening riff again, I come in on the first verse, tentative, waiting for him to correct my phrasing. I have to admit we sound pretty good. Maybe he has a knack for choosing stuff I’m comfortable with. Stuff that suits my voice. Or maybe his confidence has rubbed off on me. Whatever it is, maybe we have a chance. Bring on November.
