We don’t talk a lot in the car on the way to Grandma’s. I apologise and say I’m tired, and she says that’s fine, she understands, she’s tired too.
“Weddings are exhausting,” she says.
Life is exhausting, I think.
When we get to her place and Grandma parks the car and I pull my stuff out of the back seat, I look at the view. It got dark while we were driving and now the lights are twinkling. Below us the town looks happy and sparkly, and all I can think about is Mum and Geoff, happy and sparkly together.
I would never have said Mum shouldn’t marry him, of course, even if she’d asked me, which she didn’t. I wouldn’t have held her back or made a fuss — what would have been the point? But it’s weird. And hard, kind of. I take a deep breath in, turn away from the lights and go inside, where I tell Grandma I’m super tired, and would it be okay if I just went to bed early?
“In the morning it will all feel better,” she says to me. “Because that’s what mornings are for.”
In the morning, it does feel better. A least, a bit.
Certainly, better enough to have a good breakfast (eggs benedict with avocado on the side: Grandma likes her breakfasts just as much as she likes every other meal of the day), and better enough to chat a bit while we sit inside at the kitchen bench; it’s too cold for the table on the veranda at this time of year.
It’s not better enough to get rid of the lost feeling, though. It’s there, gnawing at the edge of my ribs. I can try to swipe it away, but it’s holding on pretty hard.
“Can you drop me at Gabby’s about 11?” I ask. “She says she’s pretty much free every day these holidays. We’re going to hang out.”
“Beach?” Grandma sips her orange juice.
“Probably. At least on the sunny days.”
The lost feeling will disappear when I talk to Gabby. I know it will. We’ve talked every holiday since she moved down here, and nearly disappeared out of my life. When I finally found her, I had to tell her she was crazy: of course I was her friend — it didn’t matter where she lived, or if she moved, and for sure we’d be able to keep in touch with each other even though we lived in different towns. It was a new thing for her to get her head around, with her family moving so often, and sometimes when I think about how I’m the first person she’s ever had a long-term friendship with, I feel warm. I did that, I think. I made that happen. “We belong together, you silly rabbit,” I told her, that day in her bedroom, when I’d detectived my way back into her house and her life, and was trying to convince her to talk to me.
Now we see each other during holidays when I visit Grandma and text almost every day in the school term. Gabby tried calling me a few times but I hate talking on the phone — you just can’t see the person’s face or watch their mouth — so I told her ‘texting is better’. It took some explaining, because she’s never really understood much about me being hard of hearing, but when I just stopped answering her calls and texted back instead, she finally got the message. Gabby knows pretty much everything that goes on at my school now, and she keeps me up to date with hers as well. We just pick up where we left off, every single time.
Grandma says she’ll drop me off at the corner we always meet at, and I grin when I see Gabby in the distance. Her smile just about covers her whole face, and when I get out of the car, she gives me a huge hug.
“So, the wedding?”
It’s the first thing she wants to ask me about, as we walk down to the beach. It’s colder than I thought - definitely colder now than a few days ago, at the wedding - and I’m glad I’ve brought my jacket.
“It was… nice,” I say. “Pretty, I guess.” I hold out my silver bracelet so she can see it.
“Ooh, lovely,” she says. “But I want more details about everything else. Dresses. Shoes. Cars. Flowers. Did you cry?”
“What?” I turn towards her, to try to pick up her voice better.
“Did. You. Cry?”
I laugh and turn away in embarrassment. “Oh, um. No.” Then I get worried. “Why? Do you think I should have?”
Gabby makes enormous puppy dog eyes at me. “Everyone cries at weddings. Don’t you know that?” She puts her two hands up to her heart. “’Cos they’re so romantic, and everyone’s so happy.”
So happy. I take a breath in and let it out. “I didn’t cry. Actually, I couldn’t really hear what was going on. So I think I kind of missed the getting married part.”
“You missed it? Omigosh, like that’s the most important thing.” She looks shocked for a second, and then smiles. “I mean, apart from the dresses, obvs. What were they…?”
The wind picks up and blows my ponytail in my face, and I miss the last bit of Gabby’s question. “Um, like, a short blue one for Mum, and then for me…”
“Not white?”
“No, but…”
“Flowers?”
“She didn’t want a fuss.”
Gabby’s face drops. “So not even a limo?”
I shake my head. “It was just really low key.”
“Oh, weird.” Gabby points down through the sandy path surrounded by bushland, through the beach, with its white sand and blue and white waves. “You’re not going to go in, are you?”
“Not today. We can just sit on the sand,” I say, and then we pick our way across the path, trying not to get sand in our shoes, or in the rolled up legs of our jeans, until I overbalance in a sand pile, and accidentally kick some over Gabby’s whole left foot, and then we’re both laughing so hard and there’s sand everywhere and we don’t even care any more.
We find a spot to sit, on a tuft of grass, where we can look right over the whole beach, from one clear end to almost the other end, although it’s disappearing into a haze of salt air.
“Not as good as the mall, but so nice.” Gabby stretches her hands up and almost yells.
I silently agree. The beach is one place that gives me back my energy. Maybe it’s the constant, pounding waves, or maybe the fact that the light and the salt and the air and the water are stronger than anything else. “You can go to the beach, but you can’t change it,” my Dad said once. “It will change you.”
The breeze blows again, and I realise I’m on the wrong side of Gabby. When she talks, the sound of her words will blow right out of her mouth and away from me.
“Can I swap?” I point to a grassy patch on the other side of me. “You sit here.”
She looks annoyed at me, but does it anyway. “Did you hear that the Beat Boys are going to be touring this year?” She pulls at my sleeve so I have to look at her. “I can’t believe it. Can you imagine if they came here?”
I give her a slightly mocking ‘poor Gabby’ look. “You are so totally in love with that group. Seriously. I think you’re going to marry one of them.”
She does a pretend swoon. “I’m going to marry all five of them. Imagine if that happened. My life would be complete.” She sits up. “You’d be my bridesmaid, of course.”
“Great,” I say. “And you’d be married to five B-grade singers all at once.”
“B-grade. As if. They’re totally the best.” Gabby grins. “But it would be a great wedding.”
We sit together, comfortable in the silence. I hug my jacket around myself in the cold and count the pounding of the waves on the beach. Five. Six. Seven.
“It’s so weird, you know,” I say, “about the wedding. It’s like something’s ended.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just, like, maybe nothing will be the same. Ever.” I put my head down on my knees and wrap my finger around a long stalk of grass.
“Things change,” Gabby says. She turns her back slightly away from me, but the wind brings the sound of her voice to me anyway. “It’s normal.”
I break off the grass and flick it away, watching it dance on the wind until it falls, with a sudden rush, to the ground.
“I know it’s normal. It’s just…”
I don’t even have words to explain it. I know Gabby’s had a lot of change in her life, but at least every time she’s moved, she’s done it with both her parents. She might have had to change houses, but at least the people in them have stayed the same.
“I just never thought my mum would want to find someone else.”
Gabby shifts back to me. She looks softer, in her face. “You’ll get used to it.”
“I’m just so tired.” It’s still true. Sitting here on the grass, even at the beach, I just want to lie down and sleep.
“People do this. They get married again. And it could be heaps worse. I mean, you like him, right?”
I pull a grass stem right out by the roots this time.
“Of course. Yeah.” I twirl the piece of grass around. A tiny round nodule attached to the root flies around and around beneath my fingers. I imagine myself hanging on to it, twirling, faster and faster, flying around in the air, trying to hold on to what is supposed to keep me strong and solid. “It’s more than that, though.”
“But, tell me more about the wedding.” Gabby sounds impatient. “Did you like your dress that you wore? Did you get the white one in the end?”
I put the grass down and smile. I’d messaged Gabby a photo of each of the three dresses I’d tried on, the day Mum and I had been shopping for mine. “She liked the tan one, but I went for the white.” I put my hands back and breathe in the salt air. “It didn’t really match hers, and I was a bit worried, but she said I should just get the one I liked best.” I shift position. “So I did. And it looked good. At least, I think it did.” I pull my phone out of my pocket, and swipe to open it up. “See?” I scroll through the pictures until I find the one Mum and I took together.
“Nice,” said Gabby. She sounds admiring. “Your mum’s really pretty.”
“Yeah.”
“And you too, of course.”
I play-slap her on the head. “Gee, thanks.”
“So, it was a good wedding.” She sounds like she needs me to agree.
“Uh huh.” I make the noise with my mouth and then close it again quickly, because the words I want to say are hiding just underneath, waiting to come out.
It was a good wedding. Of course it was a good wedding. But I’m tired. And I’m lost. And my roots are floundering and spinning, out of the ground.