Breathing Under Water Page 5

  ‘Why the worst?’

  ‘I was travelling by myself … meant there was no one to share the great moments with, and no one to cry with when it got hard.’

  ‘Well, you’re home now,’ I say. ‘And everyone is here.’

  Five

  ANY STORY

  Because I have no clothes at her house other than my work clothes, I am forced to obey when Mia decides to dress me for the party. I end up in a high-waisted denim skirt, a cropped black bralette and a vintage denim jacket. Feeling kind of edgy in double denim, I sit on the edge of the bed while she colours my lips dense burgundy. When Mia permits me a glance in the mirror, my eyes, as dark blue as the ocean at midnight, have a certain light, a certain energy, a reflection of the moon.

  ‘You’re so lucky,’ she complains. ‘Your eyebrows and eyelashes are so dark, you don’t even need make-up.’

  I draw a breath deep into my belly, warm and dark, picturing his jagged hairline, wondering what would happen if he were to see me with tinted lips and eyes that swim.

  If he saw me, would he be at my mercy? The sea to the moon?

  ‘You look really pretty,’ she says and kisses my forehead, before finishing off her own make-up and outfit.

  When we’re ready to leave, we say goodbye to William and Jackson.

  ‘Are you coming back here tonight?’ William asks.

  ‘Either here or Grace’s,’ Mia says.

  ‘Okay, well, your mum got called in this afternoon, so she’ll be at the hospital all night. If you do come back, try to be mindful of her tomorrow – she’ll want quiet …’

  ‘All good, love you!’

  ‘Bye, thanks for the pies!’ I call, and it’s not until we’re in the car, me turning the keys in the ignition, that I look across at Mia, see her pull a flask from beneath her jacket and think maybe tonight isn’t the best idea.

  ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘Rum,’ she beams.

  ‘But where did you …’

  ‘I took some from a bottle in the house and filled it back up with apple juice.’

  ‘Apple juice? Is that even the same colour as rum?’

  ‘A bit lighter, I think, but it doesn’t matter – neither of my parents drink rum. No one will notice.’ Mia tucks the flask back under her jacket. ‘Let’s stop somewhere on the way and get something to mix it with.’

  ‘Okay.’ I turn on the engine. In the dark, she might not notice the slight tremble of my hands.

  Even at night, we wouldn’t have needed the address to find the house.

  Music pulses through an otherwise quiet neighbourhood. There are cars and skateboards and bikes parked across the front lawn, and a girl already losing her dinner in the gutter while a friend holds back her hair. A second friend with her arms crossed is just far enough away to look like she might not be here with them. The crowd is already thick on the street, people hanging in clusters, holding silver pillows of wine above their heads, guzzling on them.

  I follow Mia up onto the front verandah and spy a group of boys at the edge of the yard, trying to find a place to jump the fence into the main party out back. As we go to enter the house, two older guys step up off a ratty couch planted at the front door. The skinnier one’s beady eyes scrutinise us. He wears a black beanie and has two sleeves of tattoos. Drawing back on a cigarette, he takes a heavy swig from his longneck and snickers, ‘This isn’t a kids’ party.’

  A lump swells in my throat.

  Mia steps forward, tossing loose curls over her shoulder, puffs her chest and says, ‘I’m with Eric Rockwell.’

  The two guys exchange a glance and crack up laughing. ‘Babe,’ the chubby one in the doorway says, ‘no one is with Eric.’

  ‘Fine,’ she snaps. ‘I’ll call him.’

  Mia fishes her mobile from her purse and starts to dial his number.

  ‘Okay, okay.’ The skinny one reaches out and pushes her hand down. ‘Come on in.’ They move aside, granting access. Mia takes my hand and draws me toward the entrance. It’s only in the moment before I step through the doorway that I recognise two faces from the crowd on the street – a boy from our English class, a girl I used to play netball with. All of them … our age.

  Suddenly, it dawns on me that we’re leaving ourselves behind and stepping into something else entirely.

  Deep house beats throb, so loud it feels as if my heart is being forced out of rhythm. Clouds of smoke loom like late May, and I wonder if anyone plans on actually living here after the party is over. We weave our way through the back living area. Beneath the bursting light of a strobe, someone launches themself off the breakfast bar, taking out a mob dancing on blackened floorboards. I squeeze Mia’s hand and quicken my pace, trying to stick close to her.

  Outside, worn couches and glass bottles litter the lawn, right down to the bottom of the yard where a makeshift stage has been set up. A local band are playing beneath a dark sky. Mia spots an empty armchair closer to the fence and steers me over to it. Sitting down, she draws me down onto her lap and whips out her phone. ‘It’s too hard to see anyone,’ she explains. ‘I’ll just message him.’

  ‘Maybe we should just wait here,’ I suggest. ‘Let him find us?’

  ‘Grace, we’re not sleeping beauties lying in the forest. I’m sick of lying still and just waiting for Prince Charming.’

  A couple walks by while I wait for her to text Eric. I see the girl nudge her partner and cock her head in our direction. ‘What is this? A Wiggles concert?’

  I shrink back, wanting to sew myself into the green leather upholstery that stinks of lint and tobacco.

  ‘Hey.’ Eric wades out from the murky shadows behind the stage and leans down to kiss each of us on the cheek. ‘Sorry,’ he pauses in front of me, ‘what’s your name again?’

  I open my mouth to speak as Mia answers, ‘Grace.’

  ‘Nice to meet you.’

  ‘You too.’ I manage a smile at the feet of this giant.

  ‘Come dance,’ he says and takes Mia’s hand, pulling her out from underneath me. Eric makes for the patch of mud in front of the stage and I feel my best friend’s arm hook around my waist. Like a fish caught on a line behind a boat, I am towed in their wake whether I like it or not.

  When we make it to the middle of the dance floor, Mia looks down at my two left feet and shouts in my ear, ‘Do you want some? Might help you loosen up, yeah?’ I see the flask in her hand.

  ‘I’m driving,’ I say. Suddenly I notice her eyes. Pink glass, sliding in and out of focus. The flask slips from her grasp, and when I pick it up off beaten earth, I discover it is empty. ‘There is nothing in here, Mia!’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ Eric wedges himself between us. ‘I’ll fix it.’ I watch him reach under the stage and draw out a bottle of vodka, pouring clear liquid into the flask until it starts to overflow. The band hits the chorus and the sea of bodies bob and sway. An elbow pokes my spine, a boot stamps my foot.

  ‘Mia, I don’t think you should …’

  Eric’s arms slither around her. He grinds his crotch against her. I watch his hands slide over her buttocks, thighs, back around her hips, up over her breasts.

  ‘She’s fine,’ he says through clenched teeth and takes her head between his two wide palms to stop it toppling off her shoulders. Then he leans down and kisses her, and I see her eyes roll into the back of her head.

  ‘Grace!’

  I spin around and see a guy in ripped cord jeans, his shirt over his shoulder like a rag. How does he know my name? He is tall, his head shaved and his jaw angular. He answers my unspoken question, ‘I’m Angus – Eric’s mate,’ and sneaks a hand beneath my jacket, brushing the skin between my skirt and bralette.

  I glance back to Mia and see a boy with a tie-dyed tee and long hair where she and Eric should be. Blood begins to pound in my eardrums as I scan the yard in search of Mia. The blood is so loud in my ears I don’t even notice the break in the music.

  ‘Where is Mia?’

  ‘She’s wit
h Eric.’ His fingertips touch my lower ribs, soft at first, and he draws me closer to him.

  ‘I have a boyfriend.’

  He maintains his grip and smiles. ‘Yeah? Where is he?’

  My skin tightens, my shoulderblades squeeze together. ‘He didn’t want to come.’

  Angus laughs, only the sound is hollow and cold. His fingers curl, nails dig into my waist. He leans over me, breathing bourbon and Coke hot against my now naked collarbones as he slides my jacket down my arms. ‘What’s his name?’ he taunts.

  ‘Harley,’ I say, quickly biting my tongue.

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  A bug in a spider’s web, I writhe and wriggle.

  Through welling tears I barely see the singer stumble off the front of the stage. The sea of bodies turns wild with waves of cheering and chanting and I am ripped out of Angus’s hold. Swimming out of the crowd, I escape up the yard, ducking into a shadow beside the house. I dig for my mobile, calling the number at the top of my favourites. Ben picks up on the second ring.

  ‘Hey, did you get my message? I’m so sorry about today! Trust me, I’ll make it up to you, Gracie – I promise, okay?’

  I close my eyes and lean against the fence, pressing my face against the rough wood.

  ‘Where are you? What’s all that noise?’

  Down the hill, the singer is hoisted into the air by three guys. He’s showered in beer and screams of praise.

  ‘Are you at a party?’

  When I don’t answer, his voice goes up. ‘Gracie, are you okay?’ It’s not until I hear myself speak that I become aware of my sobbing. ‘I can’t find Mia.’

  ‘Take a deep breath.’

  I exhale, taking comfort from his voice.

  ‘Have a wander, and if you can’t find her maybe go wait by the car?’ he suggests. ‘I’m with the boys in the shed – we have pizza, Mum made it with some healthy shit. There’s still heaps here for when you get back …’

  There’s a blackout, the winding down of a generator, and as the party is plunged into darkness my grip slackens, the phone bouncing off the ground and into a crack between the stairs and a fence. I drop to my hands and knees and stretch one hand into the gap, trying to reach it. The screen light stays on for a few seconds, but after that I am left groping for it blindly. The mob starts booing, calling for the lights to come back on. I hear someone banging metal together. ‘OI!’ they shout. ‘COPS! Everyone out! The cops are here!’

  Finally, I touch my phone, just as a boy on his way out trips over me in the shadows and I graze my head against the coarse timber of the fence. ‘Fuck! Watch yourself!’ he spits at me, dusting himself off.

  I bring the handset to my ear to find Ben still waiting on the other end. ‘Are you okay? Gracie, I heard that. You have to stick up for yourself.’

  ‘The cops are here,’ I say, cupping my other hand over my mouth so that he can hear me over the racket – empty cans crunching beneath shoes, screams, chatter, and sirens already blaring in the street. ‘I’m going to go find Mia.’

  ‘Okay, but call me back.’

  Caught in the current, I flow through the house, pouring down the front driveway and emptying into the street where the lights flash blue and red. I try to stay there, at the river mouth, darting between the schools of fish, scrutinising every face, until there are only a few left stumbling down the drive and I come to understand she must have come out before me. She’s already out here.

  I blink and tiny drops chase down my cheeks. I swallow, draw a deep breath, wiping my eyes on the sleeve of my jacket. Black blotches come away on denim.

  Weaving my way out of the crowd, I swim toward the car. Neighbours are out on their front steps in dressing robes and ugg boots, several clutching torches, as if a mere beam of light is enough to stop a teenager vomiting on their flowerbeds.

  And then I see her, a girl without her jacket, walking up the centre of the street. Her arms are wrapped around her stomach, and despite the chaos unfolding on the street all around, her every step is calm and measured, strides of equal distance, equal timing. Nothing like Mia.

  She stops on the bitumen no more than a metre in front of me and in the glow of the streetlight, I see her face, ghost white, deep sunken eyes. She’s silent.

  I notice his meaty shoulders. Trailing ten or so metres behind, Eric Rockwell comes to stand at her side, adjusting his crotch, doing up his fly.

  My heart sinks.

  Her stare is vacant, her hair matted and damp at the hairline. The giant stamps her lips with a kiss, but she doesn’t blink.

  ‘I’m going back to find my friends. See you, Mia,’ he says, and then he is gone.

  She doesn’t speak. She can’t speak.

  It’s sickening. My heart starts to ache.

  ‘Oh, Mia …’ I begin, just as whatever strength she had, holding herself upright, burns out and her body folds in two.

  We stop twice on the way home. The first time because she vomits out the door into the gutter. The second time because her cries are so hysterical, I have to turn off the engine, pull her out of the car and lie her on the kerb so that the night air can fill her lungs.

  Ben, as he has always been able to, knows something is seriously wrong before we’re even home and is waiting in the driveway when I pull up. Lifting her out of the car, he asks me what happened, and I say nothing, because with Ben I sometimes don’t need words.

  I watch the colour drain from his face. His body shrinks a little, and then his arms tighten around her, as if wishing his embrace could undo someone else’s wrongs.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘Eric Rockwell,’ I whisper, and she sobs harder, soaking his shoulder with her tears. ‘What should we do?’

  ‘Go tell the boys to go home—’ Ben begins, but then we hear Mia’s voice, her breath ragged and uneven.

  ‘I just want to go to sleep,’ she manages, and as I watch him carry her into the house, I think about Sleeping Beauty.

  I wake in the night to the sound of feet at my bedroom door.

  ‘Mia,’ Ben whispers, ‘are you awake?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She’s barely audible. ‘I can’t sleep.’

  I hear the rustle of cotton sheets as he eases himself onto the single trundle bed I pulled out for her on the floor.

  ‘Come here,’ his voice soothes, and there is another rustle as he gathers her bones. Whispers pass over the pillow, my two best friends entangled on a single mattress.

  ‘Can you tell me a story?’

  ‘A story about what?’ he asks.

  ‘About anything … Any story. A story about something else.’

  Six

  LIKE THE SUN

  Nineteen minutes and eleven seconds separated us at birth.

  On the official documentation, he is older.

  Ben came into this world screaming, his presence bold. I, on the other hand, was still caught in the shadows, lagging. Ben had left me and I was aimless in a world without him. The womb, our first home, was hollow and empty now.

  I was the moon beneath a dark horizon. And when I rose, I began my orbit around the sun.

  On the birth certificate, I am younger.

  Although it really has nothing to do with age.

  I recently discovered in a personal development class at school that fraternal twins are the result of hyperovulation – multiple eggs being released from the ovaries, which are then fertilised by different sperm, possibly even at different times. There is no way of knowing which one of us is actually older.

  It has nothing to do with age.

  What it really means is that I am, and have always been, second.

  Second to breathe. Second to be weaned off breast milk. Second to walk unaided. Second to say the alphabet from start to finish. Second to stand on a surfboard. Always one step behind Ben, always lagging.

  Whenever he took a new step, Mum would look at me almost apologetically, until one day, she began pushing me down paths Ben had not already marched. Girl guides, netbal
l, clarinet lessons.

  For a year, I even attended ballet. I was a seven-year-old unable to touch my toes, and rarely stood without the teacher poking my stomach. Tuck in this banana belly, Grace! One day, she shuffled the class and I was placed at the front of the ensemble. With no one to look to for the next move, I stumbled out of time and put each girl behind me off beat as well. I quickly returned to my place at the back and was comfortable, guided by the girls in the front row.

  These days, Mum has to lift Monty into her car, his legs too thin and tired for him to jump up on his own. Without Ben in the car, I happily take the front seat and strap myself in next to Mum. She turns on the ignition and shifts the car into gear, telling Monty to lie down in the back so she can see out the mirror.

  ‘I still don’t see why he has to be so mean … it’s been over a week,’ I say, thinking of Dad’s cold shoulder in the days since Mia and I were fired from the bakery.

  Mum pulls out of the driveway. ‘Oh it’s okay honey, he’ll get over it soon enough.’

  ‘Well he’s being nice to Ben and it was Ben’s fault, not mine.’

  Turning down the radio, Mum says, ‘It’s different for you two. You’re his little girl. I’m afraid he just doesn’t know how to react sometimes.’ Mum sighs. ‘He really does care.’

  I turn to look out the window as we turn onto High Street. ‘Got a funny way of showing it.’

  ‘You know, when you were born—’ Mum begins and even though I have heard her talk about the day a thousand times, I never get tired of listening. We’re cruising past the strip of main shops in Marlow as Mum recalls Dad clasping her wet palms in the delivery room. She tells me how Dad, a hard-skinned man, came undone, tearing at the sides like tan leather slit with a knife when Ben was drawn from her body. At the sight of his baby boy, he leant into Mum’s shoulder and cried.

  ‘The nurses had whisked Ben away,’ she says, reaching across the gear stick, rubbing my knee. ‘I could turn my energy to the tiny body still inside me. The little person I was yet to meet.’ Smiling wide now, Mum tells me that when my dad set eyes on me, his baby girl, frighteningly small for thirty-six weeks, his next breath was laced with a slight anxiety. Mum explains that his fear, in that moment, stemmed from a sudden feeling of inadequacy, the realisation that he could never guarantee my full protection. He would never be able to shield me from every girl who bullied me for being a tomboy, or catch me every time I fell from my bike. ‘Although,’ Mum laughs, ‘he will always try.’