On a beach in Italia

A newspaper hangs over the thin green fence that separates their boatshed from us—the bronzed, exposed public. A slim, muscular, latté-skinned man stands facing the sea, the murky green of a tattoo splayed across his right shoulder. It is a pirate girl who stares out menacingly from his taut skin, as if in warning. A grimacing welt, slightly bigger than a golf ball, juts out of his side; he dabs sunscreen on it, pink and grey and dead-looking. My mind burns.

            In my line of sight, there is another dark body with a female inked into its back—her eyes are closed, her red lips pursed and her green hair overflowing with hibiscus flowers. This body puffs at a cigarette, basking in fluoro-green sunglasses and mint-hued Speedos.

            Dewy-eyed men prowl across the pebbles, sarongs and jewellery and toys draped about them like Christmas decorations. Between the hot white shore and the warm, salty sea is a blur of carnival-colour. There is a diverse array of umbrellas: aqua, pink candy-stripe, rainbow, coral, emerald, South of France sailor-stripe, tablecloth orange, Hawaiian floral. And hundreds of towels in blinding shades—a loving contrast to the brown bums that rest upon them.

            And there are boats, sleek James Bond speedboats and grand, tall yachts whose masts soar upwards like giraffe necks or old Parisian lampshades.  There is a sunflower-yellow waterslide running off a boat into the water with kids in clingy bright bathing suits hovering by.           

            Everything is hot, hot, hot and enclosed beneath the proud, distant Ancona mountains. They watch over us like an immovable father while we play and sweat in this rainbow pie with crisp blue crust. Every jigsaw piece of every body has a gleam to it and there is the scent of sunscreen on skin, then the sound of babies crying and children pig-squealing and water lapping, lapping, lapping against the stony, white shore.

            There is no one here who covers up. Liquorice allsorts of bodies are dotted along the beach—saggy bumps of flesh bulge out from black bather-bottoms and tiny, hairy calves trot into the waves, towards the mountains. 

Intern daze

I write small, fanciful articles here and there for Broadsheet Media these days.

Egg's Olympic Lunchboxes




Laduree Opens in Sydney





All the Pretty Lights on Gertrude

The Cats' Mother

You smell to me like kittens and baby’s milk.

Inside odours are where you hide

and cry over midday movies

that remind you of your childhood

and of your father,

who always eluded you.

You prefer not to drive at night,

your bird-thighs wobble beneath the wheel,

and the TV set flickers as you sleep,

its chatter cradling

your skinny, lonely frame in the dark.

I wonder why you aren’t kept snug by

that heart of yours; it melts marshmallows

and latches softly onto mine,

as your cats paw at your cheeks

to wake you in the rose-lit mornings.

Those sad, doe eyes are frozen over;

ghostly pools, they cannot thaw.

They no longer know or dream of

spring, or summer, or sundrenched chests,

or toasty laughter.

I wish my own love for you could,

like talcum powder on bath-wrinkled toes,

dry up the moisture of your woes.

I wish, while alone in your kitchen,

you could love you

like your cats do.

Fiction: Chapter One of Ezra's Tale

I hate being in the backseats of cars. It feels so stale back there, especially when it’s your stuffy folks riding shotgun. I get carsick real bad too, and everyone knows it’s worse when you’re stuck in the back, the hot leather front seat sticking to your knees, the air all musty and foul. I always hated that stupid unwritten rule about older people never having to sit in the back. I mean, my Dad’s not that old, for Christ’s sake—it wouldn’t kill him to take the backseat for once. He’s not a goddamn cripple.

I looked out the window at the sea, a sombre mix of grey, swamp green and private school navy. When the sea gets murky like that, it makes me think of old shipwrecks, of the ocean swallowing up everything. It was drizzly outside, still a little balmy, but cold for a summer’s day. I pulled my hood up, adjusted my Ray-Bans and crossed my arms, trying to sleep. It was early.

‘Oh, look, Ez, the roller-skating rink!’ my mother enthused from the front seat. I ignored her.

‘Ez, look!’

I stirred in annoyance. ‘What?’

‘Come on, you and Sammy never wanted to go anywhere else once upon a time.’

I looked up in time to see a black brick building with illustrations of guys in neon t-shirts, pink headbands and skates.

‘You remember that phase, John?’ Mum said.

‘Yes, I do,’ Dad responded from behind the crossword. ‘Three-letter word for fixed or established course of life, usually dull or unpromising. Anybody?’

‘You can’t have forgotten, Ez!’

‘I remember,’ I said, leaning against the window.

‘Maybe you could get a job there.’

‘No.’

‘It would be fun!’

‘Rut.’

‘Pardon me?’

‘Three-letter word for fixed or established course of life, usually dull or unpromising.’

Dad turned around from the passenger seat, his reading glasses sliding to the end of his nose. He held up the newspaper, considering.

‘Yes, rut!’ he said, scribbling happily. ‘Very clever, Ezra.’

We fell into silence again. The drizzle turned to rain.

After a while, we reached the township of Robin Bay, where there were a lot of tanned kids walking around in bathers and denim shorts. The fact that it was raining didn’t seem to have occurred to them. I put on my headphones, cranked Sonic Youth, and tried not to think about the fact that these sorts of people were going to be my new friends. Fluoro-tank-top-wearing, teeny-bopping, beach people. I supposed I could always seek out the other stereotypes around—Emos and goths—but that didn’t really float my boat either. I could see groups of them skulking outside McDonalds and skate parks we drove by—bad skin, an overdose of piercings, hair dyed black or peroxide blonde.

I felt a tap on my leg. It was Mum. I rested my headphones around my neck. She looked pissed.

‘God, Ezra, do you want that music any louder?’

‘Sure, but it won’t go any.’

‘Well, can you turn it down, please? I’ve been yelling at you for five minutes.’

‘Sorry I missed it.’

‘Don’t be a smartarse, Ezra. I just wanted to know if you’d like to stop for lunch before we get to Gran’s?’

‘Whatever.’

‘Oh, stop it.’

‘What?’

She turned to me angrily. ‘Don’t be like that.’

‘Like what?’ I groaned. ‘Can you look at the road, please?’

‘I am looking at the road!’

‘I wasn’t being like—anything.’

‘Yes you were. You were being negative, Ezra. You’re always so negative.’

‘I’m not negative. I just don’t care whether we stop for lunch or not.’

‘Well, it would be good if you did care, Ezra, once in a while!’ Her dead-straight chestnut hair swung to and fro edgily.

‘He’s all right, darling, we’ll eat later on,’ Dad interjected.

‘He’s not all right, he’s an empty bloody shell!’ Mum snapped, her left hand flailing. ‘And take off those sunglasses, Ezra, it’s raining outside for Christ’s sake.’

I ripped off my sunglasses and leaned forward so that my face was next to Mum’s. She was gripping the steering wheel, her knuckles white.

‘You know what?’ I breathed, pointing at her face. ‘I never agreed to this so-called plan of yours to palm me off to the grandparents, so don’t freak the fuck out if I’m not making daisy chains about it.’

‘Language, Ezra!’ Dad said sternly as Mum roared, ‘THAT’S IT!’ and pulled over.

I sat back in my seat. Here we go, I thought as Mum’s eyes, two ugly brown cows’ eyes, bore into mine.

‘Don’t you even go there,’ she said in a quiet voice. ‘Don’t you go playing the victim, here, Ezra. After the hell you put me through last week, you have no right to even a whisper of complaint.’

‘What rights do I have?’ I muttered.

‘Oh fuck, Ezra!’

‘Language, darling!’ Dad cut in.

‘DON’T YOU LANGUAGE ME, I’LL USE WHATEVER FUCKING LANGUAGE I WANT!’ Mum was going off the rails. I would have laughed if the situation wasn’t so tense. She turned back to me.

‘Now,’ she began again in that same quiet voice. ‘We are going to get to my mother’s house, I’m going to drop you off, and you are not to say another word about it. Got it?’

I put my Ray-Bans back on.

‘Got it, Ezra?’

I smiled at her sweetly. ‘Got it, Mum!’

***

It had cleared up a bit by the time we got to Cape Lawrence, a seaside village on the Hamilton Peninsula where I would be caged all summer long. We rolled up the dirt driveway to Gran and Pa’s, and as I jumped out, I could hear a gravelly radio playing some old jazz tune.

‘Hello?’ Mum called, stepping out of the car.

There were flowers and shrubs everywhere, and a big lemon tree by the front gate. A dog started barking and a big black Labrador galloped up to me.

‘Hey Sooty!’ I laughed as her paws hit my chest. I threw her off and scratched her head. ‘Guess you remember me, huh? Don’t ya! Don’t ya!’

‘That was Peggy Lee with Is That All There Is?, a hit cover recorded in 1969, originally written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller. Has to be my all-time favourite rendition of—’

‘Mum?’ Mum called again. ‘We’re here!’

I let go of Sooty, grabbed my duffel bag out of the trunk, and had a look around. The garden seemed a lot smaller than the last time I was here. I was small and shy back then, convinced Gran and Pa’s front yard was an African or Amazonian jungle—exotic, deadly.

The familiar news jingle resonated from the radio.

‘Cape Lawrence search and rescue officials say they fear the three young men who have been missing at sea for nine days have drowned. Their couta boat was today found capsized on the beach at Shelly’s Point.’

‘Jeez,’ I said, to no one in particular. ‘Guess I won’t be going for a nice ol’ sail anytime soon.’

‘You’ll get dragged under by sea monsters if you do!’

I jumped. Pa had emerged out of the agapanthus and was standing right behind me. He was holding up a rusty pair of pruners and waving them at me forebodingly.

‘There you are!’ Mum said, walking over. She gave Pa a kiss on the cheek.

‘Here I am!’ He waved the pruners at me again. I edged back. ‘Just tidying up the garden a bit.’ He stared at me. ‘Don’t tell me this is my grandson!’

I forced a smile.

‘This is your grandson!’ Dad called from the car. He came over and shook Pa’s hand. Pa squinted at me.

‘But you’re so tall!’ he said. ‘How old are you again?’

‘Seventeen.’

‘Seventeen!’ he yelled, his whiskers twitching. ‘What am I s’posed to do with a seventeen year old? I thought the kid was fourteen!’

Mum laughed awkwardly and steered me up towards the house. Was he even joking? I couldn’t tell.

Though I hadn’t been back for years, my memory of Gran and Pa’s place trickled back to me fast, as if I were a bucket collecting drops from a leak in the roof. Their house could have coined the term “old and rickety”. It was timber, two stories tall, and though it was supposed to be white, it looked kind of grey because it was weatherworn and the paint was chipping. If you looked up at the place from a certain angle, it really seemed as if it might fall over.

Before we reached the door, Gran came running out in a red and white checked shirt. I was surprised at her energy—she was pretty old and all.

‘You’re here!’ she cried, smothering us both. She smelled musky and somewhat floral, a bit like perfumed toilet paper—Lavender Fresh. My bag dropped to the ground as she grabbed my shoulders.

‘Now,’ she said, in her crackly, lukewarm-milk voice. ‘Let me look at you.’

There was a pause. I sincerely hoped she knew I was seventeen.

‘Aren’t you pretty for a teenage boy!’ she boomed, picking at my clothes. ‘No longer that pint-sized ragamuffin that used to run down the front beach in the nuddy! Still haven’t cut your hair, I see.’

I didn’t know whether this was a compliment or not, so I just sort of stood there. Gran looked from me, to Mum, then back to me again.

‘He doesn’t talk much, does he?’

‘It isn’t one of his strong points,’ Mum said shortly. Guess she was still angry about the “whatever” thing.

‘Suits me just fine!’ Gran said, ushering me in.

‘So, we’ve got to head off now, I’m afraid,’ Mum said from the doorway.

‘Head off?’ Gran repeated. ‘Head off where? You’re not even going to stay for a cuppa?’

‘Paul’s got a meeting in the afternoon.’

‘Oh, Paul’s got a meeting.’

‘Don’t, Mum. You know we’d stay if we could.’

Gran’s eyes narrowed. ‘Yes, because I see you so often, as it is.’

Mum sighed. Dad appeared behind her.

‘Ready to go?’ he asked—then, noticing Gran— ‘Oh, hello there, Faye.’

‘Hello,’ she said acidly. ‘Well, I suppose if you’re all racing off, we should at least help the boy with the rest of his things.’

‘All good, Gran,’ I said, holding up my duffel bag.

‘All good?’

‘This is all I’ve got.’

‘What?’ she snapped. ‘That small thing is two months worth of clothes?’

I nodded.

‘Good Lord,’ she said, heaving a sigh. ‘Ah, well. Doesn’t seem like you’re going to be as hard work as your mother has made you out to be.’

‘He better not,’ Mum said, giving me a stiff hug. ‘Bye, honey.’

Dad clapped me on the back, grinning. ‘Don’t get into any trouble, eh, Ez?’

‘’Course not,’ I deadpanned.

After they left, Gran led me into the guest room. The walls were pink and it was bare except for a dark wooden closet in one corner and a bunk bed and Spiderman lamp in the other. I dropped my bag and crouched by the Spiderman lamp. Gran and Pa got it for me and Sam when we were ten. We were both kind of disappointed that we didn’t get one each, but it was still the coolest thing ever. I stood up and threw my bag onto the top bunk. Sam had always shotgunned it, and I’d never get a go. Gran walked over to the closet, opened it, and took out some fresh sheets.

‘So,’ she said nonchalantly, handing them to me. ‘You burned down your house, eh?’

I nearly fell over the Spiderman lamp.

‘Um,’ I faltered. ‘Not the—whole house.’

‘But a good chunk of it?’

I cleared my throat. ‘I suppose you could say that, depending on what your idea of a good chunk is … it’s a bit—subjective, really.’

‘Must’ve been a good chunk if your mother sent you here.’

‘Mm.’ I dug my hands into my pockets. ‘Well, I mean—I didn’t, like—torch the place or anything. I’m not going to burn down your house too, if that’s what you’re thinking. I’m not a pyro.’

‘No,’ Gran agreed. ‘No, I’m aware it was a cigarette that caused the fire.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Your cigarette.’

‘Yeah.’

‘That you were irresponsibly smoking in bed.’

‘Yeah …’

‘When you shouldn’t have been smoking in the first place.’

‘Mm.’

Gran was staring straight at me, and I was determinedly gazing at the Spiderman lamp.

‘You won’t be smoking here.’

Yes I would. ‘No, I won’t,’ I said.

Gran seemed satisfied. ‘Good. Now come and have a cup of tea.’

We walked into the kitchen—also pink—and something occurred to me. When Sam and I stayed here as kids, we hated the fact that there was no television. Gran always said it was because the television companies were trying to brainwash us, but surely—surely after five years, in this age of technology, she would have caved.

‘Hey Gran,’ I said, as she held the kettle under the tap. ‘Where’s the TV?’

‘No TV here.’

‘No TV?’ I looked around. ‘Are you sure?’

I walked through the kitchen into Gran and Pa’s bedroom, puzzled.

‘’Course I’m sure,’ Gran responded from the kitchen. The whoosh of the kettle sounded and there was a clinking of china cups.

I re-entered the kitchen. Gran was pouring boiling water from the kettle into two cups detailing how to tie knots: anchor hitch, bowline, figure eight, reef knot. Could Gran and Pa be anymore obvious that they lived by the beach?

But there must be a television somewhere, I thought. I passed through the kitchen again, crossed the living room and found a study. It contained a small wooden desk, a glass cabinet, some paintings of sailboats and seashells, and a computer that looked suspiciously like the one Dad brought us home in 1993.

I could hear Gran murmuring in the kitchen, and more china clinking. I strode over to the cabinet and opened it up—nothing but old plates and some knives and forks.

‘Ezra?’ Gran yelled.

‘What?’ I yelled back, crouching by the cabinet and looking glumly at the cutlery and lack of television.

‘I said, how many sugars?’ Gran was now standing in the doorway, a brown ceramic sugar pot in her hand. I closed the cabinet door and hastily stood up, dusting my hands off on my jeans. She was squinting at me suspiciously.

‘What on earth are you going through the good crockery cabinet for?’

‘Uh—’

‘Planning a tea party, are you?’

‘I was just—’

‘Treasure hunting, perhaps?’

‘Treasure hunting?’

Gran took a couple of steps towards me and shook the sugar pot threateningly in my face. ‘Are you hiding drugs?’

‘What! No, I—’

‘Because if you are planning on hiding drugs or liquor or cigarettes in my house, I’ll find them…’

‘I promise you, I’m not hiding anyth—’

‘Mark my words, I’ll sniff ‘em out like a dog!’

The flywire door banged from the kitchen.

‘Faye?’ said a voice that tinkled like keys in a pocket.

Gran’s squint softened, and she turned. A girl around my age popped her head inside the study.

‘Hello dear,’ Gran said fondly, taking her hands. ‘How are you?’

‘Oh, I’m good,’ she replied cheerfully. ‘Dad asked me to drop off some chutney.’

She reached into the bag slung over her shoulder and handed a jar to Gran.

‘Dad made it. Green tomato chutney, straight out of the garden!’

‘Isn’t that nice of your Dad?’ Gran put the sugar pot on the desk and took the jar, looking altogether like Christmas had come. ‘This looks delicious!’

She gestured for the girl to follow her and they went off towards the kitchen. I didn’t think it looked very delicious at all. It looked like puréed peas. Puréed peas mashed into a jar.

I was glad Gran had been distracted, but I was also irked that I was standing there completely ignored, so I picked up the sugar pot and wandered cautiously towards the kitchen. I idled by the fridge as Gran and the girl chatted at the kitchen table. Gran had apparently given her my cup of tea, and she was nursing it in her small, pale hands. I felt kind of stupid standing there with the sugar pot, but I couldn’t stop staring at the girl. There was something vulnerable about her—she looked so small, sitting there. Her tie-dyed blue dress drooped at the back like a thirsty violet. Her back was bony, athletic, bare. I wanted to reach out and touch it.

‘Could I have a bit of a sugar?’ she asked Gran politely, as if she was asking the teacher for another pencil at school.

‘Of course you can,’ Gran said, standing up. She crinkled her eyes and looked around. ‘Now, if I could just remember where I put the—’ Her eyes fell on me.

‘Ezra, what are you doing now? Give that here.’ Gran snatched the sugar pot from me. ‘Now, why don’t you sit down and talk to us civilly rather than creeping around and hiding drugs.’

‘Gran, I’m not hiding dr—’

‘Ezra’s trying to hide drugs,’ Gran said to the girl as she spooned some sugar into her cup.

‘Oh.’ The girl widened her eyes, playing along. ‘I see.’

She turned and looked at me for the first time, a smile twitching about her lips. Her blonde ponytail swung like a pendulum.

‘Yes, okay, yes, I’m hiding drugs,’ I said resignedly, and slumped into a chair at the table. ‘You caught me, Gran.’

‘Of course I caught you,’ Gran said. ‘Just don’t do it again.’

If Paris doesn't work out, perhaps I'll drift on down to the French Riviera and cruise the coast in slick convertibles with Cary Grant lookalikes.

Book Review!

Here we are, a review I wrote! It is of a children's fantasy book by Kate Forsyth, The Wildkin's Curse. One of my writing tutors at Melbourne Uni, George Ivanoff, posted it on his blog. Find it here.

Nice, clean fun, chaps.

Moonface

Moonface

Here’s how it went.

I woke up that morning at 5:37am. I remember the time because I have a habit of waking up at something-thirty-seven, whatever the hour. Felix always said it must be because I have some psychic connection to that number I am yet to understand. Well, whatever, my body clock was fucked. I hadn’t really slept for five days so the two or so hours of sleep I’d just had were good enough for me. The funeral wasn’t until noon, so I watched six or seven episodes of Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, season one, which Felix had bought for me for US $10.90 off Amazon a week before. By the time I considered myself hungry enough to choke down some Coco Pops, I saw the clock and freaked because it was 11:47 and I wasn’t even dressed.

Em was supposed to pick me up at 11:30, and I wondered where she was. I didn’t have an outfit planned or anything, so I put on my black jeans and the Easy Rider t-shirt I stole off Felix ages ago, and then dug through my bag for my phone, which I eventually discovered was still in my jacket pocket from yesterday, and I’d left my jacket in the kitchen so I hadn’t heard the 12 missed calls from Em when I was dozily watching Dr. Quinn. Felix and I used to love watching Dr. Quinn together on the Hallmark channel. Every character in it was just so good, you know—deeply good—and that made me want to be good too. By then it was 11:56 and I didn’t even have time to look in the mirror. I grabbed my keys and hurried outside. My phone rang. 11:58. It was Em.

‘Hey,’ I answered.

‘Where the fuck are you! I was banging on your door for, like, half an hour.’

‘I know, I was watching Dr. Quinn. I didn’t hear you.’

‘Dr. who? Jesus, Soph.’ There was an angry pause, a growl of disbelief. ‘Do you want me to come pick you up?’

‘No, it’s okay.’

‘It’s already twelve!’

‘I’ll be there soon. Just—stop stressing.’

There was another pause, but it seemed sympathetic.

‘Are you okay, Soph?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Really?’

‘Well, no. But it’s fine. See you in a bit.’

‘Okay … love you.’

‘You too.’

I hung up and had to take a moment. My throat was tight, hot—my eyes stung. I took a shaky breath and tried to think of nothing. It was probably at this point, 12:01, when the numbness took over because everything from here onwards comes back in blurs. I know I jumped on my bike without a helmet and got honked at by a taxi I think I cut in front of. I know I reached the park in twenty minutes or so, and dropped my bike by our tree, the tree we etched out names into: Soph and Felix were here, 03. We even named our tree—Moonface, after Moonface in The Faraway Tree. We were kids when we did that, like, fourteen or fifteen. It didn’t feel so long ago, though.

Funerals are strange and unreal. While you’re there, your emotions and the emotions of everyone around you are so hazardous that you sort of drift along, your eyes glazed, as if in a dream. You stiffly embrace a lot of people you’ll later forget; fiddle nervously with your program which will be frayed and blotchy by the end of the day; listen absolutely attentively to the speeches, your face crumpling in sympathy when the speaker has to take a moment to recompose himself.

It was like this, exactly like this, at my grandparents’ funerals, at the funeral of an old classmate’s mother, at the funeral of my aunt who died of lung cancer. But at Felix’s funeral, it was something else entirely. To say that I felt in a dream would be a lie. I didn’t feel like I was asleep, or dreaming, or not entirely there—I felt dead. Truly dead. Dead as a doornail.

There were loads of black folding chairs set up at the park, so many that it’s the only decorative feature I really noticed. Black folding chairs and people, people all dressed up formally, and in black. My t-shirt, Felix’s t-shirt, was bright orange with a funny cartoon of Dennis Hopper on a motorcycle—I felt a bit stupid, and wished I’d put more thought into my attire. It was a pretty significant event—you’d think I could’ve made an effort. That’s what my mum wanted to say when she saw me. I could tell. When I approached her, her eyes shifted from sad and puffy, to puzzled and annoyed, to sad and puffy again in about five guilty seconds.

‘Oh, my darling,’ she greeted tearfully, stroking my hair and hugging me to her. ‘Tell me you’ve changed your mind?’

‘I’m fine, Mum, I told you.’

‘Even just a week, so you don’t have to worry about food or work or—clothes.’ Her eyes fell on my t-shirt. ‘It would do you good to get out of that house, help you forget about—’

‘I’m okay by myself, Mum, so—just—drop it.’

As I hovered away, I could feel eyes, polka dots of eyes all following me sadly, pitifully, like I was a homeless person or an orphan with a wooden leg. I was engulfed by a tsunami of condolences—

‘Sophie, honey. How are you holding up?’ ‘… such a shock …’

‘…he was so young …’ ‘… always liked to live a little dangerously, our Felix did …’ ‘… oh, how he adored you, Sophie. You were so good for him.’

At some point, Em must have steered me away. I guess I looked pretty damn rugged. I hadn’t showered in a while, or eaten, or slept; my fringe was plastered to my forehead from the stress of being late; I wasn’t saying anything to anyone. So Em led me off, and I remember her grabbing my shoulders in manner of a coach preparing his star footballer for the upcoming match.

‘How’s your speech?’

Oh God, speech. I had written one too, but I hadn’t printed it out. I could not believe it—I had forgotten my fucking funeral speech.

‘You’ve forgotten your fucking funeral speech,’ Em deadpanned. She must’ve read between the lines of my alarmed expression. She put her hands behind her head then dropped them frantically.

‘Shit,’ she breathed. ‘Shit. Can you remember what it said?’

I searched my brain—blank. Blank blank blank. I shook my head a little manically. I was crumpling now, teetering, swaying. I couldn’t speak. I was determined not to break down—I didn’t want all those weird people groping me with sympathy again.

Em’s eyes probed mine. She gave a weak smile and drew me into a bear hug.

‘You fucking dunce,’ she almost laughed, and her tears wet my hair.

I didn’t reply. I collapsed into her and sobbed like a little kid.

Throughout the service, I was sitting up the front next to Felix’s family, staring at old Moonface in the distance. My best friend was dead. Dead. That word didn’t seem right, or real. I got a call from Sandra, his mum, five days before. I was in Aisle 6 at the supermarket, trying to decide on a brand of toothpaste.

‘Sophie? It’s Sandra … Felix is dead.’

That was it. Three words. Felix is dead. Sandra’s voice was so quiet and hollow I don’t know how I caught it. I just felt a ringing in my ears. My mouth dried up. I heard what she was saying but I didn’t understand what she meant by dead.

‘They think he was drinking. His body washed up on the back beach this morning. He drowned.’

Her words were raspy whispers that came out slowly, slowly as I dropped to the floor. It was rubbery and shiny and off-white and kind of sticky. My phone slipped out of my hand.

‘Sophie? Are you there? Hello?’

I stared up at the toothpaste. Colgate? Macleans? Gel Strip? Ultimate Whitening? Junior Jaws? I had no clue what to pick.

‘Sophie, are you there?’

I lowered my gaze and reached for the phone. It felt heavy, like lead, and my hand was shaking so badly that it took me a few tries to put it back to my ear.

‘Sandra? I’m going to have to call you back.’

In the end, I settled for Junior Jaws. The awful irony of “Mac The Shark” popping his head out of the surf was too beautiful to ignore.

The last thing I remember about the funeral service was “Hey Jude” by The Beatles playing out of scratchy speakers. Felix’s dad used to play it on the piano all the time when he was a kid, so he always had a sentimental spot for it, I guess. Everyone around me seemed to be crying now; I could hear lots of sniffling at the line: take a sad song and make it better. I wasn’t crying. I always thought that song was overplayed and annoying so I rode my bike back home without really saying goodbye to anyone. I could have thought of a thousand better songs to play while they took Felix’s coffin away.

When I got home, I felt instantly ashamed of myself and cried for an hour. A week went by after the funeral, and I didn’t leave the house. Em eventually broke in and force-fed me vegetables.

‘You’ll die too if you carry on like this,’ she said, poking a stem of broccoli in my face. It was hard to even muster the energy to open my mouth, let alone chew. I took the fork from her and just looked at it.

‘Eat!’ Em ordered, as she pulled a lump of envelopes out of her bag. ‘By the way, this is probably two weeks’ worth of mail that was exploding out of your letterbox.’

She sifted through the pile and I furtively ditched the broccoli.

‘Phone, phone, bank, Uni, phone, bank, Country Road catalogue, phone—Jesus, paid your phone bills lately?—Indian Harvest takeaway menu, letter …’

She tossed half the pile in front of me and continued with the other half, mumbling to herself. I glanced down at the letter on top of the pile and my gut wrenched.

There was no stamp or address, only my name, Soph, handwritten. I recognized the handwriting immediately and dropped the letter as if it was dry ice burning off a wart. Em didn’t notice. She was still grumbling about how many phone bills I had.

This was impossible. Hibernation was getting to my head. I picked up the letter again as quickly as I had dropped it, and ripped it open. It contained one piece of lined paper, folded twice.

I unfolded it and read, and as I read, I was sure I was going to throw up.

‘What’s that?’ came Em’s voice distantly, as if through a tunnel. I jumped up.

‘Just junk mail. Neighbourhood Watch notice or something.’

Em grunted and started opening my bills.

I clenched the piece of paper and walked stiffly into my room. I sat down on my bed and read the letter again. It was dated yesterday:

I’m not dead. Meet me at Moonface tomorrow night. 12.37am.

Tell no one.

F.