Chapter Eight
Saturday 11th January
We were all sitting around the brazier outside the bach. Jess tucked into me, her back to my front, my legs stuck out each side of her. She offered me a bite of her sausage wrapped up in a slice of bread. “We used to have a bonfire on the beach at night,” she said.
“Why don’t you do it now?”
“Not allowed. Some bylaw.”
Laura was sitting across from us staring malevolently. Denis was right. She could make some effort.
Logan’s hovering still.
After a while Jess said, “Do you want to go for a walk?”
“Yeah, okay.” I was comfortable sitting here. Would have been happy to leave things the way they were, but I’d never turned her down on anything yet. Well except the shower thing. Had some sense of self-preservation.
Jess stood up and pulled me to my feet.
We walked along the beach in the moonlight. The water shushed dark around us. The moon sat just over the horizon like a dinner plate.
Suddenly Jess jumped hard on the sand where a wave had just drawn back into the sea. “Look at this,” she said. All round her feet rings glowed in the dark. She jumped again, and the rings appeared again.
“That’s cool,” I said.
“Dad said it’s phosphorescence.” Jess’s hair blew over her face.
I gave jumping on the sand a go, and it happened for me too. Beautiful and weird, it glowed and moved. We kept jumping on the sand like a couple of little kids playing in puddles. We were staring at our feet and the glowing sand when I heard a voice in the darkness.
“Jess? Isaac?” Jess’s mum and dad appeared out of the gloom, strolling hand in hand.
We got to walk along the beach with them. Since we escaped to the movies, Jess and I have hardly been alone. We’ve been chaperoned. Some trust issues there.
Sunday 12th January
Today Jess said to her Mum. “It’s Isaac’s birthday soon.”
“When?” asked Mrs Murphy.
“Next weekend.”
“How old will you be, Isaac?”
“Eighteen,” I said.
“We’ll have to have a party,” she said. “It’s our last weekend here. It’ll be fun.”
“No thank you, no party,” I said. I’m not that big on parties.
I got overruled.
Tuesday 14th January
Laura and Logan? Laura noticed the hovering a few days ago and stopped the snarky comments in Logan’s direction.
He stayed when his mates went home. He’d been holding hands and carrying her surf board for her. I don’t carry Jess’s surfboard. I figure she’s got arms, and it’s hard to carry two of them.
Friday 17th January
We had the party and Jess invited Luke, Tessa, Cole, Noah and Adam. It was the first time I’d seen them since before Christmas. They looked the same.
Cole brought Milly with him. I’d seen her hanging out with Tessa a bit, and Cole and Milly went to the school ball together, but I didn’t know they were a thing now.
We spent the afternoon on the beach swimming. It was great. Logan and Laura joined in, and it was all sand and sun, water and waves.
In the bay, the sun leapt off the tops of the little ripples. The moored boats rocked gently. The bay at Cooks Beach is really protected, so it doesn’t get breakers, that’s why we go to Hot Water Beach to surf, but it’s good for water skiing. Beyond the boats the sea was so bright it looked silver.
Laura and Logan were trying to float on a body board. Difficult. One of them should have gone back to the bach to get another one. Jess, Tessa and Milly were bouncing around in the water. I was sitting on a towel beside Luke. Cole was sitting on the other side of him.
Luke picked up a shell. “What are you doing next year?” he asked me.
“I’m headed for Auckland.” I’m hoping I’ll be able to keep writing songs like I’ve been doing with Collins. I’m not sure whether it’s the words or the music I like the most. “What about you?” I asked.
Luke flicked the shell at a crab that scuttled past. “Working for Dad.”
“I thought you weren’t going to be a builder.” His dad has got this building business with a joinery factory attached and he’s always talking about Luke taking it all over when he’s old enough.
He shrugged. “Dad needs an apprentice. I need a job.” Another crab got a shell lobbed at it. “Adam and Noah are going to be in Hamilton next year.”
“Yeah, I knew they were planning on university.” I looked past Luke. “What about you?” I asked Cole.
“Find a job.” He watched Milly playing in the water like he couldn’t think of much else anyway.
Luke lobbed another shell. “We’re going to keep Stadium going. Collins has a mate who owns a pub in Hamilton, and he might need a band. I’ve talked to the others, and they like the idea. Me and Cole will go over to Hamilton a couple of times a week to practice, or Noah and Adam could come home. Do you want to be part of it?”
“I’ll think about it and let you know,” I said. It would be a bit of a commitment. A lot of travelling for someone with no car.
When it started to get dark, the rest of Denis’s mates turned up again. We partied around the brazier. It was all flickering flames, and music, and warm bodies, and drinking. Luke had brought his guitar. So had Adam. Noah and Cole left the drum set and keyboard behind. Like I said, transportation problems.
Jess’s parents went to bed.
We kept partying.
Luke and Tessa disappeared for a while.
We kept partying.
The drinking started to get way out of hand.
We were so drunk we were talking braille.
But we kept partying.
The Neanderthals decided to have a competition jumping over the brazier.
“Idiots,” said Jess watching them like the rest of us. “I don’t know how Denis can bear to be friends with them.” Noah picked up his guitar, then got Luke’s from beside the deckchair where he left it. He took the guitars to his car and locked them in. Adam did the same. Mine went into the sleepout. I locked that too. There’s no way Denis was going to be any happier than I’d be if our gear got wrecked.
Then the brazier got tipped over. It was bloody lucky no one got burned. Live coals and burning logs went everywhere. The cavemen still danced around it and jumped over the mess. Someone poured some spirits on the fire and it flared up, huge flames. We watched the idiots with the fire. The fools yelled and yahooed.
“Fuck,” said Jess. “I’m going to get Dad.” She took off into the house and came back out after a few minutes. “Dad’s going to stop them.” She took my hand.
Her dad came out. “Right, that’s enough. Time to put the fire out and go to bed.”
Everyone went quiet and slid into their tents. In the glow from the coals the place looked wrecked. Broken deck chairs, empty bottles, chip packets, and right in the middle of it the brazier on its side with coals spewing out.
I wondered if this was what Jess’s dad expected to happen. I didn’t think so. He looked pretty pissed.
“I’m tired,” said Jess. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yeah.” Jess went to the sleep out. I figured Laura was there with her. She disappeared before things got messy.
I went for a walk and tried to sober up. I wandered across the lawn in the near dark. All around me stars touched the edges of the sky like they were on the lining of a giant helmet. I went between the sand hills and I was almost on the beach when I nearly got bowled by bloody Logan. He was headed for the bach and going like a train.
“Bitch,” he said as he went past me. “She deserved it.”
It wasn’t too hard to figure out who he was talking about. My first thought was if I’d known Laura was on the beach with Logan, I could have been in the sleep out with Jess, despite the house rules.
I wavered there deciding whether to keep walking or go back to Jess and I heard a noise a couple of metres away. It sounded like a sob.
I looked over and could just make out Laura sitting hunched on a rug in the grass. She had her head on her knees, was hugging her legs, and I was pretty sure she was crying.
I walked through the long grass, not sure what I planned on doing, Laura wasn’t exactly high on my list of people I’d be willing to help.
She must have heard me and looked up. She probably couldn’t see me properly because the moon was low and behind me. She started crabbing backward real fast, real frightened, saying, “No, no, no,” over and over.
“It’s me,” I said. “Zac.”
She collapsed down on her elbows. “Go away.” But there was enough light to see she was a mess, and her T-shirt had been ripped, the rug was all screwed up, there were bits of clothes lying around her, and, from what I could see she was naked under the T-shirt, like maybe she’d just pulled it on.