Page 30 of The Sirens

29

JESS’S DIARY

1999

10 January

The dreams were the worst they’ve ever been last night.

When Mum knocked on my door to tell me dinner was ready, I told her I still had a headache.

‘Oh, poor love,’ she said, opening the door a crack. I buried my face in the pillow so that I wouldn’t have to look at her, this stranger. ‘Can I get you something? Panadol, water?’

‘No,’ I said, gritting my teeth. ‘I’m just going to sleep it off.’

‘All right, sweetheart. Let me know if you need anything, OK? Love you.’

I didn’t say it back.

An hour later, another knock on the door. It was Dad, this time.

‘GG,’ he said. ‘Jess. Max is on the phone for you.’

My gut lurched. I could picture Max in his room, the phone cradled between his ear and his shoulder as he sat in the chair by his desk, bare feet resting on his bed. The bed where we’d—

‘Tell him I’m sick,’ I said, even though I wanted to hear his voice more than anything. I needed my best friend.

Shame flushed through me when I remembered what we’d done. The way his fingers had hesitated on my skin. How he’d wanted to turn the light off. Like he couldn’t bear to see me as I really am.

How could we be friends – how could we be anything to each other – after that?

‘All right, love,’ Dad – or the man who pretended to be my dad – said, shutting the door softly.

I lay there for hours, unmoving. I didn’t get out of bed. Not after I heard the hiss of the tap running as Dad did the washing-up, the soft burble of the television from the living room. Not even after I heard the floorboards creak as they went up to bed, turning off the hallway light so that everything was black.

At some point I must have fallen asleep, because the next thing I was aware of was the groan of timber all around me, the bite of icy water on my skin.

When I woke up, I was sitting on the edge of the bath with the tap on full blast, white water thundering over my toes. The lights were off and in the slice of moonlight through the window, the skin of my legs shone blue. I turned off the tap so violently that my palms burned. I sat, heart pounding, listening for any noises coming from the master bedroom.

But there was nothing. Just the house breathing silently around me.

After I’d dried myself, I sat cross-legged on my bed with the lava lamp on, watching myself change. First, the webbed flesh between my toes began to itch. When I touched it, the skin came away in white ribbons, revealing a shining blue layer beneath.

Abandoned by the sea.

That must be why this happens. Why I’m drawn to water, to the thing that hurts me. Dawes Plain is almost 1,000 kilometres inland. Mum and Dad – or Robert and Judith Wilson – took me as far from the sea as they could.

Why?

To protect me, or to stop me from learning the truth?

This morning, I told Mum I was meeting Max. Dad had ridden out on his tractor at daybreak, and Mum was driving into work, so with any luck neither of them would be home if Max called.

‘Do you want a lift?’ Mum asked, as I hoisted my backpack onto my shoulder and made for the front door.

‘Nah,’ I said. ‘I’ll cycle. We’re going to ride to the old reservoir – Max wants to swim.’

Mum raised her eyebrows. It was a stupid lie – Max would never have been so cruel as to suggest I watch him swim – but Mum bought it.

‘Are you taking a hat?’

I nodded, lifting Dad’s Akubra from the coat rack and cramming it onto my head.

‘Don’t tell,’ I said, bringing a finger to my lips, and Mum laughed.

By the time I’d wheeled out my bike from its position next to the shed and closed the front gate behind me, my face ached from the effort of smiling.

It took two hours to cycle to school. It was 30 degrees, and after only five minutes my breath was coming hard, sweat collecting behind my knees and on the inside of my elbows. But I enjoyed it, the hot dusty air on my face, the landscape whooshing past as if I was leaving it for good.

I cycled past the reservoir on the way, and there were loads of kids from school there, the colourful squares of their towels brightening the scabby grass. Someone had rigged a rope to an ancient gum, and they were taking turns to launch themselves into the muddy water. Their whoops of laughter, the splash of their bodies breaking the surface, followed me like a taunt.

I cycled harder. Let them have their reservoir, I thought. It’s little better than a glorified puddle, a slick of mud in the cracked land.

I could almost feel it then, the place where I’d been found. The salt rush of the sea, as powerful as the blood in my veins.

By the time the squat buildings of the school came into view – the grey concrete dingy against red earth and blue sky, the noticeboard with its peeling letters wishing me a restful break – I felt like I was seeing it with new eyes. I’ve been coming here since I was five and for the first time I was noticing the shabby smallness of it.

I’ve never belonged here.

I chained my bike to the fence, then cut through the empty quadrangle to get to the greenhouse. There, amid the smelly tangle of old sports equipment and my memories of Max, I slipped off my long-sleeved top and jeans. I pulled two water bottles out of my bag, drank one and poured the other over my head, feeling my skin tighten and tingle. I’d stolen one of Mum’s dresses from her wardrobe: it was long and V-necked, made of soft green jersey, the kind that clings to every curve. Sleeveless. I slipped it over my head and then looked at myself in the compact mirror I’d taken from her dresser.

My wet hair framed my face in black tendrils; the dress showed the silvered skin of my chest and arms.

Good, I thought. Let him see me as I am.

As I walked to the art block, I couldn’t help but savour the air on my bare skin. I tilted my face to the sun and watched as a flock of galahs flew overhead, candy pink in the blue sky.

I was like a snake, shed of its skin. New and perfect and free.

Mr Hennessey was in the art room already, sitting at one of the high tables, paper spread all around him, his hair bright with sun.

‘Jess, hi.’

I felt his eyes on me – on my bare skin, my damp hair – and then his gaze flickered away, uneasy. He cleared his throat and gestured to the chair opposite.

I draped my bag over the back of the chair and sat down. His eyes returned to mine and I thought how young he looked.

‘Are you OK? I was worried about you yesterday. Has something happened?’

His hands were resting on the table, his knuckles speckled with paint. Mine were just inches away. I remembered his fingers, feather-light on my skin.

I told him about Robert and Judith Wilson. About Cliff House, about Comber Bay.

He listened, his eyes never leaving mine. Something changed in the set of his body; there was a new weight to him, as if he could see that my burden was too heavy and so had shouldered it himself.

By the time I finished, my cheeks burned with tears. He produced a folded wad of tissues and placed it on the table between us.

‘I thought you might need these,’ he said softly and I imagined him putting those tissues in his pocket and thinking of me. Some of the heaviness inside me lifted.

‘Thank you,’ I said, and the words sat between us, inadequate. The sun poured through the windows, and despite the whirr of the fan, the air was hot, close. I could smell his breath, with its hint of peppermint.

He waited until I had dried my tears before he spoke again.

‘I can’t imagine how it feels, discovering something so important has been kept from you,’ he began, then paused. ‘I loved my dad, when I was a kid. Really hero-worshipped him. Until one day I came home from school with a painting that the teacher had given a gold star. He ripped it in half. “Only faggots like art,” he said.’

‘That’s awful,’ I said.

He shrugged, like it was nothing.

‘Yours is an extreme example,’ he went on, ‘but we all go through it. That realisation that your parents aren’t who you thought they were. Bigots in my case – liars in yours. But not everyone in your life is going to hurt you, Jess. I promise you that.’

‘Would you? Hurt me, I mean.’

He looked away, then back again. ‘No,’ he said.

I moved my hand so that my fingertips touched his.

The silence swelled. I could see the jump of his pulse beneath the gold stubble of his jaw. My own pulse thundered in my ears, and I wondered if our hearts were beating in time.

It seemed we might sit like that forever; other students’ artworks staring down at us like saints in a church. The moment unbroken as a spell.

And then, the sudden warmth of his hand on mine. Changing everything.

I don’t want to write about what happened next. I don’t think I could do justice to any of it. Words can never quite capture everything, can they?

Maybe one day I’ll paint it. The tender shine in his eyes. Our hair – mine dark, his blond – tangled together.

I keep thinking about that painting he showed me of Orpheus and Eurydice. But instead, he’s saving me. Taking my hand and pulling me away from the dream world into this one.

He gave me a book to borrow, before I left. A Wave of Dreams, by Louis Aragon. It’s old, the letters on the cover peeling, the spine cracked.

‘It made me think of you,’ he said, his body framed in the doorway to the art block.

I’ve been reading it since I got home. There’s a passage about how when we sleep, we summon our dreams; like we’re communing with ghosts. A lightness spread through me as I read. He understands. He understands what it’s like.

But that isn’t even the best part. The best part – I’ve traced it again and again with my fingers – is the borrower’s slip on the flyleaf, where he’s written his name in neat, sloping letters.

If I sleep with it under my pillow, it’ll be like he’s here.