Thirteen Pearls

THIRTEEN
PEARLS

The
Girlfriend Fiction
Series

1
My Life and Other Catastrophes
Rowena Mohr

2
The Indigo Girls
Penni Russon

3
She's with the Band
Georgia Clark

4
Always Mackenzie
Kate Constable

5
The (not quite) Perfect Boyfriend
Lili Wilkinson

6
Step Up and Dance
Thalia Kalkipsakis

7
The Sweet Life
Rebecca Lim

8
Cassie
Barry Jonsberg

9
Bookmark Days
Scot Gardner

10
Winter of Grace
Kate Constable

11
Something More
Mo Johnson

12
Big Sky
Melaina Faranda

13
Little Bird
Penni Russon

14
What Supergirl Did Next
Thalia Kalkipsakis

15
Fifteen Love
R. M. Corbet

16
A Letter from Luisa
Rowena Mohr

17
Dear Swoosie
Kate Constable & Penni Russon

18
Thirteen Pearls
Melaina Faranda

www.allenandunwin.com/girlfriendfiction

THIRTEEN
PEARLS

MELAINA FARANDA

First published in 2010

Copyright © Melaina Faranda, 2010

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The
Australian Copyright Act
1968
(the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (
CAL
) under the Act.

Allen & Unwin
83 Alexander Street
Crows Nest
NSW
2065
Australia

Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from
the National Library of Australia
www.librariesaustralia.nla.gov.au

Cover design by Tabitha King and Bruno Herfst
Text design by Bruno Herfst
Set in 12.5/15 pt Fournier by Midland Typesetters, Australia
Printed in Australia by McPherson's Printing Group

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
www.allenandunwin.com/girlfriendfiction

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

About the Author

Acknowledgements

L
ET ME BEGIN BY SAYING
that it started with a dream.

My dream. I wanted to sail around the world like that guy, Jesse Martin, on the
Lionheart
. Or that girl, Jessica Watson, on
Ella's Pink Lady
. Solo. Did it matter that my name wasn't remotely Jess-ish and that before I'd started building my boat, I couldn't tell a clew from a luff? Or that I'd never been fishing in my life? In my dream I planned to live on sachets of lemon pepper tuna and tins of organic cocoa. I'd sail around the South Pacific, berthing in blue lagoons, swimming with dolphins, trading packets of lemon pepper tuna for coconuts and paw paws. My pale skin would somehow become magically bronzed and my dark hair would turn straw gold beneath the red-hot kiss of ozone-free sunshine.

What would I do at night?

That's what Tash wanted to know. That's all she ever wanted to know. Would I smuggle a cute stowaway aboard? A smooth, muscled-up islander, the colour of steaming organic drinking chocolate, and with a sharp white smile to dash my heart against?

I'd be listening to my iPod, composing guitar tunes from the only four chords I knew – G, C, D and E minor (Bob Dylan eat your heart out) –, be keeping an enthralling, witty log book (with a view to eventual publication) and reading.
Get that – Tash?
Reading. R-E-A-D-I-N-G.
You should try
it sometime . . .

This was muttered over the multiple hum of sewing machines and annoying reverb from Amber's MP3. Mrs Templeton looked up and frowned over her Dame Edna reading glasses. A reindeer badge drooped mournfully from her blouse: shapeless, crush-free poly-cotton, ugly plastic buttons (it wasn't a shirt or top – it was definitely a blouse). Her face was grey-green under the flicker of the faulty strip light.

I tugged a section of nylon through the sewing machine and heard the needle snap.

Mrs Templeton heard it too. She put down the textbook and sighed. ‘Edie. How many needles does that make it now?'

‘Eight.'

‘And what is so difficult about lifting the foot on the machine?'

‘It's the nylon ribbing,' I complained. ‘It's so thick.'

Mrs Templeton rolled her eyes. Her green eye shadow looked like smears of Incredible Hulk paint and did nothing for her general pallor. ‘I did warn you it would be difficult,' she said through gritted teeth. ‘I think that's enough sewing for you today, Edie. You can do some theory instead. Copy all of pages 63 and 64 from
Industrial & Non-Apparel
Textiles.
'

I ripped the plug out of the wall and stomped over to the bookshelves. When I had first approached Mrs Templeton with my idea for sewing a safety harness to hang from a line on a small yacht, she 'd said that it was a ‘commendably ambitious and innovative project'. She 'd even commented on it to Ms Dutton, who'd come in to hunt down a missing stash of pinking shears.

Well that had all changed now. I wondered if I should have played it safe – stuck to a piece of clothing like, say, a life jacket. Ha ha.

‘You still cut that Mr Hubbabubba fired you?' Tash said, not looking up from neatly running a seam along shiny black satin.

‘Mr Halabi,' I corrected.

‘Yeah, same thing.'

One of the many things I liked about Tash was her blithe lack of political correctness. I
had
to be politically correct because my father was a left-wing social worker at the Department of Community Services and my mother was a post-doctoral candidate. Which meant that when Mr Halabi had fired me, my parents had gone out of their way to justify
his
actions: it was because of the economic downturn; it was the wet season and there were fewer tourists; his poor wife was practically having a mental breakdown with her sixth child on the way (Dad breached confidentiality to mention that one); the whole retail sector of Cairns, especially eateries and restaurants, was doing it tough . . .

Neither of them wanted to hear how unfair Mr Halabi was being by firing me and not Kevin! It was Kevin who'd bailed me up in the coolroom over a Styrofoam box of iceberg lettuces and grabbed me, wet dog's breath hot on my neck as he whispered that he wanted to look at my ‘treasure chest'.

Eew.

I'd crowned him with a glass bottle of tahini yogurt.

My satisfaction at seeing tahini yogurt dripping down Kevin's dandruff-flecked mullet was swiftly demolished by being sent packing, with no pay, for the three shifts I'd already worked because Kevin had been there for four months and he was strong enough to lug the rotisserie meat around.

The incident, and subsequent firing, had left a great, glaring gap in my savings plan. For three years I had scrimped and saved to buy materials to build my boat.