Yellow (11 page)

It takes a few days for the storm to exhaust itself, and to push across to wherever it is storms go. The sun peeks tentatively out of the clouds every now and again, then goes back into hiding. It's that still, humid kind of heat that makes everything an effort, like the sky is a damp blanket draping down on you. Suffocating you. I sleepwalk through class and shake my head when Willow suggests we flick through magazines after school. I'm not in the mood for magazine girls, the kind who all look like different versions of Cassie. Besides which, I have something I need to do.

I walk down to South Beach when the final bell rings, avoiding the puddles that lie on their backs all over the sidewalk. Two giant sand dunes dominate the far end of the beach, and I chew on the end of my hair, sizing them up. Normally they're all golden and proud, but today they're sodden from the downpour, and they're like tortured cliffs, glaring down at the sand and bush surrounding them. Walking over to the second dune, I count fifteen large steps, so I'm smack bang in the middle of the thing. This is it. This is where Boogie said I'm supposed to dig. I chuck my bag and shoes and socks to the side, and scoop out a few handfuls of sand. Boogie was right. The whole thing is drenched from the storms, and the water makes the sand sticky enough so that it stays put enough to create a tunnel. Two metres doesn't seem that far. It's only two large footsteps, really. I scoop and make a hole large enough for me to be able to crawl in on all fours. It's fun, in a way, much more fun than battling the waves at the bombies. It reminds me of playing in the sand with Lark, when I was still small enough to crawl into a lap, and when a lap was the safest place in the world.

Scrape.

Scrape.

Scrape.

The hole is about a metre deep now. I'm halfway there. It's large enough for me to get my whole body in. It's cool and damp inside, like the blanket of the day's been lifted off, and I reach out to scoop another handful from the back when I feel a pair of hands tighten around my ankle.

McGinty
, I think.

Shit.

Terror grips me.

I want to howl, but there's nobody around to hear me scream. The crashing ocean will eat up the sound, and whatever noise is left over will be sifted into nothingness by the trees.

I dig my hands into the sand below me as I'm pulled out of the tunnel – in that moment just before the sand above collapses into the space where I was. I clench my fists to pound them into McGinty's plum-stained face, and turn around, screaming, ‘I'm not scared of you!'

To see Noah.

He grabs my fists in his own freckled hands.

‘You shouldn't be, I just saved your life.'

It feels like there's a small bird in my chest, and I look over to where I was only a few seconds ago. I would have been trapped in there. Noah's hands are still around mine, and it reminds me of when we were little, and we were friends, and we'd play scissors paper rock, and we used to fight about whether paper could actually beat rocks. I used to say it couldn't really, and he used to say it could. I was wrong, I think, feeling the strength of Noah's hands as they swallow my curled-up fists. McGinty is nowhere to be seen, there's no one else on the beach, only Noah's surfboard wedged upright into the sand, and the seabirds, who circle us curiously. Gently, Noah lets me go, like he was releasing a butterfly, and he sits there, fingers wide, in a stance that says ‘I'm not going to hurt you, crazy girl'.

I'm the crazy girl.

Shit.

He's close enough to smell. The light breeze makes tufts of sandy hair dance across his brow.

I face the dune and touch the spot where I'd made the tunnel.

The tunnel that isn't there anymore.

The tunnel which would have killed me.

‘That's a couple of tons of sand that would have crushed you, you idiot, and that's before you had the time to suffocate. Didn't your parents ever teach you never to dig into dunes?'

I would have been crushed.

I would have been stuck in the belly of the dune, and no one would have ever found me.

Shit.

I look up into Noah's eyes. They're the colour of the sea like it is now, when there's no sun shining on it.

‘My parents didn't teach me much,' I tell him.

‘So all of those thoughts you've got crammed inside your brain, you put them there yourself?'

‘Scout's honour, the stupid decisions are all my own.'

I study Noah's face, and something that's almost a smile, but not quite, twitches at the corners of his pensive mouth. He's close enough that I feel his body warmth, and it's different from the cloying heat of the day. It's a heady kind of heat, like the crackle of a bonfire in winter, the kind you just want to curl up in front of. The moment diffuses, and he rolls his eyes at me.

‘I can think of a lot of things to call you, but stupid isn't one of them. Not usually.'

I look out to the ocean, which spits and froths and throws itself onto the shore in a tantrum.

‘I wish I was stupid,' I reply. ‘The world seems full of happy fools. Look at Cassie.'

He's staring at me now, and he has that look on his face that he wore in English that time, the one where he thinks I'm an alien. Fury washes over me. He might surf like he's dancing, and he might be beautiful and popular, and he might have lips that make you want to reach out and touch them to see if they feel as soft as they look. But he has no right to look at me that way.

He has no right.

Puzzlement flickers across his face.

‘What?' he asks.

‘Don't look at me like that. If you think I'm weird just tell me, like everyone else does. At least be honest about it,' I hiss at him.

His brow furrows, so his freckles touch again. He stares into my eyes, and I can't look away, and I wish that he wasn't staring so intently at the ugliest thing about me.

‘There's a difference between weird and unique, you know,' he says, and then he looks away and he goes red again, in those small bits of skin that are unmarked by freckles. I bite my bottom lip and feel my face turn a beetroot shade of tan. The space between us feels tingly, like the butterflies have flown out of my stomach, and they're fluttering invisibly between us, the tips of their wings tickling our skin into goosebumps. There's an aching silence, and I try to think of something charming to say, but all my charming words have run away in that annoying habit of theirs. Witty words only chatter away in my imagination long after the fact, and never, ever, when I'm with a beautiful boy and need them the most. It's like the butterflies are biting at my tongue. Noah breaks the silence. He's got that squinty, faraway look in his eyes again.

‘Those fools might seem happy, sure, but they'll never really live. They'll just stay here, in this small little town, which is all they'll ever know, and their lives . . . Jesus, Kirra, the people here are like those goldfish. You know, the ones who live in tiny fishbowls, who can never grow big, not like the ones in big ponds. Have you seen those goldfish in the ponds? They're enormous. That's what life is, getting out and growing that big, and you've got the brains to be able to.'

I think about discarding this life one day and climbing into another, as easily as the hermit crabs do when they've outgrown their last shells. I think about how naked and vulnerable you'd feel in that time before you've found a new home that fits, and the seagulls that would pounce.

He readjusts the way he's sitting, so that now the edges of his fingers are touching my fingers.

Shit.

My fingers are touching Noah Willis's fingers.

I will never wash my fingers again.

Neither of us is looking at the other. I chew on my lip.

‘I can't imagine anything except this town,' I confess. ‘I read about other places in geography and history, but it all seems like made-up stories. I can't see the point in being smart. I mean, the only reward you get is having spit balls thrown at you. Maybe the smart people live interesting lives, but I wouldn't know if they're happy or not, because they all move away.'

His fingers clutch mine. It feels like electricity is coursing through my body, I feel it zinging all over, and the heat of it burns my cheeks.

‘We'll get out of this town. I'm not as smart as you, but I'm smart enough to know to get out. We'll live interesting lives, and we'll be happy.'

He's leaning close.

Our shoulders are touching.

Our fingers are touching.

‘Oi, Yellow!'

I've never been so disappointed to see Lark in my whole entire life. Noah jumps away from me, and the moment shatters into pieces then and there. I want to collect every shattered shard and put them in my pocket, and keep them next to me for always.

Lark's in one of his silly-bugger moods, and he throws down his surfboard and races towards me, arms outstretched and whooping.

Please no.

Oh God no.

Shit.

He whoops and scoops me up like a rag doll, and I'm hoisted over his shoulder with my tiny fists banging on his broad back.

Noah Willis can probably see my underwear.

Oh wait, he'd have already seen it when he was dragging me out of the dunes.

Shit.

Lark gambols about on the sand, as though I weighed nothing at all, singing me a made-up song which rhymes ‘me' and ‘sea' and ‘coconut tea'. If my father had a spirit animal it would definitely be a Labrador. He puts me down and I glare at him – as if I don't already have one parent who is embarrassing enough. He cocks his head to the side, and with a cheeky grin he pokes me in the nose.

‘I'll never forgive ya if you ever grow so big I can't swing you over me shoulders,' he laughs at me. I still glare at him, using all the force of my alien eyes. I wish I was an alien so I could transport him far away, and erase the memory of my underwear from Noah's brain. Lark shakes his head at me.

‘Aww, don't be like that, Yellow.' He furrows his brow, all concerned looking. ‘Hold on, is that . . . is that something in your ear?'

He furtively pulls something out of his pocket, and then leans over, all serious faced, pinching my lobe between his thumb and forefinger and peering right into my ear. Noah's watching on, and I just want to die right here and now. If there was a god, he'd listen to my prayers and the ground would swallow me up – actually, scratch that – I think of almost being swallowed up by the sand dune, and I shudder. Lark pretends to pull something out of my ear, and then triumphantly he waves a fifty-dollar note in front of my nose.

‘This is for last week, little lucky charm. One Moment won by a whole length, scored me five hundred big ones! You shoulda seen Maccas's face!'

Lark pushes the money into my hand and swings me around. I scream and Noah laughs. Lark turns to him.

‘You're the Willis boy. All grown up, aren't you mate? Is that your board?'

Noah nods, and they spend the next fifteen minutes in an easy conversation, talking surfboards, and right-handers, and the bombies near the reef. I pray under my breath that Noah doesn't tell Lark about how I lied to him, how I came out to South Beach on the Coolite, but he doesn't, and with a wink and a skip Lark leaves us to go headbutt the waves and paddle out to the back. Noah shoots me a sidelong glance.

‘Yellow?'

I blush.

‘I have no idea where he came up with that nickname,' I say, very seriously.

He does that twitch at the side of his mouth again, the one that could be the hint of a smile.

‘It doesn't suit you at all,' he agrees, mock seriously back, one eyebrow slightly cocked under tufts of unruly hair. He's leaning against the dune now, in that easy slouch perfected by the popular, like his skin is the most comfortable thing in the world. I lose my words when I look at him.

I lose my breath.

He looks like he is one of Michelangelo's sculptures we learnt about in art class, but made from sand instead of marble, with his pillow lips, and knife-sharp cheekbones that you just want to cut your fingertips on.

And those freckles . . .

‘What?' he asks, puzzled, head cocked to the side.

My eyes have given me away.

Shit.

I lower my gaze and pick up my bag.

‘I should get going now. Ummm, thank you for saving my life, and all that.'

Noah shrugs.

‘Don't mention it. I'm a superhero in disguise, you know.'

A smile creeps onto my face, and he returns my smile – not one of his asymmetrical, wry smiles this time, but one that's full and lovely. I turn and make my way back towards the path. Noah's grabbed his board and is jogging towards the waves now, and I turn to watch them for a moment – it's like the sea is the Pied Piper, and all the little surf rats of our town are drawn towards it, not to drown, but to dance. Lark's caught a barrel, and he's elegant in a way that's surprising on his hulking frame. It's the only real beauty that's allowed in this town, I think. The way the surfers pirouette upon the waves. It's the only time when we're really allowed to act proud.