Bookmark Days (7 page)
The band was gradually reappearing on stage and somehow that seemed to complicate things further. I knew as soon as they started playing I’d want to get up and do more dingbat impersonations for Nathaniel, but could I? With a head full of ugly thoughts about the fate of my cousin, could I still have fun kicking up dust with random body movements?
Apparently so. The band fired up. Nathaniel took my hand and towed me back into the lake of bodies, and I didn’t drown. Thoughts of Katie sank and all that was left floating was that hot guy with the rolled-up sleeves and me. He was looking at my face now, and I was returning his smile. It was as though we’d been friends for ages and I guess we could have been. Being neighbours must count for something, even though we’d never really had a conversation until tonight. We knew where we both lived. We’d met each other’s parents. We’d probably drunk rainwater that fell from the same clouds. But none of that really counted for much until we danced. I’d stopped thinking of him as family.
The band was on fire. Not literally, but every new song seemed like a gift better than the last. They played covers, mostly, stuff I knew the words to. They did country versions of rock classics that had the audience in a frenzy. At the end of each track, Nathaniel seemed to get closer. He bumped me, so I bumped him back. He rested his hand on my shoulder, body bent with mock exhaustion, so I patted his back. He accidentally elbowed me in the boob.
His face went a funny shade of purple under the stage lights. ‘Sorry,’ he said sharply.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said, but my voice came out all wrong. Sounded like I was thanking him for a present.
‘Are your feet sore?’ he asked.
‘A bit.’
‘Take your shoes off.’
‘No, it’s fine.’
‘I’ll take mine off, too, so your toes will be in less danger of becoming roadkill.’
I squeaked a laugh. That was when I noticed my shoes, my feet and my legs up to my knees were covered in dust. Couldn’t see my nail polish any more. Nathaniel had already toed his boots off and was stuffing his black socks into them. I tore my own shoes off. I can’t begin to describe the bliss of having my bare feet on the squashed grass. My toes were doing little digging dances of their own. The straps left marks. There was a blister behind my little toes on both sides and I’d never been more proud of blisters in my life. I hoped they never went down. I hoped they scarred to leave yet another reminder of this magic night.
During the next song, the heavens opened.
The lights and the music had blinded us to the fact that a storm was on its way. Six big drops fell, then somewhere way above us a dam burst. The band, protected by the cover of the trailer-stage, kept playing, but most of the dancers fled like lambs to the remaining marquees. Nathaniel stopped dancing and held his palms to the sky. He wore a perfect smile-frown and I knew how he was feeling. I’d seen enough empty dams to know that rain is always welcome, even on our night of nights. Give me a flood over a drought any day. I was hot and sweaty and the big fat drops cut through my dress like I’d just stepped into the shower with my clothes on. For a split second I really was concerned my new dress and shoes would be ruined by the downpour but Nathaniel took my hands and we stomped and spun and splashed like a couple of mad little kids. If I was a control freak before, I was a picture of total abandon now. There were only a few damp stragglers left to mash the last of the dust into mud on the dancing arena. We pranced around and when the rain got even harder and the dirty puddles turned to little rivers, we started kicking and splashing it at each other.
‘Nathaniel!’ someone shouted between songs and above the dull roar of the rain.
Nathaniel’s head snapped around. Standing on the edge of the crowd huddled under the marquee was Les Junior, his eyes narrowed but otherwise expressionless. Next to him stood a tanned, blonde woman – Nathaniel’s mother at a guess. Les beckoned Nathaniel with a terse nod.
‘I’d . . . better go,’ he said.
No. No. No.
‘I’ll be back, promise.’
He ran to his father. Junior just stared at me as if he’d never seen a girl before. I stared right back until a smiling fat kid with wet tracksuit pants and big bum-crack kicked a heap of muddy water at my head. I squealed and retaliated with a stomping attack that sent him scurrying backwards. He tripped on his daggy pants and hit the water bum-first, creating a mini tidal wave and an even bigger wave of laughter from the marquee.
In a sense, the fat kid saved me. I offered him my hand. He took it but didn’t really use it as he struggled to his feet. He saved me from bobbing alone on that inland sea. He saved me from having to decide if I was going to keep dancing in the mud without Nathaniel or . . . or I didn’t know what else I would do.
Nathaniel ran past and collected his boots.
Don’t go. Not now. Don’t just leave without saying goodbye.
But he didn’t. He sloshed across to me and he looked angry. Not just a little bit angry, his eyes were pinched and his jaw muscles clenched. For a moment I thought he was angry with me, but he glanced over my shoulder to where his dad was probably still standing and bared his teeth.
When he looked back at me he was smiling sadly.
‘I have to go,’ he said.
I nodded and looked at our wet feet in the slush.
‘We should . . .’ he said. ‘I . . . I had a brilliant night. I only wish it . . .’
I hugged him. There was nothing like new shoes about our hug. Nathaniel hugged me back and there was nothing shy or weird about it, either. Felt like a family hug but then it was a whole lot more than that. It was the sort of closeness that instantly seared itself into my mind, leaving an imprint that I knew I’d feel for days, weeks, months, years after. More permanent than blisters.
‘Nathaniel!’ There was a screechy edge to his father’s voice. It cut through the wet air like a harvester blade.
And then he was gone.
The fat kid had only delayed the inevitable. The band members were dragging their equipment towards the back of the truck and out of the rain, but they kept playing. The air crackled and barked with thunder. I collected my shoes. The hug was still on my skin and it felt more like the end of a song than the end of the music altogether. Maybe a dance and a hug was all I needed to crack through that wall of self-doubt. Right then, standing barefoot in the rain, I felt I’d never be shy again. I’d been closer to Nathaniel than anyone else in my life outside my family – and suddenly the whole world seemed closer and friendlier. I stood there and smiled as the fat kid did belly-slides on the grass. He created a sizeable bow wave and soon had a crew of kids diving in his wake. I realised it was the adults who ran and hid when the rain came down. The kids saw it as just another fun thing. Perhaps I was more little kid than I liked to admit.
I suddenly had the sensation that my whole body had licked one of those little square batteries. It was a tingle at first then an ache in my joints. I’d only just had time to realise that something wasn’t right when the world exploded.
There was a bright light, a deafening roar I could hear with the soles of my feet, then the darkness freckled electrical blue. I fell to my knees and put my hands over my head, but I didn’t die.
It took a few seconds for my head to stop ringing and for my brain to find a gear. Something had been hit by lightning. Something very close by. So close I felt it in my bones. When I got to my feet again, the only light in the showgrounds was the strobing from the sky – the music had stopped and the electricity had gone out. The darkness between flashes was cruel and deep and I held my breath until the world lit up again.
Now that they were the only human noise, the crowds under the marquee sounded crazed and desperate. Some of the kids who had been laughing ten seconds before were now screaming their lungs out. Fat boy was sitting on his haunches looking at his hands – maybe he’d felt what I felt.
Katie. Oh god, please let her be okay.
I jogged stop-start through the crowd and the rain to the beer tent. Everywhere, people were calling names with voices full of fear, but in the beer tent there was laughter.
‘I did,’ a woman’s voice shouted. ‘I did actually poo my pants.’
Another round of laughter.
‘Give us a look, Deb,’ a man yelled.
There was a collective groan. Someone struck a cigarette lighter and held it high. It wasn’t much light, but it filled the gaps enough for me to see that there were fewer than twenty people in the tent. I searched faces and moved past the steamy bodies.
‘Katie?’
No answer.
‘Katie?’
‘Who’s looking for Katie?’ came a drunken bloke’s voice over my shoulder.
‘Me. Her cousin.’
‘She’s not here. She’s with Dan down near the big shed with all the animals in it, I think. They’ll be back in a few minutes.’
‘Yeah,’ someone else said. ‘If Dan’s in form, they’ll be back in two minutes precisely.’
A few people chuckled.
I ran out of the tent and back into the welcome cleanse of the rain. I crossed the showgrounds to the biggest pavilion. A horse had broken free. As I made my way into the dark mouth of the huge shed, it charged out, snorting and stomping with a small crowd of handlers behind it.
‘Katie!’ I yelled, but it was useless. The racket of the downpour on the iron roof swallowed any noise I could make.
Even with the lightning outside, the shed was still impossibly deep with shadow.
‘Katie!’ I hollered, and a flashlight came on. The beam of light swept the floor and arrived at my feet.
‘What have you lost?’ someone said.
‘My cousin. My cousin and . . . and her friend.’
‘There was a couple in here earlier. They didn’t stay long. Headed out that way,’ the voice said and the torch beam pointed to the open doors at the far end of the shed.
I thanked the anonymous helper with the torch and jogged through the sweet hay and animal smells to the open doors at the other end. It was like walking under a waterfall, with no coming out the other side. The rain was cold on my neck now but the panic kept me warm.
‘Katie!’
With each flash from the heavens, I inspected a new dark hollow. There was nobody on this side of the showgrounds. I hoped she had enough sense left to make her way back to the car. The light was on when I eventually got there. It was Dad, not Katie.
‘Jump in,’ he barked. ‘Where’s Katie?’
I jumped in. ‘I . . . I don’t know. We got separated before the lights went out.’
Dad gritted his teeth and rubbed his brow with the back of his hand. ‘Well, we’d better find her. Come on.’
He opened his door. I held my breath.
‘Fifteen minutes,’ he hollered. ‘Meet back here in quarter of an hour if you haven’t found her. I’ll start at the beer tent.’ Perhaps he knew Katie better than he let on? ‘I’ll go from there and head towards the rides.’
‘I’ll check the sheds,’ I said. Again.
And the rain came down. It seemed to be setting in for forty days and forty nights. Normally a storm like this would pass in a few crazy minutes, but this one kept coming. The rivulets had turned to streams and the gutters to gurgling rivers. I started to freak out. What if Katie was face down in that? What if Katie was so drunk that she couldn’t stop herself from drowning in a puddle? I yelled her name for what felt like an hour but turned out to be less than fifteen minutes. I beat Dad back to the car by about three minutes. He’d had no luck.
‘Was she with anybody?’ he asked. ‘Might she be hiding from the rain in another car?’
Dad hadn’t assumed the worst and it made me feel better – not so much as if my stomach was going to fall out. We divided the carpark down the middle; I checked the north side, Dad the south. Some cars were driving on to the showgrounds to provide light and others were leaving in a steady stream. I hoped she wasn’t in one of those heading out the gate. Checking the cars was tedious and one-at-a-time.
I found her with my foot. Stood on something that felt disgustingly like fingers to my bare toes. She was lying on the grass under the partial shelter of a campervan.
‘Katie?’
She didn’t move.
‘Katie, oh my god. Katie?’
Her skin was warm and damp. I slapped her limp hand and felt for a pulse, but all I could feel was my own heart preparing to leap out of its cage. I pinched her arm, slapped her face.
‘Katie?’ I wailed.
There was a moan, and then she was shoving me, scratching my bare leg. ‘Leave me alone!’
‘Katie! It’s me, Av. Are you okay?’
‘Avvie?’ she slurred.
I helped her sit up. A volley of lightning turned night to day for a long second and I held my breath. She was a mess. Her hair was all grassy and her make-up had run and smeared gothic down to her chin. Her skirt had ridden up and I saw much more of Katie than any cousin should.
‘Where are your knickers?’ I asked.
‘Wha –?’
‘Come on. Stand up. We’ve got to go.’
‘No!’ she whimpered. ‘I can’t. Not like this.’
I helped her up and when the full force of the rain hit her face, she swore, long and hard, right into my ear. Her legs wouldn’t co-operate and I carried her dead weight to begin with, but the weather was like a cold shower. Each step shocked a little more sense into her.
‘Oh, Avvie, I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t worry about it, you’re fine.’
‘No! Stop . . . stop,’ she said and put both of her arms around my neck. She hugged her face into my shoulder. ‘I’m really . . . really sorry, Avvie. I really am.’
I patted her back. ‘It’s okay. That’s what cousins are for. Come on, Dad’s waiting.’
She was quiet for the longest time and I thought she’d fallen asleep. Suddenly, her body gave a little buck. The front of my dress grew warm with her beery vomit. I spun her around and held her while she emptied some more onto the grass.
I couldn’t watch. I turned my face to the sky and tried not to listen, tried not to breathe that foul steamy mess in.
By the time she’d finished, my arms were sore from holding her. When she straightened, she seemed one hundred per cent more alert. She took the first few steps towards the car by herself. She stumbled, but I was there to catch her. I got her into the back seat of the Range Rover five minutes before Dad returned. In the interior light, she looked like a zombie. I found a picnic rug for her lap.