Transformation of Minna Hargreaves, The (15 page)

Heartbreak is the colour of concrete. I was in zombie mode for days after the visit. I didn’t know how many days because I didn’t colour in my calendar. I did my chores. I made the bread. It was soggy. I cooked, but the food had no flavour. The chooks no longer chatted to me.

Mum asked me what was wrong, but I couldn’t tell her, not when she’d done the exact same thing to Dad.

Dad had a go at me for what I’d called Lizzie.

‘Yeah. Whatever,’ I said.

He put the camera on the table. ‘Cara said to tell you she doesn’t accept your resignation.’

‘Yeah. Whatever.’

Noah gave me an occasional funny look but left me alone.

On one of the zombie days the wind came up. It screamed over the island but it didn’t blow the colour back into my life. If only I could talk to Jax and Addy it wouldn’t be so bad. If only I didn’t have to keep it locked in my head where it went round and round and never stopped. I went to bed but the wind got into my dreams.

In the morning, Dad pulled me out of bed. ‘Breakfast in two minutes.’

‘Don’t care.’ I pulled the scattered blankets around me and stayed where I was, huddled on the floor. He stood over me. I shut my eyes.

‘Minna,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what went down with you and the girls, but you’re not wearing your ring so I can guess.’

I didn’t even bother to grunt.

He squatted down beside me and stroked the hair back from my face. ‘Look, kiddo — it’s only going to get worse if you keep on like this. Get up, come out and eat a proper breakfast. Then we’re going to try out the yacht.’

‘Don’t want to.’ I didn’t even want to crawl, let alone stand up and go out of the house into the wind.

Dad kept stroking my face. ‘You don’t have a choice, Min. You do it, or I get that camera and I film you lying here. Defeated and beaten.’

‘You wouldn’t.’

He stood up. ‘You’ve got five minutes. And by the way — Maritime Radio asked last night if you were okay. They miss you.’

My door shut behind him. Damn him! He wouldn’t
do that — film me looking like a hunk of spewed-up seaweed. But I wasn’t certain enough to stay where I was. I got up. Showered. Came out to the kitchen with hair wet but tidy. Hair-dryers and home. Don’t go there, Min. You’ll cry.

Dad gave me a smile and dumped a plate of bacon, sausages, tomatoes, eggs and spud in front of me. I couldn’t eat it. I did eat it.

‘Noah, you wash. Min can dry,’ said Dad, getting bossy and sharp but that was probably because Mum appeared. ‘I’ll see you two in the shed. Bring the camera, Min.’ He scarpered.

Mum ate a piece of toast.

Noah made her a cup of tea. She didn’t say anything to me, but judging by the looks zinging in my direction, she was thinking plenty.

Good. Let her. Made a change from me thinking. I was sick of thinking.

We put on overalls, Swannies and tramping boots. ‘Will you be okay, Mum?’ I asked. If she even looked like she mightn’t be, I’d stay and crawl back into bed.

‘I’ll be fine,’ she said. ‘You go off and have fun.’

Nothing would ever be fun again. Didn’t she know that?

It wasn’t easy, getting to the shed. We had to crawl over the places where the wind ripped across the island. I think Dad had given instructions, because Noah kept on at me. Wouldn’t let me turn back.

‘Get a life!’ I yelled at him.

‘You can film me. But you go first. I don’t want shots of my butt,’ he said. So I did. It didn’t seem to matter
now — my battles with Cara. She wanted film, she could have film. I didn’t care.

We got to the shed.

I looked at the yacht. They hadn’t solved the strut problem. Dad said, ‘I reckon we aren’t going to need a sail in this wind. Probably be too dangerous.’

They hauled the yacht out of the shed, up to the path above it — to the very spot where Lizzie had told me she’d stolen my boyfriend. The wind bashed me. I sank to my knees. Noah and Dad wrestled the yacht with Dad holding it and Noah settling himself on it. ‘Aim for the scrub at the bend,’ Dad yelled. ‘It’ll stop you.’

He let go of the yacht. Noah yahooed as the wind caught him and propelled him and the yacht up the track. It didn’t go that fast. Not fast enough to drag me out into such shitty weather. Noah pulled himself out of the scrubby bushes, lay on the yacht and kind of paddled it back down the track. He was grinning.

‘Your turn, Min,’ said Dad with that hint of steel.

I got myself on to the yacht. He let go. It felt fast. It felt like the world was a blur and ripping past me faster than the wind. I held the ropes steady that guided the steering and wham! I tumbled off and into the scrub. Getting back down was harder but I managed.

Dad and Noah cheered. ‘You went faster than Noah,’ Dad said. ‘Less body mass.’

‘Skinnier,’ said Noah, but he was grinning.

Okay. It was an okay morning. I filmed Noah. I filmed Dad. Noah filmed me. I hoped Cara would get sick of seeing our backsides flying up the hill with the wind behind us.

I felt better.

When we got hungry, Dad sent Noah home to make sure Mum was all right. He was concerned about her? No. Of course not. He just wanted to get Noah out of the way so he could bend my ear.

He handed me a sandwich. ‘Eat that, then we talk.’

I ate. I wasn’t going to talk. Not to him. Not to anyone on this stink island.

But I think I get my bloody-mindedness from him and he’s older and sneakier than me and somehow he got me talking. Actually, it was good to talk. I cried too, but hey, what’s new about that?

He didn’t say much. I thought I’d be in for a lecture about boys and self-respect and the whole works but he just said, ‘You’d be over it by now if we’d been at home. It’s hard here. Things just keep going round in your head.’

He gave me a hug. I sniffed. He wasn’t right about being over it. I’d never be over it. But it was nice, sitting here with the wind bashing about over our heads and him talking to me.

He turned so that he was looking right at me. Uh oh, here comes the lecture. ‘Min, I want you to promise me something.’

I managed a half grin. ‘I’m not promising anything without knowing what it is.’

He didn’t smile back. ‘Fair enough.’ He took a deep breath. It’s always bad when a parent takes a deep breath in these circumstances. ‘I want you to promise that you won’t have sex with a boy until you’re eighteen.’

‘Dad!’ I knew I was turning red. I did not want to have
this conversation.

He ploughed right on. ‘You know it’s against the law until you’re sixteen?’

I shrugged.

‘Minna. Will you promise?’

It was my turn for the deep breath. ‘Dad, that’s out of the ark! Eighteen!’

His lips twitched. ‘All right, I’ll lower it to seventeen.’

‘Sixteen,’ I snapped, ‘and that’s all I’m going to promise.’

He stared at me for seconds which stretched into one hell of an age. ‘All right. I accept that. Thank you.’

And I was left with the sneaking feeling that that was all he’d wanted in the first place. Fathers.

But I could have promised not to have sex until I was ninety-six. I couldn’t imagine loving anybody enough ever again to want to do that with them.

That night I did the listening watch. Maritime R said it was good to have me back on deck. Somebody from a camp on the mainland chimed in and said he’d missed me too.

I fed the chooks. They came to the wire for a scritch. It looked like my life would go on even though my heart was broken. No, not broken. Just numb.

Dad kept an eye on me over the next few days. He dragged me out with him and Noah. He gave me a hammer and an axe and a pile of old timber. ‘Take out the nails, then split it for the fire.’

Chopping things was therapeutic. I imagined it was Lizzie I was hammering and chopping. In the afternoons I went back to the house to make bread and cook, not
because I had to, but because I liked the change of activity.

Mum sat at the table and sketched, or she went outside and sketched. We didn’t talk much but it was okay. I gave up wondering what would happen when Mum had to leave the island. She probably didn’t know. Dad probably didn’t know. I sure as hell didn’t know.

I asked Noah, but he just shrugged.

It was a week before we were due for the next grocery run and I was sick of being vego. I was sick of eggs and cheese and bloody green vegetables. I wanted to eat meat. Meat would help fill the hole where my heart used to be. I eyed up the sheep but they looked old and stringy and I couldn’t really see myself taking to one of them with the carving knife. But I kept thinking about it which was better than keeping on with the merry-go-round in my head.

I asked Dad about the sheep and he said, ‘Great idea, I’ll help you skin it.’

So much for that.

We kept on trucking. I sat beside the chooks, filming them for ages. ‘Just fall down dead, why don’t you?’ I asked Izzie.

Drrrk took took took
is what she said.

Why are some people vego? I mean, meat tastes so good.

‘Stop obsessing,’ Dad snapped when I moaned again that night.

‘It’s just that I know I can’t have it,’ I said. Just like I knew I couldn’t have Seb. I let my hands float in the dishwater. Interesting. Would I rather have Seb back
right now or a good chunk of steak? A sausage maybe? I shook my head and then my hands. I was losing it, that was for sure. Probably protein deprived.

But I was feeling better, even though it felt wrong to be feeling better, except when I thought about Lizzie. Bitch. Her and Cara — I’d show the pair of them.

I had my Great Idea the very next day.

Possibilities swarmed in my brain while I kneaded the bread. That night, I tackled Noah in his room once I’d surgically removed his headphones. ‘What? Beat it.’

‘Want to go fishing?’

That caught his interest. ‘You got a way down to the sea?’

I had to admit that I hadn’t. ‘Not yet, anyway — but that’s the point. I reckon we try to get down.’

He was thinking about it. I could tell by the fact that he didn’t keep yelling and by the fact that he asked, ‘How?’

I shrugged. ‘How do I know? Cut steps? Use a rope? Hammer in boards to make a ladder? But don’t tell Dad. He’ll say it’s too dangerous.’

Noah gave me a look that said,
what do you think I am — crazy?
‘We’ll suss it out in the morning. Now bugger off.’

I left. On the whole, a good result. The problem was going to be how to extract Noah from Dad’s vigilant presence.

In the end, escaping Dad was easy because Noah experienced a brainwave overnight. We did the usual morning routine with Dad hauling Noah out of bed, Noah grumbling his way into the kitchen and plonking himself down at the table. The next bit was different, however. ‘Not going to work today. It’s Sunday. A holiday. My birthday — whatever, but I’m taking the day off.’

Aha! I picked up my cue without a ripple. ‘If he can have the day off, then I can too. No bread, no chooks, no garden, no cooking, no listening watch. Yippeeee!’

Dad kept eating. ‘No point. Nowhere to go. Nothing different to do. Might as well work.’

‘Feel like a break,’ said Noah. ‘Not going to work.’

‘If he doesn’t, I don’t,’ I said.

Dad shrugged. ‘Okay.’

‘You’ll have to do my jobs,’ I said. ‘If we run out of bread, we’re sunk.’

‘Your mo … Liv can do it.’

I breathed deeply and achieved a bit of calm and patient. ‘No, she can’t. She can’t stand up for long enough. She gets sick. The smell of the yeast makes her sick and so does the cooking smell.’ I jumped up. ‘I’m off. Gone. Not here. Please yourself what you do except you’d better feed the chooks because they don’t deserve to starve.’ And that reminded me that a few supplies might be useful for us as well. I chucked stuff in a backpack and we legged it out of there leaving pissed-off Dad alone with the radio, the chooks and Mum.

‘They might start talking,’ I said.

Noah didn’t even bother to say
yeah right.

We headed for the shed. ‘Everything that’s ever been on this island is in here,’ he said. ‘There’s gotta be stuff we can use and I know there’s a fishing line. Saw it the other day.’

We collected anything that looked useful. I piled it in the wheelbarrow but Noah said, ‘We’ll tie it on the land yacht. We’ll grab a rope each and let it run down the hill. Easier than the barrow.’

Goodness, the brother was really engaging the brain over this. I didn’t think it would work, but it more or less did except for losing a spade and a pickaxe, which I didn’t think we could possibly use, but he stopped, picked them up and tied them back on.

Turned out it’s not so easy to get a fully laden land yacht down a one-in-two gradient. A couple of times
the whole caboodle nearly took off on us. Dad would not be delighted if we dumped this little lot out of reach down on the rocks.

‘Whew! Made it!’ said Noah. He manoeuvred the yacht so that the wheels weren’t in danger of spinning off over the edge of the slip.

We looked down to where the land had tumbled away in a fall of rock and rubbish down to the sea. Maybe this idea wasn’t so brilliant after all. ‘You can see why the old guy had to leave,’ I said. I pointed to a sliver of shelf above the slip. ‘That must be what the penguins use but I don’t see us being able to waddle along there.’

Noah hardly gave it a glance. He ratted around among the supplies and hauled out a rope. ‘I reckon this is the way to go.’

‘How?’ I asked, a tad snippily. I was disappointed. My grand idea was a fizzer and, to top it off, we’d have to haul that load of useless junk back up the hill.

‘Tie it to something.’ Noah strode around, stamping his boots on the ground doing the big
I am an engineer
act.

I was not impressed. ‘Like the yacht, for instance?’

He grinned at me. ‘I was thinking more of bashing a post into the ground and using that.’

Okay, that might work. ‘Is the rope long enough?’

He unwound it and threw one end over the ragged edge of the track. It caught on a rock towards the bottom. ‘Even if it only gets us to there, we can climb the rest of the way.’ He grinned at me. ‘Let’s do it.’

I grinned back. ‘Right on, brother.’

He grabbed a post and the pickaxe. ‘Not too near
the edge. It’s probably a bit unstable there.’ Aha! That would be the reason for all the stamping and thumping earlier.

We chose a spot about a metre back from the edge and we hacked and dug and hacked some more. ‘Have to bury it pretty deep,’ Noah said. ‘Don’t want it coming out when we’re halfway up.’

The things a girl does. I was going to come off this island with enough muscles to slug Lizzie senseless if she was ever stupid enough to cross my path. I set up the camera so it would record my attempts at hacking my way to China.

‘Spain,’ said Noah.

‘Whatever.’

We ate all our supplies. We dug some more, until the great engineer decided it would do. We put the post in and tamped the earth down — a technical term previously unknown to me.

I won the
who will tie the rope on
contest on the grounds that I’d been a Brownie for two whole terms, during which time I’d achieved my knot-tying badge. Couldn’t remember any of them but Noah didn’t need to know that. He won the right to go first down the rope, mainly because he just went.

‘You better yell if the post comes loose,’ he said when he was a quarter of the way down.

And how would that help?

He got to the end of the rope and there was still a big gap between him and the beach. He looked up at me and his face was one huge grin. ‘This could get interesting. No footholds. I’ll have to drop on to that rock.’ He
nodded at a rock about a metre below him.

‘It might give way!’ I screeched, seeing mangled brother in my mind.

‘Yeah, but it might not. Only one way to find out.’ He let go, dropped, landed, wobbled then stabilised and the rock stayed where it was. ‘Yeehaaa!’

‘Noah?’

‘What?’

‘How are you going to get back up?’

He didn’t answer — too busy scrambling down the tumble of rocks to the beach, but his laugh floated up. I solved the problem. I hauled the rope back up and lengthened it by tying the handles from the yacht on to it.

I chucked the camera around my neck, grabbed the rope and began the grand descent. Whoever would have thought PE would turn out to be a halfway useful subject? All those rope sessions in the gym came pouring back.

Stones and dirt rattled away from under my feet. Maybe we should’ve dug that post in deeper. I could see it in my mind, slowly sliding out and out.

Noah’s voice came bouncing up to me. ‘I’ve got the hook baited. I’ll just climb out here and throw the line in.’

I felt he’d be much better employed acting as a landing pad in case of post slippage or knot undo-age but I was a bit too occupied to yell at him.

Aha! At last — the knots. Not much further and — yippee — there was a solid rock under my slightly shaky feet. Made it.

I took a shot of the slip. Quite impressive. Now for the brother with the fishing line.

‘Noah!’

No reply, but I located him — lying flat on a large, jagged rock sticking out into the waves and a couple of metres above them. He turned his head and I caught his grin on camera. I ambled towards him. Now that I was here, now that I was faced with the possibility of murdering an innocent fish, I discovered I wasn’t all that keen on the idea.

But it would be so damned good to eat.

‘Think it’ll work?’ I asked, dropping down beside prone bro.

‘Shh.’

Oh yeah. Sorry. Forgot. You have to fish in silence. I could do that. I lay down too, but on my back. I could get to like this — sun, sea, birds, no wind, no warring parents and Noah doing all the work.

I think I went to sleep, then I woke up and fishing had lost its appeal. ‘Going exploring,’ I whispered.

Noah nodded and kept holding the line.

Another whisper. ‘Is the bait still on it?’

He gave me a look that started off in the superior
what would you know about anything
range and ended up down the thoughtful end. He pulled the line in. No bait. I chuckled and got out of there in case he decided I was on bait duty.

I jumped down on to the sand, sat down and took off my boots. Sand! Should have brought the spade down because this beach needed a sandcastle. Next time.

I put my boots back on and ventured into rock-land at the other end of the beach. Rock-land, I discovered, was inhabited by seals. At first I was enchanted — sweet,
furry, cute seals, but then one of them did what seals do — let loose a huge shit. It stank, reeked, ponged. Time for a quick departure. I sat on the sand and admired the shags. They probably stank too.

It had to be getting late judging by the shadows slithering across my patch of sand. I did a few shots of shadows with Noah artistically draped on the rock in the background. ‘I’m a child of nature,’ I said. ‘I now tell the time by the sun. And by my stomach which is possibly the more reliable instrument. Time to go and here’s hoping the father has created the best food ever. No harm in dreaming.’

I got up to tell Noah. But wait! Activity on the Noah front. I started to run because it looked as if he had a fish on the end of his line, or if not a fish, then a very active chunk of seaweed.

It was a fish and lucky for me, he had it up on dry rock by the time I arrived. Unlucky for me though, it was still highly alive. Noah was too, with a grin as wide as the fish’s gaping mouth. ‘Poor fish,’ I said, which maybe wasn’t quite the most appropriate response, but I don’t think Noah heard because the grin stayed put. He yelled, ‘Grab me a rock, Min,’ and I swear the grin didn’t move a centimetre all through that.

I grabbed a rock and passed it to him. I didn’t look, but I couldn’t help hearing the thwack on the head of poor old fishy.

I’d never be able to eat it.

Yes, I would. Especially if Dad cooked it. ‘Cool, bro,’ I said in an effort to make up for previous inappropriateness.

He took his eyes off the fish for a nanosecond so that I got the full grin plus the shine from the eyes. ‘Let’s go home.’

Sweet.

He tied the fish over his shoulder and I filmed the pair of them scrambling back up the rope. Hmmm. That was not looking easy. Maybe the post would come out and I’d have to live forever on the beach with cute but putrid seals as my companions.

Noah got to the top.

‘Wait up!’ I yelled. ‘Don’t go without me!’

‘Hurry up then.’

I couldn’t believe it, except that I could — my darling brother was actually going to scarper and leave me to get to the top all by myself (which of course I was going to do anyway but that was not the point).

I slung the camera around my neck and started the great ascent.

‘Watch out!’

I looked up and there, rolling towards me, was half the cliff.

I ducked a rock the size of a netball. It zinged over my head. Gravel and dirt cascaded over and around me. A medley of tree parts shot down beside me, taking with it more rocks. Something thumped into my left leg, knocking me sideways. I lurched and teetered before my hand seized a tree root and I regained my balance.

‘Get out to the side!’ Noah yelled.

I got. It took a good-sized leap and a frantic scramble until I was clear of falling debris.
Falling debris.
I’d seen
those words somewhere. Yes, that was it: road signs. Funny what the mind will do when the body is in extreme danger. Another rock and a slide of rubbish hurtled down far too close for comfort.

‘You okay?’ Noah peered at me from the lip of the slip.

‘If the bloody earth stops moving I will be.’ And if I didn’t fall off the tiny ledge I’d landed on. Bits of me hurt but if I tried to look I’d fall.

‘Hang on and don’t move,’ Noah called. ‘I’ll get Dad.’

I shifted my left leg. It was hurting. Something rattled away from under my foot.

‘Don’t move, Min! Just don’t move a single muscle. You’re okay where you are. Hang on.’ Noah vanished with the last words.

How long before Dad came? Would he be able to rescue me when he did come? What could Noah see that I couldn’t? He sounded scared. My fingers hurt. Better find a better hold. That was funny — better better. Be good when my leg was better better ’cause right now it felt worser worser and I reckon it was bleeding too. What if I left all my blood on the side of a cliff and all that was left of me was empty skin and bones?

Hold on, Min. Don’t let go. Not much longer. You can do it. Dad’ll kill you if you let go.

How far was it down to the beach anyway? Maybe I could climb down. Be better than staying here. Better than better.

I twisted my head to look down, and down. Funny, it was a long way. Rocks below me. Hard to make sense of it. Not better. Worser. A laugh bubbled up inside me.
No. Don’t laugh. If I laughed I’d have to move. If I moved then I might fall. Not that far. Not really. About as far as the ground was from the roof of a house. Don’t want to fall though. The rocks look hard.

The slip had taken with it the rocks we’d climbed up on. There didn’t seem to be anything beneath my feet. Holy crap, if my ledge gave way I was going to end up in rock-sized pieces for the seals to eat. Were seals carnivores? Think about it, Min — they probably don’t eat seaweed.

Losing your mind here, girl. Deep breath. Not too deep, though. Don’t want to move too much. Shallow deep breaths. Calm. That’s what’s needed. A good dose of calm. And patient.

Come on, Dad.

They came at last. I heard their feet pounding down the access way. I hoped they wouldn’t run so fast that they couldn’t stop and then we’d all be down here, mince on rocks.

My leg hurt. My arms ached. My fingers — don’t think about fingers.

‘Min? Can you hear me?’ Dad’s voice, sharp and urgent.

I didn’t move my head. ‘I’m okay. Want to come up though.’

‘We’re going to pull you up. Rope coming down now.’

There it was, dangling beside me. I stared at it.

Dad’s voice thumped into my head. ‘Put your left arm through the loop, Min. Carefully now. You can do it. That’s the girl. Well done!’

I stopped. Couldn’t do any more. Couldn’t let go with my right hand. Couldn’t face swinging out over the void.

Dad’s voice hit me again. ‘Hold on with your left hand. Swap your hands over, Min. That’s it. Good. Now get your right arm through the loop.’

‘Can’t.’

‘Yes, you can. That’s it. Gently does it. That’s good.’

I did it. Managed to push my arm through the loop, then I grabbed my hold back again with both hands.