Everything Beautiful (8 page)

17
Field Recordings

After lunch, the Honeyeaters were told to assemble outside the rec room. I waited with Sarita. We leaned on the pinewood pole and listened to Neville attempting to coax some conversation out of Dylan.

“So.” Neville shook the arm of Dylan’s chair. “Big changes.” He paused for comic timing. “Long hair.”

Dylan sniffed.

Neville adopted an exaggerated macho stance and gave his chair the once-over. “What’s your ride?” He was trying to be cool, but Dylan wasn’t having any of it.

“I could do with some of your hair,” he continued, touching his own head lightly. “I don’t know what God wants with mine, but He seems intent on taking it.”

“Maybe you should get a hat.” Dylan sounded bored.

Neville considered this. “I could,” he said. “I could get a hat. Hats could become my thing. Everyone needs a thing, right?”

Dylan shrugged. There was a long silence.

“What about you?” Neville asked him. “Are you into doing weights? If you are we’ve got some hand weights, barbells … Bibles,” he joked.

Sarita poked me in the ribs. I saw Dylan’s face close up. Fleur and Craig were approaching. They were walking in step and looked like a shampoo commercial, all sun-kissed and leggy and happy. As soon as they saw Dylan they separated. Craig put his hand up for a high five. Dylan ignored it, said something to Neville, and then pushed off back to his cabin. After that no one seemed to know where to look, except for Sarita, who was staring at Craig with such longing that I had to snap my fingers in front of her face.

“We’re going to do a trust walk,” Neville announced. He winked at me and put forth a shoe box. “Pass these around, Riley.” I stared at the box, then my eyes moved up to his badge. He didn’t need a hat—wacky badges were his thing. This one was black and white and basic.
I’m into Jesus.
I passed the box around while Neville barked, “Grab a blindfold and a partner.” At the sight of the usual suspects clutching to each other, Neville stressed, “I want you to pair up with
someone you don’t know very well
. Laura, Lisa, come on. Don’t make me ask twice.”

I tried my blindfold on. It worked. I stood absolutely still and listened to the group get its thing together. Bird was humming, Laura and Lisa were pleading with Neville. I could hear shuffling and giggling. I was expecting Sarita to take my arm when I felt a column of warmth at my side. “I saw this in a magazine once.” Craig’s breath in my ear gave me the shivers. Two seconds later someone pinched my arm.

Fleur hissed, “
Sorry
.”

I heard Craig trying to appease her. “But Fleur, I
know
you.” His voice had laughter behind it. Was he laughing at me or Fleur? It was impossible to know.

Neville’s voice rang out. “The game is leader/follower. The leader has to lead the follower around the camp. This is a nonverbal, nonvisual experience. Use your senses to explore the world around you.”

Craig took my hand, and I was acutely aware of how sweaty mine was.

He led me over the plain. I felt spidergrass tickling my bare ankles. Then we were in the scrub, and sticks snapped beneath my feet. I could feel the temperature change when we walked in and out of trees. I had the sense that we were getting farther away from the group. The idea of our seclusion made my temperature soar. The silence was claustrophobic. But it wasn’t true silence—there was still activity and electricity in the air. It made me think of field recordings. I could hear: our footsteps on the hard ground; Craig’s key chain clinking; our breath out of sync; bird calls; insects rubbing their legs together. And all of this was weirdly sexy.

Craig stopped walking and dropped my hand. I felt him come behind me and push me forward. I panicked, thinking I was falling, but then my body bounced against a rope fence. Craig lifted my blindfold. “Look down.”

I looked. Twenty feet below was a gaping hole in the ground. It looked like a giant’s footstep. Or a natural well—only there was no water in there, just dry reddish mud decorated by crazed cracks and feral tracks.

“This is the crater,” Craig said. “Legend has it this is where the European settlers threw the bodies after they massacred the Aborigines. The mud is red because of the blood. Cool, isn’t it?”

“Is this where you take all your girls?” I quipped.

Craig nodded. “When we were Bronzewings, Sarita fell down here. I was the one who found her. I tied a rope to that tree, tied the other end around my waist, rappelled down, put her over my shoulder, and pulled us both up. Awesome.”

I looked around. “I thought we were supposed to be nonverbal.”

There, at the edge of something vast and ancient, Craig lurched forward and kissed me. It wasn’t a sweet kiss. His lips felt rubbery. He pulled back and stared at me. “Will you meet me tonight? Midnight?”

“Where?”

“At the merry-go-round.”

“Okay.”

Craig turned. In the sharp sunlight his profile was perfect, he had what Chloe would call Greek god–ness. Then a shadow fell and a sly look entered his eyes, and I had a sudden paranoid flash that he might push me and I would become part of the legend.

I put that thought out of my head and stayed still as he put my blindfold back on and led me back to the group.

18
The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

The Honeyeaters’ table was getting elbow-roomy. Fleur and Craig were sitting with the counselors. Bird had permission to observe the fairy wrens breeding by the recycling cage. Dylan still hadn’t surfaced. I pictured him flaking out in his cabin, watching the dust motes dance in the sun’s fading rays. Sarita was too excited to eat. She pushed her tray aside and whispered, “What was it like being partnered with Craig?” She looked from me to Fleur, as if trying to gauge when the catfight was going to break out.

“It was okay.”

“But what did you talk about?”

“Nothing. It was nonverbal, remember?”

“He’s perfect.” Sarita sighed.

“He’s
okay
.” I was outwardly cool, but on the inside my heart was racing.

Everyone else was talking about Dylan.

“It was a surfing accident,” Richard was saying. “He came off the board and slammed into a sandbank.”

“He doesn’t look like a surfer,” Laura said.

“He looks scary,” Lisa said. “What’s with all the black?”

“You’d look pretty scary if you’d lost the use of your legs.” Richard paused. “And the rest.”

The twins went, “Eww.”

“I wonder if he has a colostomy bag,” Ethan mused.

Richard sniffed. “Of course he does, idiot.”

I leaned over the table. “Do you think Dylan would like to hear you all discussing him like he’s some sort of freak?”

“What’s it to you?” Richard asked.

“Unh!” I made a face. “It’s rude, is what. And I’m eating. You people are weird. You’ve all been coming here for years—”

“We haven’t,” Lisa and Laura chirped.

“Okay, but they have.” I pointed to Richard and Ethan. I was trying to work out the group dynamic, if there was one. “I don’t get it. Isn’t Dylan your friend? Aren’t you all friends?” The boys exchanged a glance. I figured they’d made a pact not to speak to me because I was contaminated, but the urge to gossip was too tasty.

Richard said, “Thing is, Dylan used to be a bully.”

“He was a tool,” Ethan confirmed.

“Is this true?” I asked Sarita.

She nodded. “He was very competitive. He and Craig—”

“They thought they were rock stars,” Richard cut in. “You might call it hubris.” He held his fork aloft and smiled for a long time, and when I didn’t smile back he licked his lips nervously and looked away.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” I said. “That God’s got a plan for everyone. No bad deed goes unpunished. The geek shall inherit the earth. You think bad things don’t happen to good people? Wake up, Australia! Read the fucking paper.”

Richard put his hands over his ears. As soon as Ethan saw this, he did the same. They both closed their eyes and started chanting: “My God is a good God, is a just God, is the One True Holy Father.” La, la,
la
.

“You’re idiots.” I spooned some mudcake into my mouth. “My God is chocolate,” I said to Sarita, but she didn’t laugh, she just looked worried.

I missed Chloe.

Sarita was excited about the post-dinner charades, but I decided to give it a miss in favor of a long shower. I washed my hair and used a come-hithery body spray. I put my jeans back on, and my best bra, and a peasant blouse that gave me coverage without being a total sack. Then I lay in bed looking at the pictures in my bunker book. They were beautiful, but they depicted a world that was nothing like mine. In my world you didn’t see bright-eyed children with sparrows on their shoulders any more than you saw pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. My world was about white fat rolling over my waistband, guys with glazed eyes, girls on buses, at the beach, at the mall, whispering, laughing, bitching. Drinking shots with Chloe in the park until I couldn’t tell the difference between up and down. Dad’s look of disappointment. Random days when I felt most hollow, I’d sit by Mom’s grave and watch the ants make a matrix on her headstone.

I was too wired to sleep, so I started to read, and by the time Sarita came back I was engrossed.

‘What are you reading?” she asked.

“
Utopia
.” I put the cover down and gave her my report. “It’s about a made-up society where the inhabitants live in perfect harmony. There’s no crime or personal possessions and everyone practices ‘religious tolerance’—which means you can follow whatever God you want, but you can’t rag on anyone about who they choose.”

Sarita was looking confused. “But there’s only one God.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“Certain.”

“Well, you’re lucky,” I said.
Safe
, I thought.

According to the introduction, Thomas More said
Utopia
was a satire because if he’d called it a manifesto he would have been killed. And then he got killed anyway for disagreeing with Henry VIII, the bastard king. The intro also said that
Utopia
spawned a whole genre. And utopian fiction kicks because the reader can’t not compare the imagined world with his own world and wonder about how things could change. And change—or the possibility of it—is the only reason we don’t all jump sixteen floors.

I thought about Spirit Ranch. How it was supposed to be some kind of utopia, but actually Chloe’s prison call was closer to the mark. We had our name tags, our privileges removed, and too many boundaries. I took the thought down a dark alley: if this was a prison, then who was top dog? And just as I was thinking this, Fleur came in with fucky hair and her blouse buttoned up the wrong way. I looked at her. She stared back accusingly. She shook her head and let out an explosive, “Slut!”

I just laughed. “Careful,” I said under my breath. “Don’t get me started.”

19
In the Thick

At eleven thirty p.m. I lay in bed, fully dressed, listening to Fleur and Sarita’s sleep-harmony and staring at a crack in the curtain. Outside, the plain looked like a CCTV crime scene waiting to happen. I had watched the cabin lights expire until all that remained were two flickering bars—one outside the shower block, the other outside the counselors’ annex.

Fleur snored. I shined the flashlight on her sleeping form. She looked like a model in a sleepwear catalog, she had the whole getup: sleep mask, earplugs, Country Road pajamas, and her long hair cascading down her notangles satin pillow. The only dent in her perfection was the soundtrack. Fleur’s snoring was not the soft purr of a Rolls-Royce; it was more like the cheap outburst of a two-stroke engine. I liked thinking that there was something she couldn’t control. It felt like ammunition.

Suddenly Sarita spoke. Or rather, she snapped. She didn’t sound like herself. Her sleep-talking voice had big balls.

“No … Because. God! Just shut up, Mom. Shut. Up. You don’t know anything.”

I trailed her with the flashlight. Sarita was frowning and her hand was curled around her prayer rock. I liked Sarita. I felt a little guilty that I was about to get off with her crush. I didn’t feel bad for Fleur’s sake—just Sarita’s. But she was dreaming if she thought she had a chance with Craig, and hadn’t I just that morning vowed to live adventurously and fling my whole soul into everything I did? I had. I would. Nothing could stop me.

I left at five minutes to midnight. In my bag I had lip gloss, ciggies, breath mints, a sarong, and an emergency condom—brand: Gigantor. (Chloe and I had purchased a box of them online using Norma’s credit card. We laughed, we mimed, we imagined the worst.
Gigantors! Not for the Easily Intimidated!
Actually, they were gherkin-sized and oily besides …)

Outside, the air was crisp and smelled like smoked sap. There were so many stars that the sky looked like a fabulous sequined quilt. I rubbed my goose-bumpy arms as I ran through the plain, past the showers, down the path. There was a light glowing from the garage, and I crept in. “Hellooo,” I whispered, scanning for Craig. “Hey, Youth Leader. Hey, Loverboy!”

Nothing. Just the hissing of the kerosene lamp.

I went out to the merry-go-round, sarong-ed my shoulders, smoked a cigarette or three, and waited.

Waiting is an art form at which I excel. The trick of it is to keep your mind occupied. I thought about sex—or tumbling, as Chloe and I called it. I thought about how once you start you can’t go back. How sometimes—most of the time, if I was honest—I wished I could go back. I liked the idea that each new encounter effaced the last one. But if this were really true, then my memory of said tumbles would be gone, too. The first guy I ever slept with was Aaron Becker. His dad had a motor home dealership, and we did it in a different one every day of the Easter break. Foreplay was if he folded the bed down. During the act, Aaron would stare above my head, and I’d stare at his mouth moving. After a while I figured out he was counting. Counting! Like I was exercise.

“What did you get?” I once asked him.

“What?”

“How many reps? I counted eleven.”

He looked at me like he hated me. He said, “You’re really weird, you know that?” And he tied a knot in the condom and tucked it behind the mini fire extinguisher, where it wouldn’t be found until Darwin or never.

Craig appeared in front of me. He was silent and smiling like an apparition, a bush ghost I’d dreamed into existence. I felt that if I touched him my hand would go right through his skin and all I’d get was air. He took two cans of beer from his backpack, cracked one, and passed it to me. I took a sip. “This is real,” I thought. And, “Yuck. Stolen beer is warm beer.”

“Where did you score these?”

“Storeroom.”

“Youth Leader privilege?”

He laughed shortly. “Yeah.”

Without preamble, Craig lunged. It was a sloppy kiss, but not without promise. I lay back. He kissed me harder, and moved over me until his chest was firm against mine. One hand was on the back of my head, the other was working my button fly. The merry-go-round shifted east and my top half went with it. The rest of me was pinned down by Craig’s thigh. He stopped. He grabbed the waist of my jeans and yanked them down. He always had a hand on me, and I almost made a joke about him being used to girls trying to bolt—but in the thick is no place for jokes, so I just concentrated on his perfect face.

Craig pulled his jeans down with his other hand.

“Wait,” I said. “Aren’t you going to use something?”

“Yeah, whatever.”

I reached behind for my bag. “I’ve got one. Hold on.” Craig’s breath was hot on my face. “I don’t do condoms.”

“Then stop,” I said.

He stopped. “Why?” he said, irritated.

“You
have
to do condoms.”

“I’m clean.” I could hear him
smiling
. “I’ll pull out.”

I sat up. “No you won’t, because you’re not even getting
in
.”

Craig sighed. He heaved off me and kicked his feet in the sand. He seemed to be brooding. Finally he turned to me. “You could—”

“
What
?” I hissed.

“Finish me off with your hand?” And then when it was obvious that
that
wasn’t going to happen, he shrugged. “Your loss.”

I stared at him. I
hated
him! He wasn’t worth my emergency condom. He wasn’t worth spit. My top was up, my jeans were down, all my necessaries trembled under the stars. I started the awkward process of getting back into my clothes while he tapped his finger on his beer can. He took a sip and burped.

“Nice,” I said.

“What’s wrong with you?”

“If you don’t know, I’m not going to tell you.”

“You have the best tits.” Craig went for them, but I moved away.

“Creep.”