Thirteen Pearls (15 page)

I folded my arms over my chest, uncomfortably aware of Kaito checking me out over the cracking of lobster shells. It wasn't that I wanted to have the coconut-sized cleavage of Aunty Sally, but in the great DNA lottery it would have been nice to have been given a little extra something rather than a depressing A-cup. I blamed my parents. They were both straight and skinny, like me. Together we looked like a preschooler's drawing of a stick-figure family – right down to the big eyes, button noses and crazy hair.

I cracked the shell of a lobster leg with my molars and sucked out the sweet meat while Aunty Sally and Uncle Bill told stories about the good old days. Uncle Bill said that there used to be hundreds of Japanese living or working around the island. ‘I used to work with them. Good divers they were, but not as good as us.' He grinned and puffed out his scrawny chest. ‘Island people are big breathers.'

‘So where are they now?' I asked. During my brief visits to Thursday Island, I hadn't seen many Asian faces.

Kaito's expression was unreadable. ‘The Japanese were interned after Pearl Harbour was bombed,' he murmured. ‘My grandfather had returned to Japan to care for his elderly father, but some of my grandfather's friends were rounded up and put under guard at a stockade.'

Uncle Bill waved his hand in the direction of T.I. ‘It's the Wongai basketball court now.'

‘They got sent to South Australia and put in camps,' Kaito continued. ‘Thursday Island is very close to Papua New Guinea. Even though they had lived and worked in Australia for years, the Japanese people were considered spies.'

‘The Japs bombed Horn Island, but they never bombed Thursday Island because people reckoned there was a Japanese princess buried here,' Uncle Bill said.

‘You should take Edie to see the Japanese Cemetery,' Aunty Sally said, neatly separating segments of white meat from a lobster tail. ‘Hundreds of pearl divers' graves there. Died from the divers' disease.'

‘Decompression sickness.'

‘Yes.' Kaito looked at me speculatively. The whole time he'd been talking about the internment of the Japanese, he 'd been weirdly detached. As if he were talking about other people, another race. What would it be like being the child of two such different cultures that had once been at war? I'd been surprised that Kaito spoke with a regular Aussie accent. But there were identifiable Japanese elements to his personality and manner too – the ritualistic way he poured tea, the emptiness flute . . .

I wanted to ask Kaito more about the internment camps, but he tilted his head back to the sun and closed his eyes as if to avoid my questions.

‘Is it dangerous diving for pearls?' I asked.

Uncle Bill whistled through his teeth. ‘You don't want to stick your hand into one of them giant clamshells. Lose your arm or foot if you're lucky and some other fella's with you. Drown if you're not. But there 's nothing like finding abalone or harvesting wild oysters, always hopin' there 'll be a pearl inside. Like finding treasure at the bottom of the sea.'

I started, causing an exodus of tiny fish that had been nibbling my feet. That was exactly what I'd thought about fishing!

I'd always loved diving. I liked the swaying underwater world of bright fish and seaweeds, towering coral gardens rising up in the blue. I liked turning into mysterious cracks and crevices and listening to my breathing through the mouthpiece. What would it be like to seek rare and valuable pearls?

‘Can I go free-diving here?'

Kaito looked at me through a sweep of dark lashes, assessing. ‘Maybe we could go out next time Red lets us have some time off.'

That would be never
, I thought sourly. But, after seeing the expression in Kaito's eyes, I felt something warm hum through me.

After lunch, when we'd washed our sticky hands and faces with seawater and Aunty Sally and Uncle Bill had taken Aran to see where a goanna lived, that strange, humming feeling returned.

‘You're getting sunburned,' Kaito said.

I put my hand self-consciously up to my nose. It was always the first place to go beetroot pink – my Rudolph nose.

Back at the tinny, I rifled through my bag for the tube of sunscreen. Thankfully Aran hadn't managed to squeeze it all out and I smudged some onto my nose before squeaking up the sand to the slender bars of shade cast by the palm trees. I dropped and pressed my belly to the sand. Instantly its warmth sent a wave of relaxation through my limbs that made me sleepy, and I realised how, since arriving on Thirteen Pearls, my body had been on constant alert. Maybe I'd have post-traumatic stress disorder when I returned.

‘I'll do your back,' Kaito offered.

The cool cream soothed my hot skin as Kaito swept from the small of my back to my shoulders with long, even strokes. There was something sensuous and deliberate about his touch that made me start to feel anxious. I kept my face buried in the crook of my arm. When he finished I felt him settle in the sand beside me. He was lying so close my little fingernail (the only nail to have survived a biting frenzy since I'd arrived up here) could have bridged the distance. But soon, accompanied by the gentle lap of the sea, came even, regular breathing. It sounded as if he was having a siesta.

My own breath seemed swift and shallow and my heart beat fast. The way he had rubbed the sunscreen in, it had seemed as though he was being more than friendly. But I couldn't be sure. I lifted my head.

He was watching me. He didn't look away.

I mustered the courage to hold his gaze. He had the softest lips. Not sun-chafed and white like Uncle Red's, but smooth and full and . . .

Kaito kissed me. I tasted seawater and cool air. He didn't dive his tongue in straight away. Instead, he bit my bottom lip softly and kissed my cheeks and temples before returning to my mouth.

(Okay – a moment of strict and excruciating honesty. My first kisses – all four of them not including this one – weren't great. Maybe it was my expectations, waiting for the violins to kick in, or maybe it was the fact that just when I was really, really enjoying that warm feeling of ANTICIPATION swirling through me, the kiss, the real thing, with lips and tongues and teeth to
coordinate,
had shocked me into reality. Tash had told me in no uncertain terms to get over it. She reckoned the real thing was the best bit. But I'd disagreed. Yet this kiss was different . . . )

White-hot sunlight kept me glued to the ground. A sea breeze wafted between our baking bodies. Kaito didn't try and paw me like the others had. He left a knife-fine space between us. Emptiness. And it felt good.

After a few minutes, it was me who moved closer. Me who put my hand against his bare chest to feel the steady thump of his heart beneath, and me who toyed with the black pearl against his smooth skin.

Kaito slid his arm around my back and traced little circles along my shoulders, down my spine.

I shivered and pushed up closer.

He smoothed a stray lock of my sweaty hair. ‘No hurry, Edie,' he murmured. ‘We 're on
ailan tim
.'

Aran's shout made me spring to a sitting position. I watched guiltily, my face bright with more than sunburn, as Aran burst from a path leading out of a clump of mangroves, with the old people following behind.

Aran thrust a woven palm-leaf fish at me, beaming with pleasure. I scanned Uncle Bill and Aunty Sally's faces – surely they knew? Is that why they'd taken Aran for a walk? But their smiles were as warm and open as ever. ‘He got to see that pesky goanna run up a tree,' Aunty Sally said. ‘Been eating my chook eggs and we set a trap for it, didn't we?'

Aran nodded, eyes shining. Well, at least it was a goanna and not a swarthy bad guy.

When my heart finally stopped thumping, I allowed myself to meet Kaito's eyes. He smiled and mouthed a word that sent chills dancing up my arms and legs. ‘Later.'

‘Where the hell have you lot been?' Uncle Red lumbered down the jetty, making the wooden slats reverberate in his wake.

‘We had to wait for the pump to arrive,' Kaito replied serenely, as he threw the rope around the pylon and knotted it tight. ‘Didn't come in until the afternoon. I tried to call.'

I kept my gaze fixed on the apricot shimmer of sunset on the sea, not wanting my guilty expression to betray him,
us
. As far as I knew, he hadn't called at all.

Aran leaped off the boat and rushed at Red. Throwing his skinny arms and legs around my uncle, he looked like a monkey clinging to a tree trunk.

Uncle Red was taken aback. A mix of emotions played across his face – surprise, pleasure, concern, then suspicion. He gave the boy an awkward pat on the shoulder and then unpeeled him, limb by limb, and handed him back to me. Leon sauntered down the jetty. On Thirteen Pearls, any arrival or departure was a big event. Something to fill up a conversation for entire minutes . . . He stared at Kaito, then me, and frowned. I swear, he almost –
sniffed
. Uncle Red might be oblivious, but there was something feral about

Leon. His animal senses had told him that something was different.

I squirmed from his hard stare. Leon had his supermodel Danish babe waiting for him and it was none of his business what happened between me and Kaito, but I had the distinct feeling that Kaito and I had crossed a line and our merry little evening trio would no longer be so cheerful and relaxed. I knew from hanging out with Tash and Jason that the saying: ‘two's company, three 's a crowd' was especially true if there was a couple in the equation. And I was right, because later, after Aran had been tucked up, still clutching his damp elephant, and I'd emerged to lounge around the citronella candle and slap mosquitoes, the atmosphere was palpably different, strained.

Kaito played the shakuhachi and Leon looked far from chilled out. Instead, he rapped the side of his deckchair, as if bored, or cross. I tried to engage him in a conversation about the dumbest things we 'd ever done. It flopped. And when Kaito slipped his foot from a thong and starting playing with my foot, Leon glared at us both.

‘I'm knackered. Think I'll call it a night.' He turned to Kaito. ‘Red made me do twice as much work when you didn't come back.'

We remained silent, listening to Leon rustling around in his tent until his lamp went out and it was only the two of us and the sea swishing through the mangrove roots.

I'd been anticipating this precious time alone together, casting careful glances at Kaito over dinner, running my tongue over my pleasantly bruised lips, sneaking off to brush my teeth at every possible opportunity, just in case . . . But now, the night felt hollow and strange, as if something were missing. With Leon gone, the spark had departed too. Leon was such a big, flaring presence. The two of them complemented each other – Leon, golden and larger than life, and Kaito, dark and mysterious.

Kaito reached for my hand and lightly squeezed my fingertips, working his way up to massage my palm. He shifted his chair closer to mine. His other hand closed around the back of my neck with a sharp squeeze that sent a rush of chills through my body. He lifted the tangle of hair from my neck and his lips were feather soft against my nape. I forgot about Leon.

We kissed until Orion's belt had sailed overhead to the horizon. I didn't want to fall asleep out here and have Aran wake up unable to find me. Or worse, have Uncle Red discover me out here in the morning. ‘Have . . . to . . . go . . . to . . . bed,' I murmured sleepily, stumbling to my feet with an inelegant yawn.

As I crept back into the home–shed and banged into the glass door, clumsy with exhaustion, I thought how satisfying tiredness was up here. It was true tiredness – virtuous tiredness. Not because I'd stayed up too late surfing YouTube clips or because I was madly cramming for an exam. I was tired because I'd worked hard. I'd washed and scrubbed and cooked and cleaned and dragged Aran around. I was covered in bruises and covered in kisses, and right now, in the ghostly glow of my LED torch, my narrow bed, with its wee-scented sheets and thin mattress that let the springs dig through, seemed heavenly.