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  ‘You know,’ I said, enjoying the steam curling around my lips and the heat of the pannikin melting the stiffness from my rein-chafed fingers, ‘you’d better be careful. You’re getting good at this. Someone might figure it out and make you start to be useful.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Aria drawled. ‘Maybe I’ll get so good I’ll turn into the big pushy bulldozer Jonathan reckons you are.’

  I snapped a branch with a vicious crack before feeding it to the fire. ‘What is it with that guy? What’s his problem?’

  Aria looked into the night shadows.

  ‘What? Tell me? You know something,’ I accused.

  She nodded. ‘But I promised I wouldn’t tell.’

  ‘Come on, Aria. I’m your best friend. Since when did you ever stop telling me absolutely everything whether I want to know it or not?’

  ‘Okay then. The night we came back from after . . . after Dan was flown out, Jonathan told me he didn’t really get that role in the movie he’s meant to be training for. He reckoned he knew the casting agent and was that close, but the director was this chick who said he was all show and no substance and that she didn’t believe in him. You reminded him of her.’

  ‘So he’s got a chip on his shoulder that’s half a mile deep and it’s got nothing to do with me.’

  ‘You gotta admit you’re bossy,’ Aria said. ‘You could say please and thanks every once in a while.’

  ‘Yeah, and you could try not to be superficial and self-obsessed, with no interests outside of fashion and boys.’

  ‘And you should watch it in case you turn into some weird spinster cow woman who crotchets for a hobby and castrates bulls at the speed of light.’

  ‘Okay. Now you’ve stepped over the line.’

  ‘You line dance too? Perfect. Should have known you do that up here.’

  I plonked down my cup and jumped to my feet.

  Aria’s eyes widened.

  I grabbed my hat and held it over my chest and took three steps to the left then stuck my hand out and swung around, singing the most annoying song of all time: Achy Breaky Heart. It was a terrible eighties song, one that got into your head and hammered it for days.

  I caught Aria’s eye. Suddenly we were both giggling. Full-on, helpless, rib-squeezing, belly-cramping giggles.

  Every time one of us managed to stop, the other started up again.

  We lay side by side on our swags, laughed out.

  Was this what true friendship was? Screaming out all the annoying crap you hate about each other and then laughing about it? How often do we tell anyone, let alone our closest friends, how we truly think and feel about them? Friendship relies on an intricate web of tiny little lies and half-lies and lies of omission. If we said every truth straight out – yeah, you do look fat, or your boyfriend is a total jerk, or do you know you do this snorting pig laugh thing just like your mum? – perhaps we wouldn’t have friends.

  The final slow walk home was so relaxed. Just a day of chilling out, polishing off the last of our food and not having to do anything or go anywhere. By the time we reached the homestead it was late afternoon. The dogs went nuts. I tugged on the reins to pull Charlie to a halt. Dad and Gran had been counting on me. And I’d almost met the quota, but a calf had been attacked, Blue Dreamer was dead, and Dan had almost had his arm torn off.

  At least Aria and I were friends again. And not just friends like we’d been before. We’d travelled a lot further than the metre between our beds at St Anne’s. We’d been vulnerable with each other. There was a chance our friendship might just survive. Even thrive.

  And then there was Dan. I’d almost let my feelings for him wreck the muster. But he had feelings for me too. We’d shared that star-filled night, breathing each other in. Was one night enough to pass the test of time and distance?

  Dad was on the verandah, filling out bundles of paperwork to send on the mail plane. He smiled and waved. Gran came out to greet us, striding across the yard in her faded blue dress, sending a few raggedy chooks scattering. ‘Welcome home. Good job, Skye,’ she said, grabbing my arm with an iron grip. Her eyes looked tired.

  ‘Um . . . you mean apart from the crocodile, and losing Blue Dreamer?’ I still couldn’t say his name without tears stinging my eyes.

  Gran surprised me. ‘You must be exhausted. Have a shower. I’m just finishing an email. Tea’s cooked. We’ll talk about the muster over dinner.’

  Aria and I decided against the shower. Instead, we rode over to the river. A rainbow bee-eater skimmed the water, its green wings shimmering beneath the light shafting through the canopy.

  Aria scanned the opaque blue-green pool and bit her lip. ‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘There aren’t any crocs. There are a couple of waterfalls down river – they can’t get up here.’

  ‘That’s what you said before. I thought there were no crocs where there were waterfalls. But there were crocs in that gorge.’

  I stared. ‘You thought Lizard Gorge had no crocs?’

  Aria nodded. ‘I saw a waterfall.’

  ‘But you were beneath the waterfall, Aria, not above it.’

  ‘What’s the difference.’

  ‘It’s the difference between cooling off and getting killed.’

  This time, I didn’t envy Aria’s neat little figure, I was glad to have broad shoulders and capable, muscular limbs. They had saved Dan’s life. He liked them. More important, I realised, turning over and over in the river, basking in the sweet earthy water, I did too.

  FIFTEEN

  I wasn’t prepared for the city. I should have known. It happened every time I returned from Bundwarra to Perth. But this time the fluorescent lights in the airport terminal, the endless churning of the baggage carousels, the muted colours of the carpet and grey-white walls seemed like a weird dream. I longed for Bundwarra’s gentian blue sky and dark red gorges towering over emerald rivers.

  Aria tugged on my arm. ‘Daddy’s arranged for his driver to pick us up.’

  I grinned. Back at the homestead, Aria had wanted the full experience of travelling cattle class. The moment the city came into view everything changed. Catching the mail plane and an economy flight had been an adventure – but having to wait for the shuttle bus was not okay.

  In the back of the Beemer, Aria became increasingly animated. She pointed out where she’d had picnics with Rosita when she was a little kid, the building where she’d had her braces fitted, the concert hall where she did ballet competitions, the boutique where she got a total bargain on a pair of red platforms. The city was her place.

  The ornate iron gates leading into St Anne’s made the school seem like a luxury prison. Behind the faux Victorian façade of the school’s admin building, there was a warren of cell-like complexes with names like: the Lady Frankson complex and the Elaine Cheney-Hallworth wing. It had never made sense to me that with so much money the school totally cheaped out on boarders’ accommodation. At least we weren’t in the building where they’d found asbestos in the ceiling.

  The cleaners had been through our partitioned shoebox – everything reeked of disinfectant and heavy duty industrial cleaner.

  ‘Home sweet home.’ Aria clicked the combination on her locker and threw it open so that a tumble of junk spilled to the matted square of carpet, which looked as if it had been salvaged from a refuge centre. She hunted through the locker for a cardboard tube and took out posters of her favourite bands to tack on her wall.

  I opened my own locker and a picture floated to the floor – Blue Dreamer when he had still been a yearling. I stuffed it back in, not wanting to feel the ache of his loss. I put the stupid Mickey Mouse clock with alarm bell ears that Damien had sent back from Disneyland onto my metal bedside cabinet and next to that my rock. It was an ordinary looking rock – dark red with a whitish streak – but it was from Bundwarra and it reminded me of the way the rivers carved through the cliffs.

  My cabinet was minimalist compared to Aria’s. Hers already overflowed with hairclips, make-up, necklaces, a silver-
framed photo of her parents skiing in the Alps, a diary that she never wrote in, a bamboo fan Rosita had brought back from the Philippines, a plastic ball that you squeezed to make an eyeball poke out, a pink MP3 player and a maple leaf beer coaster that a hot Canadian exchange student at our brother school had scrawled his address on before he’d gone back to Ottawa. I wondered how a crapologist would analyse our personalities based on our possessions.

  What would Dan have beside his hospital bed? Warmth flowed from my chest as I remembered that night under the stars, and just as suddenly I was sick of being sensible.

  We were meant to get permission to leave the school. It was already past five and curfew was on. There was no way the housemistress would let me out. It was dark and raining and a Sunday night. Any crazed drug-taking rain-loving axe-murderer could be lurking just outside the gates of St Anne’s waiting for a little lost schoolgirl . . .

  I put on Damien’s old oilcloth raincoat.

  Aria stopped arranging the painted babushka dolls her dad had brought back from Prague. ‘Where are you going?’ ‘To see Dan.’

  Aria nodded. ‘I’ll cover for you when Bite comes round.’ She cracked open another doll and flashed me a grin. ‘Give him a kiss for me. With tongues.’

  Gran had once told me that the most dangerous animal on earth was a human. I tried not to think about it as I stepped out of the security of St Anne’s onto a rain-streaked street, lit only by the feeble haloes of the solar streetlights. On the other side of St Anne’s was the park – all in darkness. I hastened along the street and hurried around the corner, feeling safer when I came to the first strip of houses. All those lives being lived out – a city filled with a million stories, like stars.

  I checked the timetable and huddled on the bench at the bus stop. Being Sunday, there wouldn’t be a bus for another forty minutes. The rain swept in under the shelter until finally, freezing and fed up, I decided to walk.

  It felt good to be moving again. After three weeks spent in the saddle, or running around after the mob, jabbing and tagging and tail cutting, the long cramped plane flight had been hard, so it was satisfying to stretch my legs. I felt less vulnerable too, not waiting like a bunny in a burrow. I was moving. I was strong. I could survive.

  I kept walking, just taking in the wash of the city, the swish of cars on the rain-slicked streets, the fuzzy glow of lights, the orange-lit rain falling from a starless sky. It had its own rhythms. The city was its own habitat.

  By the time I arrived at the entrance of the hospital, I was soaked from where the rain had dripped in beneath my collar. No wonder Damien had given me the coat.

  As the sensor doors drew back a blast of air-conditioning chilled my skin. A woman with a faded blue cardigan and rimless glasses glanced up from the phone at reception and gestured for me to wait. I couldn’t bear to sit. Instead, I paced around watching people in cotton gowns shuffling along the far corridor. The white glare of the hospital made my eyes water. I wondered how Dan was coping with all this boxed-in sterility.

  ‘How can I help you?’

  I spun around. ‘Me? I um, I’m looking for Dan . . .

  ’ ‘What’s his surname?’

  I shook my head. I had slept in his arms and I didn’t have a clue what his last name was!

  ‘He had a shoulder operation,’ I said. ‘He was attacked by a crocodile.’

  ‘Oh, yes, him. He’s something of a heart-throb around here.’

  I smiled stiffly. I wanted him to be my heart-throb.

  ‘He’s on level 5 in the orthopedic men’s ward. But visiting hours are over.’

  I pretended not to hear.

  A nurse intercepted me at the entry to the orthopedic ward. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘I want to see Dan,’ I blurted.

  ‘I’m sorry. Visiting hours are already over for today. Patients need their rest. Perhaps you’d like to come back tomorrow?’

  Tomorrow I would be stuck in class at St Anne’s.

  ‘I can’t. If you can just tell him Skye called.’

  From a tiny enclave fitted with blue plastic seats and a coffee table strewn with out-of-date magazines, a woman with curly brown hair and even darker eyes looked up sharply from her book. ‘Skye?’

  I nodded.

  ‘You must be the one he’s been on about then,’ the woman continued, unsmiling.

  My heart fell.

  She seemed to drink me all in with her dark eyes – taking in my soaked clothes and the wet hair plastered to my face.

  ‘You the one led the muster at Bundwarra?’

  I nodded.

  ‘I told my son never to get involved with station owners. Too much politics. But that one’s made a connection with you. Can’t fight it once that happens.’

  A hot rush of joy shot up my spine.

  The woman nodded at the nurse. ‘You better let my boy see her,’ she said. ‘Best sort of medicine.’

  In the ward, five TVs blared different programs – so much for quiet time for the patients. At the far end, near the window, a familiar figure dozed beneath a stark white sheet. Dan had his eyes closed. His arm was bandaged from his wrist right up to his shoulder.

  ‘Dan?’

  He smiled, though his eyes remained shut.

  ‘Dan?’ I touched his other arm.

  Those long lashes parted. He gazed at me with his beautiful tawny eyes. ‘I thought I was dreaming.’

  I grabbed a strand of my wet dog hair. ‘If this was a dream, I would be more alluring.’

  He smiled. My heart sang.

  ‘You know your family called?’ he said.

  I shook my head.

  ‘Your grandmother. She offered me a full-time job. Jack of all trades.’

  ‘No. No way! That’s fantastic!’

  Dan looked thoughtful. ‘She offered me the work without even knowing if my arm’d be okay.’

  ‘And is it?’ I asked.

  He nodded. ‘They reckon so. Another operation and I’m out of here.’

  ‘To Bundwarra.’

  ‘If it’s okay with you.’

  ‘Okay? Are you kidding?’ Hurry up holidays – they couldn’t happen quick enough.

  Dan reached for my frozen hand and drew me closer. ‘You’re cold. Let me warm you.’ He pulled me right down close to his face and paused, just as he had with Blue Dreamer and then later with me, up on the escarpment. He breathed me in.

  I breathed him in. He smelled sweet: of raspberry jelly and ice-cream and something wilder – home.

  I skipped through the rain, heart soaring. What kind of horse would I be? Dan reckoned I’d be a thoroughbred – strong, powerful, regal, the best . . . But people aren’t horses. They are people. We’re complex. We change. Even Gran.

  ABOUT THE

  AUTHOR

  When she was fifteen, Melaina Faranda fell off a bolting horse and never got back on (thanks for slapping its rump, Cousin Jode!). She has since, however, variously ridden planes, trains, camels, surf skis, elephants, white water rafts, hot air balloons, the mean mother zipper, a dodgy equatorial yacht and a wild imagination… Writing about Skye leading a muster in the Kimberly was the perfect excuse for another long plane ride. Melaina Faranda is the author of The Circle series for teenage girls, published by Random House.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My very big thanks to Walter Albertson for fascinating yarns and a thrilling demonstration of bull-tossing on Honey Bunny the golden retriever, Jodie Webster, editor extraordinaire, Eva Mills, Bruno Herfst and the rest of the gorgeous team at Allen & Unwin. Diane Lucas, Leonie and Alan Norrington, and the Camp family from Charnley River station for generously sharing a wealth of knowledge, insight and experience – I’m so grateful. Any inaccuracies are mine.

 

 

 
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