Chapter ninety-three

Summer was always in its best of moods at the start of a school year, the full sun shining hotly upon our heads, and despite anything we said the previous year in complaint, our washed and ironed uniforms gave a warm layer of comfort for the new year. Especially for the Year six's who were given their Year six shirts. My year. The classmates I had come to love – and hate to love. The graduating class of achieved students, celebrating with me our final year in primary school.

Just one more year with them.

There was so much movement. I could see the enthusiasm embedded within each student's steps. There were contagious smiles everywhere, it was making me laugh hysterically. Especially to see my friends' faces so bright, so close to me. More than anything in that moment, I wished to capture that scene in my eyes forever.

I had started at the school just a week before the end of Year five. Days went from drewry and grey to bubbly and exhilarating.

It was from across the playground, through the hustle and bustle of pumped-up students that I spotted a pair of wonderful blue eyes. They reminded me of the sea. The same bright, twinkling sea I saw when I first landed in Australia. I had slept through the entire car ride home from Sydney airport, and I had slept the entire rest of the day, but the next morning, my dad woke us quickly, a bright smile on his face. When he still smiled for the things that mattered.

He took us on a walk and it was still dark out. To my tired legs, it was a long walk that seemed to drag as long as the hours on the plane. I remember complaining like a child. Mum told me to be quiet sometimes, but most of the time she looked at her husband. I couldn't see her face then, but I could tell she was smiling. I wish I didn't take her smile for granted.

I stopped complaining when we sat down, but we didn't do anything. My parents didn't even talk. I think days passed with us just sitting there. I started sitting upside down when I noticed the view.

Past the dark silhouettes of tall eucalyptus trees was the beach below, and the sand and the water lit up under the brightening sky. I could see the horizon then, and the light expanded like a butterfly's golden wings, from the horizon, stretching over the surface of the sea, painting the sky orange, then pink, then yellow, then pale blue. Layers and layers of pastel beyond me, above me. And then there was the sea.

I had never seen water so blue.

I didn't want to move from England. I was used to life there, living almost constantly with my grandma while my parents worked, going to school with my cool friends who never wanted me to leave, and my life under a sky so familiar. Where I could feel comfort in the clouds covering me and the slow-coming and quick-leaving summer each year.

Tasmin's eyes, like the sea, made me realise that there was going to be beauty in this unfamiliar place. They made me feel at home.

"Don't go," I mutter. "Stay here. With me. I can't… alone."

I can hear my mum say something about keeping her in my heart no matter what.

"Why did I join them, mum? I don't even – Tasmin wouldn't ever, mum," I whisper breathlessly. "She can't have. I don't think –"

Tasmin's hair tickles my cheek. I was thinking so hard about… that I didn't realise she had leant her head against my shoulder. Her breaths are slow and heavy. I feel her breathing against me. Disappointment rises in my throat.

I almost told her. She could've been awake. She could be awake right now.

I gulp, swallowing the boulder of nausea in my throat. "Tasmin?" I whisper gently.

Nothing. She's asleep.

I don't realise how tired I am also until I fall asleep, thinking of my mum, my dad, Tasmin, Ally, Reprisal, the reason I'm here.

When I wake up, Emily and Ben are standing in front of the table, beaming down at us. Ben is grinning from ear-to-ear and Emily is smirking. Their eyes flick between myself and… two notes on the table. They weren't there before.

Without moving Tasmin, I straighten my back and tilt my head to read the text on one of them. 'Harry,' the first one reads. 'Tasmin,' the second one reads. I grin up at Emily and Ben. They grin back.

You guys did this, didn't you?

This grinning and internal understanding just seems to go back and forth between us for a couple minutes before Tasmin murmurs and shifts against me.

"Morning," I say without thinking.

Tasmin humphs a small chuckle. She moves away from me and my body temperature immediately plummets. She stretches.

"Hi, guys," she mutters to Ben and Emily. "What time is it?"

Emily pffts. "Like, midnight. You two have been napping here for God knows how long, and Lilli, Charlie, Ben and I have been searching for you everywhere."

Tasmin sits a little taller. "Really?" She doesn't seem worried. She grins at me, then turns back to them. She still hasn't noticed the two notes in front of her.

"Tasmin," I say.

"Hm?" She turns to me.

"Look down." She looks down at my lap. I laugh aloud. "On the table," I instruct softly.

She looks at the table. She picks up her note and reads. She turns to me questioningly and I grin at her just like Emily and Ben did to me. Emily manages to push herself and Ben away while Tasmin reads, and while none of them are looking, I let my lips drop into a frown.

Tasmin and I return to the cabins. I grip my note tight and read it to myself a hundred times over after locking myself in the bathroom with the shower running, the mirror steaming, my hands and temples pooling with sweat.