Chapter one-hundred-and-sixteen

Tasmin

I don't remember saying anything. But my eyes are open and I see two pairs of familiar eyes, bags beneath them. My parents' eyes.

"Awake, sweetie?"

I sit up, examine the room. Harry's not here. Before I think anything of it, I lick my lips. They're dry.

"Everything okay?"

"Um," I mutter, then glance at the time. Already the next morning. "When did you guys get here?"

"Only an hour ago," my dad answers. "According to the nurse, you have been sleeping since the afternoon yesterday," he informs me with a smile.

"Really?" I ask. I'm surprised, but my voice makes it sound like I don't care.

"Really." My mum grins. "Guess what?"

"What?"

"We'll be able to discharge you, whenever you're ready, alright?"

"I –" I want to know where Harry is, whether or not we kissed, when he left, why he left, when I'll see him again.

"Georgia's so excited to see you again, you know."

I look at both my parents and say as normally as possible: "Great."

This is home.

Streets filled with kids riding their bikes, laughing, playing games. There's the front gardens filled with parents, lounging on golden front lawns, dried by the persistent sun beaming down. My neighbours aren't fazed; they wear tank-tops and shorts in the full sun.

Home smells like this:

Aussie barbeque and smoke. It smells faintly of eucalyptus, but the closer you go to the park, the closer you edge towards the bush, the more you can smell. And there's the wind, briny and fresh, carried by winds from the Antarctic Ocean. It feels sensational in hot summer.

Everything whizzes past the car window, but I see it all.

Before I can slide the home key into the door, the front door flings inwards, and I feel her around my waist before I see her.

"YOU'RE FINALLY BACK!"

I start laughing and I drop the key and hug her back. And she said she wouldn't miss me. When she hears my laugh, she hugs tighter, and then I call out in pain, because she just dug her fingers into my bandage.

She pulls away.

"AND YOU GOT SHOT! WHAT THE FRICK?"

"Language, missy," my dad scolds, bending to pick up the key and usher us in. "Not so loud, too."

Georgia giggles and takes my duffel bag from me, rushing down the hall, past the stairs and into the kitchen. Her dirty blond curls bounce behind her, and I watch her disappear behind the wall.

As my parents close the door, they glance up and grin at me. Then my mum frowns a little and my dad starts to chuckle. I breathe in deeply and smell the brownies.

"Georgia, I told you to wait till we got home," I hear mum say firmly as I wander into the kitchen. "Didn't you hear?"

Georgia checks the oven, rolling her eyes in my direction. I grin.

"I wanted to have them ready for Tasmin before she got home, mum." She closes the oven door and faces my mum boldly. "Don't worry, mum, look! I haven't burnt the house down, have I?"

My mum huffs. "Listen next time, okay?"

"Yeah."

My parents disappear upstairs.

I take a seat at the kitchen island. Georgia pours a cup of coffee and slides it across the surface, almost spilling it.

"You need it," she mutters.

I ignore her and take a gulp, savouring the warmth on my tongue.

"I thought you said you weren't gonna miss me."

She gives me a look. She may not like getting in trouble from mum, but they have the same expression.

"Ten days in the summer holidays goes a lot slower when you're not forcing me to go to the park with you, or go out with your friends." She's looking down, but I can see her smile.

"That the truth?

She scrunches up her face. "I said what I said." Then: "Oh, you gotta tell me everything about the cruise. Including who the hell almost killed you."

Here we go.

It's a Sunday morning and I'm not used to waking up in my own bed. Perhaps it's because I've gotten used to the smell of fresh, new, white sheets everyday. Or perhaps it's because I'm not waking up to the relief that Harry is only a couple of doors away, maybe thinking of me.

I throw my legs off the side of the bed but don't get up. The curtains are closed, but I left the window open, and they blow open every now and again, each time throwing golden patterns dancing over the carpet. I let them dance on my feet. It feels nice, even if I shouldn't be able to feel anything.

Deep breath in, deep breath out, sliding off the bed, thumping onto the floor. Looking around now.

My room is still feeling a little empty. I wonder how I'm not used to that when my cabin was barely up to my tastes for more than a week. Just beige walls and white sheets and brown carpet. I dig my toes into my grey carpet. It feels nice, and I have the urge to lie on it, breathing in the smell of growing up in the same room for the last seventeen years, if such a scent exists.

There's my window and my flapping beige curtains, and beyond that my neighbourhood, and way beyond that, Harry… somewhere.

I realise that I might've seen Harry for the last time yesterday. It hits me just now that he's still going to England, that is, after the investigation.

I acknowledge that my wall looks empty.

It's not, really. There's just spaces between all the photographs stuck up there with glue-tack that I cleared for new photos. Cruise photos.

I creep downstairs to the study to print out photos of my friends, but mostly of Harry. I'm sticking them up when Georgia barges in.