‘Hello, Clara. Are you leaving already?’ she asks, surprised, but I think it might be fake surprise. Like she’s trying to be smart or something.
‘I was just passing through,’ I say in a strange highpitched voice. I sound like those posh ladies from East Avenue with the big houses. I continue up the hill.
‘But your friends are here.’
See? Trying to be smart. Told you.
‘They’re not my friends,’ I shout. Loud enough for everyone to hear. Everyone. ‘You can have them.’
My heart is beating fast as I picture Gaynah’s face. She will pretend she doesn’t care. She might even pretend she hasn’t heard me.
But she heard me. I made sure of it.
‘I’ll be here tomorrow if you change your mind,’ Rudy shouts back.
I reach the top of the hill and turn to look down the slope. Rudy places her towel on a rock and wades into the river. She doesn’t seem to notice Gaynah laughing and pointing at her.
I try to count but I can’t focus I’m so mad.
One.
Two.
Three.
I don’t know what I am angrier about: Gaynah telling Calvin and his friends about our secret hideout or Gaynah laughing at Rudy.
I decide I am angrier about the hideout. That was our secret, where we went to get away from everything. Her bossy mum, her quiet father, who always has somewhere to go but no one knows where. My mum nagging at me to do things, and Papa… sometimes I even need to get away from Papa.
I storm through the banana grove, ignoring Uncle Albert calling me. I don’t even know how Gaynah and I became friends. How did someone so mean become my friend? Did I get knocked on the head? Or did I just forget what kind of friend she was?
Before I know it, I am at the house. Mama calls me as I pass her on the veranda, but her voice is distant and morphs into Gaynah’s laugh. All I can hear is her laughing. Her stupid, whiny laugh. She sounds like a tree frog.
In my bedroom, I drop to my knees and feel around for the memory box that holds stories of our friendship—things we would only talk about in our dugout. The silver pin we found in the river. The notes we would write to each other in class. The blue top we both got when we begged our parents for it because we had seen it on our favourite celebrity in one of the magazines Gaynah’s brother had sent her. The diary we shared, which no one else had seen. I grab it all under my arm and make my way out of the house.
‘Clara, what is the matter with you?’
Mama won’t understand. She’ll tell me Gaynah didn’t mean it. ‘It’s just Gaynah. Why do you let her get to you?’ she’ll say. I don’t want to hear that right now.
I head back down the hill, through the banana grove and through the trees, almost falling down the embankment to the river. Rudy is still there, making two sticks dance on the water. The group is on the other side of the river, watching her like she’s a TV show.
I stand at the edge of the river, throw off the lid of the memory box, and dump it into the water. The blue top, the diary, the letters, all of it. If Gaynah wants to be spiteful, then I can be spiteful too.
My heart is beating so fast, I can barely catch my breath. Staring Gaynah dead in the eye, I bang the bottom of the box just to make sure it’s empty. Then I turn on my heels and retrace my steps home for the second time that day.
Chapter Seven
After the incident at the river, I realise there is no one I can trust. So I spend the rest of the day under the mango tree cleaning my board. I haven’t surfed since last summer, but I make sure to clean it and check for any damage almost every day.
The first few times I surfed, Papa would lend me his board, which had been given to him by a tourist when he worked at the resort. He loved that surfboard and would never leave me alone with it in case I damaged it.
One Christmas, Papa asked Clinton, Gaynah’s father, to make me a surfboard of my own. He had never made one before, but he was a carpenter, so he was used to making things. When Papa gave it to me, he told me if I damaged it, I wouldn’t be getting another one, so I keep it in my room out of the sun, checking it for dust every day.
I can hear Mama talking to someone around the front of the house. I can’t hear what they’re saying, but I know it’s not Papa. I pick myself up from the dirt and walk to the wall of the house to try to listen. Their words are muffled, but I bet it’s Gaynah telling on me. I peek around the wall. It’s Gaynah and Calvin standing behind Uncle Albert. He is handing the memory box back to Mama.
I step back out of sight, my heart beating fast. Gaynah and Calvin told Uncle Albert about the box. Why? Are they trying to get me in trouble?
‘Clara!’ Mama calls, and it’s that voice again. The strained, painful voice that so often sits like a wall between us.
My heart sinks.
I use the back door to enter the house, walk through the living room and emerge at the front door. Mama spins round to look at me in complete bewilderment. She holds my blue top, which is dripping wet.
‘Why, Clara?’ she asks, and I can’t tell if she wants to hold me or scold me.
I lower my eyes to the ground. It seemed to make so much sense when I did it. Prove to Gaynah I no longer cared about our memories. But seeing Mama upset makes me feel silly.
‘I don’t want it any more,’ I mumble.
‘But this isn’t yours to throw away. There are things in here that don’t belong to just you. Why did you do it?’
Because she makes fun of me. Because she makes fun of other people. Because she told everyone about our secret hideout.
‘Clara.’
I glance at Gaynah through misty eyes, but she won’t look at me.
‘Well, I’ll get going, then,’ Uncle Albert says, and he flashes me a weak smile.
Mama waits for them to disappear down the hill before she closes the box. As she walks by me, she stops and rests her hand on my cheek. It’s warm and a little wet from holding the dripping blue top. She stays only for a second before her arm drops and she disappears inside the house.
I’ve never heard Mama and Papa argue. Not really argue. I’ve heard them disagree on what TV show to watch, and heard Papa try to convince Mama to go fishing with him just once. Sometimes I hear them whispering about me. How they don’t know what to do with me—Papa will say I need time and Mama will ask him how much more time.
I’ve never heard them argue like this.
I listen through the walls of my room. It is supposed to be Mama’s birthday party tonight. Most of the hill, including Ms Gee, is due in less than an hour, but I think I might have ruined it.
‘She threw it all in the river. Look!’
‘She’s going through some stuff,’ Papa says, and I can imagine him trying to hug her, but she will push him away like she always does when she is mad.
‘How much longer?’ Mama says. ‘How much longer until we do something different, Lloyd?’
I don’t know what she means by ‘do something different’. What is it they want to do to me? Send me away? Where would they send me? I feel sick thinking about it.
Everything goes quiet after that. Maybe she allowed Papa to hold her; maybe she gave up and left the room. All I know is I can’t bear to think I caused them this much pain.