Winner -- Senior Section
Friends School
The boat's hull sliced through the glassy water. Mia sat at the front, bewitched by the ghostly reflection that looked back at her. Her own face, washed out and pale, was perfect against the pink-tinged clouds, which bled into the water imbuing the world with a summery hue. The water was perfect, no wind rippled its surface. It stretched out like a waiting future, a giant sheet of hammered iron. Mia’s hair blew around her face as if she were caught in the middle of a raging storm. My own hair whipped my cheeks and eyes. The motor growled as we raced for home.
Beside us, the Alum Cliffs rose, sheer and unforgiving, yet comforting and ingrained with childhood recollections and innocence. Birds on the cliffs swooped, playful and at peace, diving from the very top of the yellow, jutting rock and plummeting, bulletlike, before swooping gracefully out, inches above the surface. As they sailed past the boat in absolute, untamed revelry, Mia turned to me smiling as if she had just had the most wonderful thought. I knew what she was thinking, of course, before she even opened her mouth. I had given her Jonathan Livingston Seagull just two weeks ago as a gift after I read it on Christmas Day, a present from my grandma. Of course, these were Pacific gulls, giant birds more like pelicans than seagulls, soaring, staring haughtily down at us from their cliff nests like Messrs. Proud, Ponder, and Percival. But to us this didn’t matter, they were Jonathan. So, I was shocked when she pointed to the sky.
“Don’t you think that cloud looks remarkably like a whale?” I stared bewildered, then looked up. The cloud was no more remarkable than any other, a steely pink blotch on the sky. Maybe a whale is hardly discernible from a blotch from a distance. So I chuckled unsurely, trying to gauge what her smirk implied.
“I suppose it does, althou-”, my confusion must have been etched across my face because Mia began to laugh - at me, this time - cutting my poor imitation of understanding pathetically short. Now, even more confused, I stared at her nonplussed.
“You really do think you’re very clever, don’t you?” she asked, her voice full of mirth and mischief. Not hurtful, but playful.
“No.” Usually, I would have agreed unequivocally; but I was always scared of being as confident as I really felt in front of Mia, dreading that finally, she might see through the facade. It wasn't as if I was unreasonably cocky, but I liked to act that way. Or is that the same thing? Anyway, appearing confident was the best way to make it a reality. “That’s… it’s just not what I was expecting you to say,” I finished lamely.
“Well then,” she exclaimed, seemingly exasperated, but I hadn’t the foggiest idea why.
“Maybe try not to look quite so smug when you think you know what I’m going to say.”
Suddenly I was excited again. “You mean, that isn’t what you were going to say?” The moment of confusion had, for a second, made me feel that I did not really know Mia as well as I liked to think. But now that moment had passed.
In front of us lay Hinsby Beach, the boat sheds like little gnome houses, the tall gums looming, gilded by the disappearing rays of sunlight. And nestled amongst the houses, markedly shabby for such an expensive area, the glass front and sloping small square lawn of my house. The chimney stuck up like a mole waiting to be hit by a plastic mallet. In this light, the house looked like a waterfront villa. Up close you noticed the spiderweb cracks running through the front windows. Not to mention the actual spiderwebs, of which there were many. One newish panel stood out from the old glass, which my precocious eight-year-old self had smashed with a bow and arrow, shooting, like a onesie-clad, four-foot-tall Robin Hood from the bottom of the lawn. In hindsight, the weapon was a somewhat foolish scheme of my parents. But it did its job. I spent my youth outside imagining I was born into the Renaissance rather than the digital age. Worth at least a window.
“Of course, I wasn’t going to tell you about the clouds,” Mia said, miffed, “but I couldn't leave you with that shit-eating grin like you knew everything.” I slowed the boat as we approached the shore and it bobbed and gurgled playfully. When it stopped, the ripples undulated out in every direction and disappeared, leaving a perfect mirror reflecting our faces by the bow. They stared back as if seeing us through a thick sheet of ice. The boat still looked like a wreck. It was.
To be fair, it had cost next to nothing. But it didn’t leak and got us to Bruny and back in a day. In the reflection, I saw the chipped and faded - although I like to say “rustic” - writing. The Waltz Sing Matilda. Maybe the old owner had just had an affliction for old Australian songs and bad jokes. He had seemed the type. Or he just couldn’t spell. As I said, it cost next to nothing.
“I was going to dub that seagull Jonathon. Don’t you think those seagulls were just like him?” I couldn't help it. My face split into that shit-eating grin that so frustrated Mia. “Looks like I do, in fact, know everything!” I exclaimed, with a spreading of my hands for effect as if to encompass the world and all the things I knew.
We were a few metres from the shore now and the sun was leaving. The water reflected the patchy, dusky grey of the sky, the masterpiece of some careless giant, bleeding beautifully into the clouds, the hills, and the ocean. The world was irrevocably surreal.
Nothing would ever be like this summer. The days never so long, the sky never so beautiful, the feeling never the same. The four-stroke idled like the purr of cats glad to see us home, guiding us lazily in towards a still, dark beach. In places rocks jutted from the water, harsh, dark silhouettes disturbing the safety and tranquillity of the iron-grey, flecked with amber like trees on an empty moor. When it stormed at this beach, we huddled inside on the couch by the warm safety of the fire as rain lashed the windows, seeping daringly through the cracks to drip on the floor as the Antarctic waves from the cold, wet underbelly of the world came sweeping in toward the shore and pitched down in a terrible ruin of white water and spray.
The beach was dark below the trees at its back, so it looked as though night had already set in. The sky was remade, mellifluously to gold and the clouds were swallowed up by the colour radiating from the horizon. Apollo's chariot could not have created a more beautiful light. Despite being happy, at ease, young and free, a feeling of summer sadness stuck to me like warm tar. I couldn't shake the feeling I was missing something.
“My uncle said he could get you that internship.” She’d been sitting on this bit of information all day, I could tell. She didn’t want to say it, but the day was over. It wasn’t like I had asked her. But then, it was like that. Secretly, selfishly, I had casually “mentioned” it. I knew, and she knew I knew, that she would ask her dad, Bill Turnbull, to get in contact with his cousin, Malcolm. It’s not my fault that nepotism is the only way with these things. But it really is. I was glad she’d refrained from mentioning it. It really had been such a perfect day.
“I’m sorry,” I said. But they were empty words. We both knew what this meant. And we knew I wasn't altogether sorry. I hoped she knew why I said it. It was that or thank you. Or goodbye.
“It’s ok.” Her voice seemed hollow but maybe I was imagining that because that’s how mine would have sounded. “This is great. Really, we should be celebrating. You’re going to work somewhere most people would give an eye for.” She was keeping the stab of bitterness out of her voice, not very well, but she was trying, and I was so grateful. And I was glad she had said eye, not girlfriend.
“I am sorry.”
“I know.” A spark of the fire that usually seemed to dance behind her eyes was back and a ghost of her smile played at the corners of her mouth. We sat in silence for a long time, but we had never been so… I don’t know, real. So adult. But then, so filled with the childish notion that no matter what this would last forever. Perfect, peaceful, and irrevocably beautiful. I thought of elves and Grey Havens. We watched as the day faded entirely.