Young Writers Society

We had to wait ten minutes in the car to get fish and chips. Alex used a newspaper as an umbrella to run inside. Joe’s Fish and Chip Shop opened onto a dead-end street and was sandwiched between squat, red-brick buildings with papered windows. A child was sitting in front of the Bottle-O, chin on her knees. Swaddled in clothes too big for her. Twisting a knife between her fingers. Metal edge trapped light. Spun on point. Slipped. Silver tip buried in her thumb. Opened her leathery skin wide. Blood welled in her palm. Streamed down her wrist. She wiped it on a grimy handkerchief and wrung it out on the footpath.

“Here.”

Alex dumped the parcels in my lap. Grease spots were already showing through waxy paper. She drove altogether too fast for someone on their P-plates. I spread a map over my knees and directed us to the lookout she’d marked.

“So, why here? Bondi would have been a way better spot,” I said.

“My assignment is to take original nature photos. Bondi is the most clichéd landscape in Australia. Plus, there aren’t whales at Bondi.”

“We don’t know that there will be whales here.”

“No, but it’s worth a shot.” She grinned at her own pun.

I tried not to feel sick as we skidded along the skinny coastal road. It didn’t seem to bother Alex that she was driving in both lanes.

“You can’t just stand at the lookout and take photos, that’ll end up just as cheesy.”

“We’ll see.”

Alex’s chosen beach was long and full of clean air, tide so far in it was butting against the dunes. We drove up to the lookout and ate fish and chips watching for whales. Hot paper burnt my legs through my jeans and my mouth stung from heat and salt. When we’d finished we listened to Morrissey sing about grey days as the sky deepened and rain drew down to meet the sea.

“Look!” Alex was napping on my shoulder. I shrugged her awake.

“What?” She blinked.

“There!”

It was hard to point with the windscreen fogged up, so I pulled her out of the car. Rain had let up a bit, and I grabbed her shoulders and pointed out to where whales were breaching.

“My god.”

Whales were jumping half out of the water and smashing onto their backs, fins outstretched. Blue whales. There were calves, sticking up shy noses. They were out near headland, spray from their splashes drifting into mist and blowing into the trees.

I was watching them, wondering if we could get the camera before they disappeared, when I heard branches crack beneath me. Alex yelled for me to follow her; she was trying to find a shortcut to the beach. We were parked at the top of a rocky hill, and the quickest way down was to slide. Only it wasn’t so much a hill as a cliff, with a threadbare covering of young trees. They grew out from rocks at odd angles, twisted by salt winds. Alex was sliding down from one to the next, using them to slow her fall.

“Come on!” She said.

“No way.”

“It’s safe, I swear.” She was straddling a tree that grew straight out from the cliff face.

“There!”

I followed where she was pointing. Calves had started to play, jumping almost fully out of the water. They arced upwards, tails waving as they dived.

“Look out!” I ducked the wooden fence and launched myself down towards her.

* * *

“To be honest, the track might have been a better idea,” Alex said, examining a cut on my leg.

“I’ll be fine.”

“Good.” She pulled the camera out of her pocket. It was her dad’s old DSLR, chunky and black and worth a lot.

“Is it broken?”

“Nah, it’s fine. But look, my photos are terrible.” She held it out to me. Whales were dark smears on grey water, half hidden by the blur of their own spray. “We have to get closer.”

Rocks stretched around the headland in one thick shelf. Waves shattered on the sea edge, but dry parts were easy to climb over. The rocks were formed in layers of every shade of pink and red and brown, some veined with quartz, and folded together like sheets of pastry. Colours swirled where rocks had been bent and kneaded. They were mostly dark sandstone, with splintery sharp edges sticking up. I tried to watch where Alex put her feet. We kept the whales on our right, headland on our left, and headed away from the beach.

I caught up with Alex every so often, when she stopped to take photos.

“Still no good. Light’s not bright enough for a short exposure, so it keeps blurring.”

We were getting close, we could see the shadows of whales underwater. Their sounds were almost drowned out by waves crashing onto rocks.

“Dammit.” I looked up to see Alex wobbling on top of a particularly high rock. Climbing up next to her, I saw the problem. Here, rocks stopped. Sea ran straight in against a sandstone cliff, so hard the base of it had worn away. It was too deep to wade, and even if you did get in there was no way to get out. It ran deep and straight out to sea.

“We can’t cross here, there’s no way I’m trying to jump that,” I said.

“I wouldn’t ask you to. I think we’ve got to go inland, it looks like we can easily walk along the cliff.”

“Okay. We can’t climb it here though.” The cliff was only a few metres tall, but it was brittle, papery rock. I could snap bits off by kicking at them.

“Sure we can.” She bent down to give me a leg up.

* * *

My arms were sore and I had rock splinters buried in my palms. Alex was brushing dust off her hands.

“Camera?”

“Right here.” She held it up, peering out to sea through the trees.

“How much further do you think we have to go?” I said.

“Dunno. If we keep close to this edge we should be able to find somewhere to climb down.”

We had to bash our way through undergrowth. The ground was hidden by a waist-high layer of ferns, and I could hear animals moving beneath them. Every so often I had to stop Alex walking face first into a spider web. She was walking so close to the edge it made me tense, and had her camera to her eye trying to frame a photo. There still wasn’t enough light. We kept breaking branches to make a path between trees. Still, I got the impression that something else was moving through the bush to our left. Keeping pace with us.

Alex found a path no wider than a rabbit track. It coiled between the trees, widening as it turned inland until we could walk shoulder to shoulder.

“Shouldn’t we head back along the cliff?” I said.

“But this path probably leads onto the rocks anyway, and this is so much nicer than bashing through trees.”

The path skewed inland again, and widened into a clearing. There was a tiny hut, corrugated iron scraps roped to a tree. A fire pit had been dug in front of it. Rabbit bones and fish heads lay at the edges in stages of decay, beer bottles half buried.

Alex and I heard footsteps at the same time. Turned in unison. A child stepped onto the path, wearing a man’s hoodie and a threadbare beanie. Hands in its pockets. Watching me. Alex took a step towards it, hands outstretched.

“Hello.” She kept her voice low. “I’m Alex, what’s your name?”

No answer. Another step forward. Still watching me, the child reached its right hand for Alex. Its fingernails were black, creases of its palm coloured with dried blood. A red cut gaped on its thumb.

“Alex.” My voice had to be calm too. “Alex. She’s got a knife.”

Alex dropped her hand too fast, and it was as if a starter’s pistol had gone off. The girl was in front of Alex, grabbed her wrist, held a knife to it. Drew the knife across it like a bow across a violin. Alex wrenched sideways and we ran. All three of us. There was no track now, just trees and ferns. We tripped, fell, got up. Not far enough ahead to look back. The girl’s footsteps were lighter. Faster. Her breathing clearer. She didn’t fall. But she didn’t catch us either. I was waiting for a knife in my ribs, to trip and feel her hands on my throat. For once I wasn’t slowing Alex down, we ran side by side. And then the trailing footsteps fell away. We got our running, our breathing under control. When we finally slowed to a walk my hands were shaking. My breath seemed to catch on a barb in my chest. Alex’s face was red, hair stuck down with sweat. Her hands were shaking too.

She held out her wrist, camera hanging from it. The strap was bloody. Neither of us would slow down, but I took her arm as we went and wiped some blood away. It was a deep cut, and blood kept welling from it. On the side of her wrist, thank god, not across veins. I tried to patch it up with a couple of band-aids, but they wouldn’t stick.

I remembered to be scared when we got back to the cliff again.

“I’m exhausted. My leg is bleeding again. You are going to start bleeding more if you use your hand too much. We’re both terrified and shaking, and we’re only here because you want to take some stupid bloody photos. There is no fucking way you are getting me to climb down that cliff.”

“I don’t think we’ll have to.” She walked away a bit, and I watched her go. Then I saw where she was heading. The ground, which had been sloping up until this point, sloped down. There were no trees, just grass. It was an easy walk down to the rocks.

* * *

We sat down together, backs against warm sandstone. The bay was empty. A low brow of cloud was breaking on the horizon, letting through pink and yellow light. Alex squinted through her camera. Shook it. Banged it against her palm. Held it up again. Rubbed the lens. Stared into it. Popped out batteries. Switched them around. Put them back in. Tested the shutter. Swore.

I took it from her and examined it. There was blood caked around the ‘on’ button. I levered it off with a fingernail, cleaned it out, and pressed it back into place. The screen lit up and I handed it back.

And we waited. Sky lit up. A few whales spouted, far out in the middle of the bay.

“How did you know?” Alex said after a while.

“Know what?”

“That she had a knife.”

“I saw her. While you were getting fish and chips. She was sitting outside, fiddling with it.”

“And you recognised her?”

“No. She cut her hand. I recognised the cut.”

“Poor thing.”

“Yeah.”

Whales kept spouting. The sky was opening up, letting more and more light through. Alex spoke again.

“I wonder why she wanted to hurt us.”

“I don’t know that she did. I mean, she just looked terrified.”

“We should do something. Tell someone.”

“Who?”

Then, so close I could see the pupil of its eye, a whale breached. The sound was monumental. Other whales smacked water with their tails, waved fins. Alex’s camera clicked and whirred beside me.

5

Georgia Crocker