This Is Yr Life

Chapter Fourteen

‘Do you remember that time in Maths, where that guy, what was his name? That guy with the bowl-cut. Was it a bowl-cut? You know, that like round haircut that was the same length all the way around, fringe to back and everything? What was his name? It doesn’t matter. You remember though, don’t you? You remember how he was trying to be funny, he always f****d about, I remember the teacher hated him. But this time, he like, he had that protractor and he was pretending they were ninja stars, and he was slinging them about the classroom and one caught that girl, with the pigtails. Holly? The one who loved horses. The one who thought she was a princess. Proper into horses. She left the year before I did? It hit her in the eye, or she screamed like it had hit her in the eye, but it had just grazed her forehead.’

It was dark. Kyle squatted in front of the screen, the ground too damp to sit. He had a small pizza box balanced on his knee, the cheese and chicken and peppers steaming in the cold December air. He picked up a slice which dripped grease into the open box, his leg, the grass beneath. It burned the top of his mouth as he took a bite, there was nothing to drink. He chewed and chewed and swallowed. Chloe laughed.

‘And anyway, she told the teacher, and showed them her eye, she wasn’t even bleeding. But she was crying, bawling. Are you sure you don’t remember? Maybe you were away that day. I don’t remember you ever missing school, though. You loved school.’

Chloe took a drink and retched. The label on the side said Hong Thong. In the background, fire spun and hurtled into the air and fell and spun again. Sparks flew and extinguished as they hit the sand. When Chloe got closer to the camera, half her face was covered in fluorescent paint. All around her, people in bikinis and swim shorts and neon vests danced in circles. They moved close and far; sand splashed around their feet. They carried buckets that spilled down their legs and over people too close. In the background, just in frame, someone was keeled over, both hands clutching their stomach as their friend rubbed their back with one hand and danced with the other.

‘She doesn’t look like she’s having a good time,’ Kyle said, pointing behind her. Chloe turned, peered, and then looked back at the camera. She mimicked vomiting and nodded.

‘She looks in trouble, her friend just left her.’

Chloe turned around again. She passed the bottle to someone off-screen and walked over. The camera followed her and then focused back to the fire that looked to be dying. In the corner, Chloe held the girl's hand and gave her a hug. The girl looked into the camera, her eyes wet with tears, she nodded and smiled and when the embrace ended, she looked at Chloe beaming. She wiped her cheeks and one of her friends came into focus, they offered her a bucket and she took it in both hands and tipped it towards her mouth. Amber liquid dribbled over the edges and spilled down her, soaking her top. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth and high-fived her friend. Chloe turned to the camera, her hand over her mouth but Kyle could tell she was laughing beneath.

The camera moved away from Chloe and the girl and her friend and settled on the spinning fire and then pointed to the sky and Kyle couldn’t tell if the sky above was merely the darkest of black or the video had finished.

‘Remember my last day? You guys made me that card with all of our faces on so I wouldn’t forget you? I still have it, somewhere I think. At my parents’ house.’

The monitor burst into colour. Splashes of white and blue and yellow and orange washed and covered the screen and it stayed this way in bubbling, frothing uncertainty and when it all cleared, the sun shone across a violent river surrounded by trees that stood tall and threw parts of the river into shade, and others which hung low and stroked the rushing current and the branches were stained darker from the water.

Down into the distance, the river flowed into darkness, the route canopied by further trees. Heading into this darkness were rafts spilling over with people in helmets and thrashing oars into the water below them, desperately striving to stay on course.

The camera panned from left to right and showed people in rafts on either side of the centre. They were all dressed the same; blue helmets with a white stripe wrapping around the peaks and a yellow and black logo of mountains and water and the word Adventure! standing out in the middle. They wore black and yellow and white wetsuits that covered their arms and legs with neon life jackets that looked in varying stages of wear and tear. and some people were wearing shorts over their suits but others had opted to go without and looked like members of a sci-fi future. Some had sunglasses, but most did not. At the front of each raft was someone attired differently with mirrored colours and name tags on their chests that had their names or nicknames, Kyle assumed, in big red letters. These people shouted and pointed and cheered and clapped, motivating their crew. They looked behind them at the abyss before them and held their hands out in warning.

And as they entered the abyss, it faded mostly to black and nothing remained but shadow. The screen stayed like this for a few minutes but Kyle did not turn away. He watched and watched and he was blinded by the light of the rest of the world as he and the raft hurtled down, the waters throwing them from side to side. Water splashed onto the camera and dribbled down before being wiped off by a mystery hand. It turned to Chloe, who was all smiles and laughter as one side of her face received a torrent of wild rapids splashing over the side. The shot whipped back around and focused on the instructor pointing, shouting, with spittle flying from his mouth and smearing across the screen. It turned to Chloe again, watching her as she struggled to row and keep the raft on course.

Kyle watched as the raft bounced and crashed over the untamed waters, nearly capsizing but always stabilising enough to keep everyone inside. Eventually, though, he began to feel sick. The constant movement and rising and falling made his head spin; he felt dizzy. Kyle reached towards the screen to steady himself but as he did, they arrived in calm, flat water where mountains skimmed the sky and the horizon fell away behind endless farmyard and dirt roads and there was only one building, a shack with a corrugated metal roof. Outside the shack was a dog with its collar tied to a concrete post that leapt and yapped and spun around in circles as they paddled themselves to the shore and everyone climbed from their rafts dripping and getting sand or dirt from the shore, tearing their helmets off. Some people contorted themselves to unzip their wetsuits while others merely lay down on the dry land, their chests heaving. The group leaders went from person to person, group to group, and high-fived each one of them. They hugged some of them, and one of the people they hugged was Chloe.

She unstrapped her helmet and her hair fell down to her shoulders. It was knotted and tangled and looked greasy, shining in the sun. Summer splashed from the water beside her, and they laughed with each other, Kyle laughed, too.

Behind them, a man stepped out from the shack with his t-shirt rolled up above his stomach. His hair was thin and wispy and he stuck to the shade. The dog sniffed at his hand, hanging by his side and he stroked along its head and down its back and then under its chin. Chloe and Summer walked over, the camera following them, and they knelt down, taking the dog’s face in their hands and letting it lick them all over their faces. The giggled, Kyle joining them, and then the man in the shack pointed them to leave.

Cars drifted past silently on the other side of the wall. Kyle could see their lights approach and then disappear as they veered around the corner at the end of the road. He had listened to people walking home from work as he sat talking to Chloe. Nobody spoke to one another, the only sounds coming from their feet cautiously stepping over the frosted pavement. There were slips, Kyle was sure. There might have been pseudo-romantic catches before anyone fell, gazing into each other’s eyes and going for a post-work coffee or beer, even on a Monday. Monday’s were the hardest day of the week, except for Tuesday. Perhaps these people would start falling in love over their drinks and then they would wake up tomorrow, maybe with a headache that means they will struggle to get to work on time, and they will think about their evening, they will think of messaging each other, they will struggle to concentrate and stare glazed over at their screens or presentations and they will invent excuses to go to the break room, or for a cigarette, or vape break, and they will check their phones, eager for any messages.

But now, it was quiet except for the sound of tires rotating on the crunching asphalt. Everybody was already home. Kyle’s breath steamed in front of him, blurring Chloe’s smile and then dissipating and melting Chloe into focus.

But Kyle did not feel cold. He took another slice of pizza.

‘It’s getting cold,’ he said as Chloe shook her head and pointed to her stomach.

‘Fair enough, I’ll have it then if you don’t mind?’ He took another slice, grease sliding onto his hands and soaking into his sleeve cuff.

All around Chloe, people were eating pizza and picking chicken from a bucket in the centre of the table. Behind them, the sun was setting and the clouds looked pink and purple and orange, washed across the sky. There were bottles of fizzy drinks and cloudy lemonade in jugs arranged in diamonds on the table before them.

The lights went out and then from the left-hand side of the screen, candles illuminated Summer’s face, she was smiling; her lip ring, something she didn’t have anymore, gleamed in the flickering of the flames that licked at her chin. Kyle took his last bite of pizza and closed the box. The strain on his legs had become too much for him and he slid the mostly-empty box under him and sat down. Whatever heat from the pizza was left warmed his legs and thighs as Chloe hugged those closest to her. In the background, a hand reached over to grab her shoulder but she was too far away and it merely brushed her hair. Kyle looked to see who it was in the shadows but all he could see were silhouettes of heads.

‘Poor guy. I bet that was the closest he ever got to you.’

Kyle heard footsteps behind him that crunched on the frozen leaves and frosted ground. From the corner of his eye, he noticed a torchlight shining up and down and across other graves and when the footsteps stopped he turned around to look. Standing just a couple of feet away was the groundsman. He was dressed in a reflective jacket that has small LED strips running around the sleeves and his stomach that flashed. These same lights shone from his gloved hands and his hat, which was thick and woolly and covered his ears.

‘We’re closing up, mate,’ he said.

‘Oh, really? It that late?’

‘’Fraid so, that your girlfriend?’

‘A friend.’

‘I’m sorry. Make sure you take that box with you.’

The groundsman walked away, shining his torch over the ground and behind gravestones. Kyle looked at Chloe.

‘I have to go, but I’ll be back soon. No, don’t look at me like that, you know I always come back.’

He stared at Chloe turning and walking and smiling and putting both index fingers in her mouth and hooking, stretching her lips into a clownish smile. She stuck her tongue out.

‘Cute,’ Kyle said. He returned the gesture.