The Turning Read Free Page A

hauling nets up the beach and trucks pull down to the water’s edge to load up for the cannery. All the drinking and fighting, the sharks and the jetboats, the great green
masses of fish pressed inside the headlands. He doesn’t tell Meg that it’s all for petfood, that his mother cries every night, that he’s given up defending her, not even urging
her to leave now, but nobody could hold that against him. Meg, this mouth-breathing moron, is staring at Biggie like he’s a guru, and I just drive and try to avoid the rear-view mirror.
    I get to thinking about the last night of school and the bonfire at Massacre Point, the beginning of that short period of grace when my very limbs tingled with relief and the dread of failure
had yet to set in. Someone had a kite in the air and its tail was on fire, looping and spiralling orange and pink against the night sky, so beautiful I almost cried. I was smashed and exhausted; I
suppose any little thing would have seemed poignant and beautiful. But I really felt that I’d reached the edge of something. I had a power and a promise I’d never sensed before. The
fact that the burning kite consumed its own tail and fluttered down into the sea didn’t really register. I didn’t see it as an omen. Biggie and I drank Bacardi and Coke and watched some
lunatic fishing for sharks with a Land Rover. Briony Nevis was there, teeth flashing in the firelight. I was too pissed to go over to her. I fell asleep trying to work up the nerve.
    We woke by a huge lake of glowing embers, our sleeping bags damp, the tide out and our heads pounding, but it was the smiling that hurt the most. Biggie wanted to stay a while in that tangle of
blankets and swags but I convinced him to get up with me and swim bare-arsed in the cold clear water inside the rocky promontory before we stole back through the sleeping crowd towards my
mother’s car. That was a great feeling, tingling, awake, up first, seeing everybody sprawled in hilarious and unlikely pairings and postures. The air was soupy, salty, and as we padded up the
sand track with birds in the mint-scented scrub all round, I just couldn’t imagine disappointment. The world felt new, specially made for us. It was only on the drive back to town that our
hangovers caught up.
    While I’m thinking about all of this Biggie’s gone and climbed over into the back and Meg’s lit up a number and they’re toking away on it with their feet up like
I’m some kind of chauffeur. The country is all low and spare now and the further we go the redder it gets. Biggie’s never had much luck with girls. I should be glad for him. But
I’m totally pissed off.
    In the mirror Biggie has this big wonky grin going. He sits back with his legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, his Blundstones poking through the gap in the seats at my elbow. Meg
murmurs and exclaims at the beauty of the country and Biggie just nods slit-eyed with smoke and anticipation while I boil.
    Late in the day, when Biggie and Meg are quizzing each other on the theme tunes to TV sitcoms, we come upon a maze of salt lakes that blaze silver and pearly in the sun and stretch to the
horizon in every direction. I begin to have the panicky feeling that the land and this very afternoon might go on forever. Biggie’s really enjoying himself back there and I slowly understand
why. There’s the obvious thing of course, the fact that he’s in with a big chance with Meg come nightfall. But something else, the thing that eats at me, is the way he’s enjoying
being brighter than her, being a step ahead, feeling somehow senior and secure in himself. It’s me all over. It’s how I am with him and it’s not pretty.
    The Kombi fills with smoke again but this time it’s bitter and metallic and I’m halfway to asking them to leave off and open a bloody window when I see the plume trailing us down the
highway and I understand that we’re on fire. I pull over into a tottery skid in the gravel at