And then a voice calls out, “Heath!”
Luke Newton is standing on the third rung of the boarding ladder, hooked over the gunwale. He’s half bent over, loosely gripping the rail, laughing. “Youseethat shit, bro?”
Heath relaxes his grip on my hoodie, and I peer over, looking down. But the shark is gone.
“Musta been a seventeen-footer!” Luke calls out. “Sure was a big bastard.”
I lean on the rail, watching the scraps of flesh float by in the current. Luke stops laughing and peers at me in surprise. “Thatyou,Min?”
It’s so quiet now that I barely need to raise my voice. “Yeah,” I tell him, “it’s me.”
He breaks out into a smile, nods at the water. “The sharks are happy you’re home.”
“They don’tlookhappy.”
“What?” he calls out in mock confusion, spreading his hands out wide. “You didn’t enjoy the show?”
He laughs again, and it feels like no time has gone by at all. Luke’s laugh is theholy shit, can you believe it!type. Everything was a joke to him. Sometimes I think it got on Heath’s nerves. Luke’s an only child, his parents hands-off and indulgent. He’s one of thosedare meboys.You dare me to jump off the pier? You dare me to eat this entire onion?
Luke was restless and easily amused, tagging along everywhere Heath went, even if Heath didn’t want him there. Heath was coiled up tight, watchful and clever, with a tendency to overthink. Theplan maker. And Luke was always there, charging in behind him like Wolverine.
He’d follow us to our house, playing endless games of Uno, and he’d slip me extra draw 4s when Heath wasn’t looking. Then Dad was home, steely and silent. Heath and I braced ourselves, quietly packing up our game, swimming upstream and away from his murderous current. But Luke…Luke would call out, “Hey, Mr. Greenwood!” and to our horror, he’d plunk himself beside Dad at the dining table, oblivious and chatting so cheerfully that Heath and I would flinch.
In the past few years, Heath’s barely said a word about Luke. Now he won’t even look at him. He just stares off, jaw tight, when Luke calls out, “He’s gone. You scared him off, bro!”
Heath ignores him and turns instead to the little boy with pained eyes.
“It was a seal, yeah?” the kid’s dad calls out to Luke, looking to Heath for confirmation.
“Uh…” Luke hesitates, eyes fixed on Heath. “Not sure, mate. Couldn’t see much to be honest.”
“No,” Heath says quietly. “It wasn’t a seal.”
The father’s face drains of color. He pulls his son into his arms as something slick and bloated drifts by in the dark current, turning slowly as the water pulls it along. He presses a soft palm over his son’s eyes because the shapeless mass in the water wasn’t an animal at all.
It was a woman.
Chapter 5
The steak is cherry red, dripping blood. The waiter sets it down on the pub table, wordlessly slides it my way. His hands are buried in tattoos, and there’s a thin strip of dried blood on the back of his left knuckle.
It’s 10p.m.at the Roo Bay pub. A handful of locals are embraced in its dark warmth, dirty hands clutching their beers like they’re worried someone’s going to steal them. I recognize them from childhood, sharkish old men, like predators at rest. One of them is Steven Newton. Luke’s dad. I freeze and something twists in my gut. He smiles at me, but it isn’t warm; it’s sharp, eager. Heath whirls around, alert, but the older man stumbles out the pub doors, grinning. Outside, he joins two fishermen who are smoking aggressively, spitting loudly on the sidewalk.
Heath doesn’t touch his chicken parma and fries. I steal a chip from his plate and stuff it in my mouth, waiting for a reaction. He smiles weakly, pushes his plate to me.
“You can have mine,” he says. “I’m not that hungry.”
I’m transported back in time to our dinner table, shoveling kangaroo into my mouth so fast I’m choking on it.
“Slow down, Min,” Heath cautions from across the table. “You’ll make yourself sick.”
But I couldn’t slow down. Hungry. God, I was alwaysso hungry.We lived outdoors, the beach, the woods. Anywhere but home, where Dad was lurking. Hunger. It was always there like a toothache.
I’d scraped my plate and asked, “Can I have some more?”
He’d pushed his plate my way and said, far too casually, “You can have mine, Min. I’m not hungry.”
I’ve never been able to get that image out of my head. God, how much that must have hurt him. Trying to provide and failing. I was absolutely ashamed of myself for asking for more to eat. Disgusted. It started off a complex relationship with food that’s worsened through the years. I only eat when I’m starving.
