I let her go and she struggled toward the creek bank, flailing like a dying fish.
Sometime later, she quietly emptied her desk and asked Miss McKenzie if she could sit at the front of the class, away from me, please. But she didn’t tell her the reason why, not until later.
Amy spent the next week in the front row and averted her eyes whenever she saw me. And I spent that time staring hard at the back of her head, remembering.
That week, I spent every afternoon in this creek with Trav,spitting water into his open mouth. He’d let me hold him under, hand cupping his skull, mouth on the back of his neck. We took turns drowning each other, over and over again. Drowning and kissing. Kissing and drowning.
Until it felt like the same thing.
—
I slip my clothes back on,follow the creek’s muddy mouth. In some areas, the grass is yellowing and brittle, crunching under my shoes. A moment later it’s thigh-high, tickling my kneecaps. The blackbirds pause on branches as dry and bare as bones.
I pause under a ghost gum, spitting on the red dirt and scraping it in with the heel of my shoe until the ground looks like a bloodstain.
When we were children, Trav and I would stand in this spot and spit ourselves dry. We dipped our fingers into the red earth, smearing the paste all over our arms and cheeks. Shivering with energy in the fading sunset, we shook up heavy cans of gasoline, pouring them onto old clothing and setting it alight with stolen matches; then we threw our heads back, howling for the dark. We sprinted through the woods, lighting it up with fire and our madness, blackbirds falling silent as we barreled through, screaming childish warnings they needn’t have listened to.
We’re coming! We’re coming! Watch out!
On Friday nights, our dads staggered home from the pub, a universe of rage boiling inside them. On those nights, you’d find stray kids hungry and scattered around town like dogs. Too afraid to go home.
Nobody really spoke about the violence. It’s not something you speak of. It changes you, though. I watched smooth-cheeked boys turn cruel and canine. Even Trav grew sullen and aggressive, lost to his mum. Lost to everyone. All pain is the same, but what we do with it isn’t.
Heath became our guardian. He built the cabin here, gave us a safe place to run to, until it wasn’t safe anymore.
Something shrieks through the woods, and I glance over my shoulder, peering into the semi-dark. Skin prickling, I wait there, squinting through the woods. The birds stop chirping mid-song, the cicadas burrow, and the woods are so quiet that all I hear is the thumping of my heart.
I press ahead, squeezing past charred tree trunks, low-hanging branches that scratch at my cheeks, chin, and neck. I hold a hand in front of my face to protect it, tripping over the twisted carpet of roots, walking deeper and deeper into the woods.
Tucked away like a crouching cat is a cabin shaped like a capitalA.It’s half buried in broken branches and autumn leaves, as if the Wicked Woods were trying to swallow it whole.
The A-frame stretches up to the bloodied sky, and a hot wind weaves through its wooden rib cage, whistling unpleasantly. It smells gory, fresh mud and sour meat. Despite the warmth, there’s a weird chill in the air. I flatten my back against a charred blackwood, unwilling to step inside.
Our real education began here.
I spent my younger years in this cabin, surrounded by boys who learned more with pocketknives than they ever did in school. Local kids who went to my school, twitchy and restless with nowhere else to go. In the beginning, I was ignored or tolerated by them because I was Heath’s sister, but as we grew, I felt something shift. The weight of their stares, heavy, uninvited. Greedy. I realized finally that I needed to vanish or grow teeth. Be the shark, or be the food.
Heath and Luke showed us how to rig up fishing line, how to scale and fillet a fresh snapper. Heath was patient and encouraging, a surgeon. Luke, restless and bloody, a butcher. Heath stepped up for us, but Luke stepped back. He grew bored of us, looked at the weight of the responsibility and decided we weren’t worth the cost. Sometimes we wouldn’t see him for months.
Nobody asked my brother to do it, to carry the weight of these forgotten kids, but it settled on his shoulders anyway. He picked it up because no one else would and he bore it quietly. Dutifully.
But over time, the weight pressed deeper. I saw it on his face, the way he moved through the world a little slower. And even when his back ached from the burden, even when no one thanked him, he kept carrying us. It was because of Heath that none of us went hungry again. Because of him, we learned how to rip gills out with two fingers, peel skin from sinewy muscle, and pluck a liver from a rib cage, popping it into our mouths, all juicy and plump.
Some of us flinched.
Most of us didn’t.
And some of us liked the violence a bit too much.
In fourth grade, I found the blood boys bent over shattered rabbit skulls, bloodied rocks in their hot, tight grips. I saw the chalky bones of a bellbird’s wing dangling from the cabin windowsill like a gruesome wind chime. And I ran my tongue over my teeth while I chopped kangaroo meat into bloodied strips.
As we grew, so did the violence. A growing, pulsing rage. The cabin simmered with feral tension, and fights broke out like fires. Heath barked warnings no one listened to. And Luke stood too close, talked too smooth, encouraged our inner war. He didn’t push exactly. He didn’t have to.
“You’re not seriously chickening out, are you?” he’d say, voice dropping low, conspiratorial. “Go on, do it…no one’s gonna know.”
Blood boys grew into blood men, aggressive and insatiable. Heath’s steady influence could not reach the part of them that had already decided.
It ended abruptly.
