Green Shoots in Concrete

Amanda Clarke

The bolt slams back like a verdict. Somewhere out there it’s summer holidays—kids shrieking at pools, thongs slapping hot concrete, eskies cracking open—but in here, dawn leaks through a slit window and I’m still stuck inBlock C, top security, New South Wales. Grey walls. Flickering fluoro. A guard barking muster down the run like we’re cattle. I blink grit from my eyes and breathe in disinfectant, old sweat, and yesterday’s cabbage. Another day in custody has started, ready or not. Breakfast is lukewarm porridge, “moosh,” the guys call it; and a hard-boiled egg that could double as a cricket ball. I eat alone in my cell, perched on the stainless-steel toilet lid. I sip bitter instant coffee from my buy-up and scratch another mark on the calendar I’ve drawn on the wall. Fivedays until my first parole hearing, until I beg a panel of suits to believe I’m a changed man.

I still hear the judge’s words from sentencing: prison will be an opportunity to rehabilitate, to rebuild your life. What a joke. Sixteen months inside, and what have I “rebuilt”? I’ve learned how to sleep through screaming matches two cells down. I’ve memorised the squeak of the guard’s boots on his rounds at 2am. If anything, prison has sanded me down, not built me up.

Late morning, I shuffle into a stale classroom with a dozen other blokes for Anger Management 101. Faded posters on the walls say things like “Think Before You Act” and “Responsibility Starts With You”. The facilitator; a cheery woman in a CSNSW polo; wants us to practise deep breathing whenever we feel our temper rising. “Breathe in, two, three, four… now out, two, three, four,” she drones, as if slow breaths will magically snuff out decades of rage. I swap sceptical looks with Blue next to me. We both know if a punch-upkicks off in the yard this arvo, no one’s going to pause to breathe in perfect rhythm.

When the facilitator asks if anyone wants to share, we all stare at the floor. Finally, Blue rolls his eyes and playsalong. “Uh, yeah, breathing might stop me from, ya know, knocking someone’s teeth out next time,” he mutters. She beams like he just found the cure for anger. Blue shoots me a wink. We’re just playing the game, ticking the boxes. Sit through the sessions, fill out the workbook, get your certificate. Paper promises to wave at the parole board.

They’ve got a program for everything; violence, drugs, booze. I’m on my second round of the alcohol awareness course, even though I reckon I got the message first time. We go around in a circle; “I’m    , I’m an alcoholic”; sharing war stories about how we wound up here. I admit I loved the grog too much on the outside; Fridaynights on the piss with my mates, then one stupid, drunken choice landed me behind bars. The counsellornods and hands out pamphlets about triggers and coping strategies. I stash mine  under  the  mattress;  it  props  up  the  wobbly  leg  of  my  bedframe. A few months back, I actually tried to ask for help. I told an officer I was feeling low, that I didn’t know how much longer I could hack it. He barely looked up from his paperwork. “I know you won’t top yourself mate,” he said with a smirk. “You tried last week” Then he walked off, jingling his keys. I stood there, stunned. It was a joke. Hilarious. That day I learned not to show cracks. Vulnerability gets you a pat on the back in brochures, but in here it just gets you laughed at.

How to cope? Some blokes pace the yard for hours like zoo animals, tattoos shimmering with sweat under thesun. Others get sneaky: last week the screws busted a couple of fellas brewing moonshine from fruit and sugar.Four litres of “prison punch” bubbling in a mop bucket under a bunk. Desperate times, desperate measures.Me, I found a different escape;one that doesn’t rot your liver or get you thrown in the slot.

Tucked behind my toilet, in a cut-off Styrofoam cup filled with contraband soil, is a seedling I’ve been nursing.Sounds crazy. But seeing that tiny green sprout each day does something for me. Last month I saved an apple seed from kitchen scraps and germinated it between damp tissues. Now it’s a fragile stem with two baby leaves, curling toward the strip of light through my high window. Under the harsh fluorescents, that plant is the only living thing here that’s not caged. I give it a few drops of water each night and whisper encouragement like a madman: Grow. Just grow.

If the officers find my little garden project, they’ll confiscate it for sure; it’s not on the approved property list. So Ihide it whenever there’s a search. I wedge the cup behind the steel toilet or tuck it under my pillow. My heart hammers if a guard even glances at that corner of my cell. It’s ridiculous how much I care. But when you’re surrounded by concrete and barbed wire, nurturing one tiny, stubborn seedling feels like reclaiming a sliver of humanity. It’s hope in a Styrofoam cup.

The other night I dreamed my seedling grew into a giant fig tree, right here in my cell. Its roots split the concrete floor and its branches punched through the ceiling. In the dream I laughed and climbed up and out, grabbing a limb to haul myself over the prison wall while alarms blared. I could taste sunlight and salt air. Waking up to grey walls was like a punch in the guts. But I checked on my little plant first thing, and I swear it had grown a millimetre. I grinned. That sprout is defiant, alive. If it can find a way to thrive in this place, maybe I can too.

In five days I’ll sit in front of a trio of parole board members, stern faces and crossed arms, trying to convince them I’m ready for release. I wonder if they have a clue what this place is really like, what it does to a person. They’ll want to see remorse, rehabilitation, a reformed man. I’ve rehearsed the speech in my head: I’m sorry for what I did. I’ve completed all the programs. I’ve learned my lesson. I’ll say it all, and I won’t be lying’ not exactly. I am sorry, and I have learned some things. But the truth is messier than a neat little speech.

I’ve seen a bloke get his parole refused for not crying. “Lack of remorse,” they called it. The poor bastard had done every program, kept his nose clean, but because he stayed dry-eyed they reckoned he didn’t care. Theystamped him not rehabilitated and sent him back to his cell. He came back hollow-eyed, hope wiped out. Iremember him staring at the floor and whispering, What more do they want? That could be me next week. It scares the hell out of me.

Still, I’ve got to try. Hope’s a dangerous thing in a place like this, but what else have I got? Each evening I sit on my bunk and picture the questions they’ll throw at me, the judgement in their eyes. I practise answers that sound humble, reformed. I practise unclenching my fists. Sometimes I catch myself doing that breathing I mocked; in through the nose, out through the mouth. Maybe I’m as desperate as everyone else to prove I can change, or at least get out before this place grinds me to nothing.

I slide my Styrofoam cup garden from its hiding spot and watch the seedling’s leaves tremble under my breath. Somewhere out there it’s summer holidays; chlorine, sunscreen, cicadas, kids screaming at a public pool. Inhere, summer is a stingy strip of light through a slit window, heat trapped in concrete, baking bleach and sweatinto everything. I lean in anyway, stealing outside just by looking at green. Even the air tastes locked up, likemetal and stale cabbage, and my tongue remembers beer from the esky outside.

Please, I think; though I don’t know if I’m talking to the plant, the parole board, or any god still turning up in places like this. Please let me out before this joint scrapes the soft parts off me. The seedling stands inshallow dirt, delicate but stubborn, as if it doesn’t know it’s not meant to live here. I stroke one velvety leaf, proof I’m not completely gone.

“Hang in there, mate,” I whisper. Not sure if it’s for the plant or me.

Either way, we’re still alive. Still pushing. Still trying to turn this concrete box into something like summer; something that can grow. And if one green shoot can crack up in Block C, top security, maybe I can crack out and feel sun on my face again, no fence in the way.

Lego Women

Ruth Rosenhek

Free to a good home. Pokémon cards and Super Mario Lego set.

My therapist urges me to take a small step forward, but every summer is unbearable. Every steaming hot day. All the laughing people on the beach—walking, swimming, or sunbathing like lizards on the sand. All a reminder of Jamie. A reminder that Jamie went too far, played too hard, one roll of the dice too many.

I crank the aircon another notch, as if turning the house into an icebox could freeze my grief. Ishove peanuts into my mouth, chewing non-stop to smother the tears.

I shake my head, disgusted, and roll another smoke. Three years on and I still mourn my son, an endless ache every day. ‘Should have this’ and ‘should have that’ loop like earworms along with my lastphone call with him. My shrill voice still echoes.

‘How many times do I have to rescue you!? You have got to take responsibility, Jamie. Pull yourself together. Grow up!’

Jamie, pain carved across his face—just 19. First he lost his best mate in a car crash, then he lost his job… and then I withdrew my support. Ran dry on compassion that once propped up his drinking and drugs.

But still I climbed into my Prado and sped over to the seaside cove where he usually hid away.All his gear was there… a trail of butts, cans, clothes and sneakers.

The sea was twisting and turning. With triumph?

Jamie, his eyes dark and vacant. Floating.

Etched in me forever.

I am no better than my son. An endless stream of coffee, chocolate, and cigarettes. Same genes. What kind of chance did he have? When he was toddling about the house, Mum wasentertaining herself on the verandah as if it were her personal pub, surrounded by half-smoked butts and empty cans.

I’ve become my mother. And her mother before that, like dominoes toppling each other.

The doorbell interrupts. I shove clothes and papers into a pile, fix my tangled hair in the mirror, then open the door.

‘Hi, I’m here about the Lego?’ a slouching woman in her forties smiles, a pink scar on her leftcheek. ‘Sorry I’m late, I was lazing at the beach.’

‘Andrea, come in. I’m sorry about the mess.’ I gesture to the candy wrappers and dirty dishes. I hand her my son’s old games. ‘These were my son’s…’ I say, my voice trailing off.

‘They’re for my son too,’ Andrea says, her hands full. ‘Nate’s… notwell.’

I see the slight twitch in her cheek, but I say nothing. ‘Fallen in with the wrong crowd and…’

‘Well, thanks for coming,’ I cut her off and usher her out the door, ignoring her crestfallenexpression. I return to the threadbare lounge and flick on the telly, but instead of watching, I pull the well-worn photo album onto my lap. Jamie swinging his bat at baseball camp. Jamie and me playing superhero dress-ups. Jamie with his dad in the hospital.

Later, I stand in the doorway, the night air humid after the stifling heat of the day. The smoke from my mouth mingles with the plasticky smell of bushfires. I cringe remembering how I shoved Andrea out the door.

My therapist is right—at least try to engage with people, with life.

Letting go of some Lego is not going to do it.

The crescent moon catches my eye and I let the swirling breeze move me to my car. I head to the beach where I stand at the ocean’s edge, following the rhythm of the water lapping. In the far distance a whale breaches. I hold my breath for a moment.

Later, I dream of dolphins circling me. One of them is wounded, blood swirling through the water.

On Monday I return to work at the library. A round-shouldered woman returning a book reminds me of Andrea but it’s not her. I feel a spasm of nausea as her words return. ‘My son…’

Driving home, I brake at a green light thinking the pony-tailed woman hurrying down the footpathmight be her. Horns blast through. No sign of her.

I want to make it right and place another ad in the paper. Looking for Andrea. You picked up the Lego. Please call.

 I wake up pre-dawn with Jamie’s cheeky grin fading, calling to me.

I brew black coffee for my drive east to the ocean. Shades of burnt amber and blood red are drawn likea sash on the horizon. It’s low tide. I hesitate but then turn and walk to Jamie’s hidden cove, the reassuring warmth of sandstone under my feet.

As I round the corner, I see the tangled limbs of a young man and a woman, surrounded by their works scattered on the sand. Just like Jamie. They pay me no attention and I stride away.

‘I’m trying,’ I tell my therapist. ‘I’m looking for that woman so I can make it right.’

‘Do you think that might be a distraction?’ he asks. I don’t answer.

I visit the beach. Again. And then again. I scan for the Lego woman.

One night, I chain smoke my way through a pack of cigarettes until there are no more. In themorning, I quit cold turkey. A colleague tells me the Southern Lights will be flaring in the night sky.

After work, I head directly to the beach, muscles tensed thinking of the long night ahead. I walk. Iswim in cold water. I walk some more. I sit, sifting sand beneath my fingers. I watch some boys tossing a frisbee, leaping, laughing. Carefree.

A woman comes running in my direction, in pursuit of a seagull. ‘My glasses!’ she yells. Shewaves a half-eaten sandwich at the

gull to get its attention, then throws the sandwich in the air. The gull grabs the bread and the woman’s glasses tumble onto the beach in exchange.

I get up to recover the glasses as the woman sidles up, panting. I gasp as I see the scar on her cheek.

‘Andrea?’

The woman looks puzzled for a moment. ‘The Lego woman!’ she exclaims.

I nod, smiling. ‘I’ve been looking for you.’ ‘You have?’

‘Yes, I’m so sorry. I…’

‘You were a bit abrupt?’ Andrea gives me an easy out.

Now’s my chance and I take it. ‘I want to hear what’s happening with your son. I… I … lost mine.’ I hand Andrea the glasses.

‘I would love that,’ she replies.

‘My son was called Jamie,’ I whisper. ‘And yours?’

We sprawl on the sand, words tumbling out of our mouths, watching the sky. Our tears blend withlaughter. Hours later, we walk away, leaving long silhouettes glimmering on the wet sand.

At home, I flop on my mattress, fall into a dreamless heavy sleep.

On the weekend, I join a few friends for a swim. My stomach unclenches, little by little, and Icatch myself giggling at a friend’s joke.

‘We missed you Mel,’ my friends chime in unison and hug me in a welcome beyond words.

I look down the beach and spot a raft of birds on the ocean. I recognise them from years gone by.The drag of wings against the water. One lifts off. Then another. Until they are like a scarf streaming towards the north.

They will be back in the winter.

Dry

David Vernon

I put my hand up. I do it at the end of every term. I know it makes me look like a goody-two-shoes but I guess it’s a habit, the sort of thing that Mum calls ‘a ritual’, I ‘spose. A bit like Dad being out every Friday night and coming back late, smelling of smoke and beer. She says it’s his ‘ritual’. At least my ritual doesn’t hurt anyone.

Miss Palin smiles. “I knew I could rely on you, Lauren.” She hands me the whiteboard spray and a mankycloth. “Stand on a chair to get those top edges,” she instructs.

I take hold of the proffered cleaning stuff and as Miss Palin turns to tidy her desk and the last students noisilyfile out of the room, I spray and scrub the white board clean. Soon I hop down off the chair and stand back to admire the snow-white board.

“Perfect,” says Miss Palin, taking the bottle and cloth. “Now you can go on your summer holidays having done a good deed.” Miss Palin is always banging on about ‘good deeds’. I don’t clean the whiteboard for her praise. I do it because once I have finished with it, the board is clean, white, untouched and anything could then be drawn on it — numbers, letters, pictures, horses… The past is the past and the future is yet to be written. Mum says that when she’sfeeling sad. She says it’s comforting and I reckon she’s right.

Miss Palin reaches into her hefty tote bag and withdraws a set of coloured pencils, still tightly held in their unopened box. “Merry Christmas, Lauren. Year 5 is over. You’ve done well and next year you will be the senior class.I’ll see you then and thanks for all your help. Have a lovely holiday!” She ushers me out of the room and then turns back to her desk as I mutter my thanks for the gift. I stand alone in the long, silent corridor — students having skedaddled at the 3pm bell and the promise of six weeks of freedom.

I pause for a moment, hopping from one foot to the other. It’s a Friday in December and the afternoon heatpromises an unsettled night lying on top of crumpled sheets. It also promises an uncertain night — a night ending inscreams and shouts and my bed being wet in the morning, or, it might, just might be a night where I sleep through until morning. But those nights are rare and getting rarer and Friday night combined with the heat of the Australian summer, means more beer for Dad.

I heft my backpack. It’s heavier than normal. It contains a change of clothes — it’s my escape plan, but can I do it? The shame of failure will be too much.

I’d told Tayla about Dad — some weeks back after Mum had gone to emergency. Tayla had listened quietlywhile I’d sobbed out the story. She’d put her arm around me while I had cried, until Ben and Jayden had called us ‘lesos’ and Ben had thrown an apple core at us. We went to the girls’ loos to talk but it was full of younger kids. Tayla gave my hand a squeeze and said, “I’ll talk to Mum.” The bell rang and we said nothing more about it, until yesterday.

“I don’t go on the last day of school,” Tayla confided at recess. “Mum will email in a sick note. Nobody cares and nothing happens anyway.”

“Oh,” I’d said, devastated that my best friend would be missing on the last day. “Hey, don’t look so miserable. I spoke to Mum about your dad. She said that

you can come and stay over any time you want to. Come over tomorrow. Dad always sets up the pool on the first day of the hols. You can give us a hand and christen it!”

I’d looked at her ever so gratefully but then fear gripped me and my stomach lurched. I’d never stayed overnight at a friend’s place before, only at relatives’ houses and with Mum to cover for me. I felt such disgust. I can’t stay atsomeone else’s house. I’m ten years old and I wet the bed — no, not all the time, but… but…

My heavy backpack reminds me that I have alternatives. Home, or Tayla’s house. Mum says to send her a textfrom Tayla’s once I arrive, just to let her know I’m safe. She knows my worries and had packed extra clothes for me and a thick towel — but what would happen if Tayla saw it? My friendship would be over and the kids and school would… I can’t think about it. So much safer to go home. I turn away from Tayla’s street and with shoulders slumped I drag my feet towards the familiar.

“Lauren!” exclaims Mum as I throw my backpack on to the couch and head towards the fridge. “Lauren, I thought you were going to Tayla’s?”

“Changed my mind.” “But why?”

“Don’t wanna,” I say. “What?”

“Just don’t.”

Mum walks over and holds me by the shoulders and turns me towards her. I see the bruise on her cheek is still visible, despite her heavy make-up. That was from last Friday. A week has passed and it’s still there. I raise my hand andgently touch the dark smudge. Mum flinches.

“Don’t,” she says.

“Why does he do it?” I whisper. “He doesn’t mean it.”

“But he shouts at me when I wet the bed. He says I’m too old for it. He scares me.”

“He doesn’t mean to. It’s the drink talking.”

This makes no sense to me. I don’t say anything. Drinks don’t talk and he doesn’t talk, he shouts and throws things at Mum and hits her.

“Lauren,” says Mum, “I do know why you don’t want to go to Tayla’s house, but it will be OK.”

“But what if it isn’t?” I mumble.

Mum squeezes me. “You only have accidents on Fridays.”

“I know,” I reply, but doesn’t Mum know today is Friday? “So, that’s exactly why I can’t go.”

“Oh, Darling! The day of the week isn’t causal.” “What? What’s corzal?”

“I mean, it isn’t because it is a Friday that you have an accident, it’s because of the shouting and …”

“Dunno what you mean,” I say. Every Friday I go to bed with a dry bed and every Saturday I wake up with a wet bed. Mum’s wrong.

“It’s stress, Lauren. Stress. When you are feeling worried or scared, you’re stressed and that can cause accidents.”

“All I know is that on Fridays I wet the bed. I hate Fridays.”

Mum squeezes me tighter. She’s hurting me and now she’s crying. I don’t know why. Maybe I bumped her cheek. I stare at the floor. It’s like the whiteboard but there are dirty marks on it. Brown circles. Little brown circles as though something has been spilt on it. Mum wipes her eyes and looks down at the little brown circles and moves her foot firmly over them, hiding them beneath her worn Hush Puppies.

“Lauren,” she whispers, “I can call Tayla’s mum and explain.” I squeak. “You can’t! You can’t!” I start to cry too.

Mum gives a small smile. “Okay. Lauren, I won’t, but I do have a suggestion.”

“What?” I ask with a sniff.

“You asked for horse riding lessons for Christmas, didn’t you.” “And you said there was no way you could ever afford them.”

“True, but what would you do if I said I’d get you two lessons, if you stay at Tayla’s house tonight and in the morning you are dry.”

“Won’t work, it’s a Friday.” I’m not going to be persuaded. “Three lessons,” says Mum.

I’m torn. Do I take what’s on offer or do I hold out. I remember I had done this once before, over washing up. I’d asked for too much and going ice-skating had been taken away from me and I’d had to do the washing-up anyway. Itwas a thick towel and I had a plastic bag, and spare pants…

“Okay,” I say. “Three lessons.”

Mum smiles and gives me a little kiss on the head. “Shall I drive you?” “No,” I say. “I’ll walk.”

A pillow lands on my face. A moment later Tayla straddles my chest. “Wakey, wakey!” she shouts. “First day of the summer hols!”

Panic floods through me. I shove her off and she lands with a squark on a pile of pillows next to my bed and grabs another one while my hands wildly flay beneath the covers, seeking the thick… dry… towel beneath me… dry… dry… and clean, like a whiteboard on which any future can be written.

“Holidays!” I laugh with a yell and hit her in the chest with my pillow. It’s on!

White Ghost

Amy Han

Sleeping at Sarah’s tonight. Studying together. Be home in the morning.

I texted this lie on my way to the station, ripples of fear coursing through me as I walked away from home. It was late summer, the evening air still warm and thick, cicadas humming from the trees. Neat brick houses lined the footpath,hedges trimmed, roses blooming behind fences.

Sarah was my best friend. My parents knew her family – they were Chinese like us. We studied together, had sleepovers all the time. If I said I was with Sarah, my parents always approved.

They didn’t know I was on the Frankston line heading south – away from Hawthorn, to hang out with people they’d never met.

The train rattled through the suburbs – Richmond, Ormond, Moorabbin. I sat with my phone on my lap, watching myreflection in the window over graffitied walls and power lines. Every time my phone buzzed I thought it would be Mum, demanding I come home. But it was just Pete sending updates:

hey we’re at the beach right side of the pier can’t wait tosee you x

The last message made my stomach flip.

I started typing a text to Sarah: Hey Sez, I’m – Then another message from Pete came through and I deleted it. Sarah would worry, probably even tell me not to go. Worse, she’d want to know everything about this Pete guy. I didn’t want to jinx it.

My phone buzzed again. Mum replying: Good. Study hard. This exam is very important for your future.

I turned my phone face-down and watched the world blur past. Guilt and fear pushed against my chest like fists.

I met Pete three weeks ago at the library. I was there every day, escaping from home. He was researching marine biology,kept asking me to watch his stuff. On the fourth day he asked if I wanted coffee. We sat outside and he made me laugh – really laugh. For the first time in ages, I felt relaxed. Free. On the tenth day he kissed me outside the closed library doors, under the security light that made everything look overexposed and unreal.

Mum would call him gweilo if she knew he existed – white ghost. They don’t have our values. Don’t waste time with boys who will ruin your future.

Dad would just look disappointed.

Now I was on a train to meet Pete’s friends at the beach, because my brother was finally at his own sleepover and my parents were at some church thing. I was so tired of being good.

At Frankston station, litter tumbled along the tracks. A man slumped against the wall, muttering. I kept my head down, walking quickly. The stench of piss hit me near the exit gates.

It was a relief to hear the ocean. That constant shushing sound, like the world whispering secrets and washingeverything away. Music drifted from somewhere ahead. Before I reached the pier, I saw bodies moving in the dim light.A small fire was already burning in the sand.

Pete grinned when he saw me.

“You came,” he said, standing to give me a hug.

Four people looked up. A girl with bleached hair – Jules – waved. Two guys nodded. Another girl, dark-haired andpretty, smiled. “I’m Steph,” she said. “Pete’s told us about you.”

I wondered if they could tell I didn’t belong – that I’d never been to a house party or the beach at night, that my sixteenth birthday was at a Chinese restaurant with family.

“You want a drink?” Pete asked.

“Just lolly drinks,” Jules smiled. “We’re not alcohol drinkers. But we do have…” She glanced at Steph, who shrugged.

“We’ve got other stuff,” Steph said. “If you’re into it. No pressure.” I wasn’t into it. I’d never tried anything they might be referring to. But I heard myself say, “Yeah, maybe later.”

Pete took my hand and we sat by the fire.

We talked for a while about nothing – when the next hang out would be, what they were doing next year. I mostly listened, noticing the easy way Jules teased Matt, the way Steph leaned into Lachie’s side like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The sand was still warm under my feet. My phone sat heavy and silent in my pocket. I thought about my parents at theirchurch thing, praying for their children to be safe and good. Mum tutting at the teenagers we passed hanging out at theshops, not studying or helping their parents. See? she’d say. No discipline. She’d remind me of the latest news report about a house party, another teenager who’d died of an overdose, more young victims of drink driving. This is what happens.

They passed around a joint and I watched it, the orange ember glowing brighter each time someone inhaled.

“It’s not like tobacco,” Pete said quietly. Not that I knew anything – all I had were my parents’ warnings about slipperyslopes and those traumatic cancer pictures on cigarette packets. I knew there was more to life than the tight bubble they wrapped around me.

But I was also afraid they were right.

“This just… helps you see things differently,” Pete said.

Lachie pulled a small plastic bag from his pocket, shook out a pill. “Got these too,” he said. “Clean stuff. We’re careful about where we get it.”

They passed the pills around like communion. When it got to me, Pete was watching. Not pushing, just waiting.

I thought about my parents, their rules that never bent. You are Chinese, mum would say. You know better.

But they weren’t here. And maybe there was a difference between being careful and being afraid of everything, just because they said so.

I took the pill. Swallowed it dry, felt it stick in my throat before it went down. Pete smiled, squeezed my knee. “You’ll be fine,” he said. “I’m right here.”

For a while, nothing happened. Then Jules said something funny and I laughed – really laughed. The sound came from deep inside, somewhere I didn’t recognise.

The stars looked sharper. The firelight seemed to pulse in time with my heartbeat. When I glanced at Pete, he looked so genuinely happy to have me there, and I understood why I’d got on that train. I needed to do something I wanted to do for once. I wanted to be there, with Pete.

“Let’s dig!” Matt said suddenly. “A massive hole. Right here.” It seemed like the best idea ever.

We all started digging, hands scooping sand, laughing. My fingers found a rhythm – scoop, toss, scoop, toss – the sandalive under my palms, warm and shifting. The music was still going, but it sounded far away now, like it was coming from underwater.

The hole was suddenly huge. Deep enough that when Pete jumped in, only his head and shoulders showed above the rim.

“It’s perfect,” he grinned. “Like a grave.”

“Don’t say that,” Steph said, but she was laughing.

Pete tried to climb out but the sand kept sliding away under his fingers. “Help me out,” he said, still smiling, but there was an edge in his voice now.

I reached down. His hand felt hot in mine, or maybe my hand felt cold. I pulled but he was heavy, or I was weak. He sank lower, up to his chest now, and his grin was gone.

The sand kept sliding, pouring in like water. Pete’s shoulders disappeared. Then his neck. His mouth opened butsand filled it. I was screaming, we were all screaming, digging, but the sand kept swallowing him.

I grabbed for his head but my fingers passed through hair that felt like smoke. Like nothing.

“Pull him out!” someone was yelling. Maybe me.

But there was nothing to pull. The hole was filling itself in, the sand smooth and undisturbed, and Pete was gone. Just gone.

I stumbled backward. The beach tilted. The fire still burned but the light looked wrong, overexposed, unreal. Steph was on her knees, digging, crying. The others were pulling her back, trying to calm her down, but their voices sounded distorted, stretched like melted caramel.

“He’s not –” I started to say, but I didn’t know how to finish. Not there? Not real? Not breathing under all that sand?

My phone was buzzing in my pocket. I pulled it out, saw mum’s name on the screen. Eleven missed calls. How long had we been here?

The beach was empty. Just us and the fading fire and the hole that looked, now, like it had never been there at all.

“Where’s Pete?” I said, but no one answered.

The stars were sharp as needles. My heartbeat was too loud. Somewhere, far away, I could hear the ocean shushing, shushing, shushing.

Not So Hot Summer

Jo Humphrey

By mid-December, Wattle Street began to smell of heat, beer and time off.

Eddie noticed it, not with annoyance but inevitability. Eskys appeared on verandahs. Plastic chairs multiplied on frontlawns. Radios hummed through open windows, tuned to stations that played the same cheerful songs every year at this time. Children moved differently now – louder, looser – released from school and flung into summer with the recklessness of things that hadn’t yet learned caution.

Summer holidays. Eddie watched it through the narrow gap in his blinds, with a look that combined apathy with disgustin just the right measure. The light cut the room into strips, catching dust he no longer saw. He hadn’t decorated for Christmas in years. No tree. No lights. No small gestures toward celebration. December existed only on calendars and supermarket shelves. Inside his house, time had thickened, slowed, and lost its edge.

His days moved in small, repetitive loops. Bed to couch. Couch to kitchen. Kitchen to back step. Each movement measured, as if he were conserving energy for something magnificent, despite the fact he no longer believed anythinggood would ever happen to him.

Alcohol was the one thing he still organized with great care and forethought. A spare carton of beer under the sink. Abottle of whisky behind the pantry tins. Another in the laundry, hidden badly, like part of him wanted it to be discovered.Eddie told himself it was preparation. He told himself it was his choice, and he’d be damned if anybody would take any more options away from him.

On Christmas Eve, the heat pressed down relentlessly. The air sat heavy in his lungs. Eddie stood shirtless at the kitchenbench, sweat tracking down his spine, and poured whisky into a chipped mug. He never used glasses anymore. Glasses suggested care. Glasses suggested people. Glasses were unnecessary.

The mug had cracked the night she left. He’d thrown it at the wall – not at her – and watched it bounce, damaged butintact. He drank. The burn cut cleanly as it travelled through his worn-out body, then settled warm and dull in his gut.

“Good,” he muttered. “Do your worst.”

His phone lay face-down on the table, long dead. No one called now. No one who had not eventually learned thatsilence was the only reply they’d get. There was one voice he still heard sometimes, late at night, when sleep wouldn’t come. It spoke his name softly, as if it were still allowed to. Better off alone, he thought. His complete melancholy surprised even him.

He refilled the mug and took it outside, lowered himself onto the back step. The yard had gone feral – grass brittle, weeds spreading unchecked. He used to mow on Saturdays, complain about dandelions overtaking the lawn, and feel the small satisfaction of effort. Now the weedsclaimed everything he’d abandoned. The dandelions had won.

From next door came laughter. A man’s voice, loud and unguarded, whimsical, not stern. A woman’s reply, affectionate.Then a child – high, piercing, impossible to ignore her uncontrolled giggling and false protestations.

Eddie frowned. The house next door had stood empty for months. Suddenly, it wasn’t. He’d watched a young family arrive, earlier today, suitcases and beach towels, sun-safe and relaxed. Holiday people. Temporary distractions. Peoplewith somewhere else to go back to. He drank and listened, feeling as though he was overhearing life from the wrong side of glass.

Christmas Day arrived bright and unforgiving.

The sun rose early. Eddie hadn’t slept. His head throbbed, his mouth dry, his skin too tight. The kitchen smelled stale – a combination of old whisky, urine, and dust. He stood at the sink, contemplating nothing and everything, when something tapped on his front door.

Once. Twice.

Eddie ignored it. Heat did strange things, as did lack of sleep. Then a third knock came, deliberate, insistent. He turned and took a few steps sideways so he could see the front door. A child’s face was pressed against the glass. Eyes wide. Nose flattened. She knocked again, undeterred by the appearance of an unwashed, unshaven old man with bloodshot eyes.

He stared at the little girl, invading his solitude. Children didn’t come to his door. Even if they didn’t sense it was aplace to avoid, their carers did. The girl frowned, then held up a piece of paper against the window. A drawing. Eddie moved begrudgingly and opened the door a cautious inch or two.

“Hi!” She said brightly. “I’m Milly and we live next door for holidays.” Her voice carried no hesitation or condemnation. She thrust the paper through the slit of the door at him. “Mum said I can give you a Christmas card, long as I don’t bothered you.”

The “card” was still warm from her hands. Eddie looked at the paper. A crooked tree. A yellow sun forced into thecorner, as if refusing to be left out. Two stick figures, one big and one small, holding hands. Across the top in largechildish capitals, written carefully, was: MERY CRISMAS.

Something, long forgotten, tightened unexpectedly in Eddie’s chest. “Thanks,” he said. Through the slowly widening door crack, his voice rough, untested.

“You have to put it on your fridge,” Milly said, her smile changing to a serious expression. “That’s where it goes.”

“Right,” Eddie said.

She studied him openly. “Are you sad?”

The question landed without judgement, without strategy or hidden agenda. Eddie glanced at the mug in his hand. At the dark liquid he’d been using to quiet his grief, to blur the days into something manageable.

“No,” he lied. “Just tired.”

Milly considered this for a moment. “Mum gets tired too, but she still swims.”

A short, broken laugh escaped him. The rare, unique sound startling him.

“You smell funny,” she added innocently.

The shame rose hot and sudden. Eddie looked away. He had forgotten how this felt, like he’d forgotten the sound of his own laughter. “Yeah,” he said quietly. “I know.”

Milly reached into her pocket and produced a slightly melted candy cane. “This helps.” Smiling brightly up at him, proffering the stripey, colourful Christmas treat, complete with pocket lint and pre-licked ends.

He hesitated, then took it. Her hand was sticky. His hand trembled, as he said. “Thank you.”

Satisfied, she turned and ran back toward her house. Halfway across his sparse, weed infested grass she called, “Don’t forget, it goes on the fridge.” Then she was gone.

Eddie stood in the doorway longer than necessary. Inside, the house felt altered – not lighter, but unsettled, like something had shifted. He pinned the card to the fridge with an old koala magnet surviving from a long-forgotten holiday. He stared at the picture, then at the candy cane sweating sugar into his hand.

Outside, a barbecue fired up. Music drifted over fences and children’s laughter carried on the waves of heat emanating from the clear blue sky.

Eddie picked up his faithful mug. Raised it to his dry lips. Stopped. The whisky smelled wrong, scented with bitter finality.

He was prepared to drink himself to death this day, as if calling it a plan made it orderly…within his control. Standing there, looking at Milly’s drawing, holding a melting candy cane, he saw himself plainly for the first time in a long time.

A grown man, grieving his own bad decisions, trying to disappear forever on Christmas Day, like anyone would miss him. “Enough,” he said softly – not with anger, but exhaustion.

He set the mug down. The sound was small but decisive. He filled the kettle, hands shaking. He hated tea. He just needed something that wasn’t poisoning him. Something that said, stay, try again.

Eddie plugged in his phone and watched it revive; the battery icon pulsing faintly. One old message sat unread. Heopened it and read: “If you ever want my help brother, just ask.”

He looked at the sender’s name. A name he hadn’t said out loud for years now. Mick. His thumb hovered; his chest tightened with the familiar fear – of being a burden, of choosing life and then finding it all too difficult. Then he thoughtof Milly’s certainty.

Her insistence that sadness could be named and that things belonged on fridges. He pressed call.

“Eddie?” Mick said, surprised. “Mate?”

“I’m not so hot Mick,” Eddie said, the truth finally leaving his lips unguarded. “In fact, I’m not okay.”

There was a brief pause, then relief. “Alright mate. I’m here. Glad you called.”

The words made Eddie want to cry; he leaned against the bench, his breath shaky. “I need help.”

“I’m coming,” Mick said. “Stay there.”

Outside, Milly shrieked with laughter as one of her parents sprayed her with the hose. Her joy rang out, unrestrained.For the first time in months, maybe years, Eddie didn’t wish for quiet. He looked at the card on his fridge. At the sun that insisted on shining, and he thought of Milly.

“Merry Christmas,” he whispered.

This time, he chose to stay.

Summer, Sand, and Shelter

Richard Morton

Summer always carried permission. Permission to loosen the tie, to stay out later, to believe hard work excused hard drinking. In those years, alcohol did much of my social labour. At the time, I passed for confident. Drink helped withthat. It supplied volume where judgement was thin and called it personality. It smoothed introductions, settled negotiations, turned strangers into allies. I was louder then, more certain, generous in the way drink allows: dinners stretched late, conversations polished by good wine and the quiet confidence of an empty whisky bottle on the table. Summer felt purpose-built for it, with longer evenings, warmer air, laughter that carried further. Drinking for pleasure seemed different, lighter. Easier. I mistook that ease for control.

When we met, alcohol was not a warning sign. It was atmosphere. We drank because it was new and fast and flattering.She worked behind bars sometimes, wiping glasses with a slow, circular motion that looked like care and felt like rehearsal. I worked around them. It felt companionable, even domestic, the shared exhaustion of late nights and empty glasses. I mistook proximity for intimacy.

There were early moments I noticed and quietly filed away. Logic that slipped sideways after a few drinks. Anger that arrived without warning and left scorch marks in its wake. Verbal cruelty that I explained to myself as damage already done by other people, other histories. Everyone has reasons, I told myself. Everyone brings something broken into a relationship.

When I moved in, I inherited a child as well as a life. There were stories she told — accidents, inattention, things that could happen to anyone. I accepted them because the alternative required action, and action would have made me the villain. When her family spoke of drinking that had begun years earlier, I translated their concern into reassurance. She was unsure of herself as a mother, I decided. She needed stability.

Marriage, I believed, was stability.

The wedding was a small disaster. She drank too much, said too much, upset people I loved. I stood between her and the room, smiling, explaining, absorbing the impact. Pressure does strange things to people, I said. Weddings are stressful. This was not her; this was circumstance.

Pregnancy did not interrupt the drinking. I told myself bodies and minds behave unpredictably under strain.

When her father died suddenly, alcohol became both anaesthetic and accelerant. I watched her argue with reality itself — demanding to see what could not be seen, accusing strangers of conspiracy — and I still framed it as grief. At thefuneral, her mother asked me, quietly, to take her home before it went too far. I felt proud that I could do that. I felt useful. I was very good at being useful. It kept me busy while avoiding the harder work of refusal.

At some point I stopped drinking the way I had. Someone needed to be sober enough to manage the edges: the children, the evenings, the next morning. She noticed the change and resented it. I had become dull, she said. Predictable. I mistook that resentment for loss of romance, rather than loss of cover. I would later learn that giving things up does notcure the urge to lean on them. It only encourages substitutions.

The calls began in the afternoons. Slurred voices, sudden emergencies, stories that did not quite align. I sent other adultsaround when I could not leave work. Mothers, friends, anyone who could fill the gap until I arrived. It did not occur tome that this, too, was help aimed at the wrong thing.

I kept believing the right setting would fix it: a quieter house; a better routine; less pressure; more love. The problem with that sort of belief is that it feels like virtue, like loyalty, like hope, but behaves like a carelessly discarded banana skin, waiting for weight.

We took a summer holiday because that was what people did when things were strained. Change the setting, shorten the sentences, forgive what could not be fixed at home.

The island delivered what summer always promises. Light sharp enough to bleach colour from thought. Children loose on bicycles. Sand that accepted footprints without keeping them. Eskys lined in the shade like practical furniture.

The drinking began early and without comment. Holiday rules applied. Wine poured into plastic cups, topped up rather than finished. I told myself this was different drinking — daytime, social, earned. Alcohol recast as scenery.

By mid-day I noticed myself watching the Esky instead of the water. Counting openings. Measuring time not by the sun,but by replenishment. Her laughter arrived before the joke and lingered after it ended. Certainty crept into her voice — not loud, but unarguable.

She swam out further than the others, turning occasionally to wave, an assurance that required watching. I followed therise and fall of her head among the small chop and thought of dolphins — how they surface not to warn, not to perform, but because breathing eventually insists. Each appearance brief. Each disappearance longer.

Nothing dramatic happened. No scene anyone would recount later. That was the point. Summer had removed the frictionof routine and what remained did not soften. It clarified.

By afternoon I was no longer participating in the day. I was managing it. Positioning children. Redirecting conversations. Explaining things before anyone asked. She moved through it all with a fluency I had mistaken, for years, as confidence.I see now it was armour — well fitted, well tested — worn by someone who expected resistance and had prepared for it.

Alcohol did not change her. It revealed the stance she had already taken.

The moment I left did not arrive as drama. It arrived as clarity. I came home one day to a familiar set of signs — the gait, the eyes, the voice — and then noticed silence where there should not have been silence. A child in water. A body moving without thought. I do not remember deciding. I remember acting. The July chilled cold water was a shockhelping me to clarity.

What followed was loud, chaotic, and witnessed by people who did not know us. By the time it was over, the story no longer belonged to me to tell. I took the children and left because I could not see a version of the future in which they were safe and everyone was still together.

Distance removed my influence, not my responsibility. News arrived piecemeal. Decline reported by others.Consequences unfolding without me present to interrupt or explain them away. When the end came, it did not feel sudden. It felt completed.

The children lost their mother while they were still learning what mothers were for.

I once believed love could be persuasive. That patience might blunt an edge already sharpened. That accommodation was kindness.

These were my justifications, not hers.

She did not need to raise the sword. She had learned how to wear it.

I did not know she had died until almost a year later. There was no call to make, no decision to weigh. By the time I found out, everything had already been concluded.

She had been buried in a pauper’s grave.

There was no service I attended, no marker I could stand beside. No record, beyond paperwork, that a woman who hadonce been loved, argued with, planned around, and feared for had existed at all.

Alcohol had not taken her suddenly. It had simply outlasted everything else.