Free Darkwater by Georgia Blain Page B

against the pounding of the rain.
    We had no choice but to squeeze past him, the legs of his jeans cold and wet as I pressed closer than I wanted, and then, just as I was almost out of his reach, he grasped my ankle, his hand clammy on my skin.
    I tried to squirm out of his grasp, scared I would overbalance and fall into the river below.
    â€˜Have a drink.’ He went to lift the bottle and knocked it over, the last of the alcohol running out across the rocks and into a pool before he could stop it. The bottle then rolled, bobbing up and down in the tide, as it floated away.
    I stepped backwards, wanting only to keep walking with the others to the cave, but I didn’t. I kept staring at him.
    â€˜What are you looking at?’ He was leering now, trying to stand, his balance wrong as he clutched onto a rock ledge and hauled himself up.
    I took another step backwards, the roar of the rain on the river too loud for the others to hear me if I screamed and there was a moment when I felt I should call out because he was frightening me, but then I also realised he was too drunk to focus any sort of harm on me.
    â€˜You should be careful,’ I told him, when I finally found the nerve to speak.
    He just stared at me.
    â€˜You’re drunk. You could fall and drown.’
    He leant against the rock, his eyes half-closed. ‘Like Amanda?’ And I couldn’t tell whether it was tears on his cheeks or just the slashing of the rain.
    He turned his back on me and began to pick his way slowly, precariously, along the rock ledge towards the grassy reserve below the path back up to our street. I almost followed to make sure he was safe, but I was scared and I knew that he would only push me away. So, instead, I stayed where I was, watching him, ready to run if he slipped and fell (although whether I would have had the strength to drag him out of the water is doubtful), until he had made his way off the rocks and away from the rush of the river.
    I was drenched. My jeans and T-shirt left a pool of water on the floor of the cave and I pressed back against the cool roughness of the sandstone wall as I tried to wring them out, my teeth chattering with the sudden cold.
    Cassie and Sonia were only a little drier, and the three of us huddled close. There was the remains of a fire, burnt ashes and clumps of charcoal, black and ready to crumble in your hand. In the corner was enough dry wood to light a small flame. The problem was matches.
    Cassie grinned. She had some in her pocket, along with a now sodden joint she had nicked from home. The paper disintegrated in her hand, the small amount of dope wet on her palm. I was glad it was going to be impossible to smoke. The last thing I felt like was another attempt at getting stoned. The matches, however, weren’t much better. The tip flaked away as she tried to strike it against the side of the box. I rubbed both dry and she tried again and again, until eventually there was a small sputter of flame, enough to catch the end of a twig.
    â€˜There’s no way she would have even looked at him,’ Sonia said, returning to the topic of Lyndon and Amanda.
    I coughed in the smoke and moved a little closer to the cave entrance. ‘You’re the one who always says he’s sexy.’
    â€˜He has a certain something,’ she conceded. ‘But you see him that pissed...’
    Outside the storm had stopped. The freshness of the southerly was pushing the clouds, clearing patches of blue in the sky, washed by a watery sunshine. The current was a petrol blue now, dark and oily, the tide slapping downriver with a newfound vigour after the lazy torpor of so many long, hot days.
    Standing out on the rock ledge, I looked to see whether Lyndon had left the reserve. There was no sign of him, the pale grass flattened by the downpour.
    â€˜I reckon it’s possible.’ Cassie wrung the ends of her hair. ‘There was something going on with her. Remember?’ She