‘Hey, Kevin!’ Brian called, and the group stopped and turned around. Kevin clocked me and I noticed a slight shake of his head.
Leanne gave me a wave. ‘Hi, Sunny. We thought you weren’t coming today,’ she said as I pushed through some small trees to get to them.
‘I never said that.’ I looked right at Kevin.
‘Oh.’ She glanced at him. ‘Okay, well, I’ll go on ahead with Brian.’
‘Why did you leave me behind?’ I said to Kevin when she was out of earshot.
‘You made it pretty clear you didn’t want to be on the search yesterday.’
The silence was suddenly broken by the screeching of cicadas. A wall of noise enveloped us. ‘You didn’t even ask me this morning,’ I said. ‘You didn’t talk to me last night.’
‘I had work to do. Anyway you were so …’
I shook my head. ‘So, what?’
‘I don’t know.’ He took off his hat and combed his fingers through his hair. ‘I never really know with you.’
‘Can we just get on with finding Dylan then?’ I tried to push past him to catch up with the others but he was blocking the only way between the boulders.
‘Sunny, how can I help you if you don’t give me a chance?’ He placed his hand on my shoulder again. I stiffened and pulled away.
‘I don’t need your help, alright?’
‘Can’t you just …’
‘Can’t I just what? Forget everything you’ve done? Start loving life again? What?’
‘I don’t expect you to do that.’
‘You know what. This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have bothered.’ I turned to go back the way I’d come.
‘Now where are you going?’
I stopped and looked back at him, venom on my lips. ‘Don’t you get it? I don’t like being around you.’
‘Then why are you here?’
‘For Dylan. Not for you.’
‘What is it with you? I don’t understand why you’re so angry.’
‘You don’t even get it, do you? You don’t understand a single bloody thing about me. How can you call yourself my stepfather? It’s a joke.’ I saw the moment my words made contact. Their impact froze his face. Disgusted in myself and in him and the world, I turned and climbed back over the rocks.
‘Wait! Come back!’
I ignored him, slapping away leaves and tripping over fallen branches. I could hear Kevin crashing behind me. ‘Sunny, for God’s sake, wait!’
I ran along the creek edge and vaulted fallen trees and rocks until I had one more boulder to climb over before I was back near the warning sign. I clambered to the top, stopping to catch my breath. Turning back, I noted that Kevin was no longer behind me. I glanced across the swirling green depths of the waterhole, feeling my anger threatening to turn to tears.
That was when I saw her. Really saw her. My mother. Across the water, on the rocky bank. She stood there, in a white muslin wedding dress, hair flowing down her shoulders, gazing across, staring right at me, her hand reaching out.
I lurched backward, felt nothing but air beneath my feet.
I woke up with a tight throbbing on the right side of my head. A woman leant over me. ‘Hello there, Sunny,’ she said. ‘It’s okay. You’re in an ambulance.’
I could feel the movement of the vehicle and the rumble of the road beneath us. ‘What happened?’
‘You had an accident and hit your head. But you’re going to be fine. Just a bit of concussion probably, but we’ll check you out at the hospital.’
My brain drew a blank. ‘What happened?’ Wait. I’d already asked that.
‘From what they told me you slipped and fell and hit your head pretty hard.’
I could see the white of a bandage obscuring the vision in one of my eyes. ‘Where’s my mum?’
A flicker of something crossed the woman’s face. ‘Umm, your father is following the ambulance. We’ll take you to the hospital in Craigsville. Okay. Just relax. You’ll be fine.’
I closed my eyes for a minute, feeling the bumps and turns of the road under my back. Someone grabbed my hand and squeezed. It was going to be alright.
At the hospital they wheeled me into a room and drew the curtains. I was alone for a few minutes staring up at the ceiling. I felt safe in the cool whiteness. People were looking after me and my sore head. Had I really fallen off a boulder? Voices came from behind the curtains; I recognised Kevin’s drawl and the paramedic from the ambulance.
‘She was asking for her mother.’
Silence.
‘I didn’t know what to say to her. Will her mother be coming?’
‘Her mother … my wife passed away a few months ago.’ Kevin’s voice. Thick.
‘Oh, I’m so sorry. It must’ve been the concussion. People get disorientated.’
I remembered asking for Mum. Why had I done that?
Kevin appeared after a few minutes, frowning down at me. Leanne stood behind him, sliding her crucifix along its chain. I wondered for a second if my injury might be serious, but apart from a throbbing head, I felt fine. I wriggled my toes and fingers to make sure.
‘They reckon you’ll be alright,’ Kevin said. ‘How’s the head?’
‘It hurts,’ I said.
A doctor came in and Kevin was forced back to the wall, looking tall and dirty against the clinical whiteness of the room.
‘Hello, Sunny. Do you remember what happened?’ the doctor said, after shining a torch into both my eyes, flicking it back and forth so I saw black and white spots when I looked at him.
‘Um, I was in the rainforest, at the waterhole.’
‘Do you remember hurting yourself?’
‘No.’
The last thing I remembered was the fight and trying to get away from Kevin, climbing the boulder, looking out across the water.
The doctor turned to Kevin. ‘It’s just a bit of concussion. We’ll keep her in for a few hours and she can probably go home later today.’
Kevin nodded.
The doctor filled out the chart hooked onto the end of my bed and then left, leaving Kevin, Leanne and
