Girl Running, Boy Falling by Kate Gordon

Author:Kate Gordon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: teens;romance;contemporary;suicide;issues;finding their way;coming-of-age;young adult;fiction
Publisher: Rhiza Edge
Published: 2018-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Three

Except, I keep remembering him.

I’ll be doing ordinary things, like cooking dinner or reading my lines, and a memory will hit me like a speeding car.

We are at Jointley’s, drawing cartoon footballers on serviettes, making them kick Jaffas through plastic straw goals.

We are on the oval at school, staring at clouds, looking for shapes.

We are ... us.

One summer, between Grades Seven and Eight—a few weeks before school and football and everything that gave our lives their edges—we were all at the beach. We were carefree and wild, itching for our lives to begin again.

Melody and Roz took off their boardies and tee shirts as soon as we arrived and ran into the waves. Peter pretended he was checking his phone, while twisting his arms into muscle shapes to impress the private school girls in their Tigerlily bikinis.

Wally and I sat on the dunes. Just us. I was intending to swim until I saw that Wally wasn’t going in. He hadn’t even brought bathers with him—he was still in his jeans.

‘Not up for a dip?’ I asked him.

He shook his head. ‘Got a big graze in the final, remember? When Pedda got me with his boot. Swear he did it on purpose, the bastard.’

‘He wouldn’t do that,’ I said, even though I wouldn’t put anything past Pedda. He was kind of a bastard. ‘He’s on your side.’

‘Pedda’s only on one side and that’s his own,’ said Wally, rolling his eyes. ‘Anyway, I gave into temptation last night, and picked some of the scab off. Now it’s all raw again and I don’t think salt water would be too much fun.’

‘Wuss.’

‘Yeah, you’re probably right. What’s your excuse?’

I shrugged. ‘Rather talk to you.’

Wally grinned. ‘Let’s talk. Let’s talk about why whales beach themselves or refugees or the US election or—’

‘All the fun stuff,’ I said, laughing.

‘All the big stuff,’ he corrected me. ‘Sometimes, I just need to talk about the big stuff. Otherwise, it gets stuck in my head and I can’t get it out.’

‘All right,’ I said, feeling a little thrill. Wally wanted to talk to me about the important things. The others got football and rock music and school. I got the things that mattered.

He looked down at the sand, drew an infinity symbol with his finger. ‘Would you believe I write poems?’ he said, quietly. Before I could answer, he hurried on. ‘They started off as letters, but they’re poems, really.’ He shoved his finger deep in the dirt. ‘Don’t tell anyone.’

He wrote poems. He was funny and smart and an amazing footballer and he had those eyes and he cared about stuff and he wrote poems.

‘I—’

Wally patted his belly. ‘I’m a starvin’ Marvin, Champ. Can we go get some Samboys or something?’

‘I’d kill for a Frosty Fruit,’ I admitted. ‘I’m so hot. But—’

I wanted to talk more about whales and Wally’s poems.

I wanted to stay right there with Wally, in this little bubble of us forever.

But Wally stood up and extended his hand. It was rough and hard. A footballer’s hand.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.