The Quiet and the Loud by Helena Fox

Author:Helena Fox [Fox, Helena]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2023-03-28T00:00:00+00:00

Calliope touches my arm. “Hey, George,” she says.

“Hey,” I say, suddenly stuck.

“You okay?”

“Yes, yeah,” I say, trying to come back to her.

“Sorry. I’ve been talking so much. You should tell me to just stop and breathe.”

“No, it’s fine. Really. It’s just—” I want to explain. I can’t. I reach across and take her hand. “It’s fine. I really like listening to you, especially in that hot British accent.”

Calliope smiles. “Thank you. Took me a while to get it just right.”

She bumps my shoulder again. We stop talking and we are still and silent and listening to everything else: the hush of waves on the shore, a rumble-crash just beyond. Wind in the tall trees behind us. The plop of a fish or a mermaid in the distance.

Calliope stands up in a rush. “Hey. Let’s go swimming!”

I look up at her. “Yeah?”

“Do you want to?” she asks, and I can see her biting her lip, and maybe she’s thinking I don’t want to be here, maybe she’s thinking I’m quiet because I don’t like her, or she thinks I’m boring? So I stand up and say, “Sure!” like someone who’s sure of things, just for a moment.

We pull off our clothes and jump into the sea. Not all our clothes. Not all the way into the sea. Enough to stand in thigh-high water and splash at each other. Enough for our skin to fizz, to shiver in our bras and undies and feel the slap of the waves on our bellies.

And I’m standing right beside Calliope and we’re looking at stars when a wave comes out of nowhere, pushes us backwards and under—and now we’re drowning, now we’re going to get eaten— and now we’re two bodies blinking, two bodies twisting—and is this the moment it all ends? Is this it?—and we push up and stand, spitting salt, wiping the ocean from our eyes.

And now Calliope is laughing, reaching for my hand, steadying me. “Not today, sea!” she yells—and we are alive, and I’m with Calliope and she’s shouting and unshakeable, fist in the air, fearless.

We run out of the surf. We tug on our clothes. We sit on the sand, squeeze the water out of our hair, shiver with the rush and thrill of it.

Calliope looks at me. “Terrible idea?”

“No, the best idea,” I say.

And then we sit and watch the water miss us, miss the shapes our bodies just made.

And I know logically we have only a short time before the last ferry leaves to go back to Circular Quay and we should go and catch it, but something steals time and slows it, or turns it to air, because now we are kissing again.

And I can’t quite think straight, can’t quite get the air in, can’t quite figure out if gravity is still on or someone switched it off. We can’t keep our hands off each other. It’s like in those movies where the couple can’t keep their hands off each other, except we’re the only ones who

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