“Bloody hell, you gotta do it faster than that, Chook.”
Sean reached out, took me by the hands and pulled me along the concrete.
“Sean, don’t!” I screamed.
He abruptly stopped me before breaking into a wicked smile. Then, he dragged me along some more in the opposite direction, his height and strength the only things preventing me from falling as he flung me around on my blades.
I screamed in terror, begging for him to stop as I barely missed knocking my shin against a giant terracotta pot plant. I just knew I was going to break a leg if he didn’t let go. All the boys watched on, laughing, as Sean finally slowed to a stop, grabbing my shoulders to steady me. I grabbed onto a verandah pole, my voice hoarse from screaming, my heart pounding out of my chest.
“Now that’s how you do it!” Sean laughed before following the others in the front door.
“You’re such a bloody child!” I yelled after him. He winked and disappeared through the bar door. It was a place I wasn’t allowed to go, so I glared at their backs furiously as their laughter was engulfed by the closing door swinging shut behind them.
I had never really had much to do with Chris’s friends when I was younger, except when they used to come and taunt me at the pub. When I started waitressing at sixteen, however, I saw them a bunch more.
I tried to convince Tammy to waitress as well, as it would be her best chance to talk to Sean, but she was way too shy. So instead, Tammy lived vicariously through me, asking after every single shift if I had run into him, or seen him at the hotel. She begged me to tell her everything. Waitressing also gave me privy information as to where ‘the Onslow Boys’ would be. I wasn’t sure why they were nicknamed that (I mean, there were other boys in Onslow), but it was something most girls called them so I figured I may as well, too.
“They’re heading to MacLean’s Beach after lock-in tonight.” I said with a sigh into the phone. It seemed like all Tammy and I ever talked about was where Sean was and what he was doing. Just for once, I wanted to have a conversation about something else.
“Oh. My. God!” Tammy said, squealing. “Amy, we have to go.”
I rolled my eyes. I was no stranger to sneaking out. I’d done so only last week to go down to a party by the lake when Dad said I couldn’t go, but the last thing I felt like doing was stalking the Onslow Boys. It sounded boring.
“I don’t know; they usually don’t finish up from the lock-in until after one in the morning.”
“Oh please, Amy, you have to come with me. I’m going to talk to him tonight. I’ll do it. I swear I will.”
I wanted to bang my head against the receiver and come down with some mysterious twenty-four-hour bug that rendered me housebound. But, like I did every other time, I caved.
“Okay, but you better do it!” I told her.
I would sneak out, sure, but if there was one boundary I would never dare cross, it was stealing booze from my dad’s pub. I knew Chris kept an up-to-date inventory down to the very last drop and messing with the stash wouldn’t be worth my life.
So that was Tammy’s area: I would agree to come and she would supply the booze. She’d raid her mum and dad’s stockpile from their garage, like she always did. Apparently, they never suspected a thing.
Come one-thirty a.m., after changing and waiting impatiently for the sound of the front bar room door to slam, I legged it for the back staircase. Tiptoeing carefully downwards, I winced at the sound of a creaking step underfoot. I froze, hoping not to be heard. But it was okay – Dad was long asleep; if George Michael wailing from the jukebox failed to stir his slumber, then nothing would. As meticulously planned via in-depth phone conversations, I met up with Tammy a little way off from MacLean’s. Giggling, we propped ourselves on top of a sand dune overlooking the sparkly, dark stretch of Lake Onslow.
“Wait here,” Tammy whispered. I’m not sure why she was speaking so quietly since we were on our own.
Tammy disappeared behind a bush and I heard the rustling of a plastic bag. Under the white glow of the full moon, she returned with something in her hand.
“Ta da!” Tammy produced a cask of peach wine and two plastic cups.
“Classy!” I mused.
“I call it Dutch courage,” Tammy said.
She squeezed on the tab, trickling a clear, fruity wine into her cup, then mine. We pressed them together in a mock clink, giggling “Cheers!”
“Here’s to me talking to Sean Murphy tonight,” Tammy said. She took a deep breath and skulled her wine.
I just shook my head and followed suit.
***
After a cask of wine and a shared six-pack of smuggled VB cans from her dad’s stash, we were feeling good and zigzagging our way towards MacLean’s Beach. Falling in the soft sand, we laughed hysterically over how uncoordinated we were. How we stumbled to the actual clearing of MacLean’s, I will never know, but we did. Then, we attempted to be suave and sophisticated and walk as straight as possible through the crowd, give or take losing it in hysterics every now and then. I made a mental note to avoid my cousin, Chris, but luckily through my blurry vision I couldn’t spot him.