Jess Lobb, of Bar Beach, is a finalist in the Newcastle Herald Short Story Competition 2023 with this entry, Worth Heaps in Scrabble.
I walked home from school with a squashed banana in my backpack and dread in my heart. The air was charged; the ocean played dead.
Beneath the smell of seaweed and sun-baked grass, I caught the scent of an earthy omen. Swimmers scuttled out of the water at Newcastle Beach like the shark alarm had sounded.
I hurried up the hill, trying not to look at the Obelisk. It was a white fang gleaming against the darkening sky.
Mum was hosting parent-teacher interviews all afternoon, so the house was empty. I was fine with the nine times table and other spooky things, but I'd never handled a storm alone. I found no comfort in my daily ritual of eating fish fingers in front of Round the Twist.
I could hear the gale picking up, the windows rattling in their frames. It sounded like skeletons dancing out of sight. The Hills Hoist creaked; the tin roof thrummed. Night had fallen on our poky terrace at 3 p.m. I switched on the lamps.
Blinky had been hit by a car a few months ago. In bad weather I used to make him a bed of towels in a washing basket inside. Without a beagle to be brave for, I tried to distract myself with my spelling homework.
'Ginormous'. 'Malevolent'. 'Penguin'.
Out the kitchen window, the approaching cloud looked like a ginormous, malevolent penguin.
I was next door before I realised what I was doing, following the path my light-up joggers forged ages ago.
Thea was six years older than me but had always been a gracious playmate. She taught me how to catch spiders with a glass and a sheet of paper so you could set them free outside; I'd only ever seen people squash them. She got busy with teenage life and trigonometry and I hadn't seen her forever.
I felt babyish, but I needed company.
I banged on her family's flyscreen. She came to the door bewildered; her face softened when she saw me trembling and ashamed.
"I ..."
"I know," she said. "You're dying to play Scrabble. Come in."
I followed her down the hall along a Persian rug, passing Picasso prints. Her place had always been nicer than mine.
It still smelled like lemongrass soap and throw blankets. Her family ate sausages with knives and forks. We entered her room, books strewn across the floor like booby traps.
Thea was comfortably tall. She wore an old watch with a thin leather band, her long hands inked with reminders: 'tomorrow', 'Nina Simone', 'socks'.
There were three moles in a diagonal line down from her lip, like full stops falling off a page. She was on a scholarship at the posh school for playing trumpet, but she preferred banging the drums in her back shed.
Did she still choose to play as Luigi on Mario Kart? Could she still sense everything I was feeling?
"Pretty big one, right?" she said, thunder punctuating her sentence.
"My earliest memory is from the Pasha Bulker storm. The underground Coles carpark flooded and you could only see the rooves of cars, like the backs of whales."
I pictured brown water filling her room until we were clinging to the pendant light. I momentarily panicked, and she motioned for me to sit on the floor with her as she laid out the Scrabble board.
"My second earliest memory is you eating sand as a baby. At one point you were banned from every beach in the Southern Hemisphere for eating all the sand."
I started to grin and saw it mirrored on her face.
"I'm glad you came over. Is your Mum out?"
"Yeah. Where are your parents?"
"Er ... also out."
Her presence was lavender oil. I felt myself calming down, even as tree branches clobbered weatherboard and rain fell in sheets. I studied the olive green walls of her bedroom, recognising the giant poster of the solar system.
"You're eleven now, right?" she asked, sifting through a handful of plastic letter squares.
I nodded, rather proudly.
"Old as the hills!"
"And you, you'd be ..."
"I actually just graduated Year 12 today," she said, shaking her head like she was dazed.
"Have you got parties on and stuff? For graduation?"
"Ah, not really. Everyone's pretty busy," Thea said.
I guessed she was shyer with people her own age.
"Look, Freddie! Your name's worth heaps."
She arranged the small yellow letters for me to see. 'Frederica', 15 points.
"What are you gonna do with your freedom?"
Thea frowned as she thought, propping her chin on her interlaced fingers like a Russian chess player.
"I want to go to Iceland."
"What's in Iceland?"
"Not much ice, apparently."
"What else?" I smiled.
"I'd also like to become a sea turtle, so I could follow the earth's magnetic field and never get lost."
"That's a good idea. Can turtles eat pizza? Are you celebrating tonight when your parents get back?"
"Well, no. They're in Queensland on a research expedition. They're studying cane toads."
"But - it's your graduation."
"They wrote me a card," she shrugged. I had a feeling I was Thea's Blinky and she was making me a bed in a washing basket.
A lightning strike made us jump.
"I love the reckless enthusiasm of snails after rain," she said.
"The slimy concrete feels so good they don't care about getting crushed."
"When the rain stops and the snails go to town, wanna come and have fish fingers? Mum will be home later. She'd love to see you."
Thea seemed to glow, like the quiet blue flame on a stove.
