Chapter Seventeen

15.2.26

April 2003

We travel on the greyhound bus through the hot, stark north.

We act like last night didn't happen. My face feels misshapen from crying and there is an emptiness running through me.

I shouldn't have believed Steve when he said 'April Fool.' I stare out at the endless landscape. I didn't believe him. I just wanted to. Now maybe I don't but it's too late to change my mind.

The film 8 Mile plays on a TV screen at the front of the bus. Steve slips his hand up my top and whispers about my green and yellow purple hills.

'Green and yellow and purple?' I say.

He runs his fingers over the flower and leaf pattern on my top. 'Green and yellow,' he says.

'Purple?'

He pulls my top forward so he's looking down it. 'In there,' he says.

'They're not purple.'

'I could make them purple.'

I think that sounds painful.

We play hangman to pass the time.

Somewhere we stay along the way we go to an art exhibition where Monet's haystack painting is being displayed. Steve walks in front of it, staring at it as if he wants to take in every last detail.

I feel bad that I am unmoved by it.

At a stop somewhere in the middle of nowhere an aboriginal family board the bus.

The bus driver shouts at a little girl for not wearing shoes.

'Would you speak to a white girl like that?' Her mother's voice is sharp.

'It's not about that. It's about her not wearing shoes,' says the driver.

But I wonder.

The girl's mother tells an older girl, maybe her other daughter, who is not coming on the bus to take her shoes off and give them to the little girl.

The older girl rolls her eyes and laughs as if in disbelief but she still takes her shoes off.

The little girl walks up the bus aisle, her feet slipping in the too big shoes.

We arrive in Derby, a small town that seems as lonely as I suddenly feel with Steve.

The hostel has single sex dorms, so Steve has a room to himself and I share with two German girls who came on the same bus as us. I think we are the only people there.

We sleep. When I wake I walk into the courtyard that all the rooms surround. I think Steve must still be asleep. Or he needs some time on his own without me. That must be it. I need to give him space. I walk out of the hostel. This place feels so empty, empty, empty.

When I get back Steve is sitting in the courtyard.

'Where did you go?' he says.

'Nowhere. Just walking.'

'You should have come and got me.'

I can't get anything right.

There is a scream from the kitchen. We run to see what's happening. The German girls point at a giant lizard that is scurrying behind the cupboards.

'Don't worry, it's harmless,' says Steve.

I wonder how he knows.

The German girls ask if we want to share a taxi to see the prison tree.

'Might as well,' says Steve, 'there's nothing else to do here.'

The prison tree is a hollow boab tree that according to some stories was used to keep aboriginal prisoners in. It's huge and round with a narrow opening.

'Maybe I could leave you behind in there,' says Steve.

I'm not even sure if he's joking.