“Hey.”

I looked up from my laptop and the essay I was halfway through writing as my final assignment for that semester’s history class. November had brought with it the last four weeks of classes for the year, and I had just two assignments left to finish and hand in – an essay about the history and social impact of creativity, and a document using a typeface based on my own handwriting for typography class. I couldn’t help but feel like the typography assignment was a massive waste of time on my part – my handwriting was barely legible on a good day, so forcing my teacher to read something written entirely in it seemed like a terrible idea.

“Hey Lis,” I said when I saw who had interrupted me. Lisbeth had somehow managed to sneak up on me, and was leaning with her arms crossed on top of the study carrel I’d been sitting at for most of the day. She gave me a smile.

“I thought you only had class on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” she said, sounding almost nonchalant. “It’s Wednesday so what gives?”

“I’ve got assignments I need to finish, and there’s too many distractions at home,” I replied as I stretched a little. “Hey, is Ruby here today? I was thinking I could give her a lift home if she needed one.”

Lisbeth shook her head. “She’s sick again. Texted me this morning to let me know she wasn’t going to be coming to class. She’ll probably be back next week.” Here she eyed me, and for a split second I felt like I was an insect beneath a magnifying glass. “Exactly how long have you been sitting here?”

“Uh…” I glanced down at my watch, and started a little when I saw that it was just after three o’clock. I’d been so engrossed in writing my essay that I had completely lost track of time. “About six hours,” I admitted.

“Have you had lunch?”

“You sound like my mum.”

“Your mum lives three hours away. Someone has to.”

I let out a quiet sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

“No, you know I’m right.” Lisbeth reached over and poked my forehead. “Come on, up you get. We’re getting afternoon tea – my shout.”

Instead of walking over to the university, or even to the campus canteen, the two of us ended up at the San Churro Chocolateria in Globe Lane, just off Crown Street Mall. “Are you sure you don’t mind paying for both of us?” I’d asked as we walked up the steep laneway from Burelli Street, the two of us having caught the Gong Shuttle into town.

“We’re friends, Taylor – of course I don’t mind,” Lisbeth had assured me. “But keep it within reason, yeah? Don’t go buying out the whole shop or anything.”

It didn’t take either of us long to decide what we were going to order – Lisbeth’s hazelnut hot chocolate, my coffee, and a plate of churros with chocolate fondue and fruit to share – and for Lisbeth to pay. As soon as we had our drinks and churros we headed out to the patio area out the front of the café. I winced involuntarily when the somewhat spindly chair creaked beneath me as I sat down at the table we had chosen.

“So what were you working on all day?” Lisbeth asked. I waited until I’d taken a bite of churro before answering.

“History essay,” I replied. “It’s not due until the end of the semester but I want to get it out of the way as soon as possible. Other final assessment I have is going to take me weeks to get done.”

“I know the feeling.” Lisbeth pulled a face. “I have so much that needs to be finished before I finish my Diploma. Like I have to review a library’s collection development policy – that’s going to take me ages. I have no idea what library I’m going to look at, for starters.”

“You’ll figure it out.”

I earned a smile for my comment. “Hopefully it won’t take me too long. I kind of want to graduate on time.”

“What are you going to do after TAFE?” I asked.

“Uni, if they let me in. I applied to the University of Technology Sydney and Charles Sturt University – I’d be happy with either one, but I’m sort of leaning more toward Charles Sturt. It’s geared more toward actual librarianship. UTS is more of a communication degree than anything else.” She took a sip from her mug. “What about you? Aside from the band, I mean.”

“Honestly? I haven’t really thought about it. Still got another year left until I’m done so I figured I didn’t have to worry about it yet.” I picked up my own mug and stared into it. “Graphic design, maybe. But it’ll depend on what we end up doing after the current touring cycle ends. We might go straight into working on a new album, or we might end up taking a break. I don’t know just yet. I’ll have to talk it over with my brothers. I got into a lot of trouble the last time I went ahead and did something without talking to them about it, and I’d really rather not get my head bitten off again.”

“I think I can understand why they’d be pissed off at you.” Lisbeth picked up one of the wooden skewers that had come with our plate of churros and fruit, speared a slice of banana, and dipped it in one of the fondue pots. “They’re not just your brothers – they’re your workmates too. Anything that one of you does has the potential to affect all three of you.”

“Yep. Pretty much. I won’t make that mistake again in a hurry.”

We were both quiet for a little while after this. I had been watching a little girl playing hopscotch on a court that someone had drawn on the ground in chalk when a somewhat unwelcome thought drifted into my head.

“Lisbeth, do you know if Ruby’s watched Strong Enough To Break yet?”

“Pretty sure she hasn’t.”

I let out a sigh. “I was afraid you were going to say that.”

“Hey.” I felt Lisbeth put a hand on my arm, and I looked over at her. “I can watch it with her. I’ve been meaning to anyway. I don’t want you to put yourself through it if you don’t think you can handle it.”

“It’s not that I can’t handle it. It’s just…” I trailed off, and for a lack of anything else to do I picked up a churro and bit into it.

“It’s hard to watch,” Lisbeth finished. “You already went through it once, and watching it is kind of like you’re going through it all over again.”

“Yeah. That’s exactly what it’s like.” I gave Lisbeth a small half-smile. “Thanks though, Lis. You’re a good friend.”

Lisbeth returned my smile. “No worries, Tay.”

That weekend, I took a break from working on assignments and drove over to Ruby’s place. Rather than drive to her caravan, I left my car in the carpark and walked along Seaview Drive. It was quieter than I expected for a Saturday, with the only sounds I could hear as I walked coming from televisions in the caravans I walked past, waves breaking on the nearby beach, and trains rattling along the railway line. Not for the first time, I understood why Ruby lived here.

Ruby greeted me with a bright smile when she opened her front door. “Hey you,” she said, before peering down at the padded envelope I was carrying. “What’s that?”

“Lisbeth said you hadn’t seen Strong Enough To Break yet,” I replied, and I held the envelope up. Zac had sent it express post on Thursday, and it had arrived the afternoon before. “Thought you might like to watch it with me.”

Ruby frowned a little. “Are you sure you don’t mind? I don’t mind watching with Lis instead.”

“I don’t mind. And to be honest, aside from my brothers you’re the only one I would ever want to watch it with. Mostly because, well…you kind of understand better than most what it was like for me.”

Ruby went bright pink at this. “Lis said the same thing about you when she was trying to talk me into telling you about all my bullshit,” she said, before giving me another smile. “C’mon in. I’ll see if I can dig up some munchies.”

I had just settled myself on the lounge with the remotes for the TV and the DVD player in hand, the DVD I’d brought with me sitting on the player’s open tray, when Ruby emerged from the caravan carrying a large plastic bowl and an unopened bag of chicken Twisties that was almost as big as her head. “Found ‘em,” she said as she set them down next to me, sounding almost triumphant.

“You don’t happen to have any alcohol in there anywhere, do you?” I asked as I opened the Twisties and emptied them into the bowl.

“I thought you didn’t drink.”

“I don’t. But I feel like I might need it for this.”

“It’s that bad, is it?” Ruby asked as she sat down next to me.

“Well, for me it is. You might feel differently.”

“I guess there’s only one way to find out,” she said, and I handed her the DVD player remote. “Ready?”

I nodded, and almost instinctively braced myself. “Ready.”

Somehow, I managed to make it through the first half hour of the documentary. Not long after she had hit play Ruby had slipped her left hand into my right, and had spent that whole time tracing slow circles on the back of my hand with her thumb. It kept me grounded and made the parts that I hadn’t been able to watch the only other time I had seen the documentary, nearly six years ago, a whole lot easier to handle.

I reached my limit after an hour. When the stretch of sand I recognised as Dudley Beach appeared on screen – the beach where I had fallen off my surfboard and almost drowned, just three weeks after I’d turned twenty-one – I yanked my hand away from Ruby’s and shot to my feet, and all but bolted for the door. I didn’t know or care where I was going – I just knew that I had to get out.

“Taylor, wait!” Ruby called after me, and I stopped trying to get the door open just long enough for Ruby to put her hands on mine. She squeezed them tightly. “Let’s get out of here, hey?” she suggested, and I nodded mutely.

I was so focused on making sure the panic I was feeling didn’t completely overwhelm me that I didn’t pay attention to where Ruby and I were going. When I finally came back to myself, the two of us were sitting on a park bench just outside the caravan park’s playground. Ruby had one hand on my back and was slowly tracing a line up and down my spine with her thumb. In the near distance I could hear waves crashing on the beach – a sound that on a normal day would be almost comforting, but right now it was just making my anxiety worse.

“Are you okay?” Ruby asked, and I shook my head. “Yeah, I know – that was a stupid question.” Her hand shifted from my back to my shoulder. “D’you want to talk about it?”

I didn’t say anything at first. Finally, almost at the moment that anyone other than Ruby would probably have prodded me to talk, I dropped my gaze to my feet and let out a sigh.

“I thought I could handle it,” I said. “Figured it was long ago enough now.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “I guess not.”

“Was that where it happened?” Ruby asked, her tone gentle.

I nodded, not even needing to ask her what she was talking about. “Yeah. I…I don’t even remember it happening – all I remember before I blacked out was this really sharp pain right here.” I pressed the palm of my left hand to the middle of my chest, over my heart. “Next thing I know, I’m lying on the sand coughing up shitloads of water and feeling like I’d just had the mother of all panic attacks.”

“Bloody hell.”

“Yeah.” I raked my hands back through my hair. “Psychologist I used to see before I moved down here was pretty sure I had post-traumatic stress disorder, both because of that and because I was sick for so long, but I didn’t fit all the criteria so she couldn’t officially diagnose me with it.”

Neither of us said much for a little while after this. Instead, Ruby shifted closer to me and put her head down on my shoulder, and I slipped an arm around her back.
“Thanks, Ruby,” I said at last, having decided I’d been quiet for long enough.

She looked up at me, frowning a little. “For what?”

“Just…being here. Putting up with all my bullshit.” I squeezed her shoulder. “Seeing me for who I am.”

“Oh.” She gave me a small, almost shy smile. “You’re welcome, Tay.”

---

The rest of November passed by in a blur of classes, finishing up assignments and prepping for the upcoming tour of New Zealand. Out of necessity the vast majority of our tour prep and rehearsal was taking place over email and Skype – entirely aside from TAFE still being in session, the sheer distance that separated Wollongong and Newcastle meant that valuable rehearsal time would be taken up by travel between the two cities. Once Ruby and I had both finished classes for the year, though, the plan was to relocate to Newcastle for the first weekend of our summer break from TAFE so that I could work out the last few details of the tour with Isaac and Zac that couldn’t be sorted out any other way.

I could very distantly hear music and voices as I stepped out of the lift into the upstairs corridor of A Block. I’d already finished classes for the year the afternoon before, so rather than spend the first day of my summer break making sure I had everything I needed for the New Zealand tour squared away, I’d instead decided to drive down to TAFE one last time. The music and voices got louder the further down the corridor I got, and I grinned. Whoever it was that had class today – and I was pretty sure I knew who it was – they sounded like they were having one hell of a party.

When I reached the open door of classroom A230, my suspicions as to who was having an end-of-year party were confirmed. A ball of scrunched-up notebook paper flew out into the little seating area across the corridor from the classroom, bouncing off one of the windows that surrounded it, and I took a few steps backwards just in time for someone – one of the students in that classroom, I figured – to dart out after it. I bent down and picked up the ball of paper before they had a chance to and handed it to them. “Oh, thanks,” they said as they took it from me.

“No worries,” I replied. “Do you know if Ruby McCormick is around at the moment?”

“Yeah, she’s here. I’ll grab her for you, hang on.”

It wasn’t long afterward that Ruby came out of the classroom, leaning mostly on her walking stick as she walked. I could see her eyes light up when she spotted me. “Taylor? Holy shit, what are you doing here?” she asked.

“Thought I’d take you out to lunch,” I replied as she hugged me. “Unless you have other plans?”

“All that lot were planning on heading out to Wiseman Park bowlo to celebrate being done with their diplomas,” she replied with a small shrug. “I don’t really want to go with them, though – I still have another year left of mine.”

“You’d feel left out,” I guessed, and Ruby nodded.

“Yeah, exactly. So I’m all yours. Just lemme…” She nodded back toward the classroom. “I’ll try to be quick.”

It didn’t take her long to gather her belongings, her classmates calling farewells as she left the classroom, and soon the two of us were heading back down the corridor toward the lift. “So what did you have in mind for lunch?” Ruby asked as the lift’s doors opened and we stepped inside.

“I was thinking we could head out to Belmore Basin,” I replied. “Get fish and chips or something from that Levendi place. Or we could do a quick Woolies run and have a bit of a picnic. What do you think?”

“Fish and chips,” Ruby replied immediately. “Though in my case I just want chips.”

“So how come you came to TAFE this morning instead of this arvo?” I asked as we left campus, heading toward where I’d parked my car. I hadn’t seen the point of paying to park in the student carpark, not when I was only going to be on campus for ten or fifteen minutes, so I had parked alongside the kerb at the Foleys Lane entrance.

Ruby stopped alongside the front passenger door and leaned against it, and crossed her arms on the roof of my car. She raised an eyebrow at me. “We’ve known each other for how long now? Nine, nearly ten months?”

“Something like that.”

“And in all that time, have you ever known me to turn down an excuse to party?”

“Yeah, okay. Point taken.”

She gave me a grin. “I should hope so.” And with those words she opened the door and slid into the front passenger seat, closing the door behind her. I followed her a few moments later, digging my keys out of my pocket as I went.

The drive into town was a short one. Almost before I realised it I was pulling up at the intersection of Harbour Street and Cliff Road, and I flicked on the right blinker so that I could start hunting for a parking spot as soon as the traffic light turned green. “Do you want me to drop you off?” I asked as I turned right into Cliff Road and saw that the parking spaces right in front of Belmore Basin were packed with cars. “I might have to park all the way up on the hill, that’s all, and I don’t want to make you walk too far.”

“Yeah, that might be a good idea,” Ruby replied. I glanced to my left just in time to see her poke at her right knee. “Just drop me off up there and I’ll meet you at the picnic tables, yeah?” she suggested, and she pointed out the windscreen at the closest turnoff.

“Yeah, no worries.”

I ended up having to drive all the way up to the carpark closest to the Flagstaff Point lighthouse just to find somewhere to park. Even though it was just after midday on a Friday the other carparks on Flagstaff Hill had all been full, somewhat to my surprise, and I somehow managed to nab the very last empty parking space right at the back of the carpark, one with a spectacular view of Wollongong Beach. It almost made me wish I’d thought to bring my surfboard with me.

Ruby was perched right on the edge of the picnic table outside the restaurant that was closest to the cycleway, her socks and sneakers sitting on the bench next to her bare feet, and she was intently focused on her phone. I hopped up on the table next to her and peered down at what she was looking at.

“I found the menu online,” she said without looking up from her phone, about half a second before she looked at me. “How far up the hill did you end up parking?”

“Next to the lighthouse,” I replied, and Ruby sucked in a shocked-sounding breath. “It’s not even school holidays and all the other carparks were fucking packed.” I nudged her with my elbow. “I won’t make you walk all that way when we’re finished here, though.”

She gave me a smile. “You really are the best boyfriend ever, did you know that?”

I returned her smile. “I do my best. Are you sure you just want chips for lunch?”

“Actually…” She squinted at her phone’s screen. “Can you get me a chicken troppo burger instead? But without lettuce or mayo? And an orange juice if they have any.”

“Yeah, of course I can.” I squeezed her shoulder before sliding down off the table. “Be back soon.”

Somewhat to my relief the restaurant wasn’t as busy as the filled carparks had led me to believe, and so it didn’t take me long to order lunch for Ruby and I. I hung back near the doors to wait for lunch, humming quietly to myself as I scrolled through my inboxes. We were due to fly out to Auckland on Tuesday morning, so the vast majority of my recent work emails and text messages had something to do with the upcoming tour. Even though I was looking forward to going back across the Ditch, I was looking forward to my summer break a whole lot more. Not that I would actually admit that to anyone.

Ruby had moved while I’d been inside the café, I discovered as I came back to our table carrying our lunch. She was now sitting on the bench that her feet had been propped on, still barefoot and engrossed in whatever it was she was looking at on her phone. I touched her on the shoulder to get her attention. “Lunch time,” I said once she had looked up at me, and set her lunch and a bottle of orange juice down in front of her.

“Oh, awesome,” she said, sounding almost relieved. “I’m fucking starving.” She cracked open the cardboard box that held her burger. “Lollies and chips don’t really fill much of a hole,” she added, almost as if she knew what I was thinking, right before she picked her burger up and bit into it. “What did you get?”

“Bacon and cheese burger,” I replied. “But without jalapeños. I hate chillies.” I tapped the third box that I’d brought out with me. “And I got us some hot chips too.”

We were both quiet as we ate our lunch, the sounds of Belmore Basin on a Friday at lunchtime drifting around us – seagulls squawking, waves breaking on the shore of the Basin, cars and buses driving along Cliff Road, and tree branches rustling in the breeze. It was one of the many things I liked about spending time with Ruby – if it was one of my brothers or sisters I was having lunch with, the odds that one of us would have said something just to fill the silence were pretty high, but I knew Ruby appreciated the quiet as much as I did.

“So what happens now?” Ruby asked when she had finished her burger. “With the tour I mean. It’s starting pretty soon.”

“Well, for starters, there’s that tour meeting tomorrow. Plus one last pre-tour rehearsal on Sunday. Still a lot of things we couldn’t sort out over Skype.” I picked up a hot chip out of its box and popped it into my mouth. “Do you want me to pick you up tomorrow morning before I head up to Newy?”

“You don’t mind?”

“‘Course I don’t mind. If it makes it easier for you then why would I mind?” I nudged Ruby with my elbow. “Are you sure you don’t mind that I’ll probably be busy all weekend?”

“Totally don’t mind. I’ll probably just go shopping or something. There’s bound to be something I’ll have forgotten to pack.”

“Okay. Just making sure.” I uncapped my bottle of water and skolled about half of it. “And then on Monday we’re going to Sydney. That way there isn’t a mad rush on Tuesday morning to get to the airport on time.”

“I fucking hate international flights,” Ruby grumbled. “I’m sleeping the whole way to Auckland, you just watch me.”

I managed to hold back a laugh. “Yeah, I don’t like them much either. But unless you want to hop on a cruise ship and have the trip take half a week at the very least, we don’t really have any other choice.”

“Yeah, I think I’ll pass on that.”

This time I let out a quiet chuckle. “I thought you might. You’re looking forward to tour, though?”

She nodded. “Yeah. It’ll be nice to spend longer than a few days there. I didn’t get to explore nearly as much as I wanted to last time.”

“Well, we’ll have three whole days off between the Christchurch and Wellington shows – I reckon we can fit in a bit of exploring during our break.” I glanced at Ruby. “Could even make a road trip out of it.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Just you and me, a campervan, and the open road. How’s that sound?”

“That sounds perfect.” She shifted a little closer to me and propped her chin up on my shoulder, and I slipped an arm around her. “Absolutely perfect.”

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