Seven

• Aurora Carli , Grade 10, Penleigh and Essendon Grammar School
• Short Story
• 2018

Finalist in the 'Time To Write 2018/2019' competition

It was summer, and we were bored. All bored, all the time, and the worst part of it was we weren’t supposed to be: summer was supposed to be exciting; school was out and it was hot enough to go swimming and we could go anywhere we wanted – but none of it was exciting; not one bit. Waves of heat pummelled over us in crisp rolls of 40 degrees, all the swamps whose banks we waded through had grass higher than our knees and seemed to hiss with reptilian malevolence, cicadas rung in our ears until their trill cries became all we heard and our skin sizzled behind our necks before it was even midday.
I remember it so distinctly: the packet of Bounty’s I bought at the general store that morning for thirty cents, wearing the sneakers with the mud stain that I couldn’t get out, bantering with Rebecca and Steven beneath the shop awning: all perfectly normal things, all things you would expect on a day like this, in a town like this, in a time like this. The vending machine was thrumming with its electric current and there was sweat dripping all down my neck, the air inside the shop was so unbearably hot I could feel myself wilting. Let’s go, I’d said once I’d emerged from the shop. I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to.
We traversed the banks up to the river that clung to the sparse fields at the towns’ edge: it was a modest spot; quiet, didn’t attract too much attention from passers-by who were normally dead-set on the highway out of town and didn’t much care for the stops in between, and whatever people it did attract were quickly deterred by the bank’s steep incline and its slanderous, snake-harbouring grass. We always made the trek directly up: most times the grass was unkempt and the soil was dry and cracked and ridden with anthills, but it wasn’t too far from the road and if you got the angle right you’d make the ascent in less than ten minutes, and from there it was just a matter of descending the hill and crossing over to the bank. We all went down together: the twins first, then me, then the rest of them trailing behind, like always. The twins were fearless as usual; ambling down the bank so fast their heels scudded the dirt. I was a bit more cautious, trailing behind a little, watching my step, looking for any roots or knolls beneath the grass that I could snag my feet on. I was distantly aware of the others following behind me, their echoing laughs, the sound of their shoe soles scrabbling across dry earth. There were seven of us, I counted: seven of us every time.
We reached the base of the bank breathless and sweat-stained and hot with adrenaline.
When I counted us again, there were only six.