Wyld Times, Episode 66 – unaired footage, Boat Cam, 2:15am
It's night aboard the Easy Catch; the boat bobs gently up and down on the dark waters. Michelle sits alone on the deck, staring out across the water. There are lights from a small, seaside town visible from the shore, glimmering like starlight against the rocky rise of mountains in the distance.
Michelle sits up suddenly, peering into the night. There's the faint sound of singing and the hum of an outboard motor. A small tin boat is veering back and forth across the calm waters, leaving a vivid white wake that catches the moonlight.
The singing gets louder as the boat thuds gracelessly into the side of the Easy Catch. Michelle moves swiftly, throwing a rope over the side, shushing the driver. "Bruce! You'll wake everyone up!"
Bruce's head appears as he clumsily climbs aboard. He's clearly intoxicated, singing a bastardised version of an old Australian folksong: "Once a jolly Wyldman, had some beer and then cocaine! Then ploughed two best friends in a hot tub! And he sang as he watched, both sheilas fighting over him-"
"Bruce, please." She gestures helplessly towards the bedrooms. "Kylie and Parker are sleeping. The crew will hear you. Please."
"Bloody hell, you're no fun," he says, his words sounding sticky and staccato. "You were never any fun. God, it was hard work getting you to marry me."
"I don't know why you bothered," she replies, hurt in every syllable. "I thought it was love, but that doesn't seem to be the case."
Bruce laughs, his bellows echoing across the water. "Are you serious? You have no idea why I wanted to marry you? Are you really that stupid?"
Michelle doesn't answer. Bruce scrunches up his face. "Oh, Jesus, you really are that stupid. Well, here I am, trying to find financial backers at this fancy fundraiser, then me mate tells me he just met the daughter of the bird in charge – the one with all the money! All it took was asking this chick if she wanted to see the python in my pocket, a few cocktails and a hard root, and she was ready to walk down the aisle with me! A pretty damn successful investment effort if you ask me..."
Michelle speaks softly. "You only wanted my money."
"Oh, come on now, sweet cheeks," says Bruce. "You were also a hot piece of ass. And free child care! Don't sell yourself short."
"I gave you everything. My heart, my body – my parents funded your park, this show – I have cared for your sister as if she's my own child!"
"And look at everything you got in return!" Bruce retorts. "You're famous! Not as famous as me, but still."
He begins to shed his clothing. A steamer wetsuit hangs on a line nearby and Bruce inelegantly plonks down on a bench and pulls it over his shins.
Michelle says, "If that's all you wanted from me, then we should get a divorce."
Bruce snorts. "God, I wish. But your parents made me sign that prenup, remember? If you'd just let me get away without signing it, we'd be right – we could go our separate ways. But if we break up now, I'll be left with nothing. So, sorry love – we're stuck together until I make enough money from the show – or one of us is dead."
He stands and struggles with his wetsuit zipper. Michelle seems dazed as she says, "What are you doing? You can't go diving now."
He snarls at her. "Don't tell me what to do. This is our season finale – we need something big and dangerous to go out on so we get a better renewal contract. You know what scored the best ratings with our test audiences this year? The octopus and the polar bear. Viewers want danger. They want to get wild – and I'm going to give it to them."
He straps on a body camera and his scuba gear while Michelle pleads with him. "Bruce, please – you're drunk, you're high, it's night, we haven't checked the gear, you can't go alone-"
"Well, maybe you'd better do your part for once and come with me." He shoves her out of the way, then turns to face the silently recording camera. "This is Bruce Wyld. We've been tracking a pod of orca all week in these West Australian waters, but we haven't been able to get close enough to really get a taste of their wild nature. I'm about to change that. I'm going for a night dive with me missus, Michelle, to see if we can sneak up on these buggers while they're resting." He spoils his near-perfect commentary by belching loudly at the end. "Let's go, Shell."
"Bruce, wait!"
It's too late. He sits facing backward on the side of the boat, gives Michelle a wink and the finger, then topples himself into the dark water. As he falls, he yells, "Let's get Wyld!" and then vanishes with a splash.
She screams, then frantically starts to pull on her own wetsuit while calling for help. "Parker! Wake up, please! Parker, help!"
Parker stumbles onto screen, his red hair sticking up in every direction. "What? What's going on?"
Michelle dons her scuba gear. "It's Bruce – he came back from town drunk, he's gone in alone! I have to go in after him!"
She runs for the edge, but Parker catches her around the waist. "Mish, if you go in alone, then we'll be looking for two people instead of one. Wait, please? We'll find him, I promise."
The footage becomes frantic, almost as if it's been sped up. Parker wakes the rest of the crew and jumps into his own gear. He and one crew member team up, Michelle goes out with another in the opposite direction. Those left on board shine the massive searchlight on the water, radios crackling and calling for help from shore.
Then, there's a long, eerie section of footage where very little happens. Silent water, silent crew.
A girl appears on screen, sleepy in her purple pyjamas. She asks someone what's going on. Her face falls, crumpling so fast, it looks like she's been punched.
She races to the side of the boat, her small fingers gripping the rail. She stands there for hours, calling for her brother over and over, her tears falling freely into the dark sea.
It's after dawn when Parker surfaces just beside the boat where Kylie is waiting. Bruce's body is in his arms, the big man broken and lifeless.
She tilts back her head and screams, and the audio on the footage cuts out as if the microphone was unable to process the sound of such raw, unedited grief.
The footage comes to an end, but I don't move. I don't think I can. A message from the video player appears over the top of the final frame, partially obscuring my younger self's face almost ripped in half by grief at the sight of my brother's dead body. Would you like to watch from the start?
I'd begun watching about halfway through. I'm now wondering if I should have watched this at all.
My phone has begun to ring beside me. Absently, I swipe it to answer. I think I might be in shock. It actually doesn't feel too bad at all; it's a kind of cushioned place where nothing more can hurt me because the worst has already happened. "Hello?"
"Kylie?"
"Oh, hi, Michelle," I say dreamily.
"Kylie, I'm here with Parker – where are you?"
I evade the question; I'm in the last place where my world felt whole and right, and I'm not ready to be around other people yet. "I've been watching a video."
"Oh, Kylie," says Michelle in dismay.
I'm not totally sure why she sounds so sad. After all, what I've just seen doesn't exactly paint her in the best light either. She could have dived in after Bruce and messed with his gear when no one was watching as revenge. I don't know that it didn't happen. I haven't watched the body cam footage yet.
So, I've learned that my brother had some problems. So, what? Everybody does. He was ambitious and driven and daring. No, he shouldn't have married Michelle just for her money, but he wasn't a bad guy. Was he?
I shake my head. The Bruce I keep in my head doesn't line up with this other Bruce – the liar, the cheater, the crazy risk taker. It has jarred the foundations of my reality, like finding out that what you thought was the bottom step wasn't actually the bottom step, and now you're just waiting to see how hard you hit the ground.
Slowly, I speak the words. "Bruce... My brother wasn't a good person."
"Kylie..." I can hear Michelle struggle to find the right words. "He was flawed, but he loved you."
Now I've allowed my subconscious to consider the possibility that Bruce wasn't a perfect deity, little moments are starting to sprout in my memory like mushrooms. Bruce's casual misogyny that everyone found so hilarious. The way he'd disappear after our mum died, leaving me on my own with Parker or random school mums. The time he pretended to throw a toxic octopus at me. When these things happened, I was a kid who desperately wanted to please her big brother by laughing in all the right places, by 'being cool' and rolling with whatever he suggested. Being with Bruce was like being on a dodgy carnival ride with missing pieces; it was heaps of fun in the moment, but afterwards, you questioned how anyone allowed it to happen.
"Oh my god," I say quietly, waves of revelation threatening to drown me. I'd been trying to emulate Bruce for my whole life and was only now realising I'd made a horrible choice. "I can't believe it. I can't believe I did that."
Michelle is still talking. "Kyls, please – it doesn't matter what you saw on that footage. It doesn't define you and the only one to blame for Bruce's death is Bruce, okay?"
"What are you talking about?" I say, trying to understand her meaning while dealing with the thousand other thoughts whipping around inside my head.
Because if what I've seen is what actually happened, Michelle might just be the best, most patient, most forgiving and most loving person I've ever met – and I've been treating her like a flaming garbage can filled with used nappies for years.
A flurry of moments plays in my mind. Michelle and me the first night we met, staying up late in her hotel room, painting our nails and watching Disney shows. Michelle smiling at me on camera, finding small ways to make me feel comfortable, shielding me from Bruce's scorn. Michelle helping me to choose furniture and decorations for my new room in our house by the sea, the first real home I'd had since my mum died.
Another memory: Michelle bringing me food in bed after Bruce's funeral, telling me that she loved me and she was signing papers to become my official guardian. I love you, Kylie – and I'm always going to protect you. She could have just ditched me, sent me off to foster care and started a new life without me, one where she never had to think about Bruce again. Instead, she'd stayed.
I'd always wished for someone to stay. And when they did, I'd tried to drive them away.
Simeon, too. God. My insides curl up like burning paper as I think about what I've done to him. I was being ignorant and racist and he still tried to patiently talk to me and help me understand. And in return? I turned the bitch-filled firehose on him and stormed away.
"I'm a monster," I gasp, the revelation landing with a mighty splash. "Bruce was a bad person. I am too."
"Kylie, no." Michelle's voice is firm and loving. "Honey, tell me where you are. Let me come and hug you. Parker is here too – we love you, Kylie. We are and will always be your family."
"But you're not my blood," I say. "I'm made from the same DNA as Bruce. It doesn't matter how much you love me, I'll always be the same as him. Selfish. Arrogant. A wild animal that will bite you if you get close enough."
"Kylie, you never deliberately hurt anyone that night. You were a little kid! And what happened never should have meant that someone died except-"
"Wait – what?" There it is again, that feeling that I've missed something. "I didn't hurt anyone that night. I just walked out on the deck and cried for Bruce – that's all."
There's a beat of silence on the other end of the phone, then Parker speaks. "Kylie, we're in your office and you're not here. Where are you, kiddo? Did you go back to the bungalow?"
"What do you mean, Michelle?" My voice is rising now, the unknown pulling tight around my throat. "I didn't do anything! I watched Bruce come back to the boat, he was drunk, he went diving! Everyone said he had equipment failure – that his regulator was damaged! I wasn't even there!"
"Kylie, it's okay – just tell us where you are and we can talk this over-"
I hang up, then turn my phone off. I can't handle listening to Parker and Michelle telling me that everything is going to be okay when I'm starting to realise it never was. Listen to them tell me they love me when I might be unlovable.
With flying fingers, I expand the video player on my laptop again. I drag the pointer backward through the footage. In reverse, I stop screaming, the sun goes back into the ocean, Bruce pops back out of the water and onto the side of the boat, still grinning.
If only every crappy choice could be so easily reversed; I would wave my fingers and undo the stupid things I said to Simeon. I'd sit and listen and try to understand his experiences. I wouldn't get defensive about my privilege or pretend that I knew exactly what it was like for him or that my experience was exactly the same. I would tell him that race and discrimination and marginalisation were really big, really new topics for me – but that I wanted to educate myself and do better. That I wanted to learn and keep learning with him by my side.
If this is a world where I can undo what I've done to Simeon, I want to try.
But first, I have to know what really happened on that day. I keep rewinding, back before where I started, pausing to watch snippets. There's Bruce, jumping in the tin boat and heading for town just before sunset. Then, a big meal on deck, our last supper, all of us eating around a big table, smiling in the sun.
Then, I see me again, alone on the deck. And as I watch, I realise that Michelle was wrong.
Because I'm not just a bad person.
I'm a murderer.
Another cliffhanger? I know, I know, but stick with me, lovely reader, I will bring you through ;)
Chapter question: have you ever found out that someone wasn't the person you thought they were? For me, it was one of my closest friends - realising that she was a terrible mother. That was a really hard conceptual gap to process, that someone I loved wasn't a good parent to their child - I really struggled to put those two different sides of her together.
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