Dan and I are lying head to toe on his bed, listening to the latest single by Two Soap Dolls, and passing an ice-cold beer between us. I'm watching the ceiling fan spinning, and I'm tapping my fingers along my ribs, in time with the bass guitar. My thin white dress is sticking to my skin with sweat. Dan is only wearing shorts. It's Sunday afternoon and the stifling humidity isn't helping my hangover.
When the song finishes I pull my head up and look over at my brother. He has his eyes closed, and his curly brown hair is sticking lightly to his forehead. The rest of his hair is pulled back into a little ponytail at the nape of his neck. He hasn't shaved in a few days and there's a faint line of stubble across his upper lip and along his chin. He has the beer resting on his ribcage, and the condensation is dripping onto his skin.
'That was good,' I tell him. 'It's not like their old stuff, but I like it.'
He gives a small nod with his eyes closed.
'When is everyone getting here?' I ask.
Dan sits up, opening his eyes. 'Three, maybe. Lucas is coming, you know?'
I grab the beer off Dan and take a swig.
'Have you spoken to him lately?' he asks.
'He was there last night,' I say.
Dan scratches at his hairline. 'You guys ever gonna make up?'
I sit up and swing my legs off the bed. 'After everything he did to me in grade ten? No.'
Mum and Dad are both in the kitchen. Dad is sitting on one of the bar stools, slouched over his computer. He's wearing a collared cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to show the fading tattoos on his forearms. He's got the same large earrings and brown haired ponytail as my brother Dan.
Mum is mixing a salad and drinking white wine.
'Hi, Emily,' she says, turning around. She's the immaculate mother, with neat blonde hair, flawless makeup and manicured nails. She's wearing a peach kaftan that reveals her overly bronzed décolletage. 'The Elmhirsts and Shepherds should be here soon. The Whitneys are running a little behind.'
My dad's old band mates, the members of Dime's the Limit, are coming over to celebrate his book deal, and bringing their families. Lucas hasn't been to my house since we had our big falling out in grade ten, and my anxiety is turning into irritation. I steal the glass of wine from Mum when she turns her back and take a huge sip.
The Elmhirsts are the first to arrive.
Dan emerges from his bedroom just in time to greet Lucas and his older brothers while I slink further into the kitchen and pull out glasses in an attempt to avoid Lucas.
Lucas's father, Trevor, launches into a conversation with Dad about the good old days. They head out to the back deck. Dan leads the Elmhirst boys out towards the pool, and I allow myself to breathe once they pass.
Ainsley and her parents arrive after. Ainsley is wearing a plain black dress with sleeves that would look uncomfortably hot on anyone else, but the way she holds herself with her arms crossed over her chest makes it seem like she's cold. Ivan and Karen Shepherd, her parents, greet Mum enthusiastically and then follow her out to the deck and pool area, leaving Ainsley and me in the kitchen.
'I'm glad you're here,' I say. 'It's weird having Lucas here.'
Ainsley sits down on a stool and starts picking at her black nail polish. 'Are you going swimming?' she asks me.
'Hell yeah,' I say. 'It's hot as.'
'I don't want to have to wash my hair tonight before school,' Ainsley says. 'Maybe I won't go swimming.'
'Just don't get your hair wet.'
Ainsley gives me a disbelieving look. 'With the Elmhirst boys and everyone in the pool? They'll splash me. I just won't swim.'
I narrow my eyes.
'Did your mum put the dressing in the salad or is it on the side?' she asks.
I frown. 'Um, I don't know.'
'Okay. I don't like salad dressing,' she says.
'Since when?' I say, but she just shrugs. 'Do you want a drink?'
Ainsley opens her eyes wide and shakes her head. 'Mum doesn't like me drinking.'
'That's stupid. If my mum told me not to drink she'd be the biggest hypocrite in the world. Anyway, you're turning seventeen in a month.'
'So?' Ainsley says. 'I'm not legal until I'm eighteen, and as far as my Mum is concerned, that's when I'll start drinking. She thinks I just go to parties to hang out with people.'
I roll my eyes. 'Your mother was in a rock band when she finished high school. As if she wasn't getting drunk and high well before she turned eighteen,' I say.
Ainsley shrugs. 'You know my mum. I'm not going to try to cross her.'
I grab a beer and join Ainsley on a bar stool looking out towards the pool area. Dad, Trevor and Ivan cluster around the barbeque while Mum and Karen have taken seats at the table. Dan, Lucas, Mike and Zach are now in the pool. I watch Lucas do lazy laps. His blonde hair looks dark when it's wet, and his arms glisten as they come out of the water.
Julian and his family arrive. His mum, Nicoletta, is a striking Italian woman with big hair and a round figure. Dad has told us how she was fiery and passionate in her youth, but it seems her marriage to Julian's father, Guy, has subdued her. She dumps a platter of potato salad on the bench and stays close to her husband, almost as if she's reluctant to be here.
Julian has two younger siblings, Findlay, who is a year younger than us, and Ana, who is eight or nine. Findlay's not here, and I hear Julian mention something about Findlay's girlfriend's birthday party, but then I'm too busy hugging little Ana. Ana is a dark haired beauty, shadowing Julian until I greet her. She beams up at me after we hug.
'How's school?' I ask her.
'I won the art prize even though there were grade seven students who entered the competition,' she says proudly.
'So you're good at art too, hey?' I say.
'I taught her everything she knows, dude,' Julian says proudly, pulling his sister into him and tickling her.
'Jules!' she shrieks, and laughs wildly.
Julian looks at me over his little sister's writhing figure. 'I see the Elmhirsts are here. I haven't seen Zach and Mike since they graduated.'
'Unfortunately we see Lucas far too often,' I say darkly.
'Come on, let's go out and sit by the pool,' Julian says. 'It's too hot in here.'
I'm wearing my bikinis underneath my loose summer dress, and when we enter the pool area I take the dress off. I catch Lucas watching me as I sling the dress over the fence. I raise my eyebrows at him.
'Well hello Em!' Zach says. 'The years have not been unkind to you. Why haven't we seen you around our house anytime recently?'
'You should ask your brother,' I say, and sit down beside the two oldest Elmhirst boys.
Ainsley joins me, sitting timidly in her black dress. I see her examine the way her thighs splay out across the edge of the pool. She pulls at her dress, covering up her thighs. 'Don't want to get sunburnt,' she says to me.
'Boys, I haven't even told you yet,' Dan is saying to Zach and Mike. 'I got a job at Crater Mag.'
'You got a job at Crater? How?'
'They like my writing and they think I know my shit about music,' Dan says. 'I mostly do odd jobs around the office, and go to the gigs no one else wants to go to, but yeah, it's a start.'
'That's so fucking cool,' I say, sliding into the pool. Dan and I have always had our father's passion for music, but neither of us is musically talented. We've always been writers.
'Hey Em,' Zach says. 'Have you thought of what you want to do after you finish school? Or are you just going to bum around like your brother until someone offers you a job at a magazine?'
'I want to write for a travel magazine.'
'But you've never travelled anywhere,' Lucas snorts.
I shrug. 'So? I'll start when I finish school. I'll do a big road trip around Australia with all my friends and write about it the whole time.'
I swim silently up behind Ana, and then grab the little girl from behind. She shrieks and laughs as I lift her out of the water and drop her back into the pool.
'Oi dude, I'll come with you around Australia,' Julian says. 'That'd be sick as. Imagine getting a van and living out of it. Sitting on the roof, watching the sunrise over Uluru and having a smoke. That'd be fucking sick.'
Dad calls us over to grab steak and sausages. I step out of the pool, but realise I've forgotten to bring a towel, so I put my dress over the top of my togs.
Ainsley has decided she only wants salad, and she is a bit disgruntled that my mum already mixed the salad dressing into the salad. I watch her pick at lettuce leaves for a while and then abandon her food.
'I think Aug said he and the guys will be back in Brissy this year,' Dad is saying to Trevor as he picks up pieces of steak with the tongs and places them onto a plate that Trevor is holding. 'Oh, Em, we didn't get napkins out. Can your run in and grab them?'
I'm glad for the opportunity to get away from Lucas, and I decide while I'm inside I may as well grab myself a towel. I walk down the hall to the linen cupboard, grab a beach towel, and pull off my dress. I walk into the kitchen, drying my hair with the towel, to see Lucas standing at the kitchen bench.
'What do you want?' I ask.
'Just getting napkins,' he says, 'since you were so slow about it.'
He opens the drawer with the napkins inside. I step towards him and snatch the napkins out before he can reach them. He stares at me, unimpressed. 'What's up with you, anyway?'
'I don't like Prisley scum in my house.'
'You didn't have a problem with it when we were little,' he says.
'Because you weren't scum back then,' I say.
'You're more immature than I remember.'
'And you're ruder,' I say, clutching the napkins tightly. My hair is dripping onto my back, leaving a cold trail down my spine. Lucas's gaze wanders down, and I'm suddenly very conscious that my bikinis are probably sitting weirdly on my boobs. I want to walk away from Lucas but he's just standing there, staring at me, so I just stare back.
'You still best friends with Watson?' Lucas asks, looking me in the eye again.
I blink. 'Yeah, of course.'
'How's Taylor?'
I frown. 'Why do you ask?'
'Taylor had a thing with Duncan for a while, and Duncan is my best friend. So, actually, I'm just curious. Plus, I can already tell you don't like her. I grew up with you, Em. I know you better than anyone. You hate Taylor.'
'Why did Duncan and Taylor break up?' I ask, ignoring the way Lucas can see straight through me.
'Well you know Duncan's a dickhead to girls. He didn't treat her right, obviously. I think she ended it. I don't know; it wasn't a big deal to him.'
'Yeah you Prisley boys seem to shrug off girls without a second thought.'
'Well Duncan's a dickhead,' Lucas says. 'Not all Prisley guys are though. There was a time when you believed that.'
'There was a time when you wouldn't have hung out with Duncan because he is a dickhead,' I say.
'No, there wasn't. I tend to form attachments with dickheads. That's probably why I was friends with you for so long.' He reaches out to take the napkins off me, but I step back, annoyed.
'I'm not a dickhead,' I say. 'In grade ten I did nothing at all to you, and you spread rumours about me.'
'Maybe. Are you going to bring those napkins outside?'
'You go out first,' I snap.
'Stop being so rude to me,' he says. 'You don't even know half of what happened in grade ten.'
He turns around and walks out, leaving me standing in the puddle that my wet hair is making, wearing nothing but bikinis, and clutching helplessly to a pile of napkins. I thought my fights with Lucas Elmhirst were over, but obviously, I was wrong. I guess until I finish senior year, I'll still keep bumping into my unfairly attractive Prisley enemy. I grit my teeth, and walk back out into the sun.
After we eat, Ainsley still refuses to swim and sits on a deckchair with her legs crossed and her shoulders hunched, scrolling through photos of healthy meals on her phone. I abandon her and swim with the boys and Ana until the first round of thunder starts rolling over our heads. Rain starts spitting down, making rings on the pool water just as we're all running under the cover of the deck roof.
Dark clouds have descended over us, and there's a sharp wind pulling through the trees in our backyard and making the temperature drop. The Elmhirsts, Shepherds and Whitneys decide to leave now before the storm gets any worse.
Dan is playing Two Soap Dolls loudly in his room when the power goes out. The music cuts out and I'm jolted into a black bathroom, making me shriek. I hear Dan laughing from his bedroom.
As I predicted, the storm blows over, leaving a grey sky like a scar, damaged from the tumultuous aggression of the lightning. Dan and I stand out on the deck, each sipping from a bottle of cider, and watch as the dark clouds move away and the rain clears up. I'm wearing a big band shirt and my wet hair is sticking to the back of it and dripping down my spine.
'Things still tense with you and Lucas then, hey?' Dan says.
'Yeah,' I say, taking a generous swig of my cider. 'To be honest Dan, I don't think it's ever going to change. I remember in grade ten I thought he'd just apologise and we'd go back to normal, but that's not going to happen, is it?' I stare down the neck of the bottle, examining the bubbles in the golden liquid.
'It's hard to mend that kind of relationship. You knew Lucas so well so when you fought with him you knew exactly how to bring him down, and same with him. You two really damaged each other. I remember after your fight with Lucas, you were inconsolable. He really got to you, and I know you don't think so, but you really hurt him. It's hard to repair something when you've done that much damage.'
Lightning flickers on the horizon, moving away from us now, but the sky is still torn.