Thirteen Pearls by Melaina Faranda Page B

gave a languid, big-cat stretch as he yawned. ‘I’m earning a ticket to go see my girl.’
    Lucky girl , I thought before I could censor it. It was almost impossible to remove my gaze from those beautiful biceps and that strong square jaw.
    Out loud, I said, ‘I’m beat. Got to hit the sack.’ I’d been here fewer than five hours and I was already flattening my vowels and talking like a ‘dinkum Aussie’. Mum would be appalled. I was starting to sound like Leon. Welcome to Far far North Queensland.
    Like a sleepwalker, I navigated my way back into the shed and crashed on my own bed. At some stage during the night, I woke for a second time. From outside came the soft rhythmic shushing of the sea. The heat inside was stifling and a mosquito buzzed around my face.
    From Aran’s bed came a whimper, then another, and he began to sob. Sighing, I reached down, bundled up his skinny body and hauled him up into my narrow bed. I tucked an arm around him and used my spare hand to wipe his forehead, just like Dad used to do with me when I was sick. Instantly, he stopped crying. He tucked his thumb into his mouth and nestled against me.
    I was surprised by how tender this made me feel. Perhaps I’d been wrong and he wasn’t the monster I’d imagined him to be only hours earlier. Maybe he was frightened about having someone new come into his life, especially with his mother so far away. I decided that I’d been wrong about the kid. Tomorrow we’d wake up, I’d forage around to make him a relatively healthy breakfast and then we ’d spend the day searching for shells and making cubbies in the mangroves and playing pirates and explorers.

A N EARSPLITTING – COCK-A-DOODLE-DO reverberated inside my skull. (Roosters were meant to be a delightful nursery rhyme creature that welcomed the day beneath a big smiley-face sun, but to me the crowing was far more malevolent.) It was still practically dark, for heaven’s sake.
    Aran slept soundly through it, and the next siren blast.
    COCK-A-DOODLE-DO!
    I groaned and rolled over into a warm, smelly puddle. I patted it gingerly. Not exactly a puddle, more of a soaked patch reeking of ammonia.
    I instantly recalled Leon’s confiding whisper last night, ‘Aran wets the bed.’
    Fantastic. There were clumps of dried spaghetti in my hair, patches of mangrove mud on my legs, and now I smelled like one of the winos in Fogarty Park.
    I pulled a sarong around me, ripped back the curtain and stumbled into the kitchen to wash my hands, only to stop short from slamming straight into Kaito.
    For a moment I watched through bleary, sleep-deprived eyes as Kaito made tea. He was using real tea leaves and not just dangling a teabag like Tash’s mum did (my mum only drank coffee). Instead, Kaito swirled hot water from the kettle into a waiting cup to warm it; the only cup not crawling with unmentionable micro-flora and -fauna.
    He poured the tea with mesmerising precision with a series of small pauses, as he tilted back the battered aluminum teapot and then allowed the steaming liquid to flow freely into the cup again. When the ritual was complete, he offered me the cup.
    I shook my head and croaked, ‘Water.’
    Kaito searched about helplessly for a glass that wasn’t clouded with milky residue or covered in greasy finger marks.
    At this hour of the morning, I could never do niceties. ‘Where ’s the shower.’
    He pointed. ‘Out through that door, behind the bamboo screen. It’s not really a shower. More of a bucket situation.’
    My arms and legs goose-pimpled as I scooped ice-cream container after ice-cream container of water out of the plastic drum, sluicing off wee and mangrove mud and spaghetti. Finally, when I smelled and felt clean, I towel-dried my hair with the sarong before wrapping the damp rectangle of fabric around me, and returning to the shed.
    I was human again. But when I looked at