He’ll just see where she lives. Then he’ll go home.
Number eleven Gully Avenue is a squat house with an adjoining veterinary practice in a spruced-up shed. The front yard is crammed with a massive tree, a walled garden and a paved path with pansies in buckets growing around a big sign that reads ‘FREY VET AND ANIMAL SHELTER. WE HELP. WE SAVE’.
Beck feels so stupid looking at it.
A light glows by the front door, an invitation, a lure. Beck is a moth to it. His feet crunch the sea of buffalo grass and clover as he creeps towards the old Victorian house with its rippled glass door speckled with the warmth of a thousand colours. Faint barking sounds behind the glass, then laughter.
August lives here? Warm and happy and safe?
If he knocks, he’ll unleash a legion of pathetic awkwardness. He’s never asked for help in his life. He doesn’t want it. What does he want?
A family.
An occasional hug.
To know his sister is safe.
A friend.
Something more than a friend?
A safe place to write his music. Which is gone gone gone … Don’t think about that right now.
He just wants to talk. That’s not pitiful, right? Friend to friend, asking for a second to talk about – anything. Like how dumb his name is, or how he actually adores Twice Burgundy, or how August’s crazy healthy food tastes downright delicious no matter how much he mocks it. She’d laugh at him. It’d be normal. He could go home and clean the mess and breathe.
His feet betray him and cross the cold wet grass. His hand rises to the door, hesitates. How bad is his face? Is he going to scare her?
Yes.
This is so wrong, so stupid, so needy, so—
He knocks.
Dogs explode into howls and scrabbling paws behind the glass. If August doesn’t answer, he’ll split because there’s no way he’s facing her parents with a face like this to ask to see their daughter. But as the seconds tick past, the resolve in his chest caves until he’s suffocated with the need to stay.
August answers the door.
She’s in red Aztec leggings and a huge cream jumper that comes to her thighs and gapes at the neck. Her fingers barely poke out the ends. Her feet are bare despite her breath frosting as her mouth opens.
‘Beck?’ Her eyes couldn’t get any rounder.
He can smell tomato and rosemary sauce and wine and warmth.
‘Who is it, honey?’ someone calls.
‘My friend from school!’ August yells over her shoulder.
She blocks a yapping dog trying to throw itself out the door, which leaves her wedged awkwardly before Beck. ‘Shut up, Bo! You too, Gunther.’
With a groan, she gives up and slips fully outside, shutting the front door in the barking faces. She wraps her arms around herself and shivers and Beck feels guilty. Yes. He feels guilty about the cold air.
‘You’re not OK.’ It’s not a question. ‘What happened? Who did this? Can I do something?’
‘Petition for world peace?’ His nose runs and he has nothing to wipe it with, which is a crippling embarrassment.
August doesn’t smile. Beck feels worse.
‘I’m s-s-sorry.’ His teeth won’t stop chattering. ‘I shouldn’t have—’
‘Yes, you should have.’ She touches his arm, not quite holding him but somehow pinning him from taking flight. ‘This is what friends are for. To help in time of strife and stuff chocolate down your throat when you’re miserable. That sort of fun stuff.’ Her fingers tighten slightly around his arm. ‘You have to come in.’
‘No.’ He’s a knot of panic and horror. ‘Your parents – they can’t—’
‘I’m not letting you freeze on my lawn,’ August says. ‘You can lie if you want … and they won’t make a fuss. They’re totally reasonable folks, trust me.’ Her eyes sparkle. ‘I’ll invent a gloriously distracting reason for your facial features. You wrestle polar bears as an after-school job!’
‘Um.’
‘You’re right. Way too unrealistic. You’re a back-alley street fighter.’
‘Because that’s so much better.’
This is why he came. This is what he needs – a moment under the spell of her smile.
‘But seriously,’ she says, the joke fading, ‘are you hurt bad? Do you want to call emergency?’
‘No.’ He doesn’t know what he wants. His brain has drowned and he can’t make a decision. He can barely breathe.
August nods and yanks the door back open. ‘Don’t mind the dogs. Most of them won’t kill you.’
The heat, the smells, the cheery warbles of happy conversation – he’s going to ruin it. He’ll wreck August’s evening and what if her parents tell the police anyway? His family are the jagged teeth of a saw, but they’re all he has and he can’t lose that right now.
‘I can’t, August, I can’t—’
But he lets himself be pulled inside.
The dogs hit first, warm and strong, knocking against his legs and leaping all over with wet, rough tongues. Then he’s enveloped in warmth, light, the mouthwatering smells of something in the oven. August hauls a few dogs off him and calls uselessly for quiet. She has to pluck one from the chaos, frothing with rage, and shove it in a bedroom with the door shut.
There are animals absolutely everywhere.
He’s in a lounge with a hammock full of cats in one corner next to a wall of windows, and the remaining walls are covered in handmade shelves. A woven rug is on the floor and a battered coffee table sports a bonsai tree, a mess of magazines and an unmoving turtle. The ugliest dog Beck’s ever seen nestles on a sofa. It looks like something’s chewed off its nose and glued it back on.
‘That,’ August says, noticing his stare, ‘is Stuart. Excuse his face. He’s been beaten half to death by a disgusting human. We rescued him and while he loves me, he hates men. Don’t pet him.’
Beck takes a step back as Stuart snarls.
‘And this is Tortle.’ August picks up the turtle and strokes its shell. ‘We didn’t know if he was a tortoise or a turtle when we found him, so we covered both bases.’
‘Clever,’ says Beck.
‘Exceptionally.’ August sets it back down. ‘Plus, with a free-spirited name like Tortle, he won’t conform to stereotypes. Look at him now! He’s embracing his life with no stereotypical box!’
‘Does he own a box?’
‘Actually, no.’ August beams. ‘He’s always free. I’m so proud.’
‘Question.’ Beck squints at the unmoving shell. ‘Is it alive?’
‘Oh stop it.’ She gives his shoulder a gentle, playful nudge. ‘You’re just jealous of my divergent pet.’ She twirls, her gargantuan jumper billowing, and dances down the hallway. ‘Hungry?’
‘I already ate.’ He feels like he’s never eaten in his life.
‘Does that stop you eating again?’ August says.
Unless he wants to stay and get licked by two or nine dogs, Beck has to follow. Every inch of the hallway wall is covered in mismatched photo frames, most starring August pulling faces or cuddling a frog or with green goo mushed over her baby face or her arms draped over her dad’s shoulders while she kisses his cheek.
‘But first – the bathroom.’ August takes Beck’s hand and gently pulls him into it. ‘Don’t even protest. I am excellent at first aid.’
He wants to do more than protest. He wants to run. But he finds himself perching on the edge of a bathtub while August cracks a cupboard door and pulls out a battered first aid kit. This is ridiculous. He’s being needy, he—
She rests a hand under his chin and tilts his head upwards. A frown creases her eyebrows. He wishes he wasn’t causing that.
‘Your cheek isn’t too bad,’ she says, voice serious, soft. ‘Bruising, and a small cut.’ She’s got a small cloth and she dips it in antiseptic and wipes it across his cheekbone. It stings like fresh hell but he doesn’t flinch. He refuses to flinch.
‘I can do this myself,’ he says.
Her concentrating frown remains. ‘I know. But I’m taking care of you for just a hot second, Beck. Let me.’
He does.
Never mind that he can’t breathe because her hand is cupped under his chin. Never mind that her skin sets his alight in a way that has nothing to do with stinging cuts.
Please don’t stop.
Please don’t let go.