Page 27 of Just One Look
“Did your dad ever get you therapy?” Lauren asked it without looking at her, the same way she’d said most of this, but still, Elizabeth felt flayed raw, her emotions too close to the surface. It was a panicky thing to feel so much, to let the ice melt.
“No,” she said. “I was fine. I’ve always been fine.”
“Birdie. Being able to keep going isn’t the same as being fine. Excelling isn’t even the same as being fine. It can just be another way to run away.” Again, it was gentle. Elizabeth wanted to ask her to call her by her real name, but it felt nasty, after Lauren had worked so hard to give her a nice vacation, and was trying so hard now to be kind. It wasn’t her fault that it hadn’t quite worked.
Instead of answering, Elizabeth pushed off the rail and said, “I’d better go get changed. We’ll be landing soon.” And didn’t look at Lauren’s face as she went, at the disappointment she’d see there.
What does she want from me?she raged inwardly.I can’t do this! I can’t be all happy and sweet and loving like Piper! I don’t know how!
She peeled the wetsuit off and felt herself losing the cloak of invisibility along with it. Back to being too tall, too big, too not-Piper. To watching boys’ eyes slide right past her and on to Piper like she wasn’t there. Her eyes were hot and her throat tight with unshed tears, and in that unguarded, painful, unfrozen moment, she felt her mama’s arms around her, her mama’s lips brushing her hair. Felt herself holding onto her mama’s sleeve, the way she always had, so she wouldn’t go away. Hanging on tight, until she couldn’t anymore.
Ten minutes later, they landed, with Elizabeth’s insides jumbled again, chaotic. She couldn’t meet Lauren’s eyes, but she could tell she had some sadness inside, even as she chatted and smiled and got them loaded back into the car and headed back to the tiny bach on the Tutukaka Coast outside Whangarei where they’d spent Christmas. Back to the wooden deck where Piper and Lauren would do yoga together, always inviting Elizabeth to join them, upon which Elizabeth would politely decline and take a walk down to the water instead. It was peaceful there, it was calm and beautiful and spectacular at sunset, and none of this was anybody’s fault but hers.
Driving back, then, the rumpled green land with its hedges and stands of trees bucolic and sleepy. Past sheep with their tiny, fluffy white lambs, frisking and gamboling together. She’d never known what “frisking and gamboling” looked like, exactly, until she’d seen these lambs.
Tomorrow, they were going to explore some caves, then hike to a waterfall. Which was exciting, and Elizabeth knew this trip would be so memorable in retrospect, so why couldn’t she enjoy it more now?
She was going to do better, she vowed, be gracious, be friendly, … benormal.
She was thinking it when Lauren slowed the car and said, “Avos for sale, and eggs, too?Avocado toast and poached eggs in the morning, then. Brilliant.” And took off up a gravel-strewn dirt track in a way nobody would do back home. Just pulling up to a stranger’s house, even if the hand-lettered sign at the roadhadsaid there was produce for sale here? To go up and knock at their kitchendoor?
The door opened, and there was a guy behind it. How old, she couldn’t quite tell. He was taller than any guy she’d ever seen, and his shoulders took up most of the doorframe, but he looked a little rawboned and a little young, like he wasn’t quite formed yet. His nose was big, like hers, and had the same bump at the top that hers did, too. His cheekbones were sharp, his dark hair was thick and messy, and his thick black eyebrows cut straight across his face. His eyes were deep brown, though, and his expression was … kind.
It was weird to think a guy like this could be kind, but that was how he seemed.
Lauren said, “Kia ora,” in her usual sunny way, like she was confident that everybody would love her. “We’re after avos and eggs.”
“Sure,” the guy said. “Come in, if you like.”
This was interesting. Elizabeth had never been in a rural New Zealand … farmhouse, or whatever. She stepped inside and took off her shoes with the others, aware of her hair, which never dried without frizz unless she used product and a hairdryer, both of which had been in short supply on the boat.
The kitchen looked like a kitchen, so as a field trip, this failed. It was big, with a round table at one end, but otherwise? Kitchen.
“Hi,” Piper said. Perkily, of course, and her hairwasn’tfrizzy. “I’m Piper. Your farm is beautiful, so peaceful and green.”
“Thanks,” he said. “Not mine, though. My gran’s and my mum’s. I’m Luka. How many eggs and avos?”
“Oh, two dozen eggs,” Lauren said. “And a bag of avos. Can’t have too many avos on holiday, can you? Your gran’s and mum’s, eh. That’s unusual.”
“It’s a woman thing,” Luka said, loading avocadoes into a paper bag. “My sisters help as well. You up from Auckland? Or where?”
“Auckland,” Piper said, showing her dimples. “Except for my stepsister, because Birdie’s from the States. We’ve been showing her around. We went scuba diving today, in fact. It was brilliant. I know you, don’t I? Or I’ve seen you? At school?”
His hands stilled for a minute, and then he was pulling two cartons of eggs off a shelf. “Could be. I’m at Saint Kentigern.”
“I knew it!” Piper said. “Me too, but I only started last year, in Year 11. You’re in the first fifteen, though, aren’t you?”
“Yeh,” he said, flushing a little. “At least I was last year. We’ll see.”
“The rugby team,” Piper told Elizabeth. “The varsity, I guess you’d say,” and then went on, “What kind of a name is Luka? I can’t remember your surname, sorry, except that I remember it was something exciting.”
Now, the flush on his cheeks was deeper. “Darkovic,” he said. “Croatian.”
“Oh,” Piper said. “Is that why you look the way you do?”
“Uh … how do I look?” He was starting to smile, though, Piper working her usual magic.
“Tough,” she said, looking at him from under her lashes. “Is Croatian tough, then?”
