Page 72 of Barre Fight
Slowly, not taking his eyes from her face, Justin reached above their heads and turned the blasting air-conditioning nozzle so that the cool air was no longer blowing directly on her exposed skin. Then, figuring he’d been gazing hopefully down at her for long enough, he tore his eyes away and toward the window. The ominous film of smoke had only grown thicker in the few minutes since he’d last looked.
When the plane finally landed, the smell of jet fuel filled the plane as it always did, but this time it was cut through with the unmistakable scent of bushfire smoke. Justin seized his phone again, waiting for service bars to appear in the top right corner of the screen. The moment they did, the phone began to vibrate and notifications stacked up on the screen all at once. Missy, Mum, Shane. His thumb trembled slightly as he tried to discern the order in which they’d been sent, which of them would give him the most recent and accurate information.
Missy, 7:26am: They evacuated overnight. Everyone’s safe but the fire came in so fast they barely had time to grab the dog and their bags and go. They’re at an evacuation centre in Hartley.
Hartley? That was halfway up the mountain. A long way to evacuate, and a dangerous drive if you were in a hurry or if there were fires on either side of the road.
Mum, 7:26am: Call when u land. We’re ok.
It had to be the first time his mum had ever used the correct emoji. Under any other circumstance, Justin would be proud. Now he was just terrified. Had the house burned? The town? The whole valley?
Shane, 7:26am: All safe. Most of town at evac centre. Waiting for news.
Justin let out a heavy, shaking breath. “Waiting for news” meant the fire was still burning out of control. “Waiting for news” meant that, when the news eventually came, it probably wouldn’t be good. Justin thought about the hundreds of acres of bushland just waiting to burn. All those people who had to escape, all those homes. All the wildlife. He took in a deep breath, hoping to settle his churning stomach, but all that did was leave his mouth dry and tasting of smoke.
Next to him, Ivy had woken up, probably when the plane hit the runway. She looked up from her own phone. “Any news?”
“Everyone’s safe,” he said, his voice scratchy from emotion and dry airplane air. Well, he thought, maybe not everyone. Most of the town, Shane had said. But what if some people hadn’t made it out in time?
“But?” Ivy asked.
“Huh?” he asked, running a hand through his hair. It was greasy. God, he was exhausted. Anxious adrenaline had rushed his system when his phone came back online, and it was still thrumming in his muscles. But underneath it, fatigue wasdragging at him, making his brain feel heavy in his skull. The performances, the late nights with Ivy, the full day in transit, it was all catching up with him now. He wanted to sleep for a week, and he wanted to sprint off the plane and not stop until he’d seen with his own eyes that his family was okay.
“Everyone’s safe… That sounds like things got pretty bad overnight. Where are they? When can they go home?”
Ivy Page, always ready with a follow-up question or three. A journalist in her soul, even if she didn’t have the job title anymore. He looked at her, and the urge to pull her to him returned, more intense than it had been a few minutes earlier. She’d slept more on this flight than he had, but her skin was pale and she had faint purple smudges under her eyes. She was wan and worn out, but god, she was still so beautiful.
“The family’s safe, that’s all I know right n—” His phone rang in his hand. He lurched forward and fumbled it slightly in his haste to answer the call.
“Any news?” he asked Missy without preamble. He was aware of Ivy watching him closely, brow furrowed in concern. There was silence on the other end of the line. “Missy? Are you there?”
“Yeah, I’m here,” she said. Her voice was low and heavy, and Justin felt his stomach drop and his adrenaline spike again.
“What’s going on?”
She sighed, and the sound seemed to last for an hour. Justin gestured with his hand, a frantic, flappinghurry upmotion. He could feel, rather than see, Ivy watching him closely. Finally, Missy spoke.
“Both the houses burned. The whole street’s flattened, Shane says the RFS told him there’s basically nothing left. Most of the town is…” Her voice caught. “Most of the town’s probably destroyed.”
“Christ,” Justin breathed, and he dropped back into the seat.
“Yeah,” Missy said faintly. “It’s really bad.”
“Is it over?”
“Not even close, from what Shane said. There were two fires both headed for the town, and they almost had one under control, but then the winds shifted, and the other one started moving too fast to stop it. By the time it started burning bushland on the outskirts of town, the other one had almost joined up with it. And Hillstone was right in the middle.”
God, his mum must have been terrified. In all those decades of living in the bush, knowing that fire was a fact of life, had she ever really thought she’d have to flee her home in the middle of the night?
“How are they doing? I mean, really?”
He heard Missy inhale through her clenched teeth and he could picture her tipping her head from side to side. “Hard to say. They’re all set up at the evacuation centre but emergency services won’t tell them how long they should expect to stay there.”
In other words, even the experts couldn’t say when it would be safe to go back to Hillstone. And even when it was… what would there be to go back to? He pictured the squat brick home with its terracotta tile roof, and inside it, the small second bedroom he’d been so thrilled to call his own after several years of sharing Missy’s bedroom in her house a few doors down. That little house had been one of the few places in the entire town he felt safe and loved. It had been that house and the old church hall where he took ballet. He swallowed hard, trying not to think about how both buildings had burned to the ground as he sat here in this cramped, lumpy airplane seat, far away and powerless to prevent their destruction.
“I’m going to go get them tonight,” Missy was saying in his ear. “They’ve already done one night on those fold-up cots and Mum says her back is killing her.” Steen had slipped a disc a fewyears ago and hadn’t fully recovered. She barely slept through the night in her own bed.
“Okay.” Justin nodded. “Want me to come with you?”
