The Brink, page 1
ABOUT THE BOOK
A group of school-leavers: free at last, ready to party, expectations high.
A remote island on the Western Australian coast wasn’t exactly the plan, but they’re not going to let that hold them back.
Leonardo, geeky, asthmatic, shy and prone to anxiety, has landed with them. He’s terrified—he’s definitely not part of this cool gang. Super high-achiever Kaiya is trying to forget her frustration with her drug-addicted sister as well as dealing with pressure from the popular girls to lose her virginity. Mason, footy jock with the physique to match, is coming to terms with his secret desire for his best mate, Jared. And Jared wants a week off from his relationship with Val so he can have sex with as many girls as possible.
But the party takes a dangerous turn when Val is drugged and a man is later found dead on the beach. Blame, fear, mistrust, coverups, power plays and dark secrets tear the group apart and expose the deadly tensions beneath the surface. And each teen is forced to confront demons that will lead them either to devastating tragedy or transformative triumph.
Whoever survives the week will never be the same again.
The Brink is a raw, powerful novel that pulls no punches in its authentic exploration of masculinity, sexuality, mental health, drug and alcohol use, relationships and sex. Holden Sheppard takes the teenage experience to the next level.
For my husband, Raphael, who waved back
CONTENTS
COVER PAGE
ABOUT THE BOOK
TITLE PAGE
DEDICATION
PROLOGUE
MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
TUESDAY, 20 NOVEMBER
8
9
10
11
12
WEDNESDAY, 21 NOVEMBER
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
THURSDAY, 22 NOVEMBER
21
22
23
24
25
26
FRIDAY, 23 NOVEMBER
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
SATURDAY, 24 NOVEMBER
39
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
COPYRIGHT PAGE
LEONARDO
It didn’t start with the dead body.
It started with an old LandCruiser heading up the Indian Ocean Drive, and that Sesame Street song on loop in my monkey mind. One of these things is not like the others.
The thing was me. The others were four of the most popular people in our graduating class, and I never imagined I’d be in a car with them on a road trip to Leavers Week.
For me, this trip was always going to be a nightmare, like the one where I can’t escape from the spider.
For them, this trip was meant to be a dream come true.
They were wrong.
MONDAY, 19 NOVEMBER
1
LEONARDO
No matter how long I stare into the full-length mirror, I can never see my whole self in it.
I’m trying to work out what they’ll pick on. Maybe they won’t be able to fault me on anything. I went out yesterday to get some new gear. First time I’ve been to Lakeside Joondalup since my mother died. Various adults gave me pity money after the funeral—hundred-dollar notes crushed into sweaty handshakes, sympathy cards in the letterbox—so I blew a few hundred bucks at City Beach.
I don’t usually spend money on anything, but the last time I wore casual clothes in front of these people—the last free-dress day we had at school—they pulled the piss out of me for wearing a cheap Big W T-shirt. I was the only person not wearing a brand name. Fifth-period health class ended with Valentina Velasquez gifting me a twenty-dollar Kmart voucher so I could ‘level up’ my wardrobe. The video of that moment went low-key viral.
So today I have brand names coming out my arse. An Under Armour duffel bag packed with Quiksilver boardies and Lucid T-shirts. For the drive up, I’m wearing a baggy black and gold Jetpilot T-shirt, a white Fox snapback, Unit walk shorts and Rip Curl thongs. I feel stupid keeping the sticker on my Fox cap, but everyone at school does this—some urban thing to prove the cap was store-bought—so I resist the urge to tear it off.
I study my reflection. Yes. I think I’ve succeeded. For once, I look like a normal eighteen-year-old boy.
Not boy, I remind myself. Eighteen means I’m a man now, but that word seems to fit me as loosely as my baggy T-shirt. A man is rugged and walks barefoot on gravel and burps in front of other people and doesn’t give a shit what they say. I’m so far from that, it’s comical.
A horn beeps outside and I literally jump.
They don’t send anyone to knock on my front door. Pneumatic tyres crunch on gravel. Fizzy pop music blares from a stereo. The horn beeps a second time and Jared O’Shea’s voice calls, ‘C’mon, Leonardo, we’re already late.’
I grab my backpack and my rolled-up swag and head out to meet them. After a whole year struggling with the concept of goodbye, this arvo the hardest thing is to have nobody to say goodbye to at all. Dad’s up on site—stuck on a shitty three- and-one swing—and my mother’s ashes don’t talk back.
The rattle of the flywire door on chipped-paint wood is almost as loud as the silence of nobody shouting at me not to slam it.
My schoolmates have rocked up in Jared’s dad’s Troopy: a boxy white LandCruiser with a roo bar and caked-on red mud up the sides. Jared’s dad is the Chief Financial Officer of a mining company on St Georges Terrace. He goes off-roading once a year and keeps the car unwashed to look like he’s a real rough-and-tough Aussie bloke.
Jared’s not a lot different to his dad. By the time I get to the verge, he’s jumped out of the Troopy and is poking around under the bonnet with the engine still running.
‘Isn’t that dangerous?’ I say.
Jared’s wearing cobalt-blue wraparound sunnies. His nose is covered in white zinc. He doesn’t look my way, but smirks in response, like he’s a regular guest on Top Gear or something. ‘Not if ya know what ya doing, bud.’
The Troopy doesn’t have rear side doors. ‘How do I get in?’ I ask. ‘Climb over the front seats?’
‘There’s a little kiddy seat at the front if you wanna sit between me and Val,’ Jared says.
‘If that was my kid I would’ve had a fucking abortion,’ the rich voice of Valentina Velasquez calls through the window. ‘Kidding. Hi, Leonardo.’
Like hell she’s kidding.
‘Door’s at the back, mate,’ Jared says. The duh is implied by his tone. He slams the bonnet shut.
I’m not convinced he was actually doing anything to the engine.
‘Jeez.’ He looks me up and down. ‘What’d you come as?’
‘Just got some new gear,’ I mumble.
I was dux of our school this year, but Jared always talks to me like he’s the genius offspring of Elon Musk and I’m as dumb as one of those driverless cars that crashes and kills all its passengers. He got a D in English once because he wrote a whole essay about the movie of World War Z instead of the book. The best part was when he compared Brad Pitt’s character in the film to Brad Pitt’s character in Ocean’s Eleven. Give the man a medal.
I get in the back of the Troopy. It’s old, with ripped vinyl seats the colour of sand. It smells of dirt and motor oil and stale cigarette smoke. Everyone else has piled their shit up on the back seats and in the middle of the cab, so I have to climb over eskies and pillows and backpacks and beach towels and a couple of boogie boards.
Just when I think I’m in, something hooks around my ankle and I stack it, throwing my hands out as I lunge forward, grabbing for something to break my fall.
That something happens to be Kaiya Saito.
Once I’ve steadied myself, I realise my hands are gripping her bare knees. I glance up to see her dark eyes piercing my dignity.
‘You can get off me now,’ she says.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to…I tripped over something…’ I look down at my ankle: it’s tangled in an overlong seatbelt. The thing designed to protect us from accidents. Friggin’ irony.
‘Just get off.’
I straighten up. There are two seats free, and one of them’s right next to Kaiya, so I back into the other seat, beside Mason Shaw.
‘As coordinated as ever, ay, Leo?’ Mason says, as I buckle my seatbelt.
‘It’s Leonardo,’ I say.
Mason raises an eyebrow and squeezes my thigh. ‘Look at these anorexic quads, bro. No muscle on ya. No wonder you stacked it. Can’t hold your own body weight.’
There’s a good chance me tripping had nothing to do with weak quadriceps and everything to do with Mason planting the seatbelt there. He’s the kind of lunk who makes Jared look intelligent. He spent most of high school pushing people over, or jumping off limestone ledges, or carving dicks into wooden desks.
I’m annoyed I’m stuck next to Mason. I would’ve preferred to sit with Kaiya, since she’s pretty much the only person in the car who doesn’t actively hate me—although I might’ve changed that by accidentally groping her knees. The worst part is, because the back seats in the Troopy face inwards, I’m sitting directly opposite her. I don’t wanna make eye contact. Instead, I look down at my skinny legs poking out of baggy walk shorts, at my leg hairs. Mason’s right. I look like a stick figure, especially next to his gorilla thighs straining against his light-blue footy shorts. Based on legs alone, you’d guess Mason was a beefy twenty-five-year-old rugby player and I was a fifteen-year-old prisoner of war.
Jared jumps in the Troopy, slams his door and starts the engine. We’re not even out of my driveway when Valentina turns around, nudging Kaiya. They both laugh.
‘Leonardo, hun,’ Valentina says. She waves her hand in the general direction of my body. ‘What’s happened here? You look like City Beach threw up all over you.’
‘And then a speedway,’ Kaiya adds.
They all laugh.
My face throbs with heat, like there’s a toaster under my skin. ‘Just got some new gear.’
‘Oh, believe me, we can see that,’ Valentina says. ‘You like Jetpilot, do you?’
‘I guess.’
‘When was the last time you were on a jet ski?’
‘Huh?’
‘Jet skiing. You know that’s what Jetpilot gear is for, right? You don’t strike me as the extreme sports kinda guy.’
‘I just liked the T-shirt.’
Kaiya sniggers. ‘The duffel bag.’
Valentina narrows her gaze at it. ‘Oh, bless. Under Armour. Where’d you get that bag, Leonardo?’
There is no answer I can offer to cushion any of the coming blows.
‘Rebel Sport.’
All four of them lose their shit laughing. ‘You know it’s meant to be a gym bag, right?’ Valentina says. ‘When was the last time you went to a gym? Genuine question.’
My face radiates; the toast is burnt. ‘I’ve never been to one.’
Four laughing faces. ‘Why’d you get all this new gear then?’ says Valentina. ‘Didn’t you want to spend that Kmart voucher I got you?’
I’m spared finding an answer by Jared saying, ‘He’s just being a try-hard.’
That hurts. Not the try-hard comment—but that it’s Jared piling on me, since he’s the reason I’m here in the first place.
As we hit the main road out of Perth, Valentina fiddles with the radio. There’s no aux cord since the Troopy is so old. She flips between stations before settling on Nova. ‘Hey, Leonardo, remind me again, what happened to your other ride?’
It’s her not-so-veiled way of saying Why the hell are you coming with us?
‘Hien was going to drive, but he’s not coming to Leavers now,’ I reply.
‘Who’s Hien? Is he that nerd who always wears that NASA T-shirt?’
‘He’s…yes.’
‘Why isn’t he coming?’
‘His parents booked him on a university summer course in Canberra.’
Valentina’s got her visor down, and I see her mouth twitch in the little inbuilt mirror. ‘Typical Asian parents. Right, Kaiya?’
Kaiya smirks in reply, like they’ve had endless discussions about this.
As blunt as Valentina is, she’s not wrong. Hien can’t stand his controlling parents, and he was almost crying when he rang to say he couldn’t come. Hien’s been my best friend through high school: we spent lunchtimes in the school library playing chess with Stefan and Sidd, and Friday nights at each other’s houses playing Dungeons and Dragons or LARPing Game of Thrones. We made Stefan be the Khaleesi because he’s blond. Hien and I fought over who got to be Stannis Baratheon; I won. I swear, at the time, it didn’t feel as nerdy as it sounds now.
I could have gone to Leavers Week with the other two, I guess. But once Hien was out, Stefan piked with a BS excuse about a head cold. And once Sidd realised the party was down to two, he bailed as well.
Frankly, I would’ve happily sat Leavers out at that point. I never drink anyway, and being stuck with the people who made high school a living hell didn’t exactly appeal.
Mason, for one, spent most of year twelve sticking his finger near my backside whenever I sat in front of him in science class, then calling me a poofter. Which I’m not, by the way, not that there’s anything wrong with that. And every time we had PE he’d make a point of picking me last. And everyone sniggered, because why wouldn’t you? Watching a geek like me try to catch a ball probably would be funny if you weren’t a geek like me.
And when Valentina found out I had severe hayfever made worse by perfumes, she came up behind me in Italian class and sprayed floral-scented deodorant all over my back until my school uniform was soaked through. My eyes were streaming and she took a video of me and told me to stop being a crybaby. Basically the entire school saw that clip.
‘Okay, so Hien couldn’t drive,’ Valentina says, switching channels until she finds an Ariana Grande song. ‘Don’t any of your other friends have their licence?’
I swallow. ‘My other mates aren’t coming,’ I say. ‘It’s just me.’
‘Oh.’ She covers her mouth in mock surprise. I feel like she’s now led the conversation to where she wants it. ‘But who are you going to hang out with in Jurien?’
I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to slide through the floor as much as I do right now. I catch Jared’s eye in the rear-view mirror. ‘Jared?’
Jared clears his throat unnecessarily. ‘Leonardo can hang with us.’
‘Oh,’ Val says. She rests her chin on her arm, which is stretched over the back of the seat, and pouts at me. ‘I thought we were only giving you a lift.’ She forces a smile at me. ‘Well, I hope we don’t bore you to death.’
‘I’m sure I’ll survive,’ I mumble, almost too quietly for even me to hear.
‘I didn’t know you and Jared were mates,’ Kaiya pipes up. ‘How do you guys know each other?’
I’m not sure what was worse. Her frozen silence after I fell on top of her, or her asking this question. Again, I look at Jared for him to reply. I’m interested in how he’ll answer.
His face is nearly as pale as the zinc on his nose. ‘Our dads used to be mates,’ he says. He guns the engine as he overtakes a hatchback. ‘They arranged it.’
This stings. Our dads used to be mates. Jared and I went to the same playgroup when we were four, so our mums became friends and our dads became drinking buddies. Jared went to a different primary school, but it was close enough to mine that we could have playdates after school at his house. We would kick the footy around his backyard, even though I was bad at it. I liked it more when we played Spyro and Crash Bandicoot on his PlayStation and, when we were a bit older, Call of Duty. Jared would raid the pantry and get us fistfuls of fun-size chocolates. I was stunned he was allowed to do that. My mother would never have permitted so much sugar.
I was so excited about starting year seven because Jared and I would be going to the same high school. I’d have a real, bona fide friend by my side every day.
That didn’t last long. The swimming carnival happened about three weeks into first term. The moment I waved to Jared and he didn’t wave back, our friendship was over.
Our dads used to be mates. So did we, Jared, you prick.
It’s true our fathers did engineer this nightmare, though. After my friends pulled out of Leavers, Dad insisted I go. He desperately wanted me to have at least one normal year-twelve experience, and he didn’t like the idea of me being alone in the house without school to occupy my overactive brain. I didn’t like it either. I’d go crazy if I was left with nothing but my own imagination. So Dad called Jared’s dad, and Mr O’Shea probably felt sorry for me because my mother was dead, and he pressured Jared into inviting me.
But there’s absolutely nothing normal about going on a trip with the popular group. I’ve never belonged anywhere less. At least after this trip, I’ll never have to see any of them ever again.
And I’m okay with never seeing any of them again—except Jared. We’ve never talked about what happened at the swimming carnival. Sometimes I wish he’d walk up to me and tell me what I did, what makes me so repulsive. I’ve had daydreams of him turning around and punching me in the face and I think how good it would feel to know for sure he hates me.
That’s part of the reason I came. Seven days in a little coastal town with Jared might be enough to make him like me again. Or maybe it will finally make him punch me in the face. I’m honestly not sure which hope is more pathetic.
I’ve had other dreams, too—not daydreams, but proper night-time dreams where my subconscious rules and I’m not afraid like I am when I’m awake. In those dreams, I corner Jared. I tell him how much he’s hurt me by rejecting me. He finally feels all the pain he’s made me feel. And when he tries to punch me, I dodge it, and I punch him back, so hard one of his teeth gets knocked out.
