Skin and Blister
Category C: Highly Commended (2024) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Isabel Glynn
For a year when she was 12, Sadie and her family lived in St. Ives in a pretty white house. Sadie’s dad had begun a cushy new job at one of the big four banks. He motioned to work each morning in a navy suit with alternating inoffensive ties. Their mum found night shift work as a receptionist at the Royal Alfred. The strange hours left immense bags under her eyes and led her to do things like put her handbag in the fridge and lanyard in the tumble dryer.
Sadie and her sister attended an all-girls school where they wore wide-brimmed straw hats and blue striped dresses. Sydney’s humidity was a wet blanket they couldn’t seem to tumble their way to the edge of. The damp underarms of their school dress never fully evaporated, and dew clung to their upper lips.
Private school was an alternate universe. Their low ponytails, straight teeth and fake-tanned seemed to be a part of an unmentioned uniform. They talked about things that were foreign to Sadie like sailing, private tutors and European holidays. And they were all so intelligent. Sadie’s natural talent at once had to transform itself into extreme academic exertion just to keep her head above water. Back in Nangwarry, she had always been the smartest person in the room. But here, it was nothing special. Never in her life had she met so many people who genuinely wanted to be doctors and engineers. She had barely known another 12-year-old with any future ambition at all.
Sadie phoned Beth on the home phone every Friday night and gave a detailed update about the notable girls in her year level. Apparently, Jenna has an elevator in her house, like not an apartment, her house. Beth returned the favour, providing the necessary gossip on the school regulars. Ben Fields kissed Alicia on the oval. Beth’s voice on the phone was sweet, excitable and rambling. Sadie lied on her bed, kicking her feet in the air behind her smiling.
Before school, Sadie’s chest would be tight, like someone was pushing their palm hard into her sternum. She taught herself square breathing to avoid passing out on the train to school. In, 2, 3, 4, pause, 2, 3, 4, out, 2, 3, 4, pause, 2, 3, 4. Her little sister Leah looked at her sideways when she did this. She took to the new school like a duck to water. In two weeks, she had infiltrated the group of the most popular year 5s and assimilated as if she had been there since reception. Leah came into the world five times more charismatic and beautiful than her older sister, and therefore experienced life as a fun challenge rather than an exhaustion.
Sadie made one friend during her time at her new school, Ila. They shared a passion for girl bands and young adult fantasy novels. It was an intense comfort, to find a fellow nerd. Although she liked Ila, she often saw their friendship as a betrayal to Beth. On the phone, she didn’t tell Beth much about Ila. She suspected Beth kept her other friendships quiet as well. Every Friday night when Sadie hung up the phone she would cry inconsolably. The symptoms of puberty mixed with the symptoms of upheaval. The slamming of doors and days in bed were a reflex to indulge.
Her parents fought like unsocialised dogs. Snarling, barking, teeth bared. Sadie only got bits of what it was about, but she knew money was at the centre of it. I’m the one who earned most of it, Diane. We have children, Mark, you have to consult me.
The four of them never left the house unless they were invited somewhere. For Leah, that was most weekends and some evenings after school. Parties, trips to Westfield or the beach with her horde of friends. Ila invited Sadie out a couple of times but that was about it. Sadie spent most weekends either listening to her parents spar or the deafening silence of their cold shoulders. She would do her homework twice and read religiously. For her 13th birthday her dad gifted her a pair of Bluetooth headphones. Her cheeks flushed at the indiscreet gesture, but she was thankful nonetheless for the issue it solved.
For two weeks in October, their dad spent the week away in Melbourne for work. Walking to the kitchen, Sadie heard her mum’s voice through the bedroom door. I think it’s the best thing to do for the girls. I know, I know. No, you don’t have to come down I'm fine on my own. Don’t mention anything to Mum and Dad, okay? Sadie knew her mum was calling her sister her voice when her voice became tired and loose with the honesty, the way voices do when the person listening truly knows you.
Aunt Jeanette was there by the next day. Sadie’s mother took the girls out of the house for the first time to Taronga Zoo. Her mother and aunt trailed behind them, talking quietly with their heads slightly bowed. Leah was oblivious, just beaming to be out of the house with her family. She ran up to the meerkats, mad with glee, and pressed her hands and nose to the glass. There were two baby meerkats rolling in the sand. Tiny tufts of their grey-brown sticking up as they moved moved lazily from wrestling to snuggling.
“That one’s you,” Leah pointed to the slightly bigger one “and that one’s me!”.
Feeling a sudden surge of bittersweet love, she pulled her sister into a sideways hug and kissed the top of her blonde head.
The four of them had lunch at the cafe. The two sisters were opposite from each other on the rectangular table. Oldest across from oldest sister, and youngest across from youngest. Aunt Jeanette sat across from Leah, recounting a story from their childhood. It was about how they once found a stray kitten in the backyard which they then hid in their wardrobe until their parents found out.
“Then, Dad, he was always the softy out of the two of them, let us keep him,” Jeanette said proudly.
“He was orange with white paws so we named him Socks,” Mum said. “Pretty unoriginal”.
“We also had Wags the dog. He had a very waggly tail”.
Sadie’s mum, aunt and sister laughed hysterically at this. Sadie caught herself laughing too, but also watching her mum’s face soften. Her brown eyes were alive and present like they were the first time she saw a frangipani flower, or the time two rainbow lorikeets landed outside in the bird bath. The older pair of sisters barely looked related. Aunt Jeanette’s nose was long and straight, and her hair a mousy brown. Their mother’s nose was round and small, and she had the same wiry hair as Sadie. But when they laughed, their identical small round teeth and crinkly smiles made it clear to see they could be nothing but sisters.
Aunt Jeanette flew back to Adelaide and Sadie headed off for her school science camp. When she returned home, the house was eerily peaceful. Her dad had returned and was cooking dinner, sliding red and green capsicums into a wok of oil and jarred ginger. Their mother was watching the news on TV, Leah’s legs strewn across her lap while she played on her iPad. There had been a four-day heatwave, so the screen doors were wide open to let a cool evening breeze through. Sadie remembered thinking that her parents must have resolved their issues while she was away. Of course, she thought, maybe I just had to give them a little space and they would figure it all out.
The peaceful equilibrium of their household went on for another full week. Their dad even insisted on driving them to school each morning, blaring 80s rock music and winding down the windows to make the girls cower and laugh with embarrassment. Sadie often forgot that her dad could be fun. He always had this cheeky glint in his eye and had the habit of making everything a game. He pulled them into a one-armed hug from the backseat before he made his way into the city, Hoodoo Gurus still spilling out the car windows as he flew around the curb.
That Friday evening, the previous events started to become clear. After watching an hour of afternoon TV and bouncing on the trampoline, Sadie and Leah walked into the open living space red cheeked and frazzle haired. Their mum was sitting at the kitchen table fiddling with her watch, and their father was leaning against the kitchen bench looking at the girls with pressed lips.
“Girls, come sit down. Your mother and I have something we want to discuss with you.”
The conversation went about as smoothly as those conversations usually do, which is not at all. Leah was crying and yelling, and Sadie was saying nothing. Their ever-stoic mother had a stream of constant tears falling down her face. Their dad looked tired and slightly vexed.
“But we just moved here!” Leah wailed for the third time.
“I know sweetheart,” their dad said, “but it’s for the best”.
“Why can’t I stay in Sydney with you, and Sadie can go live with Mum”.
Sadie felt a hot flash of betrayal.
“I don’t want to leave my friends,” Leah added.
“You have friends back home, Lee. I’m sure they’ll be more than happy to have you back”.
The conversation went around in circles, mostly between Leah and their dad. The decision was that they would both go back to regional South Australia to live with their mum in their old house that had since been rented out. They would finish the school year at the girls’ school and their dad would buy a smaller place nearer the city. Their father would come visit for every school holiday and birthday. Sadie made no protest. In some ways she had seen it coming and in others she felt blind-sighted. Either way, it would be a humiliation to cry in front of anyone about it.
Come early December, after a week of Christmas activities and movies, the school year came to an end. Their beautiful North Shore home was a tiled echo chamber, void of any screaming it had previously heard. Sadie stole a woollen jumper from inside a box of her dad’s clothes, wrapping it in a plastic bag before putting it in her suitcase so it wouldn’t lose its smell.
The girls spent the two-day drive home looking out of the window. Leah refused her food, but Sadie ate up, to exhibit her unaffectedness. Their mother took them to see Frozen on the stopover in Shepparton. Despite herself, Leah came out of the cinema singing and twirling in a summer dress. Let it go, let it gooooo. Sadie thought Elsa should have stayed inside her room and never left the castle.
The three of them made it back to Nangwarry just after lunch time on a Sunday. Their grandparents’ silver Camry was parked in front of Sadie’s old house. They had two paper parcels of fish and chips and a six-pack of mini lemonades. Sadie’s grandparents hugged her mother tightly. She saw her grandma whisper something in her mum’s ear and give a sad smile.
A ding-ding sound came from behind Sadie. She turned to meet a beaming Beth who was peddling along the bitumen road smiling from ear to ear. They barrelled towards each other at full velocity like colliding stars. Falling sideways on the grass in unison with the bike.