Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
The soundtrack is Don Henley singing on the Eagles’ Greatest Hits. Everything 70’s is cool right now. The smell is Body Shop Dewberry oil. The feeling is the wind through the wound down windows of Bek’s Bluebird. But also of freedom. We are four friends, itching on the inside from so much study. It’s a beautiful midsummer’s day. Let’s break out this beast, the first car, and go on a road trip!
There’s a crew standard of long, shiny hair, the result of square meals lovingly prepared and the clean living of school-work, rest, play. Blowing free of scrunchies in the cooling breeze of the state forest, the car stereo is punctuated by the call of a solitary bell bird.
We’ve got an undercurrent of anxiety – in tonight’s delivery of the Herald Sun our scores will be published, along with the rest of Victorian Year 12s. The measurement of an entire school career represented by a percentage to 2 decimal points. I never want the day to end, but I cant stand the waiting either. I certainly cant put aside the ants inside me feelings and go home to dinner with Mum, Dad and the boys. I’d punch one of them.
“Hey! What did that sign just read?” Jo’s singular voice cuts above the music and the wind. “Did anyone else just read that? I think it said Cum Creek. It was actually spelt the right way!”
“I think it did. We’re going back to look.” Pulling the car over, the newly licensed and responsible Bek did a careful u-turn.
“This is a kodak moment Ber!” The smile that broke a thousand boys flashed across the back seat at me from Emma.
I reached down into my Sportsgirl bag for my camera. Yep, still 10 shots left.
We clamber out and pose in front of the sign for several snaps. Less than 20 km from our home town – how is this filthy and very excellent little waterway name something we have never heard of? While we stand there giggling and posing there are several hoots and shout outs from the occasional passing car.
The rest of that day and night is a haze of memory and barefooted summer fun. What remains is the sensation; the smell of the cool forest on a hot day, the exemption from curfew, the feelings of friendships to last a lifetime.
Early the next morning the results did come in, we ripped into those early paper deliveries like savages. The main street looked like the aftermath of the grand final parade. Some of us were happy, some were going to have to come up with a new plan. We would all survive.
Those photos worked – there were no ways to check them on the spot, no guarantees with film; but they did come out. In a box in an album they sit – golden sun dappled frames of those first days of freedom. Whenever I hear the opening chords to Hotel California it’s this day I’m straight back to in a flash.