Read Online Affection by Krissy Kneen - Free Book Online Page B

back in the sun. “No. I think we’ll both be sad and alone.”

    The yellow truck stopped. The nameless men vaulted over its railings, ran toward our garden. They were all tight arms and shining sinew. They were ripe with heat and strength and sweat and when they were close enough to cast a shadow over me I felt afraid. My legs were shaking. I wanted this. I pulled down my swimsuit and exposed my breasts to them. I had wanted them to stop for me, but now that they had I felt afraid. The fear was a shiver that vibrated the muscles under my skin. I crossed my legs coyly and the pressure of this movement created a wet warmth in my crotch.
    In the dream they circled me and I felt their shadows dark and cold like sharks brushing against my legs. My fear silenced me. The first man to break this circling standoff was slick with sweat. He kneeled, straddling my crossed legs, and it was at the encouragement of the others that he slipped his hand between my legs and his finger, rough from work and smelling like soil, dragged the crotch of my swimsuit aside and I felt the scratch of it entering me. I was trembling by then and my fear was like excitement.
    Hands on both my legs, hands around my wrists. Four men stretching me taught as a skinned roo and the fabric of my swimsuit gave way so easily when he wrenched it to one side. The heavy chest pushing the air from my lungs. The scent of sweat and hay and diesel, the tugging of the hands around my limbs. I was acutely aware of each of these sensations and if I woke before the first man had finished with me and zipped up, stepping aside for another man to take his place,
then I would be disappointed. I would crush my fist between my legs and roll over hoping to regain the rising tide of excitement before the last fragments of sleep drifted away.
    It was a recurring dream, and when it didn’t recur of its own accord I sought it out. I made it happen again and again and again.

SCHOOL AGAIN

    Somehow my mother had negotiated for me to hitch a ride with the special school bus that would pick me up from the Turkey Road turn-off and drop me at the Boyne Island stop. From there, the Gladstone bus would take me to school. We hauled ourselves into the consumptive Kombi and my mother bunny-hopped the hulking thing across the corrugations of the access road.
    â€œIf the bus doesn’t connect with the second bus then you stay with the driver,” my mother fretted. “Don’t let her leave you on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere.”
    â€œShe’s not going to leave me, Mum, she’s got a bus full of special kids. She’s not exactly going to leave them on the side of the road.”
    â€œYou’ve got your lunch?” she asked me. “Some money just in case? Change for the phone?”

    â€œI’ll be all right, Mum,” but I was not sure if this was true. I wondered what kind of first impression I would make—fat, nerdy girl from the western suburbs. I imagined the other students all fresh off their farms, fit and healthy and competent at ball sports, already capable of navigating their way through thick bushland, adept at wood chopping and fence building, up and milking the cows before setting out their school uniforms.
    All of my references to country kids had come from old musicals, Paint Your Wagon , Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Annie Get Your Gun . When the bus arrived I kissed my mother quickly.
    She talked to the driver, a round, happy woman with curly hair who waved to me and listened closely as my mother recounted her plan for a breakdown “—she can call me from your place, if that’s all right. It won’t happen, but just in case.”
    â€œWe’ll be fine,” the driver winked at me. “Won’t we, Krissy?”
    â€œKris.” I wanted to be taken seriously. At Toolooah High in Gladstone I would be arriving with a clean slate. I would remain cautious, speak when spoken to,