watched the dimple at Dill’s cheek pucker and disappear as his mouth moved with each concentrated swish of his bow. His features were changing, maybe he would become more like their dad after all, the soft rounded edges of his little-boyhood just beginning their surrender to the harder lines of adolescence.
Dill looked at the dog then threw Alex an angelic look, eyes squinting over cheeks risen with mischief.
‘Don’t try that butter wouldn’t melt thing on me, Dill,’ Alex laughed, ‘I saw you in action earlier. I’d stay out of Jem’s way for a while if I were you.’
Finn laughed. ‘What have you done at your sister now, buddy?’ Finn had paint spatters all over his shirt. Or was that mud? No matter, he’d turned it inside out anyway. Rodolfo woofed and very sensibly fell back to trot beside Finn’s legs, before Dill could do a William Tell on him.
‘Nothin’.’ Dill grinned.
‘You big fibber, Dill Pickle,’ Alex said. ‘Y’know how I can always tell when you’re fibbing?’
‘His lips move?’ Finn teased.
‘No.’ Alex bumped Finn with her shoulder. She looked back to Dill. ‘Your dimple gives you away, little brother.’
Dill gave in immediately. ‘I caught Jem snogging the bathroom mirror! The actual mirror!’ His nose wrinkled. ‘Ew, she’s so gross, she looked like the fish me and Dad caught when we went fishing in the plunge pools.’ Dill made a face, presumably of a fish gasping its last. ‘I think she needs more practice. Yeeuck.’
‘Jem is spending a lot of time in the bathroom, come to think of it.’ Alex bit at the smile on her lips. Finn let his own smile run a merry riot all over his face. Something floated inside Alex when she saw him do that.
‘Know much about snogging do you, bud? What are you, nine?’
Dill stopped swishing and jabbed his bow towards Alex. ‘I know you like to snog my sister,’ he grinned, ‘and if my dad catches you guys on the porch again, he told Mum he’s going to see how much you really like her, Finn, and tell you all the gross stuff Alex—’
Alex lunged. ‘Dill! God, shut up!’
Dill bolted. Alex was going to throttle him. No wonder Mum had asked her to take Dill out while Jem cooled off. Jem had been set to murder him back at the house.
Alex made a grab for him. Incapacitating Dillon with relentless armpit-tickling was probably one of her favourite things to do, second only to snogging Finn’s face off on the front porch.
‘One sister trying to kill you not enough, huh, Dill?’
Dill squealed in that way smaller children do when they’re being chased and The Fear has gotten a hold of them. She’d nearly got to him, but they were both giggling too much to effectively chase or flee from the other. Alex made a final lunge when something cumbersome, a black and tan furred lump of warmth scuttled beneath her knees sending her reeling into the grasses with a clumsy thud. Rodolfo whimpered. Dill looked on for about half a second before erupting into the same breathless laughter he was holding onto from his toddlerhood.
Rodolfo whimpered again. Alex whimpered too. ‘Bad dog, Rodolfo.’ She lifted an arm up to examine it and grimaced.
‘Hold on, don’t move!’ Finn was beating back the thicket of nettles with Dill’s bow. He looked kinda clumsy about it, Alex thought, but it felt sort of romantic. Totally worth the stings.
‘Don’t, Finn, you’ll get stung too!’ Like she meant that.
Finn slipped an arm beneath her back. Alex let him. Finn lifted her out of the nettle patch. Alex breathed in a hit of his warm skin and the body spray she didn’t think suited him but said she liked just the same because he was Finn, marvellously gorgeous, artistic, Finn.
‘You’re not going to snog now, are you?’ Dill drew one of his arrows from their sheath and held it out to them feathers first. ‘Cos if you are, can one of you please shoot me first? Don’t bother with the apple.’
Alex jolted awake to a short, sharp, unpleasant sound at her truck window. Dill disappeared from her mind leaving behind him only a dull echo of the stinging sensation Alex had felt creeping through her legs. More tapping at the passenger window pushed away those last wisps of Finn too.
Alex blinked. Kerring General loomed in the near distance. She pieced it together, remembered her mum, Jem’s call, the journey home. Alex rubbed the tiredness from her head. Finn. On the roadside. That bit hadn’t been a trippy dream. Alex shifted a little and felt an uncomfortable fuzziness sear through one of her calf muscles. Her legs were locked together awkwardly in the foot well, a tingling sensation raging all the way down into her feet.
Pins and needles, loony. Not nettle-rash. She tried to flex against it.
‘I knew you wouldn’t wait until morning.’ The voice was dampened by glass. Alex checked for drool at the corner of her lips and tried to see around the hand softly rapping fingers adorned with pretty rings against her passenger window. Jem had been a sandy blonde last Christmas, sporting a victory roll if memory served. The girl standing the other side of the glass was all long layers and choppy fringe in a shade much closer to the deep red Blythe had passed on to both of them. Dill had taken more of their dad’s features, their mum had said. More angular and fair. But mostly he hadn’t reminded Alex of either of their parents in particular.
Alex smiled through the glass. It regularly caught her off-guard how attractive Jem had become since emerging from her tomboy chrysalis. Without Dill, Alex’s theory couldn’t be properly measured, but she’d long suspected theirs was one of those families where the children had become progressively more beautiful as they’d come along. This morning though, Jem looked even more the butterfly than usual, striking and fragile all at once.
Alex reached across the passenger seat and pulled on the door handle. ‘Hey, stranger. What time is it?’ The car park had filled up since Alex had pulled into one of the far bays and dozed off.
Jem crouched down in the truck doorway. ‘Time you stopped sleeping with your mouth open? It’s eight-thirty, how long have you been here? Or shouldn’t I ask?’ She reached lithely over the passenger seat and pulled Alex’s head in for a kiss. The question was on Jem’s face before she could ask it. ‘Alex, have you been swimming?’
‘Not exactly.’ She wouldn’t call it swimming. Alex gave in to another yawn. ‘I haven’t been here that long, I don’t think. Couple of hours?’
‘Hope not, Al. They’re hot on the parking charges here, the thieving toads. Like anyone wants to be stuck at a hospital.’ Alex pulled her pumps back and grabbed her rucksack from the passenger foot well while Jem slammed the passenger door shut. Alex skipped to keep pace with her, glancing across the hospital car park as they walked. There was no sign of him. Jem pulled an expensive looking phone from the breast pocket of her denim jacket and checked the screen. ‘He went in already. I hung back to make a call, I didn’t spot you until after he’d gone inside,’ she said reassuringly. Jem returned her phone to her pocket, slipping her free arm around Alex’s waist. ‘Honest, Al, don’t go off on one … he didn’t know you were here or he’d have waited to say hi.’
‘OK.’ Alex smiled, trying not to leave such a tiny word hanging in the air all by itself. What had she been expecting anyway,
