2016 Tim Winton Award for Young Writers

FIRST PLACE UPPER SECONDARY CATEGORY

© Emily Price

Seventeen years old St Hilda's Anglican School for Girls

The street is the same as it has been for the last 25 years. Bricks fade to crumbled dust. The varnish on the verandas peels in the wind, mould spreading from the sunken asbestos rooves into the jarrah posts infested with white ants. Each gust of wind acts as a breath, the rusty sheds and gnarly paperbarks creaking, groaning. Each resident slows in their day-to-day doings and holds their breath too, all waiting. And like clockwork, the next breeze flows through the town. The sheds settle in their rusty foundations, the paperbarks sigh back into their hunched positions and activity resumes as if there was no interruption. The lady on the hill remains seated. Old John Brookes barters with the green grocer. It’s a Monday, and John always buys his potatoes on a Monday. Little Sally watches in awe as her father counters John’s offer and gets a price far above the cost it took to grow them in their garden. She runs inside to tell her mum that they can afford ballet lessons this week. Meanwhile Old John Brookes shuffles off smugly, convinced he has just got the deal of the century. The lady on the hill glances at the scene then stares into the trees. Milly and Bert are arguing over a letter that needs to go on the mail run. Someone forgot a stamp and Milly

doesn’t want to pay 30c for a letter that is not her own. Bert waves his arms exasperated, calling Milly selfish, yet does not move to pay for the stamp himself. Milly throws the letter into the dust and slams the post office door. Bert storms towards the postal truck and starts the engine. The letter lies bruised in the dirt. The lady on the hill watches. The letter catches in the wind and stumbles drunkenly down the road towards the drainpipe. The lady on the hill watches it crash into the drain, ink running, as the water swallows it up. The letter could have been important, but it is too late now. Before, she might have run to save it. Even paid 30c so it could be returned to its rightful owner. But now she watches, unblinking, as it sinks below the surface into the muddy water. She looks at her watch. It’s 10 am, teatime. The floorboards shudder as she slowly stretches up and shuffles along the veranda, towards the door. Her teapot sits contently on the bench, ready to begin the daily ritual. Two chipped, bone china teacups wait patiently on the sink. As always, she sets tea for two. She picks up the brewing pot. Carefully she fills each cup, never spilling a drop. Her hand shakes gently as she

places the pot back onto its mat. Sitting down, she takes a sip of her tea, politely excusing herself as she reaches across the other table setting to take a scone. She settles back into her chair. Silence fills the air as she stares at the pot of jam at the centre of the table. Her eyes widen, the smallest sign of recognition. Picking it up she walks slowly out of the dining room and down the hall. She opens the back door, stumbles down the path, never taking her eyes off the old rusty shed sighing in the breeze. Her hand grips the jam pot so hard her knuckles are white. Halfway to the shed she stops. She can’t remember why she is there. The jam pot drops and smashes at her feet. She doesn’t blink. All she can see is the shed, the rusty walls heaving, groaning. She was so close to proving them all wrong. The lady on the hill stands frigid in the wind. Marge has just finished cleaning the church. She bustles out the doors, broom in tow, towards her car parked in the bay marked ‘Reserved’. This bay is next to the bay marked ‘Reserved for the Father’. As two ladies of the church walk past on their way to the park, Marge makes a large fuss of going to open her car that is parked next to the Father’s bay. They stop as Marge digs noisily through her bag only to realise her keys are still in the church. The ladies of the church watch in amusement as

Marge huffs inside, mumbling to herself about forgetting to pick up a parcel the Father has left especially for her. The church doors close behind her. The ladies smirk and then continue on their walk. The lady on the hill stands frigid in the wind. She begins to shiver. Billy turns seven today. He got a new bike for his birthday, a red one. Billy no longer needs his training wheels as he proudly parades through the streets, pedalling fast past the jealous onlookers. Sam’s face turns sour. He only got a toy truck for his birthday. Billy smiles triumphantly. Sam asks if he can have a turn but Billy is scared he will break his new bike. After all, Sam might not be off his training wheels yet. Sam turns his back on Billy, body hunched, and slowly shuffles inside, scuffing his toe in the gravel as he goes. Billy does a sharp turn and hits a rock, falling hard onto the bitumen. His knee is all cut up and he starts to cry. Sam watches from his front doorstep. Nobody goes to help Billy. Sam quietly closes the front door behind him and leaves Billy alone on the bitumen with his stupid new bike. The lady on the hill starts to cry. Big sobs roll through her body. She can’t breath properly. Her body shudders as each gasp of air

wrenches through her. Her throat closes up and she goes into blind panic. She tries to remember something, anything. It’s blank. The jam was the first trigger in a long time. But she let it go. The lady on the hill begins to shatter. Brenda marches into the newsagents to get her morning paper. Her walking stick clicks on the laminate as she stomps towards the counter. Gill has given up asking Brenda to not smoke in the store and, instead, has started the habit herself. After giving Brenda her paper over the counter, the two walk outside together. Gill and Brenda are gossips, always have been. Brenda gives Gill an update on the council’s latest scandal. The mayor and his wife are rumoured to be getting a divorce after he had an affair with his secretary. Gill thinks it is about time the woman moved on, why would anyone want to marry a man who doesn’t go to Sunday church anyway? The conversation swings to its next victim. Gill asks about the movements of Ms Florence, you know, the lady on the hill. Brenda tuts, taking a long drag of her cigarette. “You know, someone that crazy shouldn’t be left on their own. There are institutions for that kind of thing.” “I mean for heavens sake, she can’t even remember her own husbands name, or that son of hers!”

Both women shake their heads disapprovingly and flick their bangs out of the way to glare at the old house, barely standing, at the top of the hill. Gill needs to go back to work. Brenda has to pick up a parcel. They both grunt goodbyes and are absorbed back into their own separate lives. The lady on the hill starts to clean. She washes the jam off the path. She scrubs the tiles until they are no longer sticky. She washes the teapot, and the two chipped teacups. She brushes the crumbs from the uneaten scones into her hand and shakes them into the bin. The scones are wrapped in a tea towel and placed on the bench. She walks down the hall. She steps onto the veranda with the peeling varnish and mouldy roof. She sits. Blindly she stares, void of memories. She shows no hint of her earlier episode. No reason to give them more to talk about. The lady on the hill stares blankly out onto the street. If you look closely there is a very small spot of jam on her shoe.

2016 Tim Winton Award for Young Writers

SECOND PLACE

UPPER SECONDARY CATEGORY

© Indigo Atkinson

Seventeen years old Cape Naturalist College

Truth is the bully we all pretend to like, and I am the blank cursor on my computer screen – words here in my head not there on the paper. Across from me is my grandmother, my mother’s mother, fingers a knot of worry, knuckles rapping the table with a consistent and precise concern. A pot bubbles in the kitchen. I know it is a distant sound to her, because she is holding space now. She is holding the space of my grandfather, the seat between us, and her concern is boundless. The women in our family are good at holding the empty spaces left by men, whose lips taste like lies, but whose presence is never denied. I am a passive observer now, though I suppose not truly objective, and grandpa has started to wander off more and more frequently. The doctors say schizophrenia, grandmother says it’s her and I say he is trying to meet on the boundary of the good and evil inside himself. It will send you mad if you cannot pick a side. My grandmother, my mother, and my sister have all picked the good and the giving side and they give and are good. My father and my brother choose to leave their chairs empty at the dinner table now. They are a procession of lost testosterone. My grandfather walks that line that is within us all and now, I think he has gone walking looking for how to heal the fault line between the good and the empty. I want to say this to my grandmother and I want to say while the men in this family grow large full moon bellies, you wane. Why do you not pray for yourself? While the pot bubbles in the kitchen, a space is between us, held for a man wandering. Can you not see that there is love to be had within me and my sister and your own daughter? Can you cease to pray for my brother and my grandfather because your prayers are answered in the love we already have for you? But truth is a bully and I have no desire to hit my grandmother with a, “they’re never coming home” this early in the morning.

“Tell me the truth!” My mother would say sternly. My grubby little fingers would twist in the worried way already too familiar, and my knuckles would rap on the table occasionally. My sister would cry and say, “He did it mum, he hit me!” And then she would hide behind my mother’s legs, convinced my brother had hit her and that mum could protect her. Mum would look down on me, but I was already too afraid of the truth’s consequences. As my sister grew up and had boyfriends that had other girlfriends, and dad left mum for a war within himself, truth seemed to grow claws, sharpened on my silence. My sister was an artful holder of empty spaces, learnt it best from my mum who set the dinner table for dad years after he was only an empty space. I look at my mum now, and she works a lot, pressing into the hours, an ignorance of the empty spaces all around her. For truth is a bully, we all pretend to like. It is 10:31am when I get a phone call. Grandmother sits quietly at the table, mum is working, my sister volunteering. I stare until my eyes go blurry at the page but I cannot write. Today I am also a keeper of blank spaces. “Hello?” I say as I pick up the phone. “Hello, is this Sanjay?” “No. I’m his younger and abandoned sister. How do you still have this number?” “Oh shit… I thought he had gone back home to all you guys… He said he was going to. Um… your grandpa is here, just sort of chilling in my kitchen. Like…” “Chilling? Just chilling in your kitchen? Well that doesn’t sound awful. You’re welcome to him because he’s not welcome around here at the moment.” I hang up the phone and drift to the kitchen. I’m sure it was Ahmed I spoke to, I remember he and my brother were close. My grandmother stirs at a pot of

turmeric and rice and clasps my small palms in her worried knuckles. She stares at me with tiger’s eyes. “He’s coming back for dinner tonight isn’t he?” Her voice rattles but it doesn’t break. I shrug. “I’m going to be here for dinner tonight. So is mum. You’ve got some great company already, whaddya need the wrinkled prune for as well?” She tuts and tuts. “So rude. You were always so rude about him.” It is 10:43am when the phone rings again. “Hello?” I say again. “Still not Sanjay then? Right... Ok... I need you to come get this old dude, I…I can’t have him chilling in my kitchen anymore.” “Sorry can’t help you there. I’m planning a family dinner and he’s not invited.” “I’m being serious! He’s wheezing and talking about his death a lot and he’s smoking and my mum doesn’t like people smoking in the house and – “ “Sorry Ahmed, not my problem right now.” I look to my grandmother, still lost in her familiar landscape of the kitchen. I think that if I keep the men out of this household long enough, the women will grow strong together and stop keeping their empty places. I think that dysfunctional families only survive with strong women and that love is an illusion of Fate and Time, used to distract us little humans from true strength. If we didn’t love these men so much, perhaps their absence wouldn’t feel like a physical ache in the heart and bones and soul. The unfortunate truth is, grandpa needs to stay away for grandmother to heal. 2:34 pm. “Hello?” “Its not Ahmed calling this time.”

Silence, until I choke, “Sanjay?” “Yes my sister.” I hang up. 2:35pm. “If this is Sanjay, I swear to –“ “Please sister, just let me –“ Hang up. 2:42pm. No Caller ID. “If you’d just let me tell you the truth–“ Hang up. I don’t want to hear the truth from Sanjay. I know his truth already. He would throw temper tantrums despite being the oldest and dad would laugh at mum saying, “Boys will be boys hey!” Sanjay said that he was picked on; Sanjay neglects his role as the bully. Sanjay said he couldn’t concentrate in school and Dad said that boys needed to be outdoors not in classrooms. Then Dad screamed until he coughed up blood when Sanjay’s grades dropped. Dad left when Sanjay was twelve and our grandparents moved in. In a flurry of teenage years, awkward, angry and awful, Sanjay grew up. The Sanjay I remember slammed his fist on the bench every time he spoke to Mum. He yelled at me for being weak and small. He preached hate at my sister. He left at seventeen to join the lost procession of testosterone, leaving behind an empty space at the dinner table, and mother with a hole where her heart should be. It’s dinnertime now and the sun falls on the table in pierced shards that escape the blind’s arms. It’s a setting sun, a bloody sun, a distraction for a quiet table. “How was work mum?” I ask. Cutlery scrapes a mournful tune to brake the silence,

because mum doesn’t hear me. She has mimicked her own mother in the way that she grows thin, counting her calories and withdrawing into a shell of skin; while my dad grows large and sloth like, drinking with foreign women. Grandma pushes the vegetables around on her plate in a dreary pattern. What a sorry bunch we are, lacking love and lustre and unable to face the truth of abandonment. “He’s not coming grandma. And look, I’m here, I love you,” I say. Tiger eyes, and a rattling voice she repeats to me, “He’s coming to dinner tonight.” They call it serendipity and I call it coincidence that there is a knock at the door at that moment. Of course I answer, suspense in every footstep out of the small living room, and across the kitchen into the hall. I open the front door slowly, half of my face peeping out to see who it is. Sanjay stands in front of me. When I last saw him, he was so cruel with his words like whips, and then he broke mum’s heart, packing his bags and leaving screaming. Now he stands, a deflated self, though still tall and handsome, a much sadder human. He wears despair like a new and stiff uniform. It creases the corners of his eyes, weighs at the corners of his mouth. His mouth moves. Words form. “Grandpa has died,” he says. Truth begins the fight with a strong upper cut. I open the door a little wider. We stand chest to chest, separated by truth. I don’t say anything for a very long thirty seconds. I feel hands on my throat. I feel claws scraping at the bones of my chest. My lungs are too small and I breathe from an increasingly shallow basin of breath. Grandma totters in and beams upon the sight of Sanjay. “Oh my son, my son, my beautiful grandson! I told your mother you would return!” Mum slinks into the kitchen too, shadows of uncertainty cloud her face. Sanjay meets her eyes with a cautious apology and

bad news. Grandmother still hugging him, he speaks over her head, “I tried to call you Dee,” he says to me. “He ran from Ahmed’s. Straight in front of a truck.” Truth runs claws down the wallpaper of my mind until my reality is in shreds. The depression of an empty space is revealed beneath my mind’s wallpaper. He ran. He’s dead. Ran in front of a truck. I wasn’t there. Truth lurks in the corner of the funeral, caresses the casket of Granddad, leers at me all dressed in black. “To tell you the truth,” begins Sanjay softly, “There was nothing you could’ve done even if you’d been there.” To tell you the truth Sanjay, if you hadn’t walked out on the family, I would’ve been there and I would know for sure what consequence my actions would have had. “Thank you Sanjay.” Truth smiles with gratitude, pleased that I’d found it so appealing when Sanjay spoke it. Grandmother seems to be waiting for someone, saving a seat beside her as if Granddad might just show up again. It is a sad a tearful procession of mascara clogged tears and thirty euphemisms for suicide. They say he wanted to go, so he went and now he’s in a ‘better’ place. The sky seems to mock us with its clarity and sunshine. I learned that love is no illusion of Time and Fate. It is the force that heals wounds of ignorance. Sanjay moved back in and cleaned out Grandad’s room. Mum took some time off work and my sister came home. My grandmother didn’t set the table for Granddad, as if his death finally forced her to shake Truth’s hand acknowledging that he wasn’t coming home. The truth about Sanjay punched me in the face, and then in the gut for good measure as I watched him mimic grandma’s cooking, and mum’s cleaning habits: he only ever had Dad’s shouting and then Dad’s absence to model as a man, nothing

else. He only knew how to join the lost boys and not how to choose the good within himself. I learned to not be a blank cursor, flickering on the edge of a blank page, edge of a story. In Sanjay’s bed of rest, I approached. The blankets like a cacoon he had returned to to be reborn, his face’s sleepy creases unending I said, “I love you.” I said. Sanjay held my hand. The chasm between kindness and the Truth, healed.

2016 Tim Winton Award for Young Writers

THIRD PLACE

UPPER SECONDARY CATEGORY

© Elena Perse

Sixteen years Santa Maria College

Tiny droplets of rain spattered my face, sullen grey clouds rolling above me. I hitched my bag higher up my shoulders, rubbing where the strap had dug in, leaving a lurid red mark. I could feel the beginning of a headache pounding beneath my temples. I’d seriously misjudged this whole “gap year” thing. Worn down by my university degree, I’d decided to take some time off and travel around the country. Now, due to a combination of overconfidence in the kindness of strangers and the public transport system, and a lack of money, I was stranded by the roadside. No buses or trains connected to the next town I was headed to, and there was no way I could pay for a taxi. So there I stood, maybe a kilometre along the only sealed road, hoping someone would pick me up. I checked my watch. Ten o’clock. I gave it maybe half an hour more before I had to head back to the crusty motel, for safety’s sake. I’d been waiting for maybe 10 minutes when I heard the rumble of a car, and a set of wide eyed headlights swung into view. I hurried to the side of the road, stretching out my thumb, shielding my face from the brightness with my other hand. The car screeched to a stop beside me. It was shiny, cherry red even in the darkness. Someone clearly took good care of it. The window closest to me was wound down. I waited, holding my breath. “Jump right in,” a voice said flatly from within. I hesitated. The inside of the car seemed unusually dark- I couldn’t see anything of the driver. I peered in again and deliberated. I looked back over my shoulder at the inky bush behind me and made up my mind. What other choice did I have? I swung the door open and slid into the car, buckling up my belt before I could have a change of heart. After a brief struggle with the clasp, I turned to face the person sitting in the driver’s seat. A young woman sat, staring right

ahead. Pale hands rested limply on the steering wheel and a scented pine air freshener hung from the rear vision mirror. She didn’t make a sound. “Uh, thank you…For picking me up, I mean…” I said She turned her head slowly to glance appraisingly at me. “Hmmm,” was all she said, before turning her attention back to the darkened road ahead of us. The car was silent once again. “You must be pretty brave.” I said after about an hour, my voice breaking the quiet. She turned, fixing her gaze on me. “What do you mean?” she asked, her voice low and toneless. Something about her quiet manner and slow movements made me feel a little on edge. I shifted uncomfortably against the scratchy car seat. “Well, most girls wouldn’t pick up some random guy out in the middle of nowhere.” I realised how that sounded and hurriedly forced a laugh. “Not that, you know, you have any reason to be scared. I’m really grateful for you picking me up and, like, I have a little sister and everything. I’d never hurt a girl.” She regarded me, lips pursed. We hadn’t swerved or anything, but I really wished she would look back at the road. Or just away from me. Whatever. I looked down at my hands in my lap. “You remind me of someone.” she said, tugging me out of my reverie. “Sorry?” “You look just like a boy I knew,” she repeated. “An old friend. That’s why I picked you up.” I forced another awkward laugh. “Um. That’s cool.” Another silence yawned between us. My fingers itched to switch on the radio, even to turn up the heat so the roar of air would drown out the deafening quiet. Instead I leant back against the headrest and closed my eyes. I’d gotten barely any sleep last

night, on the lumpy mattress in the dodgy motel. When I woke up, the car was freezing. I stirred groggily and rubbed at my eyes. The driver silently stared ahead, giving no sign she even knew she had a passenger. I reached out and put my hand over one of the heater vents to check if it was on. Air pushed at my fingertips, but icy cold. I shivered and twisted at the dial with numb fingers, but the cold air continued to wash over me. “Um, hey…” I ventured Uh, your heater- I think it’s broken. It’s freezing and I can’t turn it off…” The girl stared stonily straight ahead. My arms were prickling with goosebumps. I leant across the centre console and touched the driver’s arm to get her attention. She didn’t respond. Her arm was cold under mine, and the weak floral scent of her perfume tickled my nose. I sank back against my seat. I glanced across again and something caught my eye. The luminous red numbers of the car’s clock flashed over and over- 2:45 2:45 2:45 2:45. I stared- I was sure it had been a quarter to three for longer than a minute. I looked at my watch- the big hand almost brushing the 3, the little hand resting at quarter to. The thin red second hand- utterly motionless. I surged forward and shook the girl’s arm, hard. Her whole body juddered with the movement. “Hey- hey…HEY!” she didn’t respond at all. A marionette with sliced strings. I moved to shake her again but before I could reach her, the car suddenly swerved. Tyres screeched on the wet road. We spun off the tarmac. My head cracked painfully against the window. Bright white lights bloomed before my eyes, unfolding like flowers. When my sight finally cleared, I looked frantically around. The

car had come right of the road, and we were surrounded by damp scrub. The sky outside was pitch black. I turned to the driver and froze. She sat limply, her neck bent at an uncomfortable angle. Her pale hair was dark with blood, and I didn’t want to look at her face where it rested on the wheel. My stomach churned. “Oh god! Oh my god! I’ll… I’ll call someone. I’m going to call an ambulance.” I told the girl hysterically. She remained motionless. My heart juddered in my chest. My hands shook uncontrollably when I tried to open the door. I tumbled out into the cold air. Leaves damp beneath my knees. Back up again. I fished my phone out. 000. Heart ricochetting about. A series of short beeps, coming from my phone. No bars. No service. I dragged in a deep breath. In. Out. Calm. Down. I walked further along the road, dialling and redialling. I refused to look down at my watch. I didn’t want to think about how long this was taking- how long the girl had left. Deep down, I was terrified of seeing the halted second hand again. I had no idea how long I’d been walking when finally, a voice in my ear told me I’d been connected. “Oh thank god, I need- I need an ambulance- really quick. I was hitch hiking, but I’ve been in an accident, we swerved off the road and the girl driving won’t wake up, and her head’s bleeding and oh god, oh god…” I was babbling wildly, so sick with fear, I couldn’t think. The steady voice of the operator asked me question after question. In a daze, I told her the last town I’d seen us go through, the motorway we were on and what the car looked like. I turned and began heading back the way I’d come. The calm, cool voice in my ear took the tremble from my hands, as I hurried to the car. The dark mass of the vehicle became visible, half hidden by vegetation, just as I heard the sirens. Over my

shoulder, I could see the flashing lights, and I began to run to the car. I waved my arms frantically to catch their attention. The ambulance pulled over at the same time I made it to the car. I hunched over, hands on my knees- trying to force air back into my lungs as paramedics jumped out. I straightened up and stopped dead. The flashing lights of the ambulance illuminated the car. A different car, it had to be. This car was red, sure, but it was rusty with age, grimy and covered in dirt. The car that had picked me up had been well loved, and there was no way it could have gotten this dirty just in the crash. I was so confused. All around me, the harsh artificial light rendered the paramedics’ faces masks. One put her hand on my arm and I started. “We heard there was an injured driver- where is she?” she asked. I stared “Front seat,”’ I replied. The woman gave me a strange look and led me over to the driver’s door. It hung open and I gazed inside. There was no girl in the front seat. Instead, the upholstery was perishing and covered in dried, red-brown stains. I turned and heaved. My head spun. I had no idea of what was happening. Someone guided me away from the car. They sat me down, my head between my knees. Next thing I knew, I was in a police station. A policeman peered at me “Ah, good- you’re awake. We’ve got a couple of questions to ask you, just head this way, mate.” he said, helping me to my feet. I stumbled my way into another chair, facing a desk. The man sat down. “Okay- can you tell me what happened last night- from when you were picked up, right up until the ambulance arrived?”

My memories of the night before flooded back and my stomach rolled. I told the policeman about how a silent girl had picked me up in a shiny red car, how I’d fallen asleep and woken to icy cold and stopped clocks. How the car had swerved off the road, the girl’s bleeding head, and finally the old empty car with bloodstains and no driver. The officer sat back and exhaled heavily. He pushed a small piece of plastic towards me. “Take a look,” he invited. “Seem familiar?” I gaped. It was a driver’s license, belonging to a James Hendricks. With my face on it. “I-I this isn’t mine. That’s not me….” I said, frowning at the officer. “We know,” he replied “By the date on it, that guy should be in his thirties by now. Too old to be you. However, it was in the glovebox of that car. We ran some checks, and the car has been missing for 15 years.” He handed me a photo of a girl with blonde hair. “This was in the glovebox too. Know her?” It was the girl who picked me up. I told the officer and he raised an eyebrow. “That’s Victoria Cooke. She vanished at the same time as the car- Hendricks was a good friend of hers, he said she borrowed it. Everyone thought she’d run away. Hendricks had been cleared as a suspect in her disappearance, but with DNA evidence from the car, we might be able to reopen the case.” “What case? That girl, Victoria, she definitely picked me up. She hit her head too- just look around the crash, she can’t have gone far. Just find her and ask what happened.” I said insistently The man looked at me gravely, “I have no idea who picked you up, because it couldn’t have been Victoria. We found her body a few years ago. She’s been dead for quite a while.”