Page 8 of The Version You Hide

“Thank you, Jade,” I say self-assuredly. “Now if you’ll both excuse me, this badass is overdue a lunch break.”

“Yeah,” Jade agrees. “She needs a lunch break. And I need a Jack and coke. What does a girl have to do to get a fucking drink around here?” She slams a heavy hand down on the bar attempting to imitate our disgruntled former customer.

A laugh bursts from me as Dylan turns to Jade. “Oh, come on! That’s not funny. I’m going to make you wait now. In fact, I’m cutting you off!” He waves a dismissive hand as he turns his back to her.

“I just got here!” Jade cries, her eyes widening as her jaw drops in surprise.

“Well, you should have thought about that before you opened your smart mouth,” he retaliates before moving down the corridor back to the office.

“Looks like I’m not the only one around here that enjoys torturing him then,” I say with a conspiratorial smirk, pouring a shot of Jack Daniels into a scotch glass.

“Yeah, you’re right.” Jade brushes her dark hair over her shoulder. “It’s a pretty fun way to pass the time.”

“Told you.” I wink, topping her glass with Coke and sliding it across the bar. “I’ll catch up with you later, I guess.”

She offers me a nod before taking a sip of her beverage while I head to the storage room to grab my backpack.

I wander down the esplanade, relishing the afternoon sun on my face and the way the ocean breeze gently whips my hair. After the events of recent years, it’s the little things that make my heart happy. The unmistakable sensation of white sand slipping through my toes. The sound of a seagull cawing, the crashing of the waves.

Things that can’t turn on me, abandon me, crush my heart to dust.

These are the things I can let in.

The pier has become my usual lunch time stomping ground. Or more precisely, the patch of grass in front of the large gum tree. I let my backpack fall to the ground, then sit, setting my back against its smooth bark. I pull my sketch book out and rest it on my knees while I dig around for the set of pencils at the bottom of the bag. Then I survey my surroundings, searching for my muse.

What to draw today, I wonder. The sailboat on the horizon, the surfer girl that waxes her board on the shore. Or maybe the pelican that digs for leftovers in the trash can a few metres to my left. None of these subjects really capture my attention. At least not long enough to spend the required effort needed to put them on paper.

But then I see her. A woman on a park bench, her gaze lost on the ocean in the distance, her wiry long waves curling behind her in the soft breeze. There’s an emptiness within her eyes, yet they portray more emotion than I’ve ever seen. She looks lost. Or lonely. Or both, and my chest aches with sympathy for her.

I drag my pencil along the paper, sketching the lines of her face, unsure if I really have the capability to capture the aching in her expression. To truly do justice to this woman’s portrait. I continue anyway, mindlessly detailing the curve of her jaw, the fullness of her lips and the turmoil in her light blue irises.

It’s not quiet on the pier today, and I’m glad for that. I don’t do well with the quiet. The calm.

It’s when things are quiet that the doubts creep in. When I begin to wonder whether this path I’ve taken is the right one for me.

You’d think it would be easy for me to pack up and start a new life. Especially when the one I’ve left behind was less than ideal. I mean, as if having a mentally preoccupied father and a physically absent mother wasn’t enough, the abusive, drug-dealing boyfriend that constantly pulled me into his web of deceit took the cake.

But of course, leaving behind the girl I used to be comes with a new set of challenges. I’ve only ever been Mackenzie Riley.

The girl with the alcoholic father.

The girl with no friends.

Ethan Davis’s punching bag.

Two questions keep me awake at night, when anxiety creeps in like an oxygen thief, emptying my lungs of air. The first one is, who the hell am I if I’m no longer the girl I’ve been my whole life? The second, do I really belong here?

I’m desperate to break free from the girl I used to be, but I still feel her there. She exists below the surface. Unsure, fragile, and absolutely terrified she’s going to blow this second chance she’s been given.

And I know that Cliff Haven isn’t the worst place I could have landed. I mean, its small. Like, tiny. There’s only one supermarket in town and the nearest shopping mall is a half hour drive away. Things are so backward here I’m surprised they aren’t still using dial up internet.

And because it’s so incredibly tiny, everyone knows everyone else’s business. Which would be fine if my business wasn’t the business that the town was preoccupied with.

Sometimes I pray for a natural disaster, a flood, or some giant event to rock Cliff Haven. Nothing that would threaten anyone’s lives. Just something big enough to override the magnitude of a lost girl from out of town being kidnapped by her boyfriend and bringing with her the evil that resulted in one of their own being hospitalised for life-threatening stab wounds.

But it isn’t all bad. I have my half-sister. This one person that connects me to my new beginning. And I love Kristen. I really do. I’m grateful that fate brought us together.

I glance back up to the woman on the park bench. I’ve got her main features pencilled in on the page and I’ve begun to shade in the definition of her eyes, nose, and jaw when she stands, folding her arms around herself and walks away.

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