Up Over Down Under (24 page)

“Steamed cod fillet with broccoli.”

“Broccoli?” She liked broccoli just fine. That was, when it was prepared with actual herbs and spices and other flavor-producing ingredients.

“Steamed broccoli,” Mrs. Ritter confirmed.

Billie's heart sank. “Sounds…delicious.” One thing she was homesick for: Marmite. And pavlova. And the occasional chocolate bar. Mrs. Ritter absolutely never served a dessert. She hadn't been too homesick since she'd arrived in D.C., but right about now she'd kill someone for a pressed peanut-butter-and-Nutella sandwich.

Okay, that was four things. But still.

“We're celebrating,” Mrs. Ritter went on. “Mr. Ritter will be home soon, and we'll all have dinner together.”

Billie perked up. “Celebrating?” That, at least, sounded promising. “Ace! What's the occasion?”

Mrs. Ritter pushed aside the dish she'd been fiddling with—a salad, from the looks of it—and sidled over to the kitchen table, pulling out a chair and settling in, leaning forward onto her elbows. Her eyes sparkled and Billie realized she looked almost giddy. Almost.

“Mr. Ritter was able to get some time off this weekend. We didn't want to say anything until we were sure.”

Billie arched an eyebrow, still not entirely sure what this had to do with her. Were they leaving her alone for the weekend and heading off on a romantic holiday?

“We'll be going to Ocean City this weekend!” Mrs. Ritter burst out, her words coming in a rush. “You'll love it. Granted, it's the off-season and a
touch
cold, so you won't be able to swim, but we can still walk on the beach, and we'll be able to take the sailboat out—oh, and you'll get to try genuine Maryland crab cakes!”

It took a moment for what Mrs. Ritter was saying to sink in, so foreign to Billie was her genuine enthusiasm and bubbliness. But then it hit her: boating, the beach, and deep-fried crab cakes?

Billie was in. So in. Maybe not with the crabs, but with everything else,
definitely.

Talk about aces.

The Ritters told Billie that she could bring a friend with her to the cottage. This begged the question of whom to ask.

It wasn't one she had to mull for long, of course, seeing as her close girlfriends could be counted on one finger.

She tracked Heather down outside of her locker the next afternoon.

“Busy plotting your next bold move of guerrilla warfare?” Heather asked, smiling and flipping the combination to her locker, opening the door, and rummaging inside for some books.

“Hilarious, I'm sure,” Billie said. “Anyway, no…no saving the world just now.” She shrugged. “Other than typing up the content for the Ritter e-newsletter, that is. Just thinking, I suppose.”

“Thinking? At school? Unnecessary.” Heather laughed, fished out the books that she'd been looking for, and then slammed her locker door shut. “We'll have to put an end to that straightaway.” She adopted a mock-Aussie accent for the word “straightaway,” causing Billie to giggle.

She knew she and Heather would have a great time in Maryland. “About the weekend . . .” she began.

“What's going on?” Heather asked. “Am I going to be jealous of your wild social calendar?”

“Nope,” Billie said, still smiling. “It's the same thing that you've got on. That is, if you want. Hear me out…”

Barely forty minutes after leaving Sorrento, the ferry reached the other side of the bay at Queenscliff. Everyone piled back into the cars and headed off the boat, out of the harbor, and onto the main road.

They drove along, Eliza luxuriating in the feeling of the warm, early-evening breeze blowing through her hair. They drove through small towns and then through fields just inland. As they drove closer to the sea, Eliza could catch glimpses of the coastline. Interrupted only by low hills of scrub, there were long beaches stretching out of sight in both directions. The ocean looked calm and peaceful, with rows of waves gently crashing one after the next. The sky was huge above her, and the road stretched out in front of them.

After an hour, they pulled into a parking lot with a gas station, a grocery store, and a bottle shop—what they called a liquor store down here. Eliza went with the girls, Johnny, and Whiz to get food while Will and Macca filled the cars.

They bought several bags of food and sodas to keep them through a couple days, then popped next door to the bottle shop, where Will and Macca were picking up some beer. Once Macca had paid for the beer, they filled a cooler with ice, packed everything up, and headed back out onto the road out of town.

Soon they pulled off the main road onto a dirt track that wound along until they came to a clearing on a hillside overlooking a broad open beach. You could just make out the sea at this point as the sun had set and the last few rays of light were fading over the horizon.

The cars came to a stop, and everyone popped out. Eliza walked to the edge of the car park and looked out over the broad expanse of coastline framing a giant crescent-shaped bay. You could hear the waves breaking and the sounds of the last seabirds of the day. It was peaceful until Will shattered her private reverie.

“All right, me and Whiz are gonna find some wood for the fire and get that started. Macca and Johnny, you guys get the tents set up. Girls are on food and beverage detail. Right?” It wasn't so much a question as a command, and they all took to their task.

Eliza went to the back of the car and began unpacking bags and laying things out on a picnic table with the girls. This was a pretty easy job since they were mostly going to be eating burgers, hot dogs, and potato chips, but they made a nice spread of fixings for everyone and then watched as the boys piled the wood up for a fire.

Once everyone was done with the tasks at hand, Will took a small gas container from the back of his car and poured some diesel fuel on the logs and lit it with a dropped match.

Eliza was not, by any stretch of the imagination, a “camper.” At summer camp she opted every time for things like weaving and movie night over hiking and canoeing. That being said, she knew enough that covering wood in fuel and lighting was not the recommended method of starting a campfire. A fact that was promptly proven.

The match hit the wood pile and an enormous flash of flames enveloped the area, causing Will to leap back to save his eyebrows. Once the dramatic fireball burned off, the fire was actually burning very nicely, if a bit thick with black smoke.

“Subtle, mate, very subtle,” Macca said to Will.

“What? We have a fire, don't we? So get stuffed! Now somebody toss me a stubby from the esky.”

Johnny grabbed a beer from the Igloo cooler and tossed it to Will.

“Thanks, mate. Now let's get cooking. I'm starved!”

 

 

Later, after having eaten their fill, Johnny and Whiz brought out acoustic guitars and began to play. They had laid blankets out all around the fire pit, and everyone curled up, singing along.

The guys played a lot of songs that everyone knew the lyrics to. There were classics by bands that Eliza knew, like Green Day and Oasis, and each song seemed to capture her feelings of the moment, like some sort of movie sound track. Then the guys decided to do an Australian set in Eliza's honor, running through the best of AC/DC, INXS, Men at Work, and a host of Australian songs that she had no clue about.

“I am so out of my depth here. I know a couple songs by AC/DC, but I have never even heard of some of these groups,” Eliza whispered to Macca.

“Don't worry about it, babe. The fact is, most people don't know the words, either, just catch the tune and shout along.” With that he turned to the others and asked, “Guys, is it the last train or the last plane out of Sydney in ‘Khe Sanh'?”

It was clear to Eliza from the argument that broke out that nobody knew the answer, but that didn't stop everyone from joining in on a rousing chorus of Cold Chisel's classic song.

She lay with her head in Macca's lap looking up at his face, and slowly everyone disappeared from the fire until it was just the two of them huddled together under a blanket.

“Are you cold?” Macca asked, pulling the blanket up.

“Nah, the fire's warm, but I'm worried we're going to smell like human barbecues tomorrow.”

“It's okay, we'll let everything air out. Besides, we're spending the day at the beach. I'm teaching you to surf tomorrow.”

“You do realize that that will be a whole lot of wasted effort? You're a little nuts for thinking that you can teach this klutz to stand on a floating board, you know?” She poked him in the ribs.

“Ouch,” Macca said with a laugh, and kissed her. “Just call me crazy, then.”

“Crazy,” she said, laughing herself.

And then she kissed him right back.

 

Eliza awoke completely disoriented. The sun was breaking over the hill across from her, and everything smelled of smoke from the night's fire, the last embers of which were still smoldering a few feet away. Macca was sound asleep, one arm draped across her, and she could see Whiz coming up out of the scrub with an armful of firewood.

Eliza slid out from under Macca's arm, wiped her eyes, and got up.

“Morning,” Whiz said as he dumped the wood next to the fire pit.

Eliza blinked. “What time is it?”

“About seven-thirty or so. You want to grab the eggs, that bag with the bread and spreads, and the fry pan from the back of the car? I'll get the fire going, and we can cook up some brekkie.”

“Sure.” Eliza ducked into an empty tent, got dressed, and tried her best to get her hair under control, ultimately just pulling it back into a ponytail. She went and grabbed the supplies and came back.

Once the fire was going again, Whiz maneuvered the cooking rack onto some rocks over it and got the fry pan cooking. He put in some butter and sizzled some bread, making a kind of country toast.

While he cooked, people began stirring slowly, emerging from tents or from the blankets they had slept under. Eliza took some solace in realizing that everybody looked as rough as she felt.

Once the first couple slices were ready, Whiz pulled them out and offered one to Eliza. He then rooted around in the bag until he pulled out a jar of Vegemite and began spreading a thick layer of the stuff on his toast.

“You want some?”

“No, no thanks.” She wrinkled her nose.

“Come on, it's the best way to start the day.”

He seemed so earnest that Eliza acquiesced and spread a thin layer on one corner of her toast. She gingerly took a bite and made a face.

“Nope, no way.”

“It's an Australian tradition.”

“Yeah, well, I'm not Australian. Don't forget.”

Macca was sitting up, wrapped in the blanket and rubbing his eyes by this point. Whiz poked him with his foot.

“Oi! Wake up, you lazy slacker! Brekkie's up, and your girl's complaining.”

“Shut up,” Macca said as he swatted Whiz's foot away.

“You guys sound so funny, I never get over it,” Eliza said to Whiz as she nibbled at the safe area of her toast. “I mean funny in a good way. I love the Aussie accent. If I'm lucky, maybe I'll get a little bit of one by the time I go back.”