The Byron Journals Read Online Free Page A

onto the main street and headed towards the supermarket. A couple of surfers, still wet from the ocean, walked past with boards under their arms, and on the other side of the road some Schoolies slid through the traffic, pushing each other in shopping trolleys.
    â€˜How long are you staying in town?’ Heidi asked.
    â€˜I don’t know…but I don’t want to go home.’
    She shrugged. ‘So don’t.’
    â€˜It’s not that simple.’
    â€˜Why not?’
    He looked away. ‘Tim mentioned you were from Adelaide.’
    â€˜Fucking hole,’ she said and scratched her cheek. ‘You?’
    The pot was kicking in. Would she go cold on him if she found out it was his hometown too?
    â€˜Melbourne,’ he replied, immediately regretting it.
    She bit her lip. ‘Where in Melbourne?’
    â€˜Just…the umm…eastern suburbs.’
    They sat at the back of the café near a palm tree potted in a half wine barrel, and ordered coffee. Stoned, his thoughts slipped out of his grasp before he could put them into words. To his relief, Heidi started talking. She spoke quickly, her hands dancing—the weed animating her, rather than mellowing her out. She talked about drumming on the streets with Tim, swimming naked in the ocean, and crazy parties in the hinterland. She told him about her first time scuba diving at Julian Rocks out in the Bay. How scary and exciting it had been descending the anchor chain surrounded by schools of fish. The wobbegong sharks she’d seen sleeping on the sea floor and the huge manta ray that had passed directly over her. The white pointer fatality at a nearby submerged pinnacle, twenty years earlier, when a man on his honeymoon saved his wife by lunging into the path of the attacking shark.
    â€˜But everyone keeps quiet about any bad stuff that happens here,’ she said. ‘Shark attacks, drug overdoses and Rohypnol rapes. Stuff like that doesn’t really fit with people’s idea of Byron.’
    Her eyes slid over him, a breeze rustled the palm fronds behind her, and the hem of her dress lapped at her thighs. He was entranced by the lilt that came into her voice at points of the conversation, her bursts of nervous laughter and the way she drew her fringe away from her eyes.
    She stopped talking to look over his shoulder and he turned to see two of the café staff ushering a man out of the cafe.
    â€˜What’s going on?’ he asked.
    â€˜Oh, he’s just one of the local crazies,’ she replied, her voice cooler now. ‘He comes here every now and then, trips out and starts upsetting customers. Apparently he used to be some hot-shot lawyer down in Sydney.’
    Her contempt was unmistakable.
    â€˜And what happened?’ he asked.
    â€˜Came up here on holidays, tried some hallucinogens— mushies, DMT, or something—and completely lost it. Apparently some people have genetic predispositions. Dormant enzymes—switch them on and they’re crazy for life.’
    â€˜My grandfather went crazy towards the end of his life,’ he said. ‘He was crippled with arthritis, but he’d go out and play eighteen holes of golf, then sit in a stupor for days. Bipolar disorder.’
    â€˜Yeah, well you should probably give hallucinogens a miss.’
    â€˜How come you know so much about it?’
    â€˜I’ve read up on it.’ She paused and looked over his shoulder again. ‘That lawyer…He mustn’t have had any close friends or family because no one’s ever come for him. Now he’s just lost up here, stuck in his own private hell. Sometimes you see him walking down the street banging his hand against his head, other times you see him shouting and crying at the sky.’
    â€˜Sounds horrible,’ he said.
    She glanced at the man once more before turning her gaze on Andrew. ‘Yeah, but like I said—he was a lawyer—he’d probably fucked a lot of