One Chapter Ends

Chapter Five

From: hazelmb@icloud.com.au

To: natashadean@gmail.com.au

Subject: Re: How are you?

Hi Nat,

Best hangover recipe: avocado and chorizo toast. Add fries. My dad swears by it: he used it during his uni days.

I'm going well. Better than I was. I won't be able to visit anytime soon – everything's blowing up over here. Bookstore, parents, uni prep. Bit overwhelming, but all good. I can handle it.

We have to Skype again sometime soon, when my life isn't half-shit, half-confusion.

Love,

Hazel xo

~

"Hey, could you come over to my granddad's house after the game tonight?"

Hazel blinked, her hands frozen in the motion of setting up the board. "Why?"

Theodore set out each stand, forehead creased. "Granddad asked me to invite you over. He didn't say why, but he doesn't ask me to do things like this very often."

"What, invite strange girls over to his house for him?" she joked, half-smiling.

"Oh, no, he asks me to do that all the time," he said with a straight face. "Obviously."

"Ladies' man." Hazel nodded. "Gotcha."

"Anyway, will you come? I'll drive you back to your car afterwards, so don't worry about that. If you're busy, I'll tell him you can't make it."

She saw the earnestness in his face. "Sure, I'll do it."

"Really?"

She shrugged. "I'm not planning on doing much tonight. My life mostly revolves around Scrabble and books nowadays."

Theodore smiled. "Great. Thanks. I'll let him know."

Hazel opened her mouth to reply, but at that point, Keith walked into the room and his eyes met hers. He pointed a finger at her, threateningly.

"Tonight's the night, kid," he told her, warningly. "I'm winning it back tonight."

Hazel caught Theodore's eye and both looked down to hide their smirks.

~

Hazel sat in the back of Theodore's Toyota, gazing out of the window and smiling at the memory of Keith's face when she and June had tied for first.

Theodore was a big fan of instrumental music, especially movie soundtracks, so they'd been listening to orchestral versions of He's a Pirate and Forbidden Friendship for the past ten minutes.

Now he hummed along to an orchestral version of the Guardians of the Galaxy, Vol. 1 soundtrack. Brian sat placidly in the passenger seat, tapping his fingers to the beat on the centre console.

They pulled into a small street, covered on each side with jacaranda trees, violently in bloom. They punctured the black night with vehement bursts of colour. Hazel gaped at the purple blossoms carpeting the bitumen and the lawns, with more drifting down from above.

"It's gorgeous," she breathed.

"I've always liked it," Brian replied contentedly. "Jacarandas are my favourite kind of tree."

Theodore pulled into the driveway of an old brick house. Like Charlotte's. Hazel frowned. She hadn't seen or heard from Charlotte since driving her home last week. She hadn't come into the bookstore and she didn't have the girl's phone number, so she'd had to assume that Renée Sloane had made good on her promise: Charlotte really wasn't allowed to go out alone anymore.