Page 1 of Reckless

Chapter 1

ROBBIE

I liked how it felt to breathe this way. Like I’d never get enough air into my lungs. Like I’d just finished something extreme, something gruelling. A marathon, a high-speed chase, wall of death at a blow-your-eardrums-out concert. Things I’d never done, would never do.

But I’d do this.

The guy rolled off of me and slapped my arse as he headed to the toilet. I didn’t care that he’d been a sloppy kisser, or that he’d chanted “Yes, yes, yes,” the entire time, like he was summoning a spirit. Not likely I’d remember any of that in the morning anyway. I buried my face in a pillow that smelled like a stranger and my own boozy sweat, and breathed, a gasping, shaky inhale, like I’d just climbed fucking Everest.

At some point I passed out. Woke to a not so gentle nudge from Yes-yes-yes. “I have to get to work.”

And I had to get to the barge.

Fuck.

I threw on my clothes and only realised as I was stumbling towards Queen’s Wharf that I was wearing the guy’s jumper, not mine.

Well. I hoped he wasn’t too attached to it. Because we were definitely never going to see each other again.

It was almost noon when the barge arrived at Dauntless Island. Twice I’d been sick over the edge of the barge, and I stopped to be sick again just past Mavis’s shop. Thank God she was busy helping with the unloading and didn’t see me. It was nearing one when I dragged my arse up the narrow path to the farm. Kat was either out with the chickens or delivering eggs. She was practical, my sister, but she liked gossip as much as the next islander. We used to have a crate by the road where we put fresh eggs, an honesty box beside it. But Kat liked making deliveries, liked the excuse to talk to the neighbours. Sometimes I thought she was trying to make up for me, for the way I couldn’t seem to spit more than two words out at a time.

There was a nest of blankets on the couch. Kat would claim she’d fallen asleep watching TV there, but she only ever fell asleep watching TV there one Wednesday night a month, the same Wednesday nights I spent in Newcastle. She didn’t like being here alone, which made me feel guilty, but not guilty enough to stop going to the mainland.

I went to the bathroom to brush my teeth, and then to my room to change. I smelled like I’d spilled something cheap and strong on myself, but then I remembered this was Yes-yes-yes’s jumper. Arnold, the rooster, began crowing as I pulled on a work shirt. He’d crow without rhyme or reason, ignoring the dawn but heralding 1:47 p.m. with enthusiasm.

All at once I was weirdly sad over having missed sunrise here. It was only one morning a month that I had to watch the dawn arrive over Newcastle’s blocky apartment buildings rather than the fifteen acres Kat and I owned on Dauntless. But there was nothing like sunrise on the farm. The soft pinks and golds could make even Sam, our wall-eyed goat with a tongue too large for his mouth, look majestic as he lay on his favourite hill. The way I breathed during sunrise was opposite to how I breathed in the backroom of a Newcastle club, or facedown on some stranger’s bed. Here, I didn’t breathe like I’d just conquered the world—I breathed like there was nothing in the world that needed conquering.

I went out to give Sam the goat a scratch, then checked the troughs. Stopped to talk to Lucy—my favourite cow, but don’t tell the others. I worked all afternoon, forgoing a lunch break. Not so much as a silent apology to Katrina, but because I still wasn’t sure I could put anything in my stomach without losing it again.

Kat was back in the late afternoon, on a tear from the moment she stepped inside. “First coppers and now doctors,” was all I caught of her muttered tirade. I wasn’t sure what she meant. Well, I knew about the copper, because I’d been dumb enough to think I could get away with bringing the guy milk without making an enemy of the whole damn island. Kat wasn’t chatty, exactly, but she muttered a lot. She’d wander around the house muttering about anything and everything that was annoying her. I tuned her out a lot of the time. Right now I was just glad she was muttering about doctors and not about my life choices.

From what I gathered, a doctor—some bloke from the mainland—had opened up a practice on Dauntless, and no one was happy about it. I let Kat’s muttering fade into the background. So what if a doctor had come to Dauntless? Wasn’t like I’d ever make an appointment to go see him.

Three days later, it burned when I pissed.

So much so, in fact, that I had to make a fucking doctor’s appointment.

There were no doctors on Dauntless Island. Or, I mean, there weren’t, until now. Red Joe was in charge of the medical chest from the Royal Flying Doctor Service, but he wasn’t a doctor. Julie Dinsmore called herself a healer, and she did cure Yellow Sarah Hooper’s stomach problems last summer. But that was just by telling her not to drink so much of her homebrewed rum.

I went to see a doctor on the mainland once when I was a kid. I was always getting coughs and Mum wanted me to see a specialist. I’d hated it. The bright lights and the too-shiny floors and the little stapler-like device the doctor had used to prick my finger for a blood sample. The way I’d had to stay still while he poked and prodded. After that, I’d prayed to stay healthy for the rest of my life, so I’d never have to go back. And my prayer had been answered, more or less. The coughs had stopped, and I’d been healthy as a horse ever since—my once-monthly hangovers being an exception. Farm work would keep you in good shape; that’s what I figured. Those people who were always getting sick, allergic to everything…it’s because mainlanders were inside all the time. On Dauntless, we didn’t sit around in offices all day passing germs around.

But now I had a problem that clearly wasn’t gonna be cured by a day in the fields. I told Kat something was wrong, and while I tried to avoid going into detail, she got it out of me and told me to make an appointment with the new doctor.

“Thought you said Dauntless didn’t need a clinic,” I grumbled. “That soon we’d be built up worse than the mainland.”

“I didn’t say we didn’t need a clinic,” she said brusquely. “Just that we’ve had enough outsiders come here recently.”

“You like Eddie,” I pointed out.

“Of course I like Eddie. What’s not to like? And I do think we need a real doctor here. Now we have one. So you should go. I don’t want to listen to you complaining day in and day out until your dick falls off.”

I tried not to act alarmed. There wasn’t any disease that made your dick fall off. Right?

“I haven’t complained,” I said, irritated. “I just said it hurts to piss.” It was more than that by now—my arse hurt like the devil too.

Kat gave a long sigh, and it seemed like there was more she wanted to say. “Just go see the guy, Robbie. His name’s Alastair Jones. I talked to Mavis yesterday and she said he’s not so bad.”

Coming from Mavis, that was a ringing endorsement.