We Three

These three are inseparable, they sit in the shade with mango juice running down their chins; a brown haired girl, a blonde haired girl and one boy. The two girls met in year 3 when they ordered the same thing for lunch – a salad sandwich and a frozen chocolate milk from the canteen, but they had the wrong change. They swap lunches and start talking, both the girls are only allowed to order lunch on Fridays and they live around the corner from each other. The brown haired girl is the bossy one and the blonde haired girl needs someone to follow, they fit like two jigsaw pieces. The boy grew up with the blonde haired girl; their families have been friends since before the blonde haired girl and the boy were born. Both families have three children and they are all born within three months of each other. The dads think this was the doing of the mothers. The three of them cause more trouble than their little town is used to. They don’t mean to but when they are having fun, they always seem to cause mischief. Like the time when they were exploring blue moon mine. They figured it was off limits because the adults didn’t want them to take the gold.

“We don’t want the gold, and if we find any we will just leave it where it is so its okay.”

It starts to get dark and the blonde haired girl wants to go home but the brown haired girl and the boy have found a python and are daring each other to pick it up. The blonde haired girl is looking for her house, they are high up on a hill and can see almost to the other side of town. She says there must be a fire because there are lots of sirens and lights in town. This gets the attention of the Brown haired girl and the boy; they want to see the fire too. They stand on their tipee toes and scan but they can’t see any flames licking up at the sky so they decide to head back into town to see if they can find it. The blonde haired girl sighs with relief, she was getting scared but she didn’t want to tell the other two because they would tease her. When they get back under the street lights they find out that the police and the whole town were looking for them. Despite their protests that they knew where they were and they weren’t lost, they still got a good smack from their Dads and then a broken heart from watching their Mum’s cry. They had to spend the whole week without seeing each other, and that was the worst of all.  They do everything together; they ride their bikes to the Dam, steal tamarinds from Mrs Chambers’s yard and go swimming at the pool all summer, every summer. During their last year of primary school, the boy’s Mum and Dad start to fight and at the end of that year they move away. At first the two girls just mope around and then beg their parents to take them to visit the boy, but life moves on. The two girls become even closer, they are closer than sisters. They share everything from a soft drink to their deepest darkest secrets. But they don’t share boyfriends. That’s because the blonde haired girl likes girls, but she doesn’t know it yet. The brown haired girl knows though, she knows everything about her best friend and she loves her for it. Time passes and the girls grow, they sometimes hear from the boy but he is slowly forgotten. Half way through high school the brown haired girl goes to boarding school in another state, they are heartbroken to leave each other but they must move on with life. They get more friends but they never find someone to replace the other girl. They each have a hole in their heart, one for a blonde haired girl, the other for a brown haired girl. One day the Blonde haired girl calls the brown haired girl and says she has some bad news, the brown haired girl braces herself thinking if she has cancer I will be home tomorrow. But no the Blonde haired girl does not have cancer; she knows she likes girls and is worried. The brown haired girl cannot help but laugh with relief and at the fact that she herself has known this fact for years and she is sure the blonde haired girls parents know too. She will be home in a few weeks and will go with the blonde haired girl to tell her parents, this makes the blonde haired girl much happier. Life continues on and the two girls go their separate ways but always stay tied to each other, they go months without talking but they pick up like it was only yesterday. The blonde haired girl is a Sioux chef in the big restaurant in the capital and the brown haired girl does marketing for a big airline company. One day the brown haired girl gets a telephone call from a number she doesn’t recognise, it’s the Boy. He is working in the mines over in the west, he looked her up to see how she is. They talk for hours about nothing and everything and then he calls again the next week. Her boyfriend doesn’t like this much but he doesn’t like much about her life, he wants her to quit work and have babies. She wants to have babies, just not with him. The Brown haired girl and her boyfriend break up, she is upset that it is the end of a relationship and she is alone again but she is not upset that he is gone. The boy calls her again and tells her he has a job not far from her and wants to see her. The brown haired girl calls the blonde haired girl and tells her what is happening; the blonde haired girl laughs and says something about not being able to dam the river of life. The boy visits the brown haired girl and they talk like they did on the phone. They see each other a lot and then it happens, one night they do more than talk and they lay together afterwards remembering the time at Blue Moon mine. A few months later the brown haired girl calls the Blond haired girl and asks her to be maid of honour, the blonde haired girl just laughs and cries with joy. The old town comes together for the wedding, they cannot believe that the three of them are reunited, old men tell tales of their childhood while old women natter about destiny and fate. Ten months later the blonde haired girl is there helping the boy look after the brown haired girl, as she pants and pushes and curses the boy, another little brown haired girl is born. They all prey she will meet a little blonde haired girl and a little boy and take extra insurance just in case.