Ballad for a Mad Girl Page 10

  ‘I just…’ I falter.

  Diesel gets up and barks at the window. A second later, Cody barrels in through the front door with a tall beanied person close behind: Gummer. My brother has a carton of beer under one arm and a Lumpy’s Pete-za in the other hand.

  Gummer bends over and kisses my cheek. I get a whiff of something spicy and clean. He bends over and scoops me up, pyjamas and all, and I don’t have the heart to tell him his hand is pressing on the mother of all grazes on my hip. I ignore the pain and let him spin me around. He’s a bit drunk. But he isn’t stoned.

  ‘Where have you two been?’ Dad says.

  Cody slaps the pizza down on the coffee table. ‘Pub.’ Gummer says, ‘We walked. It’s okay, I left the truck.’ He dumps me onto the couch and drops into the space next to me. ‘Your brother is a good influence.’

  And we eat. The boys drink. Diesel dozes peacefully under the table. Sometime after midnight, I fall asleep near Gummer, on the opposite end of the couch. The television stays on all night. I don’t wake until morning. I don’t remember my dreams.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ Gummer says.

  He’s watching me intently, his sleepy face and a spoonful of cereal poised over the bowl. He’s wearing his usual baggy jeans and a black T-shirt that reads ‘Bad Apple’ in a seventies font. His beanie is lying on the table like a dead hamster.

  I wonder what he suspects. ‘Nothing. Most boring holidays ever.’ I pop two pieces of toast and spread them with butter and strawberry jam.

  ‘You look like shit,’ he says, continuing his breakfast.

  I almost choke on a mouthful of toast. ‘You can talk. You always look like shit. I’m just too polite to mention it.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘You will be.’ He can’t know anything; he can’t see anything. My injuries are hidden under thick socks and acres of flannelette. ‘Have you been studying?’

  ‘A bit. Exams seem a long way off still. You?’

  I shake my head. ‘Have you caught up with the others?’

  ‘Just Pete and Mitch. Who’ve you seen?’ He tips the bowl to slurp the last of the milk and wipes his mouth.

  ‘Nobody.’ I don’t want to ask but I can’t help myself. ‘Kenzie wasn’t with Mitch?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Trouble in paradise, I reckon. Amber, on the other hand, seems to be levitating.’

  I snicker. ‘Yeah, I saw her, too. At Ruby’s with Noah Wentz. She told me to go screw myself.’

  Gummer’s mouth falls open. ‘What’d you say to her?’

  ‘I said it back to her. After she left the room.’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I meant what did you say to her to make her tell you to go screw yourself?’

  I drop my toast onto the plate. ‘You think I started it? Gee, thanks, Gummer.’

  I’m silently fuming. Gummer usually eats and leaves but today he hangs around, playing with his phone. It’s frustrating—after a decent night’s sleep, I’m bouncing on the balls of my feet, itching to go looking for answers. It’s not an extraordinary development, seeing my mum in Hannah’s class photo, but I’m fascinated by the feeling I got as we were leaving the Holt house. It was…satisfaction. As if I was heading in the right direction; as if a bone had clicked into place.

  ‘What time are you leaving?’ I ask.

  He looks hurt. ‘I thought you might want to hang out.’

  ‘And do what?’

  ‘There’s a pop art exhibition at the library and free face-painting at the mall.’

  ‘Face-painting? Seriously?’ He snaps an image of me frowning. I try to grab his phone. ‘Delete that.’

  ‘Only if I can replace it with one of you wearing a smile.’ He sticks out his bottom lip. ‘I’ve forgotten how that looks.’

  I bare my teeth and he takes another photo. I get up, huffing, and throw myself onto the couch.

  ‘Weird.’ He pushes his chair back and strides across the room. ‘Total Freaksville.’

  ‘What?’ I stare at a stain on the ceiling. ‘Those words have ceased to mean anything to me.’

  ‘Look.’ He’s waving his phone in my face. ‘What have you done to your teeth?’ He leans over and tries to peel back my lips.

  ‘Get off me!’ I jerk my head away and smack it on the arm of the couch. ‘Do you ever go home?’

  ‘Just look.’

  I focus. It’s my face. I’m unusually pale, caught wearing a typically annoyed expression, but there’s something off. It reminds me of when our Year Eight History teacher, Mrs Franks, got new falsies—we all kept staring at her, trying to figure out why she looked the same, but different. My teeth are all wrong. They’re bigger, squared off and perfectly straight. Mine are rounded and slightly gappy.

  I peer closer, squinting. It’s disconcerting. Me. Not me.

  ‘It’s nothing. You’re imagining things.’

  He shakes his phone as if that might fix the problem. ‘You must have moved your head. It’s blurred or something.’ He catches my eye as I turn away. ‘This is not weird or freaky to you?’

  ‘That’s what I said.’ I want him to guess because I can’t tell him. I don’t want to see that understanding expression people give me when I’m riding a bit loose on my rails; it’s not a big leap they take from calling me a risk-taker to calling me crazy. Oh, poor Grace, she isn’t coping. Her mother was hit by a truck. She saw the shrine. She ate a bad prawn. Like everything has a simple explanation.

  ‘Hey. Tell me what’s going on.’ He sits next to me and lifts my feet onto his lap. ‘What’s this?’ He touches a fingertip to the light graze on my leg and peels down my sock. He gasps when he sees how many bandaids are stuck to my ankle. ‘What have you done to yourself?’

  ‘I didn’t do it. Not really.’ I pull my foot away. ‘Anyway, you wouldn’t believe me if I told you. It’s complicated and…weird.’

  He laughs. ‘Sometimes I park my car in the middle of a paddock and lie in the back, waiting for flashing lights and little green men. Tell me.’ His fingers are gentle as he pulls up my sock. ‘I’m the weirdest person you know.’ He sees my hesitation. ‘If you tell them you need them, they’ll come. Kenzie and the others, I mean. You know that, right?’

  ‘I don’t know anything anymore.’

  Diesel sidles into the lounge room, his ears back and his tail tucked between his legs. He takes a detour around the couch to get to his water bowl in the kitchen.

  I sigh and lever my sore body from the couch. ‘I crashed my bike. I’ll show you.’ It’ll be a relief not to keep so many secrets, and he’s right: he’d be the last person to judge. ‘I just…you really think I started it? With Amber?’

  He says solemnly, ‘You start everything, Grace. Always have.’

  We walk to the pub and pick up the Ford. Still in a haze of pain, I realise I’ve left my phone and purse at home, so Gummer buys me a sushi roll and a Coke at the mall—we call it the mall but it’s just an outdoor food court next to the main shopping centre—and he waits for ages to have an alien painted on his cheek.

  I’m sitting at a cafe table, eating my sushi. I can’t help but smile, watching him stand in line with a bunch of four-year-olds, his beanie pulled low over his forehead. I guess we should be studying, but I’ve missed this—hanging out with friends, nowhere to be, no worries, no agenda.

  There’s a phone ringing. I toss the empty sushi container into a bin and automatically rummage around in my bag. With a sick feeling, I remember: my phone is with my purse, sitting on the windowsill in Susannah Holt’s bathroom.

  It’s Gummer’s phone ringing.

  He answers, and a strange expression passes over his face. He leaves his place in the line. ‘It’s you,’ he says frowning at the screen. He hands the phone to me.

  ‘Hello?’ The line’s open but nobody speaks. I take it away from my ear and the screen lights up. DisGrace. The call is coming from my phone.

  Gummer’s mouthing something at me. WTF?

  I cover the phone and whis
per, ‘I lost it. It’s just somebody trying to give it back.’

  He nods and steps back into the line. It doesn’t seem to occur to him, as it has to me, that my keypad has a password. It’s locked. The only person who knows my password is Kenzie. We have the same code—unless she’s changed hers recently, which she probably has.

  I press the phone back to my ear. ‘Who’s there?’ My hand is clammy, my chest tight. ‘Mrs Holt?’ There’s a sudden shrill whine that makes my eardrum throb, followed by a heavy thud. A second later, a noise that sounds like footsteps on bare floorboards. ‘Who’s calling from my phone?’ I stand up.

  Gummer is gazing at me steadily, trying to read the situation.

  ‘Who is this?’ A sharp crack. ‘How did you get into my phone?’ I’m shrieking now. Pacing up and down. Mothers gather their children close and head off.

  Gummer’s hand is on my shoulder. He takes the phone and speaks. ‘If I were you I’d hand the phone in to the police. It’s been reported stolen and you’re being traced.’ He blinks and checks the screen, shrugging. ‘They hung up. Calm down and think. Where did you lose it?’

  ‘I don’t remember,’ I lie. ‘It was yesterday sometime.’

  ‘Where’d you go?’

  I can’t answer. My brain is scrambled. The mall is packed with pre-school kids—and mothers, mothers everywhere, holding tiny hands, wiping snotty noses. Ordinary people going about their ordinary lives.

  ‘Grace, look at me. Did they say anything?’

  I swing around. I try to breathe. ‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Okay.’ If I keep saying it, maybe it will be.

  ‘Should I call your dad?’

  ‘No,’ I bark. ‘Just take me home.’

  ‘Sure,’ he says. ‘But I’d kinda like to know what you’ve got yourself into.’

  We start walking back to the truck. Gummer is raving on about the Hearts and the night I dyed the pool. He has a conspiracy theory for everything. That’s what he thinks: it’s someone playing a revenge prank.

  I cut him off. ‘Do you remember, when we were about eleven, I hid under the boardwalk in the swamp? You guys came looking for me and I jumped out at you?’ ‘Sure,’ he says, nodding. ‘You were covered in mud and leeches and your eyeballs looked yellow. Scared the crap out of us. Pete ran halfway home and Amber almost peed her pants again.’ He fishes in his pocket for his keys. ‘Those were the days,’ he says wryly.

  ‘Do you remember what you said?’

  He shakes his head. ‘Shitbiscuits, or some such? I don’t know. It was a long time ago.’

  ‘You said you thought your heart was going to beat its way out of your chest and the first thing that came into your head was some prayer about dying in your sleep. You said you were a goddamned believer, until you realised it was me.’

  ‘Wow. I was a verbose little turd, wasn’t I? Shitbiscuits would’ve covered it.’

  ‘You called me the bogeygirl.’

  ‘And you were flattered enough to remember it?’ He opens the passenger door for me. ‘Or offended, in which case, sorry.’

  ‘I’m being serious.’

  He laughs. ‘I know. It’s out of character. Which is exactly why my heart’s beating its way out of my chest right now. Feel.’ He presses my palm to his ribs. ‘Jeepers, your skin is like ice.’

  ‘Jeepers?’

  ‘Creepers.’

  ‘I’ve seen her.’ I snatch my hand away.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The bogeygirl.’

  He starts the truck, throws his arm across the back of my seat and reverses out of the car park.

  ‘Why aren’t you saying anything?’

  ‘What do you want me to say? Woo-ee-oo? There’s no such thing? You’re crazy? If this is one of your games, I’m not playing.’ He turns left into the main road and drives too fast in the direction of home.

  Gummer never used to drive fast.

  I say, ‘That sounds like something Kenzie would say, not you.’ He looks away. ‘You have seen her, haven’t you?’ I glare at his profile.

  He snorts. ‘The bogeygirl? Not since the boardwalk.’

  ‘No. I’m talking about Kenzie. Let me guess—she told you I was acting out again and you should pay me no attention, like I’m a naughty five-year-old, not pushing eighteen.’ I catch his grimace and I know it’s true. ‘Something something “the girl who cried wolf”. Am I right?’

  ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’ he says, hardly moving his lips. ‘Paying you attention.’

  I have a lump in my throat like I’m a cat with a fur ball, and if I don’t bring it up, I’ll choke. ‘You’re. Not. Listening.’ I clap my palm over my mouth. My voice is not mine. It’s deep and grating, caked with dirt.

  But Gummer hasn’t noticed. He didn’t hear. He only sees his childhood friend, who has a history of pulling pranks, who tells so many half-truths she believes her own lies.

  I try to hold back the panic coursing through my blood. He’s smiling. He’s humouring me.

  ‘Thanks. Pull over. I’ll walk from here,’ I tell him. ‘I need to do something.’

  He parks in the bike lane near the cemetery. ‘Here?’ he says, staring across the field of headstones. ‘Oh. Right. Want me to wait?’

  Shaking my head, I get out and slam the door. As I push through the wrought-iron gate, I turn around. He’s still parked, watching. He wants to help me but he doesn’t know how. That’s the difference between us: Gummer desperately wants to believe in things he’s never seen, but I’ve seen things I don’t want to believe. And no matter how hard I tug at the veil between his reality and mine, he’ll stay safe on the other side where everything is possible but not quite real, like watching a scary movie with a bucket of popcorn in your lap, the lights turned on.

  Gummer can’t help me.

  I have a Hollywood-movie version of a cemetery in my head. My imaginary graveyard is set in New Orleans; it’s lush and overgrown, with elegant marble crypts, a labyrinth of winding pathways and ancient trees draped with hanging moss. The crypts are haunted by the restless spirits of people taken before their time. The flowers on the graves are brittle and dying, and shadows lurk around every corner. It’s a place of mystery and old magic.

  Swanston Cemetery is nothing like that. I must have passed it thousands of times, but I’ve never been through the gate. I stop just inside the entrance, flip my sunglasses down, and wait. It’s bright here. Spread out like the town itself, in a tidy grid, it’s flat, dusty and exposed, and the lawns are brown stubble.

  I should know which way to go. I should have brought flowers.

  I spot a squat brick building and trudge along the path leading to it. The headstones are all similar: dirty grey, rough around the edges—probably cheap because they were mined locally. Most of the flowers are plastic, and the few crypts are hideous marble boxes in the oldest part of the cemetery. The paths are wide and straight, covered with a layer of white quartz. A couple of sad pines huddle in the centre—no place for a shadow to hide. It looks like the dead buried here lived to be old, old people. I don’t feel sad for them. I don’t feel anything at all.

  A woman comes out of the building. She’s dressed in men’s clothing, carrying a bucket and one of those extendable claws we use at school for picking up rubbish.

  ‘Excuse me?’ I ask. ‘Where’s the memorial rock garden?’

  ‘Up further, past Maria’s angel,’ she says, pointing. ‘It’s at the end of 4Z. Be careful where you step.’

  I thank her and head for a big angel on a pedestal. As I get closer, I see one of the wing tips is broken and the angel’s face has crumbled away, as if birds have been pecking at her nose. Maria Rossi, 1896–1972. Beloved. Next to it, a twin headstone and grave that looks like a stone-age double bed. It makes me shudder to think of the bodies inside.

  Near the end of the row, the path leads to a low gate set between two dying hedges. Beyond the gate, there’s a circular, paved walkway with rough granite boulders set around the edge, each boulder inlaid with a plaq
ue. It’s greener here, well tended, with clumps of native grasses and more recent dates on the stones.

  This must be it.

  I step slowly past each stone, reading the inscriptions. Some have none: a future grave? No—not a grave. These are for ashes. Cremations. Dad went against my grandparents’ wishes—they’re staunch Catholics who believe a body must be buried to be resurrected. They moved far away when I was younger and we haven’t spoken to them since the funeral. Mum wanted to be cremated. She always said if she died she wanted her ashes scattered between the east and west coasts, so she could be everywhere and nowhere. Not stuck in one place.

  Her ashes are here, under a rock, in one place. But where? What is it for, this unwanted connection with the afterlife, if I can’t feel the pull of my own dead mother?

  I leave the rock garden through the opposite side. It opens onto an area with short grass like whiskers and graves with glittery black headstones. These stones don’t look cheap or local. I scan the names, but I’m not looking for Mum anymore. I’m looking for her. Then I realise: you can’t bury a body that has never been found. Where does her mother go? She must go somewhere to leave flowers. She looks like a person who would leave flowers.

  I flip up my sunglasses and take a step back. The ground gives way. My feet scrabble on loose gravel and I slide in slow motion, down, down. I have grit in my eyes and fistfuls of dirt. Before I even hit the bottom I’ve done the calculations—everyone knows a grave is six feet under—and I’m not scared. My feet touch. I’m still standing, and the top of my head is only just below the edge. This is only a hole in the earth; the earth is solid and real. I can see and I can breathe. I could climb out if I wanted to, but I stay there, waiting for the dust to settle, noticing the different colours in the layers of the earth and the way the oblong of sky looks like a postcard, it’s such a perfect heartbreaking blue.