Ballad for a Mad Girl Read online

  Kenzie texted me before school to say she wasn’t coming. Amber’s up the back of the bus; I can hear her voice, the way it gets high-pitched when she’s telling a tall story. I suppose I should be grateful Gummer sat with me, but I was hoping to be alone.

  ‘So, what happened to the dudes?’ he says. ‘Did you find them?’

  I shake my head. I’ve had dreams about finding their shrunken little bodies under my bed, like those rubbery toy dinosaurs that swell and hatch from plaster eggs when you soak them in water, and shrivel again when they dry out.

  ‘Maybe Diesel ate them,’ he offers. ‘Or they escaped outside.’

  ‘Diesel doesn’t come upstairs.’

  He raises his eyebrows. It’s my flat tone—he thinks I don’t care, but how can I explain why I’m so accepting of their disappearance without telling him about the cracks between this world and the next? Without sounding crazy?

  He pushes up his sleeves and I catch a glimpse of his new tattoo. The script runs up the inside of his pale forearm, from his wrist to his elbow. We’re not supposed to have exposed tatts at school. Getting one on his forearm means he won’t be able to wear T-shirts, and Gummer lives in T-shirts, even in cold weather.

  I grab his hand with both of mine. ‘What does it say?’

  He glances down. ‘There is hope and a kind of beauty in there somewhere, if you look for it.’

  ‘Giger?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Beauty in where? What does it mean?’

  ‘Beauty in terror. He’s referring to his work. You know, how most people see his creations as monstrous. I think he’s saying that we need our monsters to know what it is to be human.’

  I shudder.

  ‘Have you seen your bogeygirl?’

  She’s a he. ‘I know you think I’m nuts.’ I press closer to the window. ‘I’m so tired. It’s getting too hard pretending to be like everyone else.’

  Gummer pulls down his sleeve. ‘I don’t want you to be like everyone else, Grace. I just want you to be happy.’ When the bus pulls over, he puts out a hand to stop me from getting off at the mall with the others. ‘Let’s go to the museum instead.’

  I frown at him. ‘Aren’t you taking this new commitment to study too far?’

  ‘It’s not that.’ He seems distracted. ‘I want to show you something.’

  Amber brushes past in the aisle. She gives Gummer a fist bump, ignoring me, but just before she gets off the bus she stops and turns back, waving to get my attention. The crowd behind nudges her forward and, as the bus pulls away, she’s standing at the mall entrance, watching us.

  ‘What did she want, do you think?’

  Gummer shrugs.

  I wonder how we were ever friends. I rescued her. I made her. I broke that stick and handed her the pieces like it was a freaking metaphor for her pathetic life. That’s got to be worth something. She owes me.

  ‘She’s trying,’ Gummer says, as if he can read my mind.

  Only a couple of other students get off at the museum. They head inside, but Gummer leads me down the side street that runs between the museum and the much newer glass-fronted Police Station and Law Courts buildings.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘It’s a surprise.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for surprises.’

  ‘Fine. I’m taking you to The Bog of Eternal Stench.’

  ‘Oh. Yay.’ I pinch my nose.

  The boardwalk starts at the rear of the museum, winding for about three hundred metres through the man-made wetland, or what we call the swamp. It’s slush at this time of year, just several inches of black muck. We often used to play here, when we were younger and we didn’t mind the mosquitos; at almost two acres of dense reeds and pathways and holes, there were so many places to hide. The reeds make it look pretty but the smell is foul.

  ‘You could hide a body here.’ I follow Gummer down the left fork, which leads to a rotting gazebo at the edge of the main wetland. A dragonfly buzzes my head. I duck, swatting it away.

  ‘Not for long,’ he says. ‘Everything floats, eventually. Anyway, this would be the first place they’d look.’ He darts forward and slaps my arm.

  ‘Ouch!’

  He holds out his palm. ‘Mosquito. Got you good.’

  ‘So, Kenzie’s not back yet,’ I say. ‘Neither is Mitch.’

  Gummer nods. ‘Yeah. She’s not used to being the centre of attention.’

  ‘Not like me, you mean?’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘The sooner she struts into school, the sooner it’ll be old news. If it had happened to Amber, she would have had badges made.’

  ‘She’s not as tough as Amber.’ He gives me a wry smile. ‘Or you.’

  ‘I’m not tough.’

  ‘Beg to differ.’

  ‘Sometimes you sound like an old man,’ I say. ‘What are you doing?’ We’ve reached the gazebo and he’s upending one of the weathered park benches. ‘Hey, is that…?’

  ‘Our time capsules from Grade Four, yeah.’ He pokes his finger into the metal tube leg. ‘It’s stuck. Come here. You’ve got smaller hands.’

  ‘We should wait for the others before we open them.’

  ‘We’ll only open ours.’

  To be honest, I can barely remember what I wrote. I pinch my fingers, shove them into the tube, and grasp the end of a plastic bag. I pull it out. Inside, our tiny scrolls are squashed together.

  ‘You first,’ I say, tearing the tape.

  ‘Dibs last.’ He plucks his scroll from the bag and clenches it in his fist.

  I untie the string around mine and scan my scribbled, childish words before I read them aloud.

  ‘Okay, so bear in mind I was, like, ten, okay? Okay…I, Grace Foley, swear I will love and protect my friends forever because they are the best things in my life and even when we get old and married my friends will always come first. Pinkie swear. Amen.’ I snort. ‘Holy shit. Amen?’

  ‘It never hurts to chuck a prayer out there.’

  ‘Read yours.’

  He unravels his scroll, squinting. ‘I can’t.’

  ‘Give it here.’ There’s nothing written on the paper. I hold it up to the light. Not even an indentation. ‘You cheated!’ I smack his arm.

  He laughs. ‘It’s partly your fault. I sat there for ages trying to think of something profound to write. You were pretty hard to impress, Grace. We were all exhausted from trying to keep up.’

  Another mosquito lands on my arm. I don’t feel the sting until after it has flown away.

  ‘And now?’ I say quietly.

  ‘Now we feel like we’re leaving you behind and you’re making no attempt to catch us. It’s like you only ever run if you’re in the lead.’

  That’s not it. Is it? ‘I’ve had some setbacks.’

  He nods. ‘And nobody’s leaving you behind. We’re all waiting.’

  ‘Amber’s not.’

  ‘Amber would carry you if you asked.’

  I scratch at the bite; the swelling spreads. ‘Why did you bring me here?’

  He shrugs. ‘I thought there might be something there to remind you of the way you used to be.’

  ‘You’. Not ‘we’. Like I’m the only one who changed.

  We share a long, uncomfortable silence.

  I sit on the opposite bench and busy myself retying my scroll. I can picture ten-year-old Gummer pretending to write his note, his earnest face, his glasses with the missing lenses perched on the end of his nose. I run through his various incarnations, from his Where’s Wally? phase to now, what I’ve always thought of as the Shaggy look—but then I realise he’s moved on from that, too. He hasn’t smoked since before the holidays. I know that much. His hair’s shorter, tidier; he still wears a three-day growth, but he’s finally grown into his wide shoulders and slim hips.

  I look down at my pale, bony hands. My bitten nails. I blink away tears.

  He takes the scroll from me, bundling it up with the others, and stuf
fs the bag back into the pipe. He turns away, and I don’t know what to say.

  We head back to the museum in silence. At the bus stop, he says, ‘Let’s walk the rest of the way.’

  I shake my head. ‘I’m tired. You go. I want to be by myself for a while.’

  Gummer looks as if he might argue, but he doesn’t.

  I sit at the stop waiting for a bus, any bus, to take me anywhere. I watch him leave: he’s perfected the rangy, loose walk that made him look sloppy and double-jointed when he was a kid.

  I’m not the same girl anymore: funny, brave, loyal. That Grace is gone. Gummer is growing up, growing into his skin, and I feel as if I’m crawling out of mine, like some creature from the bottom of the swamp.

  A blue Commodore with dark windows and a crumpled rear bumper crawls by, its wheels almost in the gutter. I tuck my legs up and rear back. It does a complete turn at the roundabout, and drives past slowly on the opposite side of the road. A few minutes later, it cruises past again.

  Unsettled, I get up and start walking. It swings wide around the roundabout a second time, belching smoke. By the time I’ve reached the next bus stop, I sense the car is behind me, following at walking pace, but when I turn around there’s no car there.

  I call Kenzie that night before I go to bed. It goes straight to voicemail. I type a text message telling her about opening my scroll and being sorry for breaking promises and about the bones of William Dean being exhumed. After I press send, I realise the message doesn’t make much sense.

  I’m sorry for everything. I should have left it at that.

  I turn onto my side and burrow under the quilt. I’m so cold. So tired and confused.

  It seems like no time has passed before I’m awake again. I’m coughing and wheezing. There’s a crushing weight on my chest. My arms and legs are dead. I try to turn my head. I can’t. I’m choking, trying to suck air through a pinhole, wanting to thrash and scream, but my body is paralysed. Above, a deep vacuum of space begins to spin like black water being sucked down a drain and my hair lifts from the pillow, snaking around my face. My heart seizes; my wheeze becomes a death rattle. All I can do is roll my eyes from side to side, cold tears leaking down my face and into my ears, seeing everything but feeling nothing, willing this thing to let go.

  Just as I feel myself falling, it does let go, like a door slamming shut against a howling wind. My throat opens and my lungs expand, filling with air. It leaves me gasping, barely conscious. Slowly, sensation returns, a tingling warmth in my fingers and toes that spreads like a drug through my veins. I command my body to move, testing each part of me one twitch at a time: arms, legs, hips, shoulders.

  And my voice. ‘This isn’t real.’

  I sit up. Outside, the streetlights are shrouded in mist and somewhere a drain drips a relentless, crazy-making beat.

  I crawl out of bed and slide up the window. Icy air creeps into the room. I swing my bare legs over the windowsill and sit there, shivering, my toes just reaching the slick iron roof below. The same gleaming grey roofs stretch in a grid pattern for as far as I can see, everything silent and still. I look down. There’s something blue stuck on the iron sheets. I hook it up with my finger: a dirty, sodden denim baseball cap with a band of silver sequins. It’s Amber’s. I think of how I’ve been treating her lately—another thing to be sorry for. It’s time for me to stop feeling paralysed and do something.

  I stay there long enough to believe I’m alive, only crawling back under the covers when my teeth are chattering and my feet have turned blue. I lie on my side, drifting in and out of a light sleep, never quite going under; the drip becomes a woodpecker, rapping at my brain, tap-tapping, typing lists, endless lists.

  Amber’s regarding me from her chair at the back of homeroom, chewing a pen, while our teacher marks off the roll and hands out notices. She’s wearing a Sacred Heart boys’ tie knotted loosely around her throat.

  Nobody calls her a traitor. She has transcended.

  When I got Kenzie’s text this morning before school, I decided there was one thing I could do to make this all go away for her. Nothing anyone can say or do to me will change the fact that my collision course is set, but Kenzie is on a different track. She deserves better.

  I get up and place a plastic bag on the table in front of Amber. ‘Just returning this.’

  ‘What is it?’ she says, recoiling.

  ‘Your cap. It was on my roof.’

  She makes no move to open the bag. ‘How do you know it’s mine?’

  I nudge it towards her. ‘Of course it’s yours. You must have dropped it the night you helped me get back up to my room.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, rapid-blinking.

  ‘It’s not a prank.’ I scratch at the rash on my neck.

  Slowly, she takes the bag and shoves it into her backpack. ‘Well. Thanks.’ She checks me out, noticing the rash and the bruises on my arms. ‘You look awful. What’s that rash? Are you okay?’

  If we were still as close as we used to be, I’d tell her the truth. As it is, I don’t feel bad for lying. I sit down next to her and lower my voice. ‘No. I’m not.’

  ‘Is it Kenzie?’

  I cover my face with my hands. ‘Oh God. I’ve done something awful and it’s making me feel sick. I don’t know what to do.’

  I make it to the count of three before her arm is around my shoulders, her breath in my ear. ‘You can tell me. What is it?’

  ‘It’s me in those photos. Not Kenzie.’

  She gasps and pulls away. ‘Why is she covering for you?’

  ‘She thinks I can’t handle it,’ I say. ‘I feel so terrible. I got a message from her this morning and her parents have been called to the school. They’re probably here right now.’

  Amber’s furious. ‘You have to tell the truth, otherwise she might get suspended. It’ll affect her record.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I whisper. The first bell rings. I slide out of the chair. ‘Amber, please don’t tell anybody.’

  I look back at her, just once. She’s coiled and ready to strike. I was counting on it; Amber has a passion for drama, but she has an even stronger desire for justice. I am a hateful, gutless ball of misery wandering through the halls between classes for the rest of the day, and Amber is a shadowy avenger. She gives me way longer to come clean than I expected; it’s afternoon homeroom before I get the call from the office, and by then the story has wings.

  In this town, a rumour travels about a hundred kilometres per second faster than the truth.

  Principal Moore is short and bald with smiley eyes and Groucho Marx eyebrows. Normally I get the impression he likes me, though I waste far too much of his time.

  He doesn’t like me today.

  ‘This is a fine mess, Grace.’ He leans back in his chair, tapping his fingers. ‘I mean, it was plainly out of character for Mackenzie Collins, but I didn’t expect you to let it go this far before you took responsibility.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I hang my head. ‘I wasn’t thinking straight.’

  His eyebrows are meeting in the middle. ‘I will, of course, be trying to find out who took the photos to hold them to account. But this conduct, along with your absences from detention and counselling, well, I’m putting a full suspension in place for the rest of the week.’

  Suspension. That’s a first. At least it’ll back up the story: the few people who saw Kenzie at the party will willingly drop that chewed-up bone and swap it for something juicier.

  ‘I called your father but he said he couldn’t get here until five. I suggest you make your way home—your suspension begins tomorrow.’ He stands up, buttoning his suit jacket. ‘And now I have the delightful task of explaining to Mr and Mrs Collins that I was wrong.’ He smiles. ‘You may leave. You have plenty of thinking time ahead.’

  I cross the office, pausing at the door. ‘Kenzie will deny it. She’ll tell you I’m covering for her, but it was the other way around.’

  He nods and dismisses me, waving his hand.
/>   Kenzie and her parents are waiting in the administration lounge. They seem old and tired. She’s sandwiched between them on the couch and they’re all looking anywhere but at each other.

  ‘Hey,’ Kenzie says. ‘What’s going on?’

  Principal Moore is standing in the doorway, beckoning. ‘Come on in, folks. Grace and I have just finished. There’s been a development. It appears there’s more to this story than we thought.’

  ‘Development?’ Kenzie blinks. ‘Is this a joke?’ she asks me.

  I pull her into a hug and whisper, ‘No. It’s an intervention.’

  How easy it is for people to believe my lies; how hard for them to listen when I tell the truth.

  Dad and I face off across the kitchen table over cold plates of spaghetti. Dad’s chopping the strings into precise inch-long sections; I’m twirling them around my fork, making a nest that keeps getting bigger and bigger.

  ‘I don’t get it, Grace. You lied. I know you weren’t at that party.’

  ‘Yeah, but it’s a good lie.’ I cross my arms over my chest. I’m not backing away from this. I haven’t felt this determined in ages.

  ‘There’s no such thing as a good lie,’ he says. ‘If you needed time off school, you should have asked. You have to talk to me.’

  ‘It’s not that. Anyway, we’re not so good at talking, are we?’ He flinches. I want to press the crease between his eyes with my fingers, like smoothing out a lump of Play-Doh. ‘I’m not like before, if that’s what you’re thinking. Look! I’m up, out of bed, going to school. Well, I was. I’m functioning.’

  He takes in my sloppy appearance—the way I’m playing with my food. ‘Maybe you just have different symptoms of the same thing.’

  ‘I’m telling you it’s not the same. You’re not listening.’

  Dad gets up and scrapes his leftovers into the bin. Diesel watches and drools. ‘I’d really like you to see Dr Nichols again.’

  ‘I see Mrs Renfrey at school.’

  ‘According to her, you don’t turn up. And where do you go when you’re not home?’ he asks. ‘Tell me the truth. I know you hardly ever see your friends. Where do you go?’