Ballad for a Mad Girl Page 19

  She doesn’t react. My hand flutters and falls. It’s like someone stuck a shank through my heart. She’s so close, as real to me as she ever was when she was alive—but she can’t be because she’s dead, and I must be dreaming.

  I crouch down, rubbing my eyes.

  This isn’t happening now. It was happening then.

  Two guys get out of the second car, a dirty white ute with a tray top. They’re both big and brawny, built like Cody. Mum and the other girls press closer to each other and fall silent. They’ve spotted the other car at the edge of the quarry, where a tall, thin person is kicking dirt onto the campfire, stamping it out. He gets into the car and slams the door. The engine turns over five times, whining. It won’t start.

  That’s when I recognise Aloisi. Young Aloisi. He steps forward, staggering, pulling the other guy by the arm.

  Mum follows, yelling, ‘Leave him, Dom! It’s not worth it!’

  But Aloisi and his friend move up behind the car. They drop their shoulders and start pushing. The front tyres are less than two metres from the edge of the quarry, and though the car is hardly budging, the girls scream.

  ‘Dom!’ Mum runs. Her scarf flies off.

  The door opens as the car slips forward a few inches, and William Dean tumbles into the dirt. He’s precariously close to the edge, and without his foot on the brake the car slowly rolls forward and tips into the void. There’s a groan, a crash, the sound of breaking glass. A mushroom-shaped cloud of dust rises from the bottom of the quarry.

  For a moment everybody freezes, stunned.

  William moves first. He drags himself clear of the edge, and scrabbles in the dust, trying to get to his feet.

  Aloisi kicks William hard in the ribs, lifting his entire body with one boot. He bends down and punches him.

  Mum is hanging on to Aloisi’s arm, trying to drag him away. ‘Enough! You’re drunk.’

  ‘He deserves it. You know what he did to Hannah.’ Aloisi spits in the dirt.

  ‘Leave it to the police,’ Mum says, still tugging his arm. ‘We hardly knew her—I don’t know why you…’

  ‘The police? They aren’t doing anything! You saw that flyer, Erin. Look at him—you know he’s not right in the head.’

  William stands groggily. He takes off, heading in my direction. To the pipe.

  ‘Swampie piece of shit!’ Aloisi pulls away from my mother and follows William Dean, his friend close behind.

  William’s face is white. He squeezes through the gaps in the grille and walks the pipe like an acrobat. He reaches the quarter-way mark without missing a beat, but then he looks down. I gasp as he falters and loses his grip with one foot. He recovers, arms flailing, and steadies himself side-on, but Aloisi is at the grille now, shaking the bars.

  When William reaches halfway, right above the deepest part of the gully, Aloisi throws the first stone. It glances off William’s right shoulder and ricochets onto the rocks below. The second hits the base of his neck. He ducks and touches his head. His hand comes away stained with blood.

  Mum is kneeling in the dirt with her hands over her face. Aloisi picks up another rock, twice the size of the others. He raises it above his head and waits, as if he’s giving William time to make a choice.

  And William gives up. I see it, in his eyes, in his outstretched arms, in the way his body leans with the breeze like the windswept tree. If he’s going to fall, he might as well fly.

  I scream, at the same time as Mum, and stretch out my hand. Our voices unite, but he’s already swan-diving, gracefully, the way the birds fell. It’s too black to see where he lands. The darkness swallows him whole.

  I use the sleeves of William’s jacket to wipe tears from my cheeks.

  Mum is crying too, her expression twisted with horror. Her friends are trying to hold her back, but she breaks away and sprints to the quarry edge. For a moment I think she might follow William Dean; even knowing the distance between us is far greater than the stretch of pipe, I still reach for her.

  She collapses at the edge, scooping fistfuls of dust and hurling them at Aloisi.

  Aloisi places the rock on the ground. ‘He jumped,’ he says without emotion. ‘You all saw—I didn’t push him. He jumped.’ He looks around and, one by one, the others nod as if they’ve made some kind of pact. ‘We just wait for them to find him, and we were never here.’

  The girls pick Mum up and lead her to the car. She climbs in the back, blank-faced, and both cars leave.

  I’m numb—without feeling in my body or my heart. I should go before I freeze to death, but I stay a little longer, just so he won’t be alone—down below, up there, somewhere in the middle—wherever he is now. I don’t know how much time passes. I listen to the sounds of the night: crickets, the whispers of the wind, the rustling of grass. Every sound is timeless and natural—until I hear a dry cough.

  William isn’t dead.

  He’s crawling up the side of the quarry, clutching at clumps of weeds, hauling his broken body over rocks. I watch, unable to move, though every part of me wants to climb down to help him. He reaches the top and staggers to his feet. He’s hop-shuffling, unable to bear weight on one of his legs, making slow and painful progress towards the outer fence and Yeoman’s Track.

  I make a strangled sound in my throat. William turns. He looks right at me and slowly raises his hand, before he moves off, melting into the mist.

  It takes me a long time to summon the strength and willpower to cross back. My feet are so numb I can only sit astride the pipe and shuffle, a painful half-metre at a time. William’s jacket no longer feels like skin. It’s how I imagine the sheep carcass in the bottom of the gully might feel—dry, stiff, paper-thin—and I resist the urge to shrug it off and let it fall, too.

  As I slip through the bars of the grille, I hear the sound of tyres on gravel. Headlights flicker out on Yeoman’s Track. Help. I start running towards the road, waving my arms, scared the car might pass by before they see me.

  ‘Here!’

  Something hobbles my ankles; I trip and fall, landing on my hands and knees. But the car turns, its lights sweeping over me and switching to low-beam.

  I’ve been spotted.

  Exhausted, relieved, I kneel and drop my head. A car door opens but nobody speaks, and I look up to see the white ute with only one occupant. My fear flares again.

  Aloisi gets out of the ute and opens the tailgate. He scans the area, leans into the tray and hauls something heavy out, letting it drop to the ground.

  William. He groans and curls in on himself.

  Aloisi wraps a meaty forearm around William’s throat. I can only watch as he pulls William Dean to the edge of the gully. He bends down, lifts William into his arms and throws him over the side.

  A beat of silence, then a thud, dull and awful. Final.

  There’s mud in my eyes from mingled dust and tears. My hair hangs in a veil of tangles over my face.

  Aloisi turns away from the gully. Again, he looks around.

  Though I’m barely twenty metres away, I expect him to look through me, but his eyes stop. I push my hair away from my face and give him a stare that burns. I have no strength left. Only hate.

  He rubs his eyes and squints. His mouth goes slack. He’s shaking all over. He looks as if he’s seen a ghost.

  Aloisi jerks around and bolts to the car. He starts it up and takes off, circling twice to erase his footprints and the shape of William’s body on the ground. He roars out of the quarry, spinning the wheels.

  I try to stand but my ankles are still hobbled. I reach down to untangle my mother’s scarf. It’s real—I didn’t make it up. Underneath the scarf is my phone, buzzing, lit up with an incoming call, but I don’t answer; I stare at the screen, my teeth chattering from cold, while I struggle to connect the dots.

  Dominic Aloisi killed William Dean. He went from committing a mean act—because he fancied himself a vigilante, because he was drunk, or because William was different, I may never know—to committing murder. />
  The thing I saw crawling in the ditch on the night of the pipe challenge—it was William Dean, twenty-two years before. He couldn’t have made it far before Aloisi returned. And William may have murdered Hannah Holt, but he didn’t come back to atone or confess, or to show me where Hannah was buried—he used me. It’s not a huge leap to the final point of a terrible triangle: the ghosts finally caught up with my mother—perhaps her conscience demanded she speak up to make things right, but Dominic Aloisi silenced her before she could tell.

  I’m light-headed. I try to stand but my legs have gone to sleep. Far away—or at least that’s how it sounds—my phone keeps ringing.

  William Dean has given me a curse and a gift. Now that I know how William died, I can show that Aloisi had a motive to kill my mother—I can begin to prove that she didn’t step in front of Aloisi’s truck. If I make my mother’s killer pay, I will also give justice to William Dean, but he’ll never be held accountable for what he did to Hannah Holt. It doesn’t seem like a fair trade.

  ‘It’s not enough,’ I whisper. ‘You have to give me Hannah, too.’

  I lift the scarf and run it through my fingers. It’s so soft, still warm. I press it to my face to inhale the lingering scent of Mum’s perfume, but my mouth fills with dust. My tongue is fat and dry. My throat is closing over, my lungs are screaming; when I stare down at my hands, they hold nothing but fine white ash.

  Kenzie is curled up on my window seat, flagging the pages of a textbook. She hasn’t noticed I’m awake. She looks tired. Her eyes are puffy and bloodshot, and when she yawns the inside of her mouth is an unholy red.

  For the past two days all I’ve done is sleep, pick at my food, and watch TV. Yesterday, I discovered I have four stitches in my little finger. My body has a fresh batch of scrapes and bruises, but the pain is distant and my head feels as if it’s stuffed with cotton wool. I don’t mind the feeling—I want to forget.

  ‘Hey.’

  Kenzie looks up and smiles. ‘Sorry if I woke you. I was trying to be quiet.’

  ‘You were quiet. I didn’t know you were coming over.’

  ‘Your dad asked me to stay with you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘So you wouldn’t be alone.’

  I sit up in bed. ‘Where has he gone?’

  ‘He left a couple of hours ago. I think he’s at the school, on the warpath. Then I think he’s meeting Cody at the pub.’ She closes the textbook with a slap. ‘Sorry—I’m not supposed to talk about anything that might upset you.’

  ‘Why the school? What for?’ I swing my legs out of bed. They’re wobbly and weak—I’m not sure I can stand.

  ‘God, I’m so sorry, Grace.’

  ‘Sorry for what?’

  ‘For what happened to you…’ She stops. ‘I guess you don’t remember.’

  ‘I remember everything.’

  ‘That’s good.’ She touches my shoulder. ‘That’s a start. Hey, are you up to watching a movie? I brought supplies.’ She picks up a plastic bag, yanks my pillow from the bed, and leaves with them both tucked under her arm.

  I follow, clinging to the banister rail with two hands, feeling as if I’m only moving at half-speed.

  Downstairs, Kenzie has set up my pillow on the couch and arranged a pile of junk food on the table in front of the TV. I lie back down, search through the recorded programs and select The Shining. Ten minutes into the movie and I’m sleepy again, but Kenzie can’t sit still—she’s making me dizzy with her trips to the kitchen to make popcorn and pour drinks. Now she’s jiggling her leg and winding her ponytail around her finger until it springs free. She keeps doing it.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘I can’t stand this film,’ she says. ‘It makes me feel dead inside.’

  I frown and turn back to the screen.

  ‘You shouldn’t be watching it either.’

  ‘It isn’t real, Kenz.’

  ‘I know that, but…’

  She fidgets some more, so I turn off the TV. ‘Sorry. I know I’m bad company.’

  ‘It’s fine. It’s just hard to know what to talk about.’

  I reach over and take her hand. ‘You can ask me anything. I won’t break.’

  Her mouth twists and she pulls away. Her expression is a mix of helplessness and hopelessness.

  I want to rewind my life—if not to a place where Mum is still alive, then at least to a point where nobody looks at me the way Kenzie is looking at me right now. I pull back my shoulders. ‘You can go if you want,’ I say. ‘I’ll be all right by myself.’

  She ignores me and picks up a stack of brochures from the coffee table. ‘What are these?’

  ‘Dad brought them home. I think they’re supposed to be conversation starters.’

  ‘Pretty random,’ she says, holding up one about drug addiction.

  ‘He’s covering all bases.’

  ‘Or he’s trying to understand.’

  ‘I suppose. Maybe there isn’t a brochure for what I have.’

  ‘If there was, what would it say?’ She bites down on her lip. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Can you please stop apologising?’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘It’s hard to explain.’ She waits, so I tell her the only thing I know to be true. ‘I have hateful thoughts in my head.’

  ‘Doesn’t everybody?’ She snorts. ‘Right now I hate my parents for suddenly acting like I’m the great white university hope for the Collins dynasty, when a year ago they couldn’t have cared less. I hate my teachers. I want to set fire to those bloody textbooks. I even hate Mitch sometimes—’ She cuts herself off. ‘Wait. You hate yourself? Or everybody else, including me?’

  Somewhere under the layer of cotton wool, I feel guilt for not being there for her. ‘Kenz, the flipside of your hate is love. That’s normal. It’s different for me—I used to have plenty of hateful thoughts of my own, and that was normal too, but now it’s like I have somebody else’s. I don’t know how much of me is me anymore.’

  ‘I want you back,’ she says after a pause. ‘The way you used to be, even if you were getting me in trouble.’

  I smile. ‘I’m working on it. I promise.’

  Diesel wanders out from underneath the dining-room table. He licks Kenzie’s hand on his way past and flops down by the front door, ignoring me. His lack of hostility makes me feel as if I’m becoming invisible.

  ‘I haven’t seen Gummer or Pete,’ I say.

  ‘They want to come, but…’

  ‘Dad.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She fixes me with a stare. ‘And Amber has something to say to you. When you’re ready.’

  ‘She sent flowers.’

  ‘I bet,’ she mutters. She reaches for a brochure and holds one up about teen pregnancy. ‘Grace Foley, is there something you’re not telling me? Are you having an unexpected pregnancy?’

  ‘No. I haven’t even had unexpected sex.’

  ‘Me either.’

  We laugh. It feels good.

  ‘It’s nice to see you again.’ Dr Nichols looks uncomfortable when she realises what she has said. ‘Not here, obviously.’

  She has a new office on the fourth floor—it has a nicer view, but the room looks the same: cosy, all-white furniture, the walls painted a soft green, and just a few certificates in black frames on the wall behind her desk. Dr Nichols is too smart to peddle inspirational quotes. She knows they don’t mean anything.

  This is my third appointment in a week. My voice is husky from talking so much—and from nerves, if I’m honest, because I know we’re fast approaching the part where Dr Nichols talks back.

  ‘It’s not like before,’ I remind her.

  ‘What is it like?’ she asks.

  I think for a moment. ‘A bit like before but minus the grief.’

  ‘It can take a long time to come to terms with grief in its various forms,’ she says. ‘Tell me why it’s different.’

  ‘I’d rather say why it’s similar first.’

  She nods.
‘Go ahead.’

  ‘No appetite, nausea, anxiety, insomnia…Tell me if I’ve left anything out.’

  ‘Risk-taking,’ she prompts.

  ‘Yeah, that.’

  ‘Self-harm.’

  ‘No.’ I think of my bike sliding out in Susannah Holt’s front yard. ‘Not deliberately.’

  ‘Delusions.’

  I say nothing.

  Her pen scratches away. ‘You’ve had some trouble with your friends. You must feel very alone.’

  ‘I’ve fixed that,’ I say quickly. ‘I was being a shit.’

  She smiles. ‘That’s a very self-aware statement. It can be hard for people to understand what you’re going through, especially the people you’re closest to.’ She taps her pen. ‘So how is it different?’

  In this room, the things I’ve experienced seem far away. I feel safe.

  After the last time Dr Nichols helped put me back together, I remember thinking I was part of a game and the reset button had been pressed. Everything was the same, but slightly different. You have to navigate a familiar world—the same setting, armed with the same weapons—but you can only reach the endgame by making different choices. Except it’s hard to make different choices with only a split second to react; you’re relying on instinct, so you take similar turns. You fight—and lose—to the same monsters that beat you before. One wrong step and you’re stuck playing out the game, watching your life run out, and the reset button is somewhere you can’t reach.

  More than anything, I want to start over.

  ‘Are you sure you’re ready to talk about this, Grace?’

  ‘Yes.’ I’ve chewed the tips of my fingernails ragged. My thumbnail has caught the tassel of Dr Nichols’s blue scarf—one end of it is slowly unravelling under her desk. She hasn’t noticed. ‘I want to face it now.’

  She pours a glass of water and pushes it across the desk. ‘It’s a slow…’

  I tip back on my chair. ‘I’m ready to listen to what you have to say. We’ve done this before, remember? Everything I’ve told you—you have the answers right there in front of you, don’t you?’ I lean forward and tap her notes. ‘Devil’s advocate, you said once. Let’s play.’ I sit back, pulling on the bright blue thread. Her scarf slips onto the floor.