Ballad for a Mad Girl Read online

  Gummer and Amber haven’t arrived yet. I’ll need them with this hostile crowd. I hope they haven’t pulled over somewhere—I wouldn’t put it past Amber to try to seduce Gummer. She has a bad habit of testing our friendship one way or the other. She’s probably dazzling him with skin, perfume, legs—in the last year she’s changed, transformed into cartoon proportions, and Gummer is clueless.

  ‘You better not fall tonight,’ Kenzie says, leaning through the window. ‘What’s wrong? Are you scared?’

  ‘Shh. Psych.’ I’m waiting for the buzz I get before every prank, every performance. The only thing that scares me is the dead silence that follows a flat joke.

  ‘Come on, Grace,’ Kenzie beckons.

  She wants it to be over. I wonder when this all stopped being fun for her. In the last year Kenzie has changed too—now she’s serious about her schoolwork. And perhaps she’s serious about Mitchell after all? Is everything else silly and juvenile for her now, including me?

  Losing Mum, leaving the farm—that was bad enough. Now I’m failing school and my friends are all hooking up.

  I summon the hateful thoughts—the unfairness of it all makes me mad, and anger makes me feel like I can do anything—but tonight, as much as I try, there’s nothing. I can’t feel.

  Gummer’s arrived. He’s nodding at Pete, but he looks stunned. Amber appears, holding a bottle of cheap champagne. She hovers close to Gummer, glancing at him from beneath her lashes, and I know she’s struck again. It might not be a death blow to our friendship, but it’s close.

  I climb out of Pete’s car.

  Pete gives a lazy finger to the Sacred Heart crowd and herds the Swampies into a cluster. ‘Thirty-six point five seconds is the time to beat,’ he calls. ‘Sick ’em, Foley. Show those immaculate conceptions or immature conniptions or whatever they call themselves.’

  I get a round of applause and take a bow, but my heart’s not in it.

  Kenzie won’t look at me.

  I turn my attention to the pipe, my old friend. There are fan-shaped grilles each end, but they don’t stop us. There’s a rope ladder underneath, so it’s easy enough to scoot down the bank of the gully and climb back up on the other side of the grille. The smallest, like me, can simply slip through sideways. Most straddle the pipe and shuffle along it. A few have mastered the tightrope walk, but I have an advantage: I’m light and quick. It’s forty metres across, as wide as a horse’s back, and fifteen metres down. When I’m standing in the middle of that pipe, knowing that something terrible happened here, knowing that there’s only air between me and death, I feel it: life is sharper, brighter, more intense. It’s a delicious kind of fear.

  And I’d rather be terrified than feel nothing.

  ‘Wentz is going,’ someone says.

  Noah Wentz, Sacred Heart’s poster boy. He’s crossing the pipe like a dog scratching its backside on the carpet.

  The record holder always goes first. The Swampies start yelling and throwing empty beer cans.

  ‘Let him go!’ I yell, waving a hand. ‘Some challenger. You dragged me out here for this?’

  I ignore the barrage of rude gestures from the Hearts and make my way to the pipe. Wentz has reached the other side, still on his arse, and he’s trying to stand to half-hearted applause. It’s a crap time.

  The gully looks bottomless tonight. Some say Hannah Holt is buried in the gully, her uneasy spirit slipping from crevice to shadow, sniffing for fear, and when she smells it she’ll pull you down by the ankles with her teeth. We all know the stories are spread by grown-ups to keep us away from the quarry, but this is the first time I’ve ever thought about Hannah Holt, or William Dean, before I’ve crossed. I can’t help wondering whether he closed his eyes when he jumped, or met the rocks with them wide open.

  ‘Over a minute,’ Pete shouts. ‘Don’t bother,’ he says to me, but Wentz is coming back, on his feet this time, and he’s moving fast.

  ‘Who’s timing?’

  ‘I got it.’

  ‘How can he see where he’s going?’

  Wentz blinks in the glare of a dozen sets of headlights and a haze of dust. Why he would choose to attempt the record on the return is beyond me. But his arms are loose at his sides as if he’s going for a stroll around the block. At over six feet, almost a foot taller than me, his steps are longer. He’s making it look effortless, and effortlessly walking the pipe takes a whole lot of practice.

  The Sacred Heart students, anticipating a record time, swarm the grille.

  ‘Damn,’ Pete says. ‘I think he’s broken it.’

  ‘Is it legal? Can he do that?’ Kenzie groans. ‘Grace, don’t even think…’

  ‘I got this,’ I tell her. Now, the buzz.

  ‘Thirty-two flat,’ Gummer says, leaning over Pete’s shoulder. ‘If you’re going to beat that, Gracie, you need a death wish.’

  It’s my turn. I’ve never really been tested before. It can be done, two steps for one.

  Wentz holds out his hand as I pass. We brush knuckles. We’ll never be anything but rivals, but it is an impressive time. The Hearts step away to give me space, but step up their insults to rattle me.

  ‘Practice run first,’ I declare. ‘I’ll challenge on the return.’

  Wentz nods to accept and Pete slaps my back, but Kenzie makes a strangled sound and walks away. The image I take with me as I slip through the grille is of Kenzie taking Mitchell by the hand and leading him to Pete’s car.

  ‘Be careful,’ Amber calls.

  The first section of pipe is slick with beer and spit. I kick off my shoes, step across the wetness and begin moving—evenly, but not too fast—feet turned out, arms outstretched. Beneath, the steep sides of the gully drop away. I block out the shouting, stare ahead at the distant midnight sky and keep the pipe in my peripheral vision. The stars give enough light if you trust them, but looking down can give you the sense that you’re not moving at all.

  I’ve done this a hundred times, maybe more.

  A gusty breeze tugs a strand of hair into my eye. I blink it away. I’m twenty metres out now, almost to the halfway point where school sucks and Jeff loves Denise. There’s a ragged concrete join in the middle that’ll trip you if you don’t know it’s there—I bend and perform a walk-over to clapping and cheers.

  There’s a sudden hush. Heart speeding, I finish the distance at a jog, all windmill arms and graceless feet, to clutch at the grille on the far side. Just enough to press close to Wentz’s time but not quite enough to beat it. Pete calls out my time but I’m not listening; it doesn’t matter. I never meant to win first time around.

  I set my feet in a starting position and lean forward, squinting. The headlights on the other side are brighter than I expected but I’m ready, sparked with adrenalin, fear at my back. I let go of the grille, moving with the breeze, pulled into a slipstream. The concrete is cool and alive, like a serpent. I run, touching down lightly on the balls of my feet, no thought of slipping, knowing that Wentz’s record will fall only minutes after it was set and Sacred Heart will lose again. I laugh and the breeze dries my teeth.

  Don’t look down. The pipe is only an inch from the ground. It’s not convex, it’s a bridge, a mile wide. It’s not far.

  My feet are sure, my breathing steady. I try to focus on the faint glitter of stars so I won’t be blinded by the headlights—but it’s as if they’ve heard me: one by one, the headlights turn off. The universe disappears. An old scar on the cornea of my left eye—always with me, like a tiny drifting cloud—is all I can see.

  I stop, steady myself, blink. Stretch my arms and wait for the edges of the world to come back. Fear is in front of me now, and to the side, above and below.

  Sabotage.

  ‘Turn on the lights!’ If I can just hear a clear voice, see a single beam of light, I’ll find my sense of direction.

  Where have the stars gone? Where is the sky?

  I’ve forgotten the time—I’ve already lost—and I’m thinking about falling. A low whistle: som
ething small and hard hits the back of my head. I drop to a crouch, feel for the pipe and straddle it with my palms pressed flat. The concrete hums with vibration.

  ‘Are you crazy? Are you trying to kill me?’

  No reply. Another near-miss missile; a beat later, the sound of whatever it was skittering onto rocks.

  ‘Kenzie?’ The breeze snatches my breath and blows it back like a ghost. ‘Pete?’

  After long seconds the stars reappear. Has the sky darkened? A soft blue-tinted mist has swallowed the edge of the quarry, the cars, the people. Can they see me? Do they know I’m stuck? I fumble in my back pocket for my phone but it isn’t there—it’s still in Pete’s car. I can barely feel my feet but I dare to look down. They’re dangling; they seem far away, and in the dim light my ankles are crisscrossed with welts and scratches.

  I call out, gagging on a wave of bile. The fear—I’m dizzy with it. My thighs are numb and tingling from the freezing pipe; my hands are losing grip and sensation. I drop my eyes to the gully below: a dragon’s yawn, and the rocks, the rocks like teeth. A lone shadow separates from the rest before the mist snatches it away with cool fingers.

  ‘Grace!’

  I hear them now, screaming from the other side, but I’m so tired. I want to close my eyes and slip into the sweet, powdery blue. I glance down: I can just see my hands. Where they grip the pipe, there’s a single looping word and a tiny drawing of a black bird—hundreds of times I’ve crossed the pipe, but I’ve never seen it.

  Hannah.

  I trace the word with my finger. It shimmers. A sharp impact near my ribs knocks me sideways and the pipe seems to buckle and twist. My legs lose grip. Close by, someone is sobbing as if their heart could break.

  I see a shape through the mist, a hand solid enough to be real. To reach it, I have to let go.

  ‘Good morning,’ I croak.

  Kenzie is perched on my window seat in the sun, knees up, arms folded around her legs. She’s wearing a red-and-white polka dot dress. It hurts my eyes to look at her.

  She turns around. ‘It’s afternoon. Cody let me in. I’ve been waiting for you to wake up.’

  ‘Afternoon?’

  ‘Near enough. It’s almost twelve.’ She unfolds herself and swings her feet to the floor. ‘How do you feel?’

  ‘Like I’ve just woken up. I think I’m having the vapours.’

  She smiles. ‘Do you think your dad knows you were gone?’

  I shrug. ‘I doubt it. You know he sleeps pretty hard.’

  ‘What happened last night, Grace? You were really freaked. You scared me.’

  I sit up. My head is throbbing; my throat is burning. My teeth feel sore and loose, like the time I had braces and the wires were changed. I taste rottenness in my spit. I reach for my phone on the side table and knock over a glass. Water spills onto the carpet.

  Exhausted, I fall back onto the pillow. ‘Where’s my phone?’

  Kenzie fetches a towel from my bathroom and soaks up the mess. ‘Are you sick or something?’

  I nod, but the truth is that my memory of the night before is as elusive as a half-remembered dream. Thinking about it makes my head pound harder. I touch the base of my skull—there’s a tender lump the size of a plum and my fingers come away crusted with rust-coloured flecks. Fury gives me the strength to swing my body out of bed.

  ‘Somebody threw something.’ I hold out my hand as proof. The flecks are gone.

  ‘What? No.’

  ‘They turned off the headlights. It was so dark. I couldn’t see.’

  ‘Grace, the headlights were on the whole time.’ She shakes her head, her mouth set. ‘I wouldn’t let that happen.’

  ‘The mist…’

  ‘There was no mist. A few spots of rain, that’s all.’ Her expression is gentle.

  I start pacing. It’s all coming back. ‘Everyone was yelling and I couldn’t concentrate. Maybe I slipped. Maybe I hit my head. Did I fall? Something hit me and I fell.’

  ‘No,’ she says firmly. ‘You got halfway and you stopped. Nothing happened—you just froze.’

  ‘They were all shouting and screaming…’

  ‘You were shouting. You put your arms over your face and you screamed. For a second you wobbled, but you got your balance again. We only yelled at you because we were afraid you were going to fall.’

  ‘I don’t remember it like that,’ I say. ‘That’s not what happened.’

  ‘There were fifty people there, Grace. They all saw what I saw. I wouldn’t lie to you.’ She puts her hand on my arm.

  I jerk away.

  ‘It’s okay if you got scared. I don’t know how you do half the things you do. I mean, it was fun when we were younger. But my mortality got the better of me that time you dared me to backflip off Morley Bridge.’

  The stubbornness kicks in—a gut emotion in my spider-webbed brain. ‘I wasn’t scared.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Fine.’

  She pauses for a beat and says, ‘I thought you were going to jump.’

  I snort. ‘Don’t stupid up the place, Kenz.’

  She picks up her bag from the seat and scrolls through her phone. ‘Mitch is wondering if you’re all right. I told him I’d let him know.’

  ‘So let him know I’m fine—apart from the hallucinations.’ I’m still in the same clothes I was wearing last night. There are watery red stains near my left armpit. ‘Look,’ I say, stretching the fabric. ‘Blood.’

  She leans close and sniffs. ‘Raspberry lemonade.’

  I check my legs and ankles, but there are no scratches. The stubbornness curls up and dies. ‘Then someone must have spiked my drink. And where’s my goddamn phone?’ I fumble in my bag and look under the bed.

  She sighs. ‘Noah Wentz had to go out there—it took him fifteen minutes to talk you into crawling back on your hands and knees. When we got you in the car you were sobbing your heart out, and halfway along the freeway you started screaming. You didn’t stop until you were almost home. Amber led you back up to your room and put you to bed—she said when she left you, you were crying in your sleep.’ Kenzie slings her bag over her shoulder and kisses my cheek. ‘And that’s the truth.’

  I shake my head. ‘Noah Wentz? Oh God, I’ll never live this down.’

  Kenzie drags the corners of my mouth up with her fingers. ‘Smile. It’ll be okay. It’s Year Twelve—it’s making us all jumpy. Sometimes it terrifies me to think everything has been leading to this.’

  ‘To what?’

  ‘You know…study. Exams. The tunnel narrowing and all that.’

  That’s what terrifies her?

  ‘It’s this house,’ I say.

  She presses another kiss to my cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  She’s gone.

  I’m still pacing, but I’m back somewhere on that freeway. My head hurts. Pete is silent, grim, speeding. Mitch is staring out the window, gripping Kenzie’s knee. Every detail is so clear I can count the bones in his knuckles. Kenzie is in the middle with her arm across my shoulders; she keeps turning me by the chin so she can look at my face, but I’m transfixed by the freeway markers rushing past in a red and white blur. Pete’s phone is ringing repeatedly. I’m looking for a fixed point to focus on because everything is moving way too fast—and I find it. My head whips around. I’m out of my seat belt and clambering onto the parcel shelf with my face pressed against the glass. Kenzie pulls me back. It’s gone in an instant, and nobody has seen what I have seen: something—someone—is crawling in the ditch by the side of the road.

  Now I remember screaming.

  In the morning I think about skipping school, but Kenzie shows up early and offers to walk with me. Usually we meet at the midway point between our houses, Reilly’s Auto, where Cody works part-time, and we talk nonstop the rest of the way. Today, we make the twenty-minute journey in near-silence—Kenzie, texting Mitch, and me, dazed, anxious and dog-tired from a second night of strange dreams.

  When we arrive, kids who’ve k
nown me since primary school are acting as if they don’t know me at all. Someone nudges my backpack. Something hits the back of my head. My armpits gather sweat but I don’t turn around.

  ‘I heard Pete found your phone.’ Kenzie links her arm with mine.

  I nod. ‘He rang the house last night.’

  ‘Phew.’

  Kenzie seems more relieved than I am. Lately, her phone is always in her hand in case Mitch calls, and I’m pretty sure she can text him blindfolded. She even sleeps with it under her pillow. My phone is an old one of Cody’s. I lose it all the time. I go out and leave it at home; I forget to charge it. I get anxious when I don’t have any messages or when I have too many messages, and it’s a constant reminder that I can’t call the one person I desperately want to talk to: Mum.

  She lowers her voice. ‘Ignore them. It’s yesterday’s news. It’s going to be fine.’

  For a moment I believe her.

  ‘Well.’ I let out a shuddering sigh. ‘Do you think they know how shitty it feels to crawl into one of our dingy boxes when it’s all free-range and chandeliers right next door?’

  A solid, eight-foot wall separates Swanston Public and Sacred Heart. They made it arty by placing a thick Perspex panel every thirty metres or so, just to give the illusion that it’s all friendly, that we’re not segregated according to how much money our parents can afford to blow on our education. The wall keeps two castes of baboons from tearing each other apart.

  Despite their chaste checked uniforms and shiny shoes, Sacred Heart students are no classier than we are, and we Swampies are no less imaginative for our Home-brand educations. Mooning, flipping the finger, pasting vicious slogans and spitting are common from both sides. The risk-takers will smear unmentionable fluids; the talented will install insulting sculptures under the guise of art; the above-it-alls will saunter past, their noses in the air, without realising they’re part-of-it-all. We ran out of fresh ideas a long time ago.

  Well, I didn’t run out of ideas—I’ve sabotaged Sacred Heart’s divine order no less than fourteen times in the past year. A month ago I switched both the small and the medium-sized axolotls in their Science room for a colossal one called Rex, sparking the rumour that Waldorf swallowed Statler. (One day I’ll return them—they’ll think Waldorf coughed Statler back up—but for now they both recline in a tank in the corner of my bedroom.) I cancelled the bus bookings for the Year Eleven camp in July, leaving forty-seven kids and forty-seven suitcases stranded in the car park for five hours. Many times, I’ve started rumours that became truth, set up hoaxes that fooled everyone, perpetrated pranks that became legend. I’ve never needed the glory—just the laughs. As long as my friends think I’m funny, I’m happy. And I don’t discriminate: Swampie Public isn’t exempt.