Dreaming of Amelia (18 page)

And then he gave a great shout of laughter.

4. Eyes

I've got to admit, that dream scared the hell out of me.

But the thing with the eyes, when I noticed it, that unnerved me even more.

It was midnight and there were about 15 of us in our home theatre. The only light came from the screen which was showing Hitchcock's
Vertigo
. But the sound wasn't on and we weren't watching. We'd turned the couches around, and we were talking and listening to blues on the stereo. Amelia and Riley slipped into the room along with a burst of party noise from upstairs. As usual, there was a subtle shift in the room when they walked in. Some people sat up who'd been slumped down, some slumped further. The girl beside me lifted her bare feet onto the couch and used her thumbnail to scrape at her toenail polish.

This was the day after the dream about Riley in the circus tent. I looked at him, remembered the dream, and uneasiness swept over me.

But then I turned back to my conversation. A few people left, others came in, and I found myself watching Amelia and Riley again.

I was watching their eyes.

At first I thought I was imagining something.

Then I looked at the eyes of others in the room — people were talking about Em's ghost, and about the Ashbury-Brookfield Art Exhibition coming up — and I realised what I was seeing. With most people, focus shifts and fades. Usually you look at the face of the person who's speaking, but now and then, you drift, lose focus, disappear into your own thoughts.

Amelia and Riley's focus never broke.

I don't mean to say they were like secret service agents when the President's giving a speech. They didn't have their hands on their holsters all the time. (They didn't have holsters. If they did, I'd have mentioned it by now.)

I mean their eyes never stopped taking things in. They watched the faces of people who spoke until the person had stopped. And when nobody was talking directly to them, they looked around the room — their eyes took in its spaces: the couches, the screen, the entertainment unit, the shape of the furniture, the space between the furniture, the shadows and the light, the people in the room, the faces of the people, the thoughts behind the faces.

All this, their eyes did in a steady, mild way.

I don't believe I ever saw their eyes disappear inside their heads.

And that's just weird.

5. Voices

One night, there was this whole hour when I found myself studying the air just in front of Riley and Amelia whenever they spoke. Because it suddenly occurred to me that their voices might be using different dimensions of the air to the rest of us.

But they weren't.

Their voices were perfectly normal. (I was totally ripped that night.)

That's the end of my first set of observations.

Lots of love,

Lydia

Oh!

I beg your pardon.

You've finished.

I think I must have dozed off for a moment.

Well, LYDIA! That is quite a catalogue! I can't help wondering if you had a moment to think a single thought, or dream a single dream, of your OWN, given all the attention you were paying to A and R.

Of course, everything you say is total ballycock.

The reason Amelia and Riley are popular is this:

They know how to hold a conversation.

With great respect to your friends, Lydia, their conversation is so dull it makes me want to stick a fish hook in the other eye.

But Riley and Amelia? A breath of fresh air.

Ever yours,

The Ghost

I'd been planning to ask why someone put a fish hook in your eye but now I know. You're obnoxious.

I have a second set of observations of Amelia and Riley.

These are the differences between them.

1.   
Riley talks more than Amelia.

2.   
They get drunk in different ways.

I guess you noticed that Amelia gets wild and wonderful when she's drunk.

But Riley talks fast, stays physically still, and watches Amelia.

3.   
Amelia has a secret

In some ways, they're like the perfect couple. They glance at one another often, as if they like to confirm that the other still exists, or as if they can read the other's thoughts. They light up when the other person speaks, and smiles form on their faces even before the other reaches the punchline in a joke.

And I see them cross the road near our school. Let's say Riley is talking when they're about to cross. Amelia keeps watching his face as he talks. She watches his eyes check for traffic, then she steps onto the road when he does. The same thing happens in reverse. It's pure listening and pure trust between them.

But Amelia has a secret. I know because I see secrets just like you can see the air.

I think Riley senses something and it's breaking him apart. I saw this the first time I ever saw them at school — cobwebs in the space between their hands.

Saw it again the night a bunch of us were trapped in a closet.

We talked about shadows for three hours that night. It's a shame you weren't there. It might have helped you see the truth: shadows and secrets are wrong.

Now this is where I want to go back to the secret I kept about Amelia and Riley — about seeing them in Castle Hill with a baby. It
Cannot resist interrupting here to say, ever so gently, DID YOU NOT HEAR ME EARLIER?!! STOP DISGRACING THE WORD BY CALLING SOMETHING SO MUNDANE AS THIS A SECRET!!

(Also, about the ‘shadow conversation' — what makes you think I wasn't there?)

Interrupt again and I swear I'll get a priest in to do an exorcism.

Okay, listen. I'm going to tell you about an incident.

The incident took place on a Thursday night, the night before the last day of term.

A group of us were in the Art Rooms.

We were there helping Em chase her ghost.

Some of us believed in the ghost. Some of us were there to laugh at Em.

Seb was there, and so were Amelia and Riley.

We'd been hanging for a while, joking around, and, so far, no ghost. The group started to splinter; people wandering. I heard Seb say he was going back to his car.

The art exhibition was happening in the gallery the next day. Seb had a work in progress in it, and he said he had something to add to it in his car.

I saw the door to the auditorium close behind him.

I was vaguely aware of one or two other people leaving the room.

Decided I would follow Seb.

There was something important that I wanted to say to him.

I went to find him. The gallery's just down the hall from the auditorium.

Someone was outside the door.

Thought it was Seb at first, but he heard my footstep, turned in my direction — and turned out it was Riley.

Riley's hands were pressed to the gallery door, about to open it.

He saw me, gave his slow, warm smile, waited. I reached him. We were both about to speak, when someone screamed.

The scream was loud.

Instinctively, I reached for Riley, and he did the same to me. One of his hands held the side of my arm for a moment. Our eyes rushed into one another's — he has this way of looking into eyes like he's diving right in — then we turned down the hall.

The scream faded — and I recognised it.

It was Em's scream. (I've known her a long time.)

Already, a crinkle had formed in the corners of Riley's eyes.
Still, he tilted his head slightly, watching the empty corridor, listening, waiting.

The silence continued. We dropped our arms and smiled.

‘I guess the ghost is here,' I said.

‘Not any more it's not,' he said — meaning the scream would have scared it away.

I laughed and so did he. He pushed open the door.

One light was shining down the end of the gallery but otherwise the room had a dim, hushed feel.

Windows were black with night. Walls were hung with paintings, neatly labelled. There was something calm and expectant about the room.

I looked around for Seb's piece. I knew he was doing something multimedia but hadn't seen it yet. I'd never even been in the gallery.

Then I realised Seb himself was not here. He must have been still out at his car.

Riley had moved across the room and was standing by the window.

There was a small card fixed to the wall beside him —
Riley T Smith
, it said — and a series of black and white photographs stretched beyond it.

The first photo was a young guy with a goatee, slouching along in the middle distance. The next was a close-up of the same guy's face, but now it had a huge, unexpected smile. Then an old woman in the same middle distance, eyes sad and lost, followed by a close-up of the woman, radiant with its smile. There was a series of similar pairs: a distant face, distracted or sullen; then a sudden, looming close-up, each with a smile that was lit with something vivid, fresh and warm. The effect was strangely confronting — the transformation was so complete, it was as if an otherworldy switch had been at work.

I moved along the wall — and found myself looking at photos of me.

It was intensely embarrassing. I felt as if they were nude portraits. I moved on, passing more pairs, and then I came to a small card labelled
The Switch
— so that was the name of the series. I'd been thinking of that exact word. Beyond the card was a final photograph: this one a close-up of a baby in a carrier, asleep.

‘That's my sister,' Riley said. He'd been gazing out the window as I looked at his photos, but now he moved to my side. ‘Chloe. I had this idea that I'd walk around with her for a few weeks and photograph people's expressions before and after they saw her. There's something about her face. Not like other babies' faces.'

I'd seen the baby, I knew what he meant. But I didn't want to mention that — it would draw attention to the photos of me and I wanted to pretend they weren't there.

Riley reached out a hand and touched the image of the baby with his fingertips.

‘You should have seen her this morning,' he said, smiling. ‘She'd got into the pantry and tipped a box of Cheerios all over the kitchen floor. I walk in and she's crawling around eating them as fast as she can. Mum's standing there, watching her — she got this embarrassed look when she saw me — she goes, “I know, I know, but I can't bring myself to stop her. She thinks she's hit the jackpot.”'

I laughed but before I had a chance to speak there was a freakish, loud noise from somewhere down the hall, followed by screams from our ghost-hunting friends, then footsteps pounding from the Art Rooms.

Riley and I looked at each other and laughed hard. We couldn't stop laughing. It was like we were laughing at everything — his beautiful photos, his funny little sister,
the image of her crawling around eating Cheerios, the fact that we both knew there were photos of me on the wall but weren't mentioning them, the madness of our friends chasing terror — it all seemed connected. We were the observers, like Riley's mother. Standing apart, watching fondly, laughing at the weird happiness of the kids.

We waited a few moments, then went out into the corridor, chatted a bit, still laughing, and headed out into the night.

And that's the incident.

Do you understand why I told you about it?

Love,

Lydia

To prove that I was right about your secret? That it was no secret? Simply Riley out with his sister taking photos for an artwork? Well! That is generous of you, Lydia.

No, I am proving that you're wrong.

When I saw Riley and Amelia with a baby last term, you know what I thought?

That it was
their
baby.

It explained their separateness. (And their sleepiness in classes.)

I didn't tell anyone cos I thought it was Amelia and Riley's secret to tell.

I wondered about their lives — 17 years old with a kid. How scared and trapped they must feel. No wonder Amelia was up to something, I thought. But it made her secret — and the space between their hands — even sadder.

I thought about the knowledge they must have that we
didn't — how to change a nappy, get a baby vaccinated. Where to buy a pram.

How much more grown-up they were than us. How childish we must seem.

Next thing, Riley's talking like an ordinary boy about his mum and his baby sister.

I felt like an idiot. I'd been thinking
I
was the only one at Ashbury who could see Riley and Amelia clearly. But I'd made an ordinary scene — two kids out with a baby sister — into something extraordinary.

I was just like everybody else: looking for a mystery, wanting a twist.

I also realised that those few sentences — Riley's cute story about the sister and the spilled breakfast cereal — was the most I'd learned about Riley all year.

There's no such thing as Amelia-and-Riley — I mean the
mysterious, amazing
Amelia-and-Riley; they don't actually exist.

Just like Em's ghost doesn't exist, because there's no such thing as ghosts.

Hmm.

Something not quite right about your final thought there, but I can't get my head around what it is.

Oops. No head.

Well. You know. Amelia and Riley? Whatever.

I'm kind of ‘over them'.

Much more interested to know what it was that you wanted to tell Seb that night. When you followed him to the gallery and found Riley there instead. Did you ever catch Seb? Did you tell him?

Huh. I wondered when you'd get to that.

No, I haven't told him yet.

Term 2 ended, the exhibition happened. Seb's artwork was a surprise. My parents came home, the parties stopped, and I didn't see Seb alone again. Now it's about to be Term 3 and the Trials. There'll still be drama rehearsals and I guess I'll see him there —