Dreaming of Amelia (22 page)

He joined us, full of excess energy, swiped his card to open the building, and we rushed inside to the warmth, and walked towards the auditorium.

I cannot say what happened first, whether the colour orange caught the corner of my eye, or the twitch leapt onto my lip. I think maybe both at once. I looked sideways, saw the closed door of Room 27B, and there it was. On the floor.
A small pile of mandarin peels
.

I turned as white as a glove.

There was something about them. The way they curled this way and that. Their orangeness. The way they
sat there looking up at me
.

And into my head rushed the thought: cleaners would have been here on the weekend!

They would not have missed a pile of mandarin peels! So how did they get there?

The answer was as clear as a ghost. It was the ghost.

Now, look, I am not a stupid girl.

I did not shout to all around me, ‘Hey! The ghost has left some mandarin peels!'

I knew that would not help my cause—both in relation to the ghost and as a human being generally.

And yet I also knew that the ghost had left those peels,
and it had done so to get my attention
. (Probably it had read about the drama rehearsal on the noticeboard and knew I'd be coming by this way.)

I continued on to the rehearsal but my heart was curling and twirling like peels, and my lip was twitching so hard that I had to blow my nose.

I did tell Lydia and Cass about the mandarin peels when we were alone later that day. Their reactions were predictable. They are kind friends, but they can laugh hard.

8
.

That day, Mum collected William and me from school. Everything was cheerful. William was excited because he thought he might have broken his toe. Mum was in her happy mood because that's her way these days. I think she really likes us (her children). She kept turning around in her belt to tell us that we're gorgeous. And then adding joyfully, ‘And you were such
ugly little babies
!'

That was harsh but fair. I've seen the photos. As babies, William and I both looked like profiteroles.

Anyway, then Mum told us she'd been thinking about baking cookies for us. She asked if we would mind discussing the pertinent issues in cookie baking.

We discussed cookies all the way home, and by the time we arrived we had agreed that, instead of Mum baking cookies, William would make his
Chocolate Chestnut Torte with Cognac Mousse
.

So, William sat up on the kitchen bench, to give his broken toe a break (ha ha), and Mum and I collected the ingredients and handed them to him.

I talked about the ghost, and William was especially interested by the mandarin peels. ‘The
peelings
gave you a
feeling
,' he said, and pointed out that this rhymes.

I didn't know what he was trying to say but I was still impressed. For a 13-year-old boy, William can be very philosophical, and his mind works in various directions.

Mum, meanwhile, asked a lot of questions, and I began to notice that they were all focused on the Art Rooms. Once, years ago, my mother
lived
in the Art Rooms—back when our school was a boarding school—so I assumed her questions were nostalgic. But then I realised she was suggesting that the creaking might be connected with the renovations, and that the cold patches might be glitches with the new reverse-cycle air-conditioning.

Not ghosts at all.

But just as William was putting his torte in the oven, Mum turned to me with a serious face and said, ‘But renovations can't explain the fruit peels.'

The whole thing made me feel strangely lovely.

9
.

The next day, Tuesday, my second message from the ghost.

This was the day of the athletics carnival and William and I were running late. Something to do with Dad needing to take his car in for a service. Anyway, we ended up walking to school.

My thoughts, as we walked, seemed somehow exciting. I couldn't figure out why. I was looking forward to something—but what? I knew I would see Cassie win some races that day, as she is a talented sprinter, but no, it was more than that.

Was I hoping for a message from the ghost?

Not really.

It was something else.

Then I remembered: Amelia and Riley were going to do something spectacular.

They have been spectacular, at regular intervals, since the day they arrived at our school, and it was time for the next dazzling.

But what would it be? Sprinting? No. That was unacceptable. If Amelia could sprint she might beat Cassie in a race. She would have to choose something else. Thanks all the same.

Maybe shotput? She seems very strong.

No. She's too beautiful for shotput. So, what? And what about Riley? Javelin? Like a hunter!

Anyway, these were my cheerful thoughts as William and I took the shortcut across Castle Hill Heritage Park.

And there they were
.

That's the strange thing about Amelia and Riley—often, I'll be thinking or talking about them, and suddenly, there they are!

Spooky.

(Although, to be fair, I do think and talk about them a lot.)

They were in the heritage park. William and I were walking a winding path, and they were on the grass amidst the trees. Maybe the distance from me to my front door. Hmm. But you don't know that distance. Never mind. Anyway, I could see them standing very close together. Amelia was talking. She was looking down at her feet as she talked, and Riley was watching her intently. They might have heard our footsteps on the path, but if so they did not look up. I walked the path, watching them openly, and they did not turn at all.

I did not call out. That would have been like calling to a television screen.

No, that's wrong: it was more like
they
were real life and
I
was the television screen.

Either way, calling seemed impossible. I left the park, looking back over my shoulder—and their intense conversation continued in the shadows of the trees.

Anyway, I carried on to school, and the carnival. It was a relaxing day. Lyd and I sat on picnic blankets with various people, and Cass kept joining us after winning races. She'd lean over, holding onto her thighs, breathing quickly, her face pale pink. Then she'd turn into Cass again, smile and help herself to my chips. I was honoured to share them with her.

Afterwards, I felt emotional because I knew it would be my last school athletics carnival ever.

Lyd pointed out that I'd never competed in a single event, and had sometimes skipped athletics carnivals altogether, but that was not the point. I saw Bindy Mackenzie taking photos for the yearbook and she was doing artistic shots of the bedraggled streamers on the grass, and it almost made me cry.

Anyway, we had a rehearsal that afternoon, so we walked over to the Art Rooms. On the way, Bindy took a photo of Lyd, Cass and me—Lyd and I held Cass's trophies in the air and pointed at her. That almost made me cry too.

‘What if there's nowhere for Cassie to run when we finish school?' I said.

But Lyd said there would always be treadmills.

Anyway, we reached the Art Rooms and wandered towards the auditorium.

Then, just as I had calmed my emotions, it happened.

A feather landed on my shoulder
.

This is not a joke.

I felt something, a very faint tickling sensation, and I looked
down at my shoulder and there it was. A white feather.

I screamed. As you might also scream if someone dropped a feather on your shoulder.

Lyd and Cass stopped and stared at me questioningly. I looked up and around, down and sideways, but there was no explanation for the feather. (I should make it abundantly clear that we were now
inside
a building, not outside where birds might fly by dropping feathers.)

The feather simply materialised. And there it was.

I looked quickly to see what room we were outside—would it be Room 27B?

No. It wasn't. It was Room 39M.

Cass said ‘Huh,' and we looked at her, and she said, ‘No, nothing, it's just that 3 times 9 is 27, and M is a kind of a sideways B, so in a way 39M
is
27B. Spiritually speaking.'

I gasped.

Lyd and Cass practically murdered themselves with their laughing.

And then we were interrupted because others were arriving for the rehearsal. Some Brookfielders appeared first, and behind them were Amelia and Riley.

I suddenly realised that they had not turned up to the athletics carnival at all.

I was openly astonished.

And yet, also, a part of me was not surprised at all. That morning at the heritage park, they'd seemed so intense, so
real
—how could two such
real
people come to a high school carnival?

You may not understand what I mean.

But, you should. For, you see, school, and school carnivals are all about playing: they're not real. Whereas, reality is.

It suddenly seemed impossible that Amelia and Riley were even
here
.

I looked back over my shoulder to check that they weren't a hologram, but no, there they were. Two regular students, walking along to a drama rehearsal.

Impossible.

And then something else struck me: something was different about Amelia and Riley.

Their faces were the same as usual—that watchful and expectant look; the faintest smiles.

But, for the first time, I could see the gap between them, the one that Lydia says she saw the day they first came to our school.

I looked away from them and back to the feather in the palm of my hand.

Two impossibilities: Amelia and Riley at my school. A feather from a ghost in my hand.

And we all carried on to the rehearsal.

10
.

Wednesday, no word from the ghost. It gave me a break. This was lucky as we got our report cards that day so I was very busy having mood swings.

On Thursday, the ghost was back with its third message.

The school was holding a tertiary information day for Year 12, and it took place in the exhibition hall in the Art Rooms. I was walking to the bathroom, taking a break from the excess information, when I saw an object lying on the ground.

It was a book.

It's true that the book was not outside Room 27B; however, it was ancient, or anyway old, with a hard cover. The cover was falling away, as if it did not want to have anything to do with the book any more. You couldn't blame it. The pages
were flaking, spotty and yellow, and more to the point, the book was called,
The Complete History of Politics in Australia
.

There was a square of paper glued to the first page:

Presented to Sandra Wilkinson
for Excellence in Penmanship, 1952
.

Clearly, the ghost had left the book here for me to find. It was old for a start, which was a clue. Ghosts are old. And the ‘penmanship' thing—well, that was the ghost's idea of a joke. It was referring to the way it made my pen roll across my desk earlier in the term.

Yes, I thought, ha ha, ghost. Funny.

But, as I stood there, alone in the corridor, my heart beating strangely, holding that old book, pinching my lip to make the twitching calm down, I suddenly looked behind me.

Why?

I don't know.

A whisper in the air.

A presence.

Something watching me.

Nothing was there so I looked back down at the book.

What was the ghost trying to say with this book?

I hoped it wasn't saying I should read it.

I now reach a point in the story that I wish I did not have to reach.

But I have to. It's part of it.

I think I said before that I am not a stupid girl?

Well, turns out, I am. Sometimes, anyway.

In particular, when alcohol has been consumed. (By me, I mean; I'm quite smart when other people drink.)

Well, I suppose I should just say it.

That very night, there was a party at Lydia's place. It was a HUGE party; a madness of a party. And I made one of those random decisions to go psycho. I mean, to drink everything my eye could see, and some things that my eye could not.

This is not my fault. My head was in a pattern of confusion. Stupid ghost throwing peelings and feathers and books at me! Stupid Amelia and Riley being too real and too impossible! (I know. That was unfair. But it confused me.)

And most of all: stupid school for holding a tertiary information day.

See, the thing is, I have always known that I want to be a lawyer, just like my parents. And yet there I was at the exhibition hall, surrounded by
other options
. Maybe I wanted to do Communications at UTS and become a journalist? Maybe I wanted to study crop rotation and become a farmer? Well, probably not, but you get the point, which is:
Maybe I was wrong about becoming a lawyer
. Who knew?

Life is confusing enough as it is.

I felt very angry.

And so, at the party—well, you don't need a list of what I drank. Let's just say that it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Actually, it was a good idea. I felt a
lot
better. I had a fantastic time. So many intense conversations! Laughed so hard! Danced and danced. Floated on the inflated dolphins in the indoor pool, watching the stars through the glass—it's so moody and steamy in Lydia's pool pyramid. At some point, Amelia climbed up one of Lydia's chimneys, climbed back down, went straight to the kitchen and started getting ingredients from the cupboard. As if something in the chimney had told her what to do. We were following, watching, laughing. Turned out she was making a tiramisu! We laughed
so hard at her serious, sooty face as she calmly reached for things around the kitchen. Next thing, she and Riley were dancing in the shadows—laughed some more—they are such cool, understated dancers—suddenly I thought:
Why am I upset about the ghost
?! I love it. It has
chosen
me! And who cares that Amelia and Riley are impossible. I love them! And who cares what I might become? I could be anything! Maybe I would be an astronomer! Such beautiful stars through the pyramid! Or maybe I'd get into swimming pool repair?