Dreaming of Amelia (37 page)

For example, there should be a sound to say, ‘Sorry, I was reading the papers beside me so I didn't see the lights change, but you don't need to be so cranky about it. See? I'm going now.'

Also: ‘Sorry, I didn't mean to honk my horn at you just then, I bumped the steering wheel in shock because I just found something EXCITING in the papers beside me.'

Also: ‘Thanks for letting me get in front of you just then even though I know you didn't actually realise I was going to, but thanks for braking fast enough to stop you crashing into the back of me, which you came SO CLOSE to doing, and I guess that was my fault. It was because I wasn't concentrating because I JUST THOUGHT OF SOMETHING
AMAZING
ABOUT THESE PAPERS!!'

And so on.

But, yes.

You heard me right.

I found something EXCITING and then I thought of something
AMAZING
to do with the papers beside me.

I was reading a section where they talk about a boy named Kenny playing a ‘prank' on some girls. (These are high school students! But so childish! Even their names!) I had read this before, but I hadn't noticed that the teacher sometimes refers to the boy named Kenny as ‘Young Patterson'.

Kenny Patterson!

So! That was the exciting thing. I'd found a possible KP for SW to love.

Then?

As I drove onward, thinking — I realised this.

Kenny could be short for Kendall.

KENDALL PATTERSON.

DO YOU REALISE WHO THAT IS???

KL Mason Patterson!!!

The rich man who died and left money to our school.

The money that was used to renovate and extend our Art Rooms.

The Art Rooms that are now actually called
The KL Mason Patterson Centre for the Arts!!!!!

And if that's not
AMAZING
, I don't know what planet you inhabit.

It is now very clear to me that Sandra Wilkinson loved Kendall Patterson, and she has come back to haunt the Art Rooms now that it is named after her lost love.

It makes me tremble with fear, having the ghost so real, but that's all right, because trembling is good exercise.

The only thing still to be cleared up is whether (a) Kendall murdered Sandra by pushing her out the window after a ‘lovers' quarrel'; or (b) Sandra jumped because Kendall broke her heart; or (c) Sandra fell by accident and Kendall was sad, and in fact maybe there are
two
ghosts in the Art Rooms now—Sandra
and
Kendall, together evermore!

I hope it is option (c).

PLEASE! Share your thoughts! Which option do YOU think it is?

Thanks.

1 Comment

Yowta772 said
. . . Em, I love ya, but remind me never to get in a car with you.

www.myglasshouse.com/shadowgirl

SUNDAY 21 SEPTEMBER

My Journey Home

walking home
from the
Goose and Thistle
after rain
in early light

trying
not to think
about thursday.

square of white
on the mud-wet
grass
labelled in black marker
with
a smudged and running
word
the word is
lost.

he says,
I spent an hour
with a torch
yesterday.

It's a CD case
it's the TV series

lost
lost on the dew-green
grass beside the path.

hit the
wall,
the floor
the nappy box
the wheels of the cot.

Or it's a lost
lost poster
its own lost poster
lost on the boot-crushed
grass beside the path.

she never gives
up,
he says,
chases hard
reaching little hands
for the
circle of light

riley talking
his little sister
playing
flashlight
games with his sister

you can't
stop,
he says,

if you stop . . .
you have to
keep the light
twitching
out of
reach.
if you stop,
let her catch it
then she'll
see that it's
nothing

nothing but
the carpet or the wall

he means
us

can't stay
still
or they'll see
what we are

you end the game
he says
by switching off the torch.

or he might mean
himself —
can't stay
still
or he'll
have to see
thursday.

thursday's
too big

when I try to
hold it for him —
put my arms
around
him
can't get
my arms
around
both.

riley,
I say,
let's stop.

label ourselves
with a smudged and running
word, and
lie down by the
side of the road.

0 Comments

Lydia Jaackson-Oberman
Student No: 8233410

Story's winding up.

Guessed what happens? Are you even concentrating?

WAKE UP!

Too much herbal tea.

It's the final week, then a two-week break, and the HSC begins.

See any contradictions there? Endings and beginnings. Festive and tragic. Coming to school at strange hours in regular clothes. Saying goodbye to people you've seen every day for the last six years. Knowing that, in a couple of weeks, you'll be back in uniform, sitting behind them in exams. Contradictions everywhere you turn. Opposites clashing and turning —

Okay, maybe I'm overdoing this a bit.

But, seriously, that week was weird.

And it seems to me that Young People Today are neither Designed nor Equipped to cope with Confusion of this kind.

The people in my year were strung out/doped up/and/or drunk.

They were hysterical, weeping and wild-eyed.

(Em was a combination of most of the above.)

I saw one guy throw an egg at a teacher's head, do a kind of
victory yodel when it hit, then
run up to that teacher and ask, in serious, polite-boy voice, for some extra revision notes.
(The teacher couldn't see him for the egg yolk in his eyes.)

I saw a girl write
Love u 4-ever
in green ink on another girl's thigh. The second girl promised that she'd never wash it off but
worried that it could look like cheat notes in an exam.

Ah, humanity. It lets you down sometimes.

So. Here we are in the middle of that week.

It's Wednesday night.

Tomorrow's the last day — there'll be a final assembly, and then tomorrow night, a once-only performance of the drama.

Tonight, an Ashbury tradition, a farewell reception in the teachers' gardens.

They open the gates, let us in, and we gasp in awe! Paradise! Hiding behind those gates all this time! (We used to break in here a lot, so we're more: huh, tulips looking fine. Like what you've done with the hydrangeas.)

Girls in tight dresses, boys in suits, teachers wearing makeup. It's Ashbury saying: ‘Welcome to the grown-up world! Turns out, it's lantern-lit with floating silver trays. Isn't it the best?'

The kids are impressed. They're controlling their madness. But it quivers in the hands that take the pastries from the trays.

I find Amelia on a garden bench. A dark corner. Blue mosquito zapper just behind her.

She looks sane.

We're friends now, Amelia and I. We've spent some time together. But our friendship is just joking around. We've talked about — what? Spiders. TV. Sausages. Shared some
stories, too — turns out we both like telling stories. She tells me fairytales she's heard, and makes some up herself. Her imagination is wild.

I like Amelia, but I don't trust her yet. All along, I've wondered if she's cheating on Riley, and I don't like cheats.

I don't want to know, but no point being friends unless it's real.

So tonight I've decided to find out. I'm thinking about what Riley told me the other day. That Amelia has a friend in a mental institution down the road.

If it's a cover, it's a strange one, but Amelia's a strange girl.

She's never mentioned a mentally ill friend to me. But then, why would she? I didn't even know there was an institution nearby.

The story could be true. I want it to be true.

The way to get a friend to share is to share a secret of your own.

I surprise myself: I tell Amelia something that I've never even told Em and Cass.

It's boring but I'll tell it for the record:

My dad moved out last year when he discovered my mother had been having an affair. She promised it was over, so he moved back in. Therapy and Tuscany saved their marriage. (That's what my mother tells her friends. Ho ho!) These days Mum and Dad are so sweet together it makes me want to rip out my own tonsils. (Or theirs.)

But just before Tuscany, my mother told me a secret. In her bathrobe, diamond bangles sliding up and down her arm, she said that her affair isn't over at all. It's with some TV star — which is probably why she told me (‘See, Lyd, I'm still a star!'). It's not over, she said. It's too beautiful. But the TV guy is married. So is she, and —

Then my dad arrived home, and Mum shut up.

My house is a lie. I hate lies. I hate affairs. I hate cheats.

Let me know if I can make myself clearer.

Moving on.

I tell Amelia the family secret on the bench at the garden party.

She listens with her eyes and says: ‘That's not fair.'

She says: ‘Your mum should never have told you that. You shouldn't have to live with that.'

She's so emphatic, I feel confused. Try to laugh but panic I might cry.

I want to say:
This is not about me, I want to know YOU.

So I say, in a tumble: ‘But people have affairs. Sometimes they can't help it. Is there something that you're keeping from Riley?'

I hadn't meant to be so direct. It's Amelia's fault — she's too nice.

We're silent a few moments. Look around. Across the gardens. There's Riley, talking to Mr Garcia. As we watch, they both laugh.

Amelia says, ‘Yes.'

 

Riley T Smith
Student No. 8233569

I'm talking to Garcia and we're laughing.

Something about tomorrow — Thursday — the drama.

He's a funny guy, Garcia, good director, good guy, but what's so funny about Thursday?

So, I'm laughing but I'm looking for Amelia.

And there she is.

On a seat across the garden,

talking to Lydia.

And it comes to me, it hits me all at once. It's so much all at once, that the only way I could make you understand would be to crowd the words together, in red ink on my knuckle, and punch you once, hard, in the face.

What I'm trying to say is these thoughts were not in sequence, they were one, big, chaotic black hole of a truth.

Here they are.

that:

every time I see her she's talking to Lydia, or lost in thoughts about her stepdad, or somewhere with her crazy friend

so she's never there, she's never here for —

that:

too much time with ghosts and you turn into a ghost, too much time with richgirls, and you —

that:

she is one. she's a richgirl.

that:

she and lydia look alike — on that seat, facing one another, facing forward, talking, they're the same — different hair but something in their bright eyes and intensity

that:

she's always been a richgirl
when you think about it, which now,

in the teachers' garden, while Garcia laughs, and I laugh along, keep right on talking, while, for the first time ever, I do

think about it,

she's always been a richgirl
— you think about it too —

that:

when she ran away from home, she brought along the following:

guitar, stuffed toy, liquor, gardening gloves, silk scarf

your typical streetkid right there, ha ha.

that:

she ran away from home because she had a fight, on her birthday, with her mother — have I told you what the fight was all about?

the dress she wanted to wear to her party, and

something burning in the frypan while her mother said, no, you can't wear it

have I told you that?

her mother was cooking for the party,
and she ran away from home

Spoiled brat.

That thought — spoiled brat.

That was separate. That one I can write on the knuckles of my other fist, and hit you with it separately. Under the chin maybe, snap your chin up. Moving on —

that:

all this time,
she could have gone home
, but she's been waiting for her stepdad, refusing swimming coaching even, loyal to her stepdad — but have I told you this? That her family home is ten minutes from here? We drove by once, saw the horseshoe on the door, she looked at it then slipped down in her seat. Her mother sends money to help her pay the rent, and have I told you this? She used to write her letters? When I first knew Amelia, now and then, her mum would write something like this:

We both said some hurtful things, so let's make a deal? I forgive you, if you forgive me? Come home and we'll figure it out!

but Amelia stayed, then we ran away, and after that the letters stopped (but she
still
sends money).

that:

even the flavours she likes — cinnamon, ginger, blueberries — those are richgirl flavours.

that:

all this time she's been living in that hostel with the old men and their hacking coughs, the bandicoots, the mould-rimmed showers, fungal infections waiting to get her pretty toes on the tiles. The rats, cockroaches, dust-stained lights — all this time

she's a fake.

I say something to Garcia, and he laughs again — my voice comes out in the same smooth tone — and I look at Amelia and Lydia — they've stopped talking now — they're looking towards me, they're standing up, I smile at them and they float my way, past lanterns, waiters, boys in suits. Lydia's wearing something tight and white that glows in moonlight, Amelia looks hot in a dress as black as night —