Dreaming of Amelia (23 page)

And so on. You get the point—

and then—

then, I don't know what happened.

All I can say is that by the next day two new posts had appeared on my blog.

I mean, I had written them. When?

Well, I do have a vague memory of writing them. I was at home. I don't know how I got home. I remember typing at my computer with this mad, singing happiness in my head and feeling convinced that I was writing a masterpiece. I expected a billion comments. Exactly a billion. I worried the comments would crash the site.

Here is the first of the two entries I wrote that night:

My Journey Home

It is 3 am and I just swam home from a party.

Stupid? No.

I have an important decision: I LOVE SEALS!

Yay! I feel so
about it. I am going to be a SEAL

TRAINER!

YAYA AYAYAY

And every day when I feel
my seal will make me

— clap your hands and splash me seal splash no not

so much you're messing up my hair.

Oh, seal, stupid seal.

It's like a giant slug.

I hate it,

But salmon and El Salvador. Connection, please?

Seb and Lydia, when, oh when will your love be

revealed to each other—I mean, GET BACK TOGETHER,

ALREADY—THE UNIVERSE NEEDS YOUR LOVE—

I feel sideways.

oh. I fell asleep. Goodnight.

So, that was the first entry.

I think there is no need for you to comment on it.

Actually, the world didn't think so either. I didn't get a billion comments, I got two.

They were:

CalypsoAngel said
. . . Yeah, what's the story with Seb and Lydia? Cos if she doesn't want him a lot of girls at Brookfield'll take him, thankx. Incl. me.

Sasha345 said
. . . Me 2.

Half an hour later, I must have woken up again. And I guess I'd had a mood swing in my sleep. Because this time, I'm sorry to say, I wrote:

My Journey Home

Look. If I had a dollar for every ghost I'd ever seen?

I would not have any dollars. DON'T YOU GET IT! I've never even seen a ghost before this year. (And not even this year actually, just got messages from it, but that
is a point beside.) THE FACT IS, I AM NOT A GHOST GIRL!!!! I am alive! So ha ha, no but DO I wander thru cemeteries at midnight making coffee for the dead? NO. I do not. And do I dress like a goth? ARE YOU KIDDING ME? no way. Why are there EVEN GOTHS? i mean, sometimes IT HURTS MY EYES TO LOOK AT THEM. They shld go on
Extreme Makeover
!!
they could be beautiful, those goths
. If they just got some colour in their cheeks. Why were they born with no blood? It's not fair.

It Makes me cry

But I am too ANGRY to cry!

Why? Thank you for asking.
I will tell you on my journey home!!!!!!!!!
no. I will not.

oh, why am I angry?

And tonight Amelia and Riley were talking about the taste of colours, and the flavour of weather, and we all started seeing things differently, including me, cos now I am thinking that the colour of my anger is MAGENTA WITH BIG BLACK SPECKS, and they make us see everything different when they talk, Amelia and Riley, and that is ALL BECAUSE OF ME.

I MAKES NO SENSE AND THAT'S BECAUSE THERE'S A GHOST IN THE ART ROOMS AND I CAN FEEL IT IN MY LIP AND UNDERNEATH MY FINGERNAILS.

And sometimes in my belly button too. (I hate the word naval. what's the navy got to do with anything.)

k.

goodnight. have beautiful, beautiful dreams about swans and japan. love from emily.

I guess I phoned Lyd and Cass after I wrote that, and woke them, because these are the comments:

Lyd said
. . . Okay, Em, here's the comment you want. I've read it and you're absolutely right. It's a masterpiece. Now delete it, and delete the post before it, and go to sleep.

Cass said
. . . And drink a lot of water right now. You are going to feel like total shit in the morning.

Em said
. . . Oh, Cass, you're so beautiful. You run so fast! When you run. And you sing so fast! No. That is incorrect. So are you Lyd, you're a goddess. I love you guys. But Lydia I HATE you.

Lyd said
. . . Okay.

Em said
. . . Cos, when are you and Seb getting back together?

Lyd said
. . . Delete that too. Can you cut out talking about my private life on your blog? I love you too, but I'm getting kinda mad too, and we need to do normal online talking and stop talking on your blog, and we need to go to sleep.

Em said
. . . I can't delete comments, I don't know how, just as YOU cannot delete Seb from your heart! Can you? No. And I know he asked for a break last year and so normally I would want to TEAR HIM TO PIECES, doing that to you, but he kind of had a point. You were sometimes a difficult, distant girlfriend, and sometimes a bit sharp-edged, which is NOT your fault, it's just you have PASSION and DEPTH and I know you were ALSO a generous, sparkling, loving girlfriend cos that's who you
are also, and otherwise Seb would. Um. I forget.

Lyd said
. . . Cass, can you make her stop?

Cass said
. . . Em, answer your phone.

Em said
. . . Is it cos he's a Brookfield boy? So you want to kind of move up a notch? I didn't think you had class prejudices, Lyd. But do you think they ever get their hair cut? Brookfielders I mean.

Cass said
. . . Em, quit while you're ahead.

Lyd said
. . . What makes you think she's ahead?

Em said
. . . And their shoes? Why do they not floss their shoes.

Em said
. . . Okay. Shhh. Great talking to you guys. I am SO going to sleep. You should too.

I slept in until after two the next afternoon, missing school (well, not actually
missing
it, like the way you miss your mum when she's away, but you know what I mean), and by the time I got up it was too late to delete the blogs. They'd been seen. There were already practically a billion new comments under the above exchange.

They were the comments of angry Brookfielders and angry goths (but I think goths might always be angry, or anyway despairing) and people from all over the world making fun of my ghost and my belly button.

11
.

The next couple of weeks were difficult. Lyd and Cass forgave me because they are the best, but everybody else was laughing at me, including Lyd and Cass.

I was scared that the Brookfielders at drama would be hostile, but they were gentle and kind as if I had some kind of mental deficiency. That was worse.

And worst of all? This happened.

Well, you remember that Mr Ludovico had to sign my application form for Law? The form was due at the end of the term, and I was worried because he still hadn't given it back to me. I knew other people whose forms
had
been signed by Mr L, so why not mine? I couldn't sleep, I was so scared that he might be planning to refuse to sign it.

But I also couldn't ask him. The fact is, ever since the day when he was standing in the doorway while I talked about him, I had been finding it hard to look at him (harder than usual, I mean). Imagine overhearing someone say you had a laugh like an espresso machine! As deeply flawed as Mr Ludovico is, I did not want him to hear that.

Eventually, though, I had to go and see him. Maybe he was waiting for an apology? Maybe he
hadn't
overheard anything in which case an apology would be a disaster? Maybe he had misplaced the form and had no idea I was waiting?

Time was running out.

I knocked on his office door.

‘Emily,' he said, smiling his spectacles-glinting smile and continuing to scribble on a random piece of paper. ‘You're here about your application form, I take it. Sit down.'

I sat down. My heart thudded.

Eventually, he looked up from his scribbling. His smile turned upside down. It was sympathetic. My heart thudded more loudly.

He took out my application form and held it up. The line for his signature was blank.

‘You really think you have what it takes to be a lawyer?' he said.

Now my heart stopped still in its tracks. Before I could get it pumping enough to speak, he went on.

‘Lawyers are adults.' His voice was weirdly compassionate. ‘Let's take a look at what it means to be an adult, shall we? Adults are independent. You, Emily, can't seem to take a step in any direction without Lydia and Cassie by your side. An adult would simply work hard to improve his marks. You, Emily, make foolish requests for your marks to be altered. An adult is a rational being.
You
ran around last term obsessing over Amelia and Riley, and
this
term you're shouting to the world—including, I might add, on some childishly hysterical blogs—that there's a ghost living in the Art Rooms at this school!'

He paused to make his face look like an exclamation mark.

‘You are every inch a child, Emily,' he said, sounding sad. ‘And I see no indications that you will ever grow up. Now, let me ask you this. Would I be doing my job—would I be
carrying out my responsibilities as principal of this school
—if I signed a form that allowed you to be a lawyer?'

My head was in a jumble. Angry sentences ran at me from every direction. They collided with pleading sentences, fell down, stood up, and turned into new sentences. They told me to grab Mr Ludovico's stupid nose and twist it.

I didn't do that.

‘There
is
a ghost living in the Art Rooms!' I cried. ‘And I can
prove
it.'

Mr Ludovico grinned. He looked happy.

‘You go ahead and do that,' he said. ‘Prove to me that there's a ghost in the Art Rooms, and I'll sign your form and get it to you in time. Deal?'

‘Deal!' I cried, and marched out of the room.

I closed the door gently, like an adult.

I stopped in the corridor.

I was in serious trouble.

A twitch in my lip? Mandarin peels? A book and a feather?

Of course there wasn't a ghost.

I'm not as stupid as I sound, you know.

12
.

Now you are confused.

If I didn't believe there was a ghost, why was I getting messages from ghosts? Telling everyone there was a ghost? Feeling angry with the ghost?

These are excellent questions, and your guess is as good as mine.

Or maybe not. What's your guess?

Here's mine.

A part of me
did
believe there was a ghost, even though I knew there wasn't one.

I can be a childish girl. That is honest of me, to say, isn't it? I know I'm supposed to be an adult, and I guess I'll be one soon—but I feel like this is my last chance to be a child. So I'm kind of childish on purpose.

I miss being a child. Sometimes I'll be walking to a class and I'll feel a powerful need to play dress-ups in Lydia's recreation room. Or bake a cake in Cass's kitchen. Or get a ‘secret assignment' from Lyd in an envelope sealed with wax. I want these things so badly it almost makes me cry. I want to go to a slumber party, hold a torch up to my face, have a seance, tell a ghost story, have Cass creep up behind me and breathe on the back of my neck so I scream like a police siren.