Dreaming of Amelia (50 page)

Saturday 20 December

Dear Ghost,

Hey, it's Lyd.

I know you said we'd ‘never chat again' — but I didn't believe you. I think you only said that cause you've got a taste for high drama and sweeping declarations. Right? So, 'tsup? How's the afterlife been treating you?

Not talking, eh? Ah, well. Whatever. I'll tell you anyway.

Just headed out to the Seven Eleven to get myself a Magnum Classic.

Or maybe a Magnum Almond. It was going to be a tossup.

Hot, sultry night. Stars out. Bare arms swinging. I had this mad, crazy feeling something good was going to happen.

Things have been good the last few days.

I did okay in the HSC, and Mum and Dad were proud. Their marriage, as you might have noticed, is settling back into its familiar patterns — they both have affairs but pretend not to notice, and most of the time they ignore each other. Everybody's happier.

So I've been messing with their minds. I told them I plan to dig trenches on the roads the next few years. Need to get some mud under my fingernails, I said. Been too sheltered all my life.

I don't want to dig up roads, but it's true that I've been too sheltered.

The things I didn't know about Amelia and Riley. I never even knew that Riley lived with a foster family. They're foster parents he lived with once when he was a kid, and ran away from. He used to run away all the time, wanting to get back to his mother, not realising she refused to leave his abusive dad so the state would never let him back with her.

These foster parents kept their eye on him over the years, and offered to take him back again when he got released from detention.

I never thought what it must be like to live with a foster family. It's a family that doesn't stay still. That baby sister Riley loved so much? They took her away. Imagine loving a baby for a year and then a social worker drives away with her.

He never gets to see her again.

He showed me her photo the other day. He keeps it in his wallet all the time. That tiny picture in the palm of his strong, scarred hands. The twist of his mouth as he looked at it, the smile in his eyes. It made me think of those before-and-after photos from his artwork — both expressions on his face at the same time. He pressed his fingers over the photo, and changed the subject fast.

I've been talking with Amelia and Riley a lot lately.

I got Amelia to meet with me eventually, after she got out of hospital. We had coffee at the Blue Danish. She was cold and remote while I told her my story about what happened between me and Riley.

Then she stared at the ceiling, and a slow smile formed on her face.

‘I get why it happened,' she said. ‘Forget about it. It's nothing.' She smiled again, ironically, and I saw what she meant—
it was nothing compared to what else was going on.

That was back when Riley was being charged for assaulting her stepfather.

When you thought about what her stepfather had done to her, and what the assault charge meant for Riley, she was right — the thing between Riley and me was nothing.

‘There's another reason I wanted to meet with you today,' I said.

I told her my idea about blackmailing the stepfather, and getting him charged for what he'd done to her instead.

She half laughed. She said she'd think about it. Our coffees were finished. We were standing up to go.

‘It wasn't nothing though,' I said. ‘I was your friend and I betrayed you. That's not nothing, and I'm sorry.'

Amelia stopped, looked me straight in the eye. She pulled on her lower lip, smiling again, watching me.

‘Let's get another coffee,' she said, and sat down.

That's when she told me the truth about what she and Riley had been planning. How they were only pretending to be friends with us, so they could get in with my mother's record company. How they were manipulating us to make us think they were musically gifted.

‘But I
was
kind of liking you in the end,' she shrugged. ‘And I guess Riley was too.' Another sad smile.

It was beautiful.

I was happier than I had been in months. I could stop feeling so guilty about Riley, but it was more than that. It was the truth. Now the year made sense. Riley and Amelia made sense.

One thing didn't make sense.

‘But you
are
,' I said. ‘Musically gifted.'

Amelia laughed. ‘See?' she said. ‘It worked.'

Anyhow, the blackmail plan was successful — Riley got off, the stepfather got charged — and now Amelia and Riley are our friends. They think it's weird that we want to be, but we just think it's funny.

‘You guys and your evil, secret plans,' said Em. ‘You're even more dramatic than me.'

These last few weeks, feels like I've opened my eyes for the first time in a year. I've been drifting around like a freakin' ghost, haunting the shadows of my life. (Not that there's anything wrong with haunting. Just remembered you're a ghost. Sorry.)

Now I feel alive (sorry, again), and tonight, like I said, I felt happy.

Em called earlier and told me to look at her blog. There was a comment there from Astrid, and turns out the Seb-and-Astrid thing was an illusion. (Almost.)

As soon as I saw it, I knew I was going to see Seb tonight.

I actually turned around, expecting him to be in the doorway of my room.

Walked to the kitchen, opened the fridge, thinking he'd be crouched down in the salad crisper, waiting to spring up like a jack-in-the-box.

I had to get out into the night, swing my arms, walk fast.

Summer cicadas, cars driving by with their windows down. People walking dogs, slapping mosquitoes, making jokes with strangers.

Hand against the glass of the shop door, and there he is.

I'm not even surprised.

He's coming out of there, a Magnum in his hand. He sees me, his eyes light up, and I smile back.

We stand in the doorway, his Magnum wrapper glinting in the fluorescent light, and I can't shift this smile.

I didn't frame my face, or plan my expression, I just smiled, and it felt like I
had
been digging in those trenches on the roads, but now I was taking a shower and letting the mud wash away.

Someone was trying to get into the shop and we were blocking the door.

We moved out together, along past the buckets of wilting flowers, stacks of newspapers, to the corner of the shop, out of the light.

We were kind of leaning, side by side, against the brick wall. Sharing his Magnum. (It was a Classic.) Talking about HSC results. Em and Cass. Amelia and Riley.

I said, ‘Why'd you tell me to stay away from Amelia and Riley that time?'

He told me again about how he overheard them talk to his soccer coach.

‘They were asking for a favour,' he said. ‘They wanted him to be a character witness at their criminal hearing. Sounded like they didn't have many friends, and they'd remembered he used to like them back when they swam for him for a week or something.'

So the coach asked them what it was about. They asked him to keep it confidential. They explained the charges — the stealing and the grievous bodily harm — and he asked for more details.

After they'd told him, he laughed, said there was no way in hell he'd stand up in court on their behalf, and turned his back on them.

‘I didn't like the way he acted,' said Seb. ‘He knew he wasn't going to be a witness for them, but he still made them tell the story. Like he wanted to make them feel like shit. But I didn't like the sound of what Riley did to that guy either.'

‘So why not just tell me?'

‘They wanted a second chance. It wasn't up to me to mess with that.'

‘You still told me to stay away from them.'

‘Well, who knows if there's any such thing as a second chance?'

‘You could have trusted me not to tell anyone.'

‘If we'd been together,' he says and looks me in the eye, ‘I would have.'

He looks down at the footpath. There's an old juice box there, half-squashed. He touches it with the side of his sneaker, turns it over on its side. Like he's thinking of kicking it somewhere.

Stops, looks up, gives me his Seb grin — I touch his arm, swing around so I'm facing him, then our arms are around each other, his hand's on the back of my neck, his mouth's on my mouth, and I can taste my favourite ice cream.

Turns out there is such a thing as a second chance.

See ya,

Lydia.

Oh, yes, and I liked the moment when he was driving you home, his elbow resting on the open window, a line of traffic blocking him — the way his hand slipped out the window, meaning, ‘Will you let me in?', and then he switched the open hand to the thumbs-up signal as he pulled into the traffic — all the while talking to you . . . And another moment, his sideways glance — you had turned away, you were looking out the window — there was a sideways glance at the back of your head, the warmth of his secret smile as he watched you, the light never leaving his eyes.

(You thought that my haunting was restricted to this house? I like an occasional Coke from the Seven Eleven myself, you know . . .)

The Ghost xxx

The Committee for the Administration of the KL Mason Patterson Trust Fund

The KL Mason Patterson Scholarship File

 

Dear Bill,

Last night, the committee reconvened to finalise the termination of the scholarships of Amelia Damaski and Riley T Smith.

As you know, the previous meeting fell apart when it emerged that Constance Milligan was a ghost.

Roberto and I met with Constance the other day, and she told us she was very sorry about having been a ghost, and could she please attend Saturday detention for as long as it took to wipe her record clear?

The woman has lost her marbles.

Roberto has suspended her from Ashbury until she gets them back.

Between us, it's a fascinating psychological case study. Constance had a pile of letters in her closet-space, tied with a pink ribbon — and I noticed that one, dated not long ago, was to Kendall. Kendall Mason Patterson. She has been
writing
to a ghost. I'd kill to get a look at some of those letters (not literally, of course). They might help to explain what's been going on. As it is, I can only speculate.

It seems that Constance was deeply affected by her Ashbury days, and life has never lived up to them for her. Hence, her passionate involvement in all things relating to the Alumni Association — but that was not enough. She wanted Ashbury itself.

It also seems that part of the thrill of her Ashbury days was her fascination with a young couple: Kendall Patterson and Sandra Wilkinson. She clearly hero-worshipped them, even as she envied and resented their celebrity status. I cannot imagine what Sandra's death did to her psyche — perhaps it terrified her? Perhaps she felt somehow responsible for it, as a result of her resentment? But I may be overanalysing.

What I had not realised was that she her
self
was a poor, scholarship girl — poor as a church mouse! — so that the wealth and beauty of Kendall and Sandra had a complicated effect on her. She was also a ‘good girl', while Kendall and Sandra were ‘wild and wicked' ones — representing her own ‘shadow' side? (Again, I may be overanalysing.)

Perhaps Constance has been grappling with these conflicts (these ghosts!) all her life — wanting to leave behind the stigma of her own poverty (so she resented our efforts to help out Brookfield), at the same time as wanting to re
live
those heady Ashbury days?

Forgive my musings. On to Amelia and Riley.

Not long ago, you asked me
why
they were chosen for their scholarships in the first place. We chose them because they wrote superb application essays and had excellent references (admittedly from their counsellors and teachers at juvenile detention facilities). They were remarkably bright, motivated, engaging and articulate at the interviews. They had enormous potential as swimmers and we strongly suspected, on the basis
of their essays and their interview answers, that they were very well-read and had a great deal of untapped academic potential, too. Most of all, they were in desperate need of a second chance at life — a last chance, even.

They were very frank at their interviews. They told us they wanted to start their lives afresh. They wanted to focus on schoolwork for the first time ever — play music, try drama, behave, get into university. They knew how their records looked, and knew they were asking us to take a big chance. As far as they were concerned, however, Ashbury was their
only
chance at making something of their lives.

It seemed to us on the committee — those who bothered to attend the meeting, anyway — that these were precisely the kind of people a scholarship like this is designed to help.

Picture, if you will, a fine line.

It is the line between the past and the future. Amelia and Riley's past was terrible — they have both felt betrayed, hurt, alone. Their future, however, may be golden — their extraordinary talents, their own strength and compassion should guarantee that . . . unless, of course, they fall over the line into the past.

I am not a fool. I know that there is anger, violence and deception in both of them — indeed, Riley unleashed that side of himself a few years ago, and a man will probably never walk again. It is clear to me that Riley suffers deeply from guilt and self-loathing as a result of that. More recently, he turned his violence on himself. He wanted to attack Amelia's stepfather — but instead, he broke his own hands.