Give Me Four Reasons (22 page)

‘Eight dollars and eighty-five cents, thanks, love,’ he says. He barely looks at me. His eyes keep flickering back to the small TV he is watching. I can’t see the screen, but I can hear the murmuring chitchat of voices.

I rummage through my pockets for the coins. ‘Two, four, six, seven dollars,’ I say, laying out the gold coins on the counter. I dig further. The man looks at me impatiently.

‘Eight dollars, and twenty cents,’ I say.

Suddenly the man swings his chair closer and peers at me. I continue digging through the bottom of my pockets.

‘Forty, sixty, seventy, eighty … eighty-five … Here you go, eight dollars and eighty-five cents.’ Relieved that I have found all the coins, I push the money across the counter at him.

The man is still staring at me.

‘Is everything okay?’ I ask.

‘Would you like a bag?’ the man asks slowly.

‘No, thanks, it’s fine,’I say. I grab the bread and the cheese, turn away and walk out of the petrol station. The man stares at me through the glass shopfront.

I walk down the street, clutching the stuff I bought to my chest. It begins to drizzle, so I take shelter at a bus stop. I tear open the packet of cheese and unwrap a slice. I stuff it in my mouth and chew as I fumble with the plastic tie at the top of the bread wrapper. Then I make myself a cheese sandwich and gobble it down. Eating takes my mind off everything. But after I’ve had three sandwiches I am full.

And tired.

And scared.

A bus pulls up and I think about hopping on it, hiding down on the back seat and letting it take me to wherever it’s going. But I shrink back in the bus shelter as I remember I only have forty cents left.

A man gets off the bus and tosses a newspaper in the garbage bin beside me. I wait until he’s gone before I reach in and grab it. I like the horoscopes. Maybe today’s forecast will help me decide what to do next.

As I unfold the paper, I can’t believe my eyes.

My smiling, chubby, fringeless face stares back up at me from the front page.

Police Fear for Safety of Missing Girl
, says the headline.

I feel sick.

I begin to read:

Police are concerned about the welfare of missing Juniper Bay girl, Paige Winfrey, after a police hunt has failed to turn up any clues.

Paige was last seen on Friday night while attempting to buy a bus ticket to Sugar Harbour. It is thought Paige was heading for Bloodstone Beach, a small seaside village on the north coast where she spent the Christmas holidays.

‘She didn’t have enough money for the ticket,’ said Bus Transit clerk Helen Kilroy. ‘She only had about nine dollars on her. She got very nervous when I asked her for ID.’

Taxi driver John Heathcote had picked up the young girl earlier in the night from her home and taken her to a Juniper West address. ‘I found her wandering the streets a short while later, so I offered to drop her back home again, but she insisted on going to a friend’s house near the bus station,’ Mr Heathcote stated.

An extensive search along the Ocean Highway on Friday evening and all day Saturday has failed to turn up any evidence of the young girl.

‘As time passes, it becomes less likely that Paige has had an accident or is playing a prank,’ explains Detective Senior Sergeant Ken Macphee. ‘If she is not found soon, this inquiry will cease to be a missing persons inquiry and become an abduction investigation.’

‘Paige is a good girl,’ wept her father Ian Winfrey at the family home late last night. ‘She’s had a few problems settling into her new school this year, and some family stuff to deal with, but she’s a great kid and we love her very much. We want her to come home safely more than anything in the world.’

Police are urging motorists who saw anything suspicious as they travelled along the Ocean Highway from Juniper Bay to Sugar Harbour on Friday evening or Saturday morning to contact them immediately.

I close my eyes and take a deep breath. There must be some mistake. But when I open my eyes again, my photo is still on the front of the paper.

I trace my fingers over the picture. No wonder no one has recognised me over the last few days. I look nothing like the girl in the photo any more. I’ve lost a lot of my puppy fat. My clothes are different. And my hair isn’t so mousy brown.

In fact, these days I probably look more like Felicity or Sidney than like the girl in the paper. That’s too weird to think about. Both Felicity and Sidney are so stylish and their hair is much lighter than mine is.

Stylish.

And fair-haired!

A stylish, fair-haired girl will bring much happiness to your life … but her misunderstandings will cause you and your loved ones much pain and sadness.

Claire, the Queen of Clairvoyance, was talking about
me
.
My
misunderstandings
have
caused me and my loved ones much pain and sadness. She doesn’t know how right she was.

‘When did everything get so screwed up?’I moan. I look at the photo again, and suddenly I know when everything started to crumble. When I opened my Passport on the last day of school and found it was empty. When I used to look like that girl. When I
was
that girl and no one knew who I was.

Everything from that moment on has got out of control. I ruined Felicity’s party. I made Dad leave. I’m the reason Mum took us on holidays so she could forget. I dissed my old friends in favour of my new ones. Then I messed things up with my new friends as well.

And now I’m sitting alone in a bus shelter, while the police are out looking for me and my parents are worried sick.

Come and get me
, I want to scream to the world.
Paige Winfrey is here.

But who
is
Paige Winfrey? Am I the girl in the photo? Am I the one Claire says is stylish? I don’t know any more.

And I don’t know what to do next.

I hug my knees to my chest, bury my head in my arms and cry.

Then I hear a siren. I look up. A police car with flashing lights skids to a halt across the road from the bus stop. Two officers dressed in blue jump out and run over to me.

The male officer speaks into a gadget on his wrist.

The female officer comes right into the bus stop and sits down next to me. ‘Paige?’ she says.

I blink and my eyes flicker from the police officers in front of me to my photograph in the newspaper on the seat.

‘Paige Winfrey?’ the female officer asks again.

‘Take me home,’ I whisper. ‘Please.’

31

When the police car pulls up outside my house, I just sit there and stare at my front porch. A dozen or so cards, some bunches of wilted flowers and a couple of teddy bears lie on the concrete.

‘Ready?’ says the female police officer. Her name is Heather. She has explained to me that the man in the petrol station recognised me and rang the police hotline. Heather and her partner were patrolling nearby so they were the first to find me. She has already phoned Mum.

She opens the car door for me and helps me to stand on my wobbly legs.

The front door to my house opens, and Mum, Dad and Felicity burst out onto the front porch and run towards the police car.

I choke back a sob, run forward and collapse into the waiting arms of my family.

When the tears have dried up, the words begin to flow.

‘When you weren’t in your bed on Friday night I thought you’d been abducted.’

‘I was out with Chloe at the vet’s when you called round. If only you’d waited five minutes, I’d have been home.’

‘I shouldn’t have left you alone on Friday night.’

‘We thought you must have tried to hitchhike to Bloodstone Beach to see Shelly.’

‘My crystal ball showed you behind bars in a dark little cell.’

‘I’m sorry I caused all this trouble,’ I sob. ‘I missed you all so much!’

‘It’s all right, sweetheart,’ Mum says.

Our front door opens again. A woman in a suit steps out of the house behind my family. ‘Hello, Paige. I’m Rhonda from the Missing Person’s Unit,’ she says. ‘Everyone’s been very worried about you. Welcome home.’ She shakes hands with Heather, walks over to what I had thought was Reuben’s car, and drives off.

My family ushers me inside.

‘Where were you?’ Felicity asks when we get into the kitchen. She and Mum and Dad look at me with puffy red eyes, ringed by dark circles.

‘I was lost,’ I say.

‘Lost?’ Felicity says.

Dad shushes her and pulls me to his chest. ‘And we were lost without you.’

* *

I have a long soak in the bath, scrubbing between my toes to get out the mud from Mrs Johannssen’s cubbyhouse and the germs from the toilet block in the park.

Then we have lunch. It is the first meal we have had as a family since December. I can tell this fact is not lost on the rest of my family.

We eat and discuss the weather. Mum, Dad and Felicity smile all the way through lunch, but their smiles seem a bit too wide to be real. I am too exhausted and ashamed of myself to smile at all. I realise everyone is trying to make everything seem as normal as possible. But I know that things have changed, and that we’ll probably hardly ever sit around and eat a meal together like this again.

And that’s a change that I’m just going to have to deal with. One day.

Later, Mum takes me outside to look at the front porch. Cards, flowers, photos and teddy bears sit in vigil. They are from my new friends and my old friends. And there are a couple from kids I went to school with last year. Kids I didn’t even think were my friends. I pick up each card and read it, before putting it carefully in a pile. But then the shame hits me. And the embarrassment. I don’t think I can face going to school on Monday.

My bottom lip starts to tremble. Mum is still with me. She grabs both my hands in hers and draws me to her chest. And then she is shuddering, too. I begin to sob as I realise the horror I’ve put her through. The horror I’ve put everyone through.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum,’I say. ‘I’m sorry for being silly. I … I just thought no one cared about me.’

‘Oh, Paige.’ Mum unties the bloodstone pendant from around her neck and hands it to me. ‘Did you forget what it says on your necklace?’

I turn the pendant over and read the fine engraving.
True friends are as rare as bloodstone.
I look up at Mum, confused.

‘Bloodstone is found everywhere,’ she explains. ‘Just like friends.’ She points at the pile of cards. I nod and smile. I put the pendant back on, but this time I wear it the other way around, with the engraving at the front.

‘I’m sorry I wasn’t straight with you about Reuben,’ Mum says.

I look up at Mum in surprise.

‘Felicity told me you were upset.’

I shrug.

‘He’s been worried about you, too. He asked me to let you know that he understands how special your relationship is with your dad. He said to tell you that, even if he is going to be around a bit more, he never wants to take that away from you or try to replace him.’

I nod.

Mum goes inside and I sit on the edge of the porch, re-reading the cards. They remind me how lucky I am to have people who care about me. But, more importantly, they remind me of how stupid I’ve been.

I hear the front gate squeak open and look up.

Jed is walking up the front path. ‘Hi, Paige,’he says.

I hop up and try to hug him.

He pushes me away. ‘You idiot!’

‘I know.’

‘Everyone’s been worried sick about you. They thought you were gone for good. Elfi, Rochelle, Sidney and Miff have all been at the police station, trying their best to help the police find out where you were.’

‘Really?’ Now I am embarrassed.

‘Of course. Did you think you could just disappear and no one would care?’

I shrug.

‘Really?’ Jed stares at me. It’s as though he is seeing me—the new me, the old me, I don’t know which—for the first time.

‘Well, that’s just stupid,’ he says. ‘Look at this stuff.’

‘I notice there isn’t anything here from you,’ I say shyly. ‘Not that I deserve it, of course.’

Jed looks past me and shoves his hands into his pockets. ‘Hello, Nicole,’ he calls out to Mum, who is waving from the lounge-room window.

I stare at Jed. He continues to avoid my eyes.

‘You never call my mum that,’ I say.

‘Yeah, well, maybe I was round here a lot this weekend, while you were gone!’ he says.

I watch as he hunches up his shoulders and digs his fists further into his pockets.

‘What’s in your pocket, Jed?’

‘Nothing,’ he says, looking up at the clouds.

‘You’re lying.’

Jed bends over and starts sniffing a plastic rose.

‘You did write me a card!’

Jed stands up again. ‘Maybe.’

‘Let me see it,’ I demand.

Jed’s face turns as red as the rose. ‘I wrote it when I thought I’d never see you again.’

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

Jed sighs and pulls out a crumpled teddy-bear card from his pocket. He gives it to me then leans down and pretends to smell some of the other flowers.

Dear Paige
, the card reads,
You can’t be gone. Because I always thought I’d have my first kiss with you. Come home safely. Love, Jed.

I fold the card carefully and put it in my pocket.

Jed looks up from the flowers and glances shyly at me. ‘Are we cool, Paige?’

I nod, even though a strange new sensation is coursing through my body, like I’m at the top of a roller-coaster and about to hurtle down the other side. ‘We’re cool.’

‘But are
we
cool?’ a familiar voice booms behind me.

‘Yes, are we?’ another familiar voice echoes.

I turn around slowly. My face and heart and stomach go through a heap of changes, as if I am riding that roller-coaster. But then I see Rochelle and Elfi grinning sheepishly at me from the front gate, and I know I have been forgiven. I run over and hug them both.

‘Four reasons you should never run away,’ Rochelle says, pushing me back.

‘Because your friends will go mad with worry,’ Elfi says.

‘Because your friends will go mad with worry,’ Jed echoes.