Yellow (17 page)

I don't wait for Willow to come back with my water. I drag myself back to my house, leaning on a fence for a little bit because I think I'm going to throw up again, except it's only sobs which crawl out of my throat. They burn just as badly. I look up to see the stars winking at me in a taunting sort of way against the sky. The sky which is the colour of regret.

I have nobody.

I am completely alone.

Even my soul has deserted me.

I wake with my sheets knotted around me on my mother's floor.

Oh God.

The throbbing is pressing into the backs of my eyes. Even my eyebrows are hurting. Mum's looking down at where I lie. She seems calmer now. Much calmer than she has been over the past few days. The past few months, really.

‘Good morning, my evil spawn,' she greets me with a raised eyebrow. I recognise that wry, sad sort of humour she used to have when I was still small enough to crawl into her lap, before the alcohol and hangovers chased all her humour away.

Oh God.

Did last night actually happen?

The memory of it keeps bashing against my brain in awful, awful flashbacks. Dancing on the table. Threatening to hit Cassie. Trying to kiss Noah, and the way he looked at me, like I was a rotted old possum corpse.

Oh God.

I'm such a loser. I'm the queen of losers. I should wear a crown. Mum strokes my sweaty head and I stare up at her face.

‘You don't look like yourself today. You actually look half okay. Did we do a body swap?' I groan.

She arches her eyebrows at me again. ‘You proved your point spectacularly.'

I make a tortured sound, and drag myself up to my feet. I'm only five foot two but it feels like I have vertigo. From her seated position, Mum hands me some Gatorade, and I gulp it down. My mouth feels like I've swallowed fistfuls of sand. I catch my reflection in Mum's cracked dresser mirror.

Oh God.

My hair is all matted like a rat's nest, and it smells like one too, that sour, mousy smell. Oh wait, that's vomit. My face looks all puffy, and my eyes are sunken into my face, like two large yellow swamps. They look stagnant.

‘How do you do it?' I ask Mum. ‘How can you stand drinking this much every day?'

She shoots me that sad, half smile again.

‘As they say, practise, practise, practise,' she replies dryly. I groan again, half at her awful attempt at a joke, and half because last night's alcohol feels like it's having a brawl with my stomach. I sink back down to the floor.

‘Want your mum to make you some scrambled eggs to soak it all up? All you have to do is unchain me . . .'

‘I'm weak, but not that weak. A beer every two hours for you.'

She rolls her eyes. ‘Uh huh. But could you be a less sadistic jailer and let me have a shower?' She screws her nose up while picking at her t-shirt. ‘I think I'm going to have to actually peel off these bloody clothes from my skin.'

I consider her request. She does smell pretty ripe, although it's not like I can talk.

‘Fine. But the leg chain stays on so I can catch you if you run.'

She sighs.

‘Kirra, this is ridiculous, you know. Not to mention really illegal. I mean,
really
illegal.'

I chew my lip and shrug.

‘I know. You can have me arrested when I let you go in . . .' I count in my head how many more days of the detox are left to go. ‘Five days. When the grog is all out of your system.'

She looks hard at me, like she's only now really looking at me for the first time.

‘There are other ways to go about this, you know. Most sane children would get adult help.'

What can I tell her? Most sane children don't have ghosts in phone boxes telling them what to do? More sane kids have parents who help them out with their problems, instead of causing their problems? I pick at my nails and avoid eye contact.

‘I tried to get Lark to help me, but he didn't want to hear about it. He wouldn't even let me live with him.'

Mum's face crumples when it dawns on her that I'd asked to live with Lark instead of her. It's as though I've slapped her. There's an aching silence, until line by line, she pulls her features back into a neutral position, blinking away her tears and pretending she had something in her eye to quickly wipe away the moisture.

‘Yeah, well, Lark's bloody hopeless, isn't he?' she sighs, puncturing the silence.

‘Bloody oath.'

We lock eyes, each of us letting a small, wry smile seep onto our faces. I bite my lip.

‘Okay, shower time,' I tell her. ‘Then breakfast. I hope you're going to be as charming company as you were yesterday. I mean, your insults were definitely creative.'

She stifles a surprised, rusty laugh.

‘Have you ever seen the movie
Rosemary's Baby
?' she asks me, mock seriously. It's a movie about a pregnant woman who gives birth to the devil's child. I stick my tongue out at her, and despite my throbbing head, strangling shame and flashes of nausea, I have a feeling that today is going to be a lot better than yesterday.

We spend the day watching old movies and eating lots of greasy food. I even suggest hiring
Rosemary's Baby
from the video store, but she just rolls her eyes and throws the pillow at me.

When I crack open the beers for her every two hours the smell of it triggers my gag reflex. I can't stand the idea of cleaning out her toilet buckets today so I unchain her whenever she wants to go to the bathroom, and she surprises me by coming back each time, patiently sitting still as I padlock the chain back around the end of her bed. Willow doesn't call me, and neither does Noah, not that I'd expect either of them to. Every time I think of last night another little corner inside me dies, and I'm not sure whether the hangover or the shame hurts more. Mum asks me for more alcohol every now and again – just one more glass – but I ignore her, and after a few muttered insults under her breath she drops the subject.

The next few days pass pretty much the same. Mum gets two drinks less every day, and we're both getting cabin fever pretty badly. Especially as she's more or less sober most of the time now. She clocks me twitching my leg, the way I do when I'm restless.

‘It's the holidays, love, go out and hang with your friends. Even dungeon masters need lives, you know,' Mum tells me after we've both killed fifteen minutes painting our toenails a shade of pink that makes our toes look like small fat piglets. Cotton balls are wedged between our toes, and I've done such a rotten job of keeping inside the lines that my toes look less piglet-y and more pig massacre-y. I sigh.

‘The thing is, I'm between friends at the moment . . .' I scrunch my face at her. ‘I've taken to chaining people up just to have company, really.'

She throws me a concerned look, which looks strange on her, that concern for me. I almost don't recognise her as my mother.

‘But you're such a sweet girl . . .' she falters ‘. . .when you're not, you know, keeping prisoners and all of that shit.'

I blow on my toenails to try to keep my emotion in check, forcing my words to be bright and breezy. ‘Don't worry, this whole chaining people up thing is just a phase.'

‘Nice to hear it. Although I'd rather you rebelled by dying your hair blue, or getting a nose piercing or something, like most bloody teenagers.'

‘Yeah well, I'm pretty unique, apparently,' I reply, and that makes me think of Noah, and how the afternoon of the speech seems like a million years ago. I think of how happiness is such a slippery thing, like trying to catch a fish with your fingers. All you can do is watch it swim away, and get on with things, and hope that one day it comes back to you. I sigh. I doubt Noah will ever look at me the same way again. That fish has well and truly swum.

I think of something to pass the afternoon, and with the cotton balls still between my toes, I hobble to my bedroom and come back with the book from the library that Mrs Darnell suggested for me –
The Bell Jar
by Sylvia Plath.

‘I thought I could read you this. Mrs Darnell told me it used to be your favourite,' I tell her. I pass it over to her, and she runs her hand slowly across the cover, as though she's wiping off the years that have gathered upon it like dust.

‘Jesus, I haven't read this since I was a teenager. I used to love to read. I was smart too, once upon a time. It wasn't your father you inherited your brains from, that's for sure.'

‘She told me you used to go to the library all the time, with some friend called Rob, apparently. Oh, and she said to tell you hi.'

I'm not sure what I said, but something inside of her breaks. I can almost hear the crack. She drops the book and her face looks like every muscle, every sinew, has been pulled taut. It's frightening.

‘Get me a drink, Kirra.' She starts pulling on her chain. ‘I've bloody had enough, do you hear me? Stop this! Get this damned chain off of me!' Her voice is a cut-glass shrill. She's struggling, and her ankle is going red from the way she's pulling at the chain. She has that wild look in her eyes, like someone else has stepped into her skin. Someone who scares me. Up until now, I would have ignored her tantrums, I would have stepped over her like she was a puddle on the floor, and let it play itself out, but I don't do that now. I get close to her, even though she's hitting at me, and I wrap my arms around her so she can't lash out at me anymore. I have my small, sobbing mother wrapped up in my arms, so tight, like the way I held onto my dolls as a small child. I have her in a huge bear hug.

‘I love you, Mum. Please stop this. I love you,' I repeat to her, rocking her, and slowly, she stops convulsing. Slowly, she looks up at me, and the blinds lift up from behind her eyes, and I know my mother is back. I don't ask what memories were just clawing inside her skin. I just let her go gently, like she was something precious and fragile, and I kiss her on the forehead and pick up the library book from the floor.

‘
The Bell Jar
, by Sylvia Plath,' I begin, in a small, steady voice. ‘It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York . . .'

Mum closes her eyes and listens, as my words rise up and are sliced to pieces by the blades of the overhead fan. I can almost feel the shards of them fall down to settle on my shoulders.

We're running out of food. I've taken Mum's bank card out of her wallet, and I know her PIN number off by heart – I've done the grocery run too many times to count. Summer is technically over, but the cold never sets in until June at least, and even then it's a mild, defeated kind of cold, still cowering under the thumb of our relentless sun. Right now it's still hot enough to make the asphalt quiver, and the car bonnets will sear your arm if you're stupid enough to lean on one. The grocery store is three blocks away and there's nothing quite like the feeling of stepping inside, and that gorgeous shiver as the air-­conditioning sucks away the beads of sweat that had been dripping down your neck.

I take a basket and meander down the aisles, picking up items. All home brand, of course. It's embarrassing, the way your groceries mark you as poor, with those plain ugly boxes which don't even attempt to seduce you or lure you. Poor people aren't even worth a marketing spiel. I mostly feel bad about having to buy the home-brand cage eggs. When I'm rich I'm going to buy nothing but free range, even if they cost double the price. That's when I'll know I've made it. I sigh and drop the cheapest carton into my basket, the ones where the eggs come from chickens who spend their whole lives in tiny cages, their beaks chopped off, so that whenever I eat omelettes I always think they taste a little bit like misery. Mrs Willis, Noah's mum, is ahead of me in the checkout line. She reminds me of Noah, with her sandy, straw hair and freckles, except where Noah's tall and lean, she's box shaped and sturdy. She's practical looking. Sensible and reliable. She smiles at me as we're waiting.

‘G'day Kirra, how good you are, doing the shopping for your mum.'

I shrug, and smile back shyly. I wonder how good she'd think I was if she knew I've had my mother chained up to her bedpost for the last few days. The person ahead of us is disputing the cost of lemons with the cashier, and Mrs Willis rolls her eyes at me.

‘Oh, by the way, do you know if Noah had people over on Saturday night? Did you hear music or anything?'

Shit.

I am a terrible liar, so I keep my eyes focused on the confectionery stand in front of the checkout, and I shrug as if I didn't know anything.

‘I went to bed pretty early that night . . .'

This isn't a lie, I was probably in a drunken coma by nine o'clock. Mrs Willis looks quizzically at me, but doesn't press it.

‘Well, I suppose the goldfish got into the blender by itself, then,' she says, unconvinced, and she starts unloading her trolley onto the counter. I don't even really hear her, I'm distracted by the newspaper rack above the stacks of Mars bars. On the front page is a picture of Josh Hohol, the kid from the library. The headline shouts out to you in thick black ink –
LOCAL BOY MISSING
– but it's the first paragraph that chills me.
A SUSPECTED RUNAWAY, ACCORDING TO POLICE SUPERINTENDENT DONALD MCGINTY.

I quickly pay for the groceries and race home. I make Mum a sandwich, and when she asks me if I want to watch
Doctor Who
with her I shrug.

‘I need to go see someone . . .'

She thinks I'm going to see a friend, and it breaks my heart, how she actually looks happy for me.

‘Okay. Scamper, then. I'll face the Daleks by myself.'

I keep thinking of how McGinty killed Boogie. Josh made McGinty think he knew about Boogie. He pretty much called McGinty a murderer; of course McGinty would want to silence him.

This is all my fault.

On top of that, Josh, is exactly the type of kid that Boogie had been. Josh is no stranger to McGinty – he once got suspended for throwing water balloons full of flour at a maths teacher he didn't like, and then there was that time he came across a school bus with the keys still in the ignition, so he decided to give himself an impromptu driving lesson and accidentally drove the thing into the creek. All the town knows that. In short, he's trouble. I keep thinking of what McGinty's face looked like when he slit Boogie's throat, that hint of triumph etched onto his features, as though he was finally allowed to act in the way he always wanted to. As though he was doing society a favour by culling the town of troublemakers before they grew up enough to get worse. The way he
liked
it. I shiver. If McGinty had dealt with Josh like he had with Boogie, then of course he'd say that he was a runaway . . . but would he have had time to dispose of the body yet?

And would I be next?

There's nothing else to do.

I have to investigate.

The sun dazzles in the sky today, and it stretches its arms as wide as it can across the blue. My board shorts are sticking to my thighs as I pick my way through the track to McGinty's house. It's a twenty-minute shortcut through the bush, and my heartbeat is all that's keeping me company. I'm not sure what I'm going to do when I get there. I just need to look around, see if there's any sign of blood, or struggle, or you know, Josh's sliced-up body. The thought of that makes me shudder, despite the heat. I come to the clearing, and step gingerly around the old scrap pile. My thongs leave footprints in the dirt here, the dirt that once came from the dormant volcano, Mount Warning, which sleeps on the horizon. Its name seems ominous today.

McGinty's house isn't what you'd call fancy. It's a one-storey, off-white, fibro building, which is being strangled by an overeager bougainvillea vine. I tread up to the house and press my back into the vine so it half swallows me, the purple flowers papery against my cheek and the thorns making needy little grabs at my t-shirt. I stay there for a few minutes.

Be brave, Kirra.

I am not brave.

But I know that if McGinty's killed Josh, then I'm going to be next, and I need proof to make sure he's arrested before it comes to that. My hands are squelchy from where they're clasping together and I concentrate on the feeling of my knotted fingers. When you have nobody to hold your hand to keep you safe you just have to use your other one so you can hold onto yourself.

I step back out into the sunlight's grip and I pretend that I am a brave person. My nerves don't believe me, though. I'm a terrible liar, even when I'm only lying to myself.

And this is it. I sneak over to the nearest window and look inside. It looks like the sort of house owned by a sixty-four-year-old widower; even the furniture is steeped in loneliness. I don't think anything's been updated in several decades, it's almost like a time capsule. The living room doesn't seem to have any signs of struggle or blood, but I recognise it from Boogie's flashback, and the saggy cane couch where Margery was murdered looks far more unsettling than a cane couch should. I try the window and I'm surprised it opens. I slide it up, and with my heart thumping in my mouth, I climb inside. I'd like to say I was graceful, like a cat, but it's more of an awkward scramble, and it takes everything I have to not crash onto the matted old carpet with a thud.

Ignoring all of my nerve endings screaming at me to get out of there, I pick myself up and tiptoe around the living room, trailing my fingers over dusty china ornaments and stained coffee cups. Everything looks in order, so if there was a struggle, McGinty's done a good job of tidying up afterwards. On top of the sideboard, beside a yellowed cordless phone, sits a framed picture of McGinty and Margery. In the photograph they're looking at each other like they're sharing a joke, their eyes are twinkling with laughter, and it's hard to reconcile this smiley-eyed woman with the nagging hag of Boogie's flashback. The living room leads into McGinty's bedroom. The doorway's ajar and I swing it open, bracing myself for bloody clothes or the kind of knife you slice coconuts with. It's utterly ordinary. A queen-sized bed dominates the space, it's unmade, except that only the right half of the bed is rumpled. It's like McGinty still keeps to his own side, waiting for Margery to slip into the bed next to him, even though it's been almost two decades since she died. It knocks me sideways, the way a half-rumpled bed could look so sad. I close the door behind me until it's only slightly ajar and I chew my lip, wondering where to begin. I look under his bed but there's nothing but shoes, lined up neatly, in pairs. The closet is bare, except for some shirts and jackets hanging neatly from the rack. Squished in the corner is a dress, large and dated, it has to have been Margery's. It's a cut-grass green colour and festooned with yellow flowers. It's so large and bright it looks like there's a big slice of meadow just hanging there in the cupboard. It's so forlorn, a field of flowers, there in the dark amidst the suits, that I have to close the door to shut away the sadness. Next, I rummage through the dirty-clothes basket in the corner, and hold up each item of clothing, turning them around for any signs of blood. Nothing. It's all so ordinary. The last place to look is the kitchen. He might not have had time to ditch the murder weapon yet, and I can imagine the knife still sitting in the sink, Josh's blood crusting on the blade. I'm about to step back through the living room when I hear a sound. A whistle.

It's definitely a whistle.

Someone is whistling ‘When the Saints Go Marching In' in the kitchen.

Shit!

I wonder what McGinty's doing home in the middle of a weekday, when I realise he works for the police. Policemen don't have regular nine to five hours, their work schedules are all over the place. Crime doesn't care about weekends or after hours, so obviously they'd sometimes have days off during the week.

Panic bashes into me.

I want to scream.

I grip my hand over my mouth to keep the sound inside of me.

Peering through the ajar bedroom door, I see McGinty walk into the living room from the kitchen. A whistle has never sounded so threatening in my life. I can't believe he hasn't heard my heartbeat by now, I feel it gonging so loud inside me. McGinty's carrying a chipped china plate with a chunk of cheese, cold meats and crackers balanced on top, but what grabs my attention is the knife, which is catching the afternoon light and it glints at me, almost like it's winking. I scan the room for an exit strategy, except the bedroom window isn't like the living-room window – this one has a fly screen on it, and there's nothing around to cut through the wire.

Shit.

There's space under his bed for me to hide, except I don't like the thought of being trapped down there while a murderer makes the bedsprings squeak above me. My mind is racing, and my palms are slippery with sweat. I'm going to die. I can't stop staring at the knife and imagining it opening up my throat, and how I'd watch as my blood spilt free from my skin. I don't want to die at fourteen. I don't want McGinty's purple face to be the last thing I ever see.

And Mum.

Nobody knows she's chained up to her bedpost. Nobody will save her.

She'll starve.

It takes everything I have to stop myself hyperventilating.

McGinty stops whistling. He looks over to the living-room window, which is now open and letting the day in with deep, hot breaths. Still carrying his plate, he wanders over to the window, looking at it curiously. His ear is cocked, like he's listening for anything strange.

Shit.

I wish my heartbeat wasn't so loud, and my stifled breaths sound to me like the wind howling down at South Beach.

Slowly, McGinty wanders over to the bedroom, as nonchalant as can be. It's creepy, the way he seems so calm. All I can see is that knife getting closer and closer. If I spring to get under the bed I'm certain he'll hear me, and then I'll be trapped under there with nowhere to run. Even if I did want to hide, I can't. I can't move. My body is giving me the silent treatment and I stand rigid, as though someone's glued me onto this space. I count down the seconds I have to live, as McGinty gets closer. Eight. Seven. Six. Five . . . But four never comes. Instead, I watch the plate and knife clatter onto the floor. A lone cracker rolls itself through the crack and settles next to my feet.

McGinty follows the plate.

He thuds to the ground, like a plum falling from a tree, and he lies there, still. I don't know whether this is some ploy to get me to reveal myself, so I wait.

I wait for a good thirty seconds.

He doesn't move.

Suddenly, my body starts to work again. I creak open the bedroom door.

He still doesn't move.

Carefully, I tiptoe toward him.

He still doesn't move.

He's not breathing.

I bend down and check his pulse.

He still doesn't move, and neither does his pulse. I shake him, and shout at him.

Nothing.

Shit.

This is the man who killed Boogie. This is the man who may have killed Josh. Should I let him die? Does he deserve to die? The flashback of his face, when he killed Boogie, races before my eyes, but that face looks nothing like the one lying here, quiet and still, turning blue. His eyes look like the sort of eyes that a kindly old uncle would have, even if they're rolled back in his head. I don't want to have his death on my hands. If he's guilty, then he's guilty, but it's not up to me to punish him. I don't have that right.