Zac and Mia (9 page)

I haven’t come here for scones.

The animals are cute, granted, but I haven’t come here for them either. I’m not a child.

Inside the store, tourists dip cubes of bread into shallow bowls while a woman describes five flavours of oils. It looks like her, a bit slimmer maybe, with dyed hair. She seems nicer than in hospital, but then, you’d expect her to be nice to customers. She nods at tourists. Makes encouraging comments about the lightness and depth of olive oil. Shit, I haven’t come here for any of this.

Yeah, I think it’s the mum. But Zac? I’m not sure. He walked right past me before, beside the emus. I didn’t care much for them either, with their beady eyes and strong beaks. He wasn’t scared though: he went in with them and came out holding three eggs in his pink gloves.

There’s a paved path leading down to a gate with a hand-painted sign, which says,
No Entry
—
Residence
.
Just past that, the guy is standing near a shed. A small kangaroo is beside him. Is it Zac? The hair’s short and dark. I hadn’t expected that. He’s better looking than I’d thought.

I need to get closer but
No Entry
reminds the sign.

I could call out his name, couldn’t I? But what if it’s not him? I’d look like a dumbass.

And what if it is?

He seems too tall. Then again, I never saw him standing.

If I call his name and he turns, what would I shout?
Remember me? The one you lied to?
I wouldn’t care who heard me, either. He promised I’d be fine and he was wrong.

But he steps into the shed and out of sight.

Behind me, the driver herds the tour group from the shop and I go too. When he attempts to help me onto the bus I shrug him off. My crutches drive mud into each carpeted step. He waits until I’m safe in the front seat then he pulls away from the car park.

It doesn’t matter if it was or wasn’t Zac. He wasn’t a part of Plan D anyway. He was just a side-trip to break up a long day.

‘You can’t use that,’ says the coach driver in town.

I thrust the ticket back at him. ‘But I bought it this morning.’

‘It’s for a different route,’ he says, blowing smoke away from me. Why is he smoking so close to a bus, anyway? ‘Direct. It’s not a hop-on, hop-off service.’

I laugh at the irony. All I can do these days is hop.

‘You should have got the hop-on, hop-off ticket if you wanted to go sightseeing.’

‘I don’t,’ I say. ‘I didn’t. Look, I’m going to Adelaide, it says, via Albany. Today.’

He drops the butt and scuffs it into the cement. I hate it when people do that. Where do they think it’s going to go? It pisses me off big-time.

‘You can get on board if you’re that keen, but I’m heading to Pemberton. That way.’ He points. ‘The next coach to Albany doesn’t come through till tomorrow—’

‘Tomorrow?’

‘You should be able to re-use the ticket, but you’d want to ring ahead to see if there’s a seat. School holidays and all.’ He shrugs. ‘Unlucky.’

Fucker. At least he’s got something right.

‘You are lucky,’ the young guy at the hostel tells me.

He’s got to be kidding.

‘You are lucky there is a bed.’ His clipped accent is hard to understand. ‘This time of season there is many fruit pickers.’ He notices my crutches then checks my face. I should have put on make-up. ‘You are picking?’

I hold out 25 bucks and tell him I’ll return later. I’m
not in the mood to spend the afternoon in a communal lounge.

Instead, I go to the main street where I buy a sandwich and an iced coffee and sit on a bench near a butcher shop. Women spend ages in there. When they come out they stand on the footpath and gossip, their chops and sausages sweating through plastic. Stupid fucking people in a stupid fucking town.

Across the road is a police station, its window plastered with photos of missing people. I go and look them over, all these men and women who are dead or pretending to be. Some were last seen before I was born.

My face isn’t there. I wonder if Mum’s told the cops, the way she’d threatened to. I wonder if they’d bother with a poster for me. If so, what would it say?

Missing: Mia Phillips. Seventeen-year-old female, currently with blonde bob. 164 centimetres. Crutches. Needs two more rounds of chemo and immediate medical attention. Suspected of theft and deception. Potentially dangerous
.

If a poster ever finds its way down here, I’ll be long gone. I’ve learned a lesson today—no more unplanned detours. Life doesn’t favour the curious. No more hopping on or off. No more trying my luck with bus drivers or girlfriends or ex-boyfriends or mothers or doctors or random strangers who once stayed in adjoining hospital rooms and fed me bullshit lies.

Everyone lies. So just take your backpack and go, Mia. Go direct.

Fuck ’em all.

The Oliomio processor clunks to a stop and the night inflates with quiet. I hear my parents creep their way alongside the house.
Shhh
, whispers Dad in the dark. I hear Mum giggle. Glasses clink. They close the front door behind them.

In the processing shed, 6000 litres of cold-pressed oil will be freshly bottled. It was a decent harvest today, so Evan boasted, with another twelve rows to be picked and crushed tomorrow. It’ll happen again in a month with the Manzanillos. I’m hoping I can talk my way into it by then.

I sleep with my head beneath the window, the curtain wide open. Even after fourteen weeks out of hospital, this feels important.

It baffles me how the mess of the universe knows exactly what it’s doing, like it was all agreed upon
13 billion years ago and the galaxies have been following the rules ever since. They’re all up there, keeping in tempo and making perfect sense, whereas we humans screw up everything in the short time we’ve got.

I hear footsteps on the grass that shouldn’t be there—Mum and Dad are inside and the alpacas should be sleeping by now. Perhaps one’s restless from the noisy night. Or it could be Sheba, who’s due to give birth soon.

I listen. There are more footsteps, further away, then a soft grunt and a spit.

I get up and lean my head and chest out of the window, my arms aching from the effort of heaving things around in the shed.

It’s Daisy, the old alpaca. ‘Go to sleep, you tool.’

But what I hear next is more human than animal. There’s a dull clunk in the darkness, then a flash of light. I see it up by the hayshed. Blue. Twice.

I wrap the doona around me and hoist myself through the window. My Jack Russell, J.R., is already at my shin, whacking me with his tail. He trails me as I walk barefoot up the path, opening then closing the gate, but stays behind when I go to the hayshed. The chicken.

Under the orange glow of small heat lamps, babies sleep peacefully in their cages, safe from foxes. They snuffle and dream.

I sneak past them to find the source of the blue flash. On top of a pile of hay, the disc looks like a small UFO, sending beams in each direction.
Blink, flicker,
blink
. I’d forgotten about this device, which Dad drags out each cubbing season. It’s supposed to scare off vixens, tricking them into believing humans are about.

It worked on me, at least. I gather the doona tighter, trying to hold it above the dirt as I retrace my steps between pens, through the gate, and back down to the house. Sharp stars mock me. My bare feet are freezing.

I crawl back through my window. Outside, Daisy grunts again.

What an idiot: scared of a blue light. I pull down the window to keep out her whines.

But Daisy’s not the only one who’s restless. Standing in my room, the walls suddenly feel too close, the air too quiet. I keep the doona about me, my ears ringing in the vacuum. There’s not a single whir or buzz or hum. Not even a breath.

But then there’s a
tap
.

And a face at the window.

I see it and fall, staggering backwards as the past pitches madly, impossibly towards me.

The girl forces up the window and thrusts out an arm.
Shhh!
her flexed hand warns.
Be still
.

I still myself, my knees and elbows tangled in doona. I find a breath, then another, while the girl hovers there, silhouetted by stars. Is she human?

The hair is thick and short. Her eyes are large. ‘Mia?’

She brings a finger to her lips. Her eyes inspect my darkened room then her hand swivels and, palm upward, beckons me.

Her skin is cold. I take her forearm to help her through the window but she lands badly and both of us twist and crumple in doona.

Above me, she’s vanilla and ice and fear.

‘Mia?’ I ask again, though I don’t need to.

I crawl free and she draws my blankets around her. Then, without explanation or apology, she rolls to her side, facing my bedroom wall.

I prop myself against the bed frame, wide awake and stunned with wonder.

I’ve helped rescue all kinds of animals. For as long as I can remember, Bec and I would pull on boots and jackets and follow Dad to the ute. How many goats have we pulled free from fences? How many parrots have we wrapped in old towels? Countless cardboard boxes watched over on the rattly drive home.

I’ve helped rescue plenty, but that’s where it ends. It was always Dad who fixed them.

Mum would toss up her arms in despair as another lamb was placed in the oven on low heat, the door left open. Other times, Dad would put on his Speedos and sit in a warm bath, dripping water over a baby alpaca given up for dead by its mother. Its head would loll and loll until eventually it snorted air. Dad
believed heat could bring back the dead.

I wonder what he’d say about this: a girl in my room, sleeping as if on an edge.

She seems warmer, at least, but it might only be on the surface. What would Dad do now?

Daylight creeps across her. I watch her slow breaths, aware of my own. Mia—it has to be. Even though her hair’s now blonde, with a too-straight fringe.

Each noise freaks me out. The creak of floorboards in the laundry. Mum? Dad and Evan driving down to the olives. Outside, the crazy clucking of chooks. Bec will be feeding the newborns and she’ll be wondering where I am.

I tiptoe to the window and peer through the curtain. I see roosters and chickens pecking by the hayshed. Bec’s out of sight.

I let the curtain drop and when I turn, the girl has one eye watching. Hair veils the rest of her face but she doesn’t brush it away.

‘Hey.’

She says nothing. Just keeps her one eye on me.

I can’t match her stare so I look down at my hands. I don’t know what to do with them. What happens now?

‘How did—’ I begin, then stop.
How
can wait. ‘Mia?’ I ask, needing confirmation. ‘Are you lost?’

It’s stupid. Of course she’s not lost. A Perth girl doesn’t leave her house, take a wrong turn and end up on the southern coast of Western Australia.

Quick footsteps come at us and Mia’s eyes widen.
She sits up. My doorknob rattles.

‘Zac, you in there?’

‘Yeah,’ I croak.

‘Why is the door locked? You getting up? I’m doing sheets.’

But my sheets are wrapped tight around the girl who’s eyeing off the window as an escape route.

‘Can’t a guy sleep in?’ I call out. ‘Even God rested on a Sunday.’

‘God
? Are you all right, Zac?’

‘I’m trying to speed-read chapter seven of
Pride and Prejudice.’

‘Sheets?’

‘Nah, thanks. I haven’t shat myself in months.’

‘Male,’ Mum mutters. ‘Don’t stay in all day, Bec’s got her hands full.’

We wait for her footsteps to peter out. Mia’s back is pressed against the wall.

‘Sorry,’ I say, though I’m not sure why.

Short hair falls either side of her face and I see it’s not the same face that looked through my hospital window. She’s not the same girl anymore, and it isn’t just the hair.

Her gaze slides across my skin. Without a shirt on, I feel suddenly vulnerable. She’s checking me over, her eyes snagging on the scars: the one at my right pec, the old one at my neck, the dots on my inner arms. She knows where to find them. The proof seems to relax her a little.

‘It
is
you,’ she murmurs. ‘Helga, you look different.’

‘It’s Zac,’ I say. ‘Yeah. So do you.’

‘Your eyes are grey.’

‘They’re more like blue.’

‘They look grey.’

She brushes away her fringe and I run my hands through my own hair, leaving my fingers linked behind my head, the way Dad does when assessing a situation.

Where do I start? This girl’s materialised from a white-walled room fourteen weeks in the past, 500 kilometres away.

‘What are you doing here?’

She blinks, looks down at the floorboards.

‘Are you okay?’

She starts to speak but her words catch in her throat, as if they’ve got barbs.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, even though I shouldn’t.

On my last day in hospital, when I went to thank Nina one last time, I saw the way she’d pivoted down the corridor and walked in another direction. I suspected then that Mia’s surgery hadn’t gone well, but what could I do? Mum talked too much on the drive home, as if she’d known, somehow, then pulled into a McDonald’s drive-through without prompting, even though my craving for a burger had gone. Later in the day, Mia would be waking, heavy with anaesthetic and painkillers and whatever sedatives they could justify. But what would she be waking to? How bad was the scar? I didn’t know, for sure. And I couldn’t ask.

‘Sorry,’ I say.

Her face tightens.

A screen door bangs and Mum calls the chickens to scraps. Soon she’ll be getting the till ready in the store. Bec will be checking for newborns and corpses, and I should be helping.

Outside is noisy, but in here, I can’t think of what to say. Mia drags my doona over her head, shrouding herself.

‘What do you want? Mia?’

She stays quiet, hidden.

What would Dad do? Walk away? Scoop her up in his arms? She’s too big for the oven.

I pull on a T-shirt and walk out of the room. In the kitchen, I make a cheese and tomato toastie with sauce. While it cools down, I microwave some Milo with milk, then carry the lot to my room. She’s still hidden under the doona, so I put them on the floor.

Then I leave again, taking my novel to the couch, where I pretend to read chapter seven. I pretend for hours.

When Bec comes to check on me, I tell her I’m sorry, that I’ve got to get three chapters finished. She believes me and I feel guilty for lying.

I don’t know what life is like for Mia. Not really. I don’t know what’s brought her here, of all places, when she has such a vocal, adoring fan club in Perth, a whole other world away.

I wait another ten minutes then go back, opening the door to a crumple of doona and an empty cup and plate.

Mia’s standing deep in my cupboards, rummaging
through stored things: boxes of Lego, a signed football, an old stamp collection, two copies of
Playboy
. I don’t cringe—they’re from years ago when bodies were novelties.

‘Can I help you?’

She turns, clutching magazines. ‘Helga.’

‘Zac. What are you doing?’

She sniffs as if for the last time. ‘I need money.’