Afterlight (10 page)

As she slammed the fire door shut, I could hear her bellowing at someone to
Get the
bleeding hell in line
. All class, all the time; that was my Gran.

‘Your Gran treat all your boyfriends this way?’ Jordan asked, amusement in his deep
voice.

My face burned as he pointed in the direction of an old blue Commodore parked fifty
metres away, its faded paintwork riddled with rust, a P-plate jammed into the lower
corner of the rear window.

Jordan moved before I did, walking towards the front passenger door and holding it
open, one dark eyebrow cocked in my direction. Shivering, I pulled the zip of my
hoodie higher, the icy wind making my already scarlet nose run again. As I slid into
the seat and dabbed self-consciously at my nose with the back of one hand, Jordan
slammed the heavy car door shut and went around to the driver’s side.

He jumped in behind the wheel and the cuff of his shirt slipped back for a moment.
Something weird happened again in the vicinity of my heart, like it was falling from
a great height. I could see the word
jymaux
engraved in black upon his skin in tiny
letters. It formed part of the
dark rim of the tattoo winding around the outer edge
of Jordan’s wrist. When he caught me staring, he tugged the cuff back up and fired
up the engine.

‘It means
twin
in Norman French,’ he said curtly as he steered up Sancerre Lane and
into the stretch of Sancerre Street just outside Floyd Parker’s house.

Right-o.
I sank down in my seat to avoid any telephoto lenses trained on the area
while Jordan turned the corner and began telling me about what I’d missed at school.
I closed my eyes, just listening and pretending I hadn’t heard it all already from
Biddy Cole.

God, he and I are breathing the same air.

Jordan was so
close
. If I put my hand out, I could rest it on his shoulder. It was
unreal.

My destructive train of thought screeched to a halt when Jordan added, ‘So that’s
when I worked out my theory about you. You’re kind-hearted to a fault. You let people
walk all over you, all the time. And you never speak up for yourself, which is perfect
for someone like Eve. She’s incredibly strong-willed. She must have been interesting
to know when she was…’

He hesitated, and the knuckles of his hands went white on the steering wheel, sunlight
glinting off the silver around his wrist.

‘Alive,’ I interrupted gently. ‘Say it, Jordan. When she was
alive
.’

9

I told him the two things I knew about Eve: that she was somehow the spit of my own
mum and that her biker boyfriend had tried to gun her down in a city street, taking
out innocent people instead.

‘After that, she disappeared, he disappeared, the news story said. And then about
a fortnight later, she shows up at my place and keeps showing up until I do what
she wants.’

Jordan was silent for a long time. Though as he eased the car into the
bumper-to-bumper traffic on Brunswick Street, he said abruptly, ‘I can say this stuff
to you, right? Because you’re okay.’

Since, like, when?
I almost blurted. I had to bite down on the insides of my mouth
to stop the words tumbling out.

His grey eyes found mine for a moment before he looked away. ‘Even Hendo and Seamus
don’t know,’ he murmured, pushing a fall of dark hair off his face. ‘It’s not something
you want to…advertise.’

I stiffened in surprise. Hendo and Seamus were Jordan’s too-cool-for-school wingmen.
Jordan had a secret too big even for the both of them?

I found myself holding my breath so hard that purple spots and squiggles started
dancing in front of my eyes. Who knew that getting to the bottom of the mystery of
Eve would involve seeing inside Jordan’s head, too?

He said, in a rush, ‘Mum gets impressions, inconclusiveness. She has to work out
what they want from the context.’

He swung the car into a narrow side street on the fringes of the city. Old pairs
of sneakers hung by their knotted-up laces from overhead wiring like bunches of dingy
fruit.

‘Mum’s…
clairaudient
,’ he added hesitantly, like I knew what that meant without a
dictionary handy, ‘but that’s about the extent of it. She hears things, you know?’

I shook my head, still baffled.

‘Voices. She says, I’m more…“gifted”. I’ve always been able to see, hear,
smell
.
God, how weird does that sound?’

He glanced across at me and I knew I was supposed to react, but it felt like I was
hearing him through a heavy
veil. None of what he was trying to tell me was really
coming together.

‘So what I think is Eve—uh, Monica—used
you
to get through to
me
. It’s the only explanation.
I mean, you’re not one of
us
, are you? The people who “see” dead people. And the
rest.’ He sounded faintly disgusted.

I opened my mouth to tell him about the glowing man from when I was five then shut
it again with a snap. I didn’t
want
to be one of those people. After Eve, I wasn’t
going to be one of those people ever again.

Jordan swerved around a cyclist going the wrong way up our street.

‘I
hate
it,’ he growled, staring sightlessly at the pollution-stained façades sliding
by, the cracked and uneven sidewalks. ‘I wish they’d leave me alone.’ He shot me
a sideways look. ‘Like how she smells of violets?’ he said fiercely, scrubbing at
his left arm through the leather of his jacket. ‘You get that, right?’

I nodded in confusion: so it was
violets
? I hadn’t known that. I just knew I’d never
be rushing out and buying any perfume remotely like it. In fact, Eve had just about
put me off floral fragrances for life.

‘I get that, too,’ Jordan growled again, still kneading his left arm before moving
on to his right. ‘But I can hear her through her memories; feel her. See things she
wants me to see. Just snatches. And then there’s the rest of them,
all talking away
like I’m supposed to care. Dropping in and out like crossed wires on a bad line.
You can do some of that as well, yeah?’

‘Only with
her
,’ I exclaimed, mentally crossing my fingers at the lie. ‘With Eve.
And I can’t actually
hear
her, so half of it has been lucky guesses, lucky breaks!
I don’t get that at all with, uh, others. God, Eve alone is enough to drive anyone
mental.’

My voice faltered to a stop as I realised what I was saying and who I was saying
it to.

‘Yeah,’ Jordan looked away, frowning. ‘Mental.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ I responded quickly, waving my hands in the air. ‘I’m not sure
what I mean.
This
is mental. But you’re not. Mental, I mean.’

Oh, honestly, just kill me now
, my inner voice moaned as I wailed out loud, ‘I always
say the wrong thing!’

‘See?
See
?’ Jordan growled. ‘This is what you do. All the time.’

Flushing, I saw that we’d entered the city. Abruptly, he pulled into a
No Standing
zone facing onto a string of eateries that formed the heart of the city’s famed Greek
quarter. I looked through the window at the fake stalactites hanging from the ceiling
inside the souvlaki joint on the corner. I’d never been brave enough to go in. Ever.

‘Well.’ My voice was tentative. ‘It explains how you found me in the middle of a
Claudia-and-pals human
sandwich. And it explains the total locker meltdown. Eve must
have
hated
being ignored by you.’

Jordan replied sharply. ‘It stops here. After this,
you leave her alone
.’

I glanced across at Jordan in confusion. He’d ceased worrying away at the skin of
his arms. His eyes were closed. He might have been asleep except that the lines of
his pale face were tight. My own uneasiness skyrocketed when I realised he wasn’t
talking to me.

He opened his grey eyes; pupils dilated wide with… pain? Although he was facing me,
his gaze was weirdly unfocused, giving the impression he was looking at something
else entirely. A chill raced across my skin, making me fold myself down smaller in
my seat.

Jordan pointed down the mouth of a narrow city lane just outside my window, lined
with Victorian-era warehouses and the back entrances of two-storey shop fronts and
fast-food outlets. A delivery truck blocked off the far end of the cobbled lane,
offloading steel kegs of beer outside the cellar door of a grim-looking pub with
barred windows. If I never saw another beer truck in my life, it would be too soon.

So far, so Melbourne.

‘This is it?’ I murmured, still confused. ‘This is what Eve wanted you to see? So
I’m seeing it, and it’s not so, um, bad.’

I popped a menthol cough lolly, my nose now so blocked I could barely taste it.

Jordan seemed to snap out of his trance at my words. He nodded, scrambling out of
his seat and slamming his car door before yanking mine open.

I climbed out in a tangle of arms and legs, feeling clumsy just because his eyes
were on me. An acid spurt of adrenaline flashed through my system as I fished a loose
hairband out of my pocket and slung the mess on my head into a low, bushy ponytail.

Not sure what to do with my hands after that, I shoved them both deep into the kangaroo
pockets of my hoodie and gave a giant, unlovely sniff. Jordan nearly sent me into
cardiac arrest when he hooked his arm through mine.

‘Seeing as how I’m supposed to be your boyfriend…’ he said, and a ghostly smile flitted
across his face.

We entered the laneway. Just being this close to him seemed to pull the world into
sharper focus. The layers of graffiti and peeling-away pub-rock posters festooning
the walls were suddenly beautiful with colour and texture, and the puddles of filthy
water between the cobbles from the overnight rains held a strange surface gleam.
A trio of dark-haired cooks in navy aprons on a mid-afternoon smoke-o stared hard
at us as we passed by, and I swear I could make out every hair on their unshaven
faces as my heart beat hard in my chest.

It’s just nerves you’re feeling, Stork
, I chided myself as Jordan pulled us to a
stop a few doors down from where the men still lounged, wreathed in smoke, watching
us.

I looked up at the piss-yellow brick façade of a two-storey warehouse, the air dense
with the smell of fat frying. There were very few windows, and each was set high
up off the ground and plugged by a rectangular pane of greasy, opaque glass, with
iron bars from top to bottom. The place had the ambience of a maximum-security jail
and the grey metal swing door set at ground level boasted a large sign that read,
simply:
Adult Discounters.

My face flamed as the meaning of the sign soaked in, and I tried to pull away. Even
my wildest dreams about Jordan Haig had not featured us walking hand-in-hand through
a place that sold plastic sex toys and porno.

‘Uh,’ I began, and Jordan snorted at my panicked expression, tightening his hold
on me as his gaze ran upward. There was a second, smaller sign above the door that
bore the legend:
Maximus Lounge
. At night it would light up in neon, but now it was
just a bunch of almost burnt-out tubes forming vague letter shapes.

‘Two choices,’ Jordan murmured, almost to himself. ‘What’s it gonna be?’

I was seeing oiled men in leather thongs. And not of the footwear variety.

‘Uh,’ I said again. ‘I think Eve meant for me to sit this
one out. She didn’t appear
to
me
, buddy, she appeared to
you
. She doesn’t need me anymore. Your word against
mine that I’m even supposed to be here. So you do it. You go and flail through the
afterglow of Eve’s life, trying to work out what she wants. I’ve seen enough to last
me. Really, I’m good. Happy to pass the baton.’

I tried to disengage my arm once more, but again, weirdly, Jordan resisted.

Then he laughed, suddenly releasing me, and the world was at once colder and dirtier
without the warmth of him pressed close. I crossed my arms defensively, but Jordan
kept the shocks coming by cupping my face in his hands.

‘It’s like a game with this one.’ His gaze was intent, all trace of amusement gone.
‘She doesn’t talk to me directly like the others do, she only
shows
me things, things
she remembers. And I only hear what she heard, or what she said. She only shows herself
to me when I’m with you, did you know that? She only lets me see her when
you’re
there. That’s never happened before: being able to share this with anyone. Other
than my mother.’

His mouth twisted wryly.

‘Oh, and the time just after I started primary school. When word got out the little
kid in 1F could speak with dead people, everyone was screaming for psych testing.
I changed schools a lot before I learnt to keep my mouth shut. So you can see how
this is as weird for me as it must
be for you. I expected you to run a mile when
you found out. But I’m glad you’re still here. Surprised. But glad.’

Jordan leaned in abruptly, resting his forehead against mine, and my unreliable breathing
cut out altogether as he looked down into my eyes, the two of us forming the apex
of something. Some new thing I was too afraid to name for fear it would vanish like
star dust.

‘She wants you involved, for some reason,’ he murmured. ‘And I
need
you: to keep
me sane. To separate what’s
me
from everything else. The usual mechanisms I have
for shutting things out—they don’t work with her. She found out what my weakness
was. She’s like a storm front. And because I can’t see her when I’m not with you,
it feels like it’s happening to me, all the little things she feeds me, expecting
me to make sense of them. There’s no order and no distance: it’s like her footsteps
are mine, her breathing, her impressions. The fear…’

He swallowed audibly and all my self-consciousness suddenly drained away. Jordan
Haig was actually
afraid
. He was more rattled than I, or anyone, had ever seen him.
I’d crossed over into scaredy-pants land more times than I could count lately, and
a feeling almost of protectiveness kicked in.