Afterlight (2 page)

‘The way he recoiled, Soph,’ someone hooted later, ‘was a classic.’

Just like with death, you can never go back after something like that. In the panicky
days after, when I started skipping class and stopped taking the calls of anyone
I ever knew from my old life—I somehow convinced Gran to let me change schools just
so I’d never have to look Floyd Parker in the eye again.

It’s the start of final year
, I’d begged.
You don’t want me to stuff it up any more
than it’s already been stuffed, do you?

I’d been watching the evening news with Gran when
I broached the subject—the lead
story about some terrible shooting that had taken place that day at a city intersection.
Some outlaw motorcycle gang leader with a neck almost as wide as his shoulders had
shot an innocent bystander to death when he intervened in a domestic the psycho was
having with his on-off girlfriend. A backpacker got hurt, too, plus a woman who was
in a car at the lights. The bikie was still on the run. It was unclear what had happened
to the girlfriend.

Her photo had lingered for a moment on screen. ‘She looks just like your mother,’
Gran had whispered, her fork frozen halfway to her mouth. ‘Same long, dark hair,
pale skin; beautiful. Could
be
your mother. It’s uncanny. And the gunman was a Reaver,
just like your dad was once. The great untouchable
O’Loughlin
himself. Haven’t heard
that name in years. What are the chances?’

I’d registered the coincidences dully. The girl in the mug shot—staring up and out
of her long hair, wary, like something cornered—looked more my age than Mum’s. But
they could have been sisters, yeah. And the fact that a bikie and a dancer were involved
was eerie.

‘Like history repeating itself,’ I’d mumbled, swallowing. ‘Only Dad was no psycho,
Gran. He got Mum
out
of the business the same way he got himself out. And I never
heard them argue. Not once. He would sooner have turned a gun on himself, than on
Mum. She was his
life
.’

Seconds later, I’d placed my fork down on the plate balanced on my lap overwhelmed
by sorrow: Mum, Dad,
Floyd
. Nothing left to live for. ‘I am
destroyed
,’ I whispered,
head in my hands, the tears dripping down into the mash, the untouched bean salsa.

‘A fresh start, Sophie,’ Gran had agreed finally—freaked out just as much by my behaviour
as by the news story, but trying not to show it as she got up to take our plates
back to the kitchen before the night shift began—‘might be just what you need.’

So I found myself at Ivy Street High two Mondays later. It was just a twenty-minute
walk from my old school, a simple detour, nothing really, but it could have been
a different country I was crossing into because no one knew my story.

They’d all just stared and stared at me going up and up and up when I’d walked in
the gates on my first day. A freak who blocked out the sun. Tallest girl there by
miles.

‘Sure you don’t want the technical institute, Storkie?’ a guy had drawled as I fetched
up at the door of the special common room for final year students. I’d stood there
looking lopsided in my second-hand, bile-yellow and navy uniform, ginger hair as
fat as a fox tail hanging over one
shoulder, trying to gauge the tribal connections,
too green to see the pattern of how they all fitted in.

And I’d done that thing I
hate
about myself, which involves most of the blood in
my body making a sudden leap for my neck, then my face, then my scalp, like a live
thing running for cover in my hair.
Blushing
doesn’t even begin to describe what
happens when I get embarrassed. Everyone had laughed while I’d kicked at the carpet,
my face on flaming
fire
, and that was how it was from then on. Open season on tall
jokes.

But I’d survived my first day, talking to nobody, smiling gamely into the middle
distance, assiduously avoiding the three girls people kept pointing out to me as
the toughest bitches at Ivy Street
. It was enough, I told myself over and over, that
I’d never have to walk past Floyd Parker’s house again. I could do this. Nine months
more and even school would be a distant memory. I wasn’t dumb, exactly. But school
and I had just never rubbed along. We’d just never
gotten
each other and I was glad
to be just about out the back end of it.

After that first day,
Storkie
stuck. It didn’t matter that I was Sophie Teague any
more, the girl with the two dead parents. At Ivy Street High, I was a clean skin.
New game; new rules. Play on.

Then, as I was lying in bed that very night, listening
to public radio in the dark—someone’s
idea of a dirty garage, Ramones tribute band—the room suddenly began to smell of
some old-fashioned flowery perfume and
she
was bending over me like I was a sick
person in need of assistance.

The girl from the news. The missing stripper.

In my bedroom.

And I was five years old again, in the dark. Heart stopped, everything stopped.

She’d looked real and solid and solemn. A girl with a pale, unlined face who could
have been my dead mother’s daughter she looked so much like her. I could tell all
this, because the girl was outlined in a faint silvery light. Her hair was slightly
wavy at the ends and she had a strong nose. Her lower lip was a little fuller than
her upper one, and she was of just above average height. I could also see how, if
she didn’t watch it, she’d run to fat one day with no problems. But that right now,
she was shaped like an extra busty hourglass—something guys like that I knew I would
never
be.

She wore a black tank top and black jeans, long hair hanging down loose, eyes like
pieces of jet, long feet pale and bare. Beautiful, in a top-heavy, fleshy kind of
way. Silent, just looking at me looking at her. Kind of illuminated from the inside,
and in outline, like a freaking
torch
.

It felt like I was wide-awake in the dark for hours,
literally suspended in place
by terror. While for her, it probably felt like no time had passed at all. It was
hard to get a handle on what she was thinking because her face never changed the
whole time.

It was probably more of a reconnaissance manoeuvre, a scouting exercise, on her part.
If I’d leapt out of bed and turned on all the lights, screamed at her to leave, or
made the sign of the cross, hissed, spat, done anything, maybe she would’ve gone
away and stayed away.

No prizes for guessing who just lay there, too scared even to blink, while she studied
me like a painting for surface weaknesses, for flaws. She probably took one look
at me and thought to herself,
There’s my bitch
. And that’s how it started.

2

So she came again, the next night, and the next, until I got what she wanted.

Eve
. That was what I ended up calling her—I had to call her something, and she was
sort of a bit biblical looking, and a bit evil, all at the same time.

Anyway, on the Tuesday afternoon, I’d been stacking trays of empties into the industrial
dishwasher just to escape our resident pervert, Dirty Neil, who treated Gran’s Public
Bar like it was his lounge room. He was long-term unemployed and had to be at least
thirty-five—looking more like fifty-five because of all the beer and Bacardi he drank.

Watched you grow up
, he said, like he always did as he
took up position on his favourite
bar stool, licking his lips while he said it. I hadn’t yet worked out what was creepier—the
thought of him thinking he was good enough for me, or the thought of him thinking
about
me.

So I’d avoided going near him, or up to my bedroom, for hours. Instead, I’d surrounded
myself with kitchen hands, noises,
things
. But every third Tuesday it was The Star’s
infamous $10 Scotch Fillet and Pub Bingo Night, which brought out every tight-arse
punter in the galaxy. When the bingo was on and the steaks were chargrilling, an
entire hostile intergalactic force could land on the roof and come through shooting,
and no one would be the wiser. While The Star heaved beneath me to its usual bingo
night rhythms, I convinced myself that it was safe to go back upstairs and that Eve
wouldn’t be back; Monday night had to be a one-off. If I slept with all the lights
on, I reasoned with myself, I’d be okay.

But you don’t really have a hope of blocking out someone who can walk through a deadlocked
door. I smelt the perfume first, and then I knew. Turned to face her, drenched in
an icy sweat, nearly screaming the house down, until I remembered that at our place
no one can hear you scream—and even if they did, they’d just put their head down
and keep drinking, so there was no point.

11.18pm
. That’s what the clock radio said. I had the
edge of my doona gripped tight
in my hand, about to climb in and get cosy.

But I froze instead—with her staring at me staring at her. It was a Mexican freaking
stand-off between me and a walking dream, with only the length of the bed between
us.

This time, she had a message for me.

In pictures, not words, because Eve doesn’t talk, exactly. She doesn’t have a voice
like we do. It’s more that she just looked at you and you’d
know
what she wanted
because she’d put it straight into your head.

But on that day—the Tuesday—I didn’t understand and refused to look at her while
she showed me:

A school.

A school kid.

A car.

In reply, I simply fumbled my clock radio on and turned it up to maximum volume.
Followed that by jumping into bed and pulling the covers right over my head to block
out
her
, the light, the smell. So scared that I said nothing and did nothing and
eventually, hours later, eons later, one endless silent scream later, she left, taking
the smell of flowers with her.

The third night—the Wednesday—Gran even came in while Eve was actually standing there
giving me her
unblinking, death-ray stare. All the lights were on, the music, even
the fan because it’d been right by my bed and I’d run out of ideas. Everything was
full-blast. I dunno, I think I was trying to
blow
Eve away. Obviously, it wasn’t
working. Nothing about her moved. Nothing about
me
moved. Stalemate.

But then Gran burst through the door and practically stood on top of Eve, demanding
to know why I’d quit helping Cook early
when we’re already two down tonight and really
struggling, Soph, how selfish are you?
She was too cross to see how terrified I was,
that I hadn’t moved out of the position I’d been lying in for so long there was almost
no blood left in my brain.

I unfroze long enough to ask Gran in a funny little voice if she could
smell
anything.

All
I
could smell was that old-fashioned, talcum-powdery smell that Eve always brought
with her like a choking cloud. I hated perfume anyway, and I was coming to hate this
one like
the toughest bitches at Ivy Street
hated some poor kid called Linda Jelly.

If it was possible, Gran looked even madder after I said that and waved her arms
right
through
Eve. Who, to my eyes, looked as solid as the next person. It was only
the way the light hit her that was the faintest bit
wrong
.

‘All I can smell,’ Gran shouted, ‘is bloody lemongrass-infused pot roast! Told Cook
we wouldn’t be able to shift
the stuff, but never mind
me
. I just own the place!
Now stop listening to that headbanging shit, Soph! We can hear it through the goddamn
floor
. Either you get your backside downstairs to help out or you
go to sleep
.’

She stormed off before I could begin to croak:
Help me, please.

So Gran couldn’t
see
Eve or
smell
her. Meanwhile, Eve hadn’t once taken her eyes
off me, not through any of it. She just continued to stand at the foot of my bed,
hands lightly curled at her sides, dark gaze unwavering. She didn’t bother to tell
me again what she wanted, so while I lay there, feeling fainter and fainter, I finally
forced my sluggish brain to really think about what she’d, uh,
told
me so far.

A school. Somewhere.

On a main road. Lots of kids. Little kids.

Something to do with a little blond boy in a navy cap, a light-blue sweatshirt, navy
shorts, white runners and socks.

A red car.

Great
.

Having Gran go off in my face like a firecracker actually helped, in a weird kind
of way, because for the first time I actually
spoke
to Eve. Both of my hands had
fallen asleep and I knew I had to do something. This couldn’t go on. I would probably
die here before I understood what she wanted.

‘Um, I don’t understand,’ I said. Well, more like barely whispered. ‘And I’d really
like to go to bed now, if that’s all right with you. But thanks for, uh, visiting.’