Afterlight (9 page)

‘It’s quite real,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’ I backed slowly away from her towards the
gate; glad I’d got the job done. I was really tired. I wanted to be home in my room
with my doona right up over my nose—even if it meant that I had to have Eve watch
me sleep.

‘And you?’ the woman suddenly croaked, looking up at me, the crucifix like some weird
extension of her right hand. ‘You real?’

The question caught me by surprise and I nodded.

‘Of course I am.’

Too real
, I thought.
Boringly real
.
As real as. Too real for all this.

The woman frowned, studying me so intently her head was tilted to one side. ‘The
one she give this to you, she real, too?’

I didn’t know how to answer that. As I hesitated, the tiny woman bent and snatched
the ring up off the footpath.

As she closed her fingers around that slender band, she burst into noisy tears, hugging
the thing to her chest and rocking on her heels, back and forth, as she wailed and
beat herself with it.

I got the hell out of there as fast as my legs would carry me. I’m no good with grief,
just ask Gran.

The next day, no surprises, I had a cold.

I was still in bed at noon when Biddy Cole rang me again on my mobile to tell me
the astonishing news that
Jordan Haig
had officially been given a week off school
as well.
Effective immediately.

The news made me sit up right away. ‘Why?’ I asked, wondering at the sudden, weird
symmetries in our lives; why his name kept cropping up when before I couldn’t have
bribed anyone to say it in my hearing.

‘Because everywhere he is today totally becomes a walking disaster zone about five
seconds later!’ Biddy said with relish. ‘People are saying either
you’re
doing it
by remote control or
he’s
the one behind the weird stuff that’s been going on and
you’re just the patsy.’

‘I’m not doing anything that doesn’t involve a box of tissues,’ I said with a tissue
stuffed firmly up one nostril. ‘You can quote me on that.’ And I knew Biddy would,
too, being the fastest mouth in the Western world. ‘What do you mean,
disaster zone
?’

Biddy proceeded to list everything that had gone wrong around Jordan Haig since I’d
been banned from school yesterday. ‘He set off the automatic sprinkler system in
the science wing for starters,’ she breathed. ‘Fire engines came.
Three.
’

‘That would be his personal magnetism at work,’ I giggled. ‘Too hot to handle. What
else?’

‘Speaking of which,’ Biddy exclaimed, ‘he then proceeded to set fire to his art class
after
the engines had left! Most of the Year 12 sculptures in the next room went
up in flames. You can imagine they aren’t too happy about
that
. Stav Heliotis is
threatening physical retribution, tatts or no tatts. Plus, mice invaded the staffroom.
People standing on chairs, you name it.’

You could hear the wonder in Biddy’s voice. I sincerely hoped that Mrs McKendry and
her pastel cashmere twin
set had been present for that one.

‘And it doesn’t stop there!’ Biddy breathed. ‘
Two
of the bookshelves in the library
collapsed as he walked by, almost taking out Mr Moore and 7A who were doing a research
project around the other side. The second floor boys’ toilets flooded after Jordan
went in to wash his hands. Stuff like that! Reporters, cops, everything have been
crawling all over. Biggest thing to happen since you pulled that locker stunt.’

‘That wasn’t me,’ I replied, distracted by what I’d heard and forgetting how no one
was supposed to know about that. ‘Jordan was there, too.’

Armed with that added bit of dirt, Biddy rang off. I couldn’t begin to imagine what
people were saying about me, about him, about us. The new wonder twins of Ivy Street.

Shivering, I rolled out of bed in slow motion and shrugged into another jumper before
climbing back under the covers with my mobile phone. I couldn’t seem to get warm.
Hearing news of the mayhem that had struck at school hadn’t helped me feel any better.
What was Eve
up
to?

I switched the tissue to the other nostril and started composing a text message to
Jordan Haig. We’d all had his number for ages, someone got it from someone who got
it from someone else, and we’d all hugged it to ourselves
like a fantasy safety blanket,
but no one had ever been brave enough to use it. Until now. The time for helpless
drooling was over. He was mixed up in this as much as I was.

So I wrote:
What gives? Storkie

Resisting the urge to add
x
because what right did I have?

Jordan was a smart guy; his take on things had to be worth at least twice whatever
Today Tonight
had to say about it. Not that I wouldn’t be glued to the set by 6.30pm
to hear the latest. After a long moment of hesitation, I sent it.

Almost immediately, Jordan replied:
Got my own problems. Her name’s Monica but it
seems you call her Eve

Well, that was enough to get me straight out of bed and into my clothes, cold or
no cold. Jordan would know what to do. If Eve really was on his case, then he was
somehow part of the solution, and it was time to lay a certain ghost to rest.

8

I zipped myself into a mangy velour hoodie and waited. I’d sent him another text,
almost immediately, that had said, simply:
I need you to help me end this

He didn’t reply. After an hour, I gave up pacing around my bedroom and headed down
to the poky broom cupboard behind the Public Bar that Gran calls ‘The Office’. No
one would see me in there, least of all Dirty Neil—who’d practically set up house
in our fine establishment since I’d been sent home from school, spilling his guts
about me to anyone who would buy him a drink. I could pretend to do something useful
for Gran while I waited for Jordan to get back to me, if he ever did.

After precisely seventeen minutes of bookkeeping, I
gave up and moped back upstairs
to my bedroom to check my mobile. Still no message. So that was it then.

Putting the phone in my pocket, I opened my door to Jordan Haig just standing there,
on the threshold. He looked so good. Angry, but good.

Part of me—the mad part—wanted to throw my arms around him the same way I’d done
to Floyd Parker. But the rest of me just blushed horribly; hot blood racing up into
my neck and my face, beating its familiar path right up into my hairline. I was sure
he could feel the heat from where he was standing because he took a step back, like
I was a malfunctioning blast furnace.

‘How’d y-you get in?’ I stammered, shoving loose hair out of my shiny, red-nosed
face. In no one’s wildest imagination could Jordan be classed as a regular at this
pub. If he were, I would only ever leave the premises in cases of dire national emergency.

Jordan just stepped inside and shut the door. I’d like to say I was equally cool.
But instead—like some demented game show hostess—I gestured wildly at him to sit
down, only to remember that the only place to sit was on my unmade bed and that it
was currently festooned in dirty tissues. My inner thermostat kicked up another couple
of notches and my skin tone inched towards
magenta crush
.

Wisely, Jordan chose to remain standing. Though what he said next made
me
sit down.

‘I just said I was your boyfriend,’ he shrugged. ‘They let me in, no problems.’

I felt all the blood in my head flow the other way and maybe the room wobbled for
a second. If only it were true. That he was here, just for me. I could die then.
Die happy.

Ghost
, I reminded myself sluggishly.
That’s why we’re here, remember? Focus.

Jordan looked like a rock god from head to toe in his bashed-up black leather jacket,
worn out tee and denim shirt, skin-tight black jeans and black creepers. He had what
looked like two kilograms of silver and onyx strung on narrow leather bands around
his wrists. Focus? I could hardly think in a straight line.

I finally croaked, ‘She always comes to me at night, Eve. She makes me do things.’
My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else who was standing really, really
far away. ‘How am I able to see her? How is it you can see her, too, when no one
else can?’

Jordan shrugged. ‘Been asking myself the same questions. No answers presenting themselves.’

He glanced around my room, taking in every dog-eared band poster and unwashed pair
of undies lying on the floor before returning his cool gaze to me. ‘Maybe it’s extra
muscle she needs,’ he said. ‘Or you’re not doing the job properly and she’s decided
to call in a professional.’ His laugh was like a bark. ‘She’s showing me this city
place. Some kind of bar.
Wants
me
to go there. She’s quite…insistent.’

I felt strangely hurt that Eve had somehow traded up. I mean, I would, if it was
a choice between me and him, but it still rankled. ‘It can never wait you know,’
I heard myself say in that thin, unhappy stranger’s voice, not sure why he’d come
all this way to tell me himself personally. ‘Better hop to it.’

‘So I understand,’ Jordan replied, mouth curving up into a half-smile that momentarily
banished the anger in his eyes. ‘But since I’ve inherited your little problem and
I need filling in, you wanna…go see? Car’s downstairs.’

I couldn’t help the stupid leap of hope in my chest. One day, one day when I was
cool, or old, or a hundred times better and more different than I was now, I’d look
back on this moment of wild and impossible hope, and throw my head back and laugh.
It represented an extra—what—hour in his company, tops? But Jordan Haig and I had
to be somewhere
together
, today. I looked down sharply to hide the irrational surge
of joy I was feeling.

‘Coolio,’ I mumbled finally. ‘Lead the way.’

As I was scrambling to my feet, Gran suddenly barged in like a pocket whirlwind.
She swelled up to almost twice her size when she saw Jordan standing over me, not
bothering to wait for an introduction, or an explanation.

‘
Who are you?
’ she screeched in his face. ‘She doesn’t
have
a boyfriend.’

Without pausing to breathe, Gran rounded on me next, going a hundred miles an hour
like she does when she’s stressed. ‘What does he want? An exclusive? A photo? Did
he hurt you? You invite him?’

My face changed colour a million times then settled on just plain mottled. I felt
about two years old, even though I’ve been able to rest both my elbows comfortably
on the top of Gran’s head since like, uh, 2012.

‘Gran,’ I mumbled. ‘This is Jordan Haig, a…a guy from my year. We’re just going out…for
a while.’

The words
for a while
came out sounding funny because the sudden look of hope on
Gran’s face before she quickly swallowed it down was painful to see. She’d looked
the way I was feeling. I’d have to have a quiet talk with her later, let her down
gently.

But Jordan didn’t help things by saying, ‘Being away from Soph, not being able to
see her…has almost killed me, Mrs Teague.’

I think Gran’s breath caught in her throat the same instant mine did. It wasn’t what
he’d just said, which my short-term auditory memory was having trouble processing
because it was the smoothest-sounding lie I’d ever heard. It was that he hadn’t called
me
Storkie
or
Stork
the way everyone else did around Gran when they were asking for
me. He’d called me by my real name. I didn’t think he’d even known it.

He
was
good. So good, I almost believed him.

‘It’s an honour, Mrs Teague,’ Jordan added, politely sticking out his right hand,
silver jangling. ‘I’ve been asking to meet you, but you know how she is.’ He rolled
his eyes.

Gran grasped Jordan’s hand, glaring up into his face as they shook firmly. As she
looked him over, her expression softened. I could tell she liked him, even though
her gaze narrowed momentarily when she clocked the edge of the thin, dark tattoo
winding around his right wrist, still visible under all the leather and silver and
stone.

But Dad had had one himself. A big Asian dragon with claws and bulging eyes that
had worked its way down between his shoulder blades and seemed to blur at the edges,
fading as he grew older. The Teagues were no strangers to tattooed men.

‘Well, Soph,’ Gran said, too cheerfully and loudly after a moment in which I caught
her remembering, too, ‘you might finally have found yourself a keeper. Enjoy yourselves,
darlings, you deserve a bit of time out.’

She ushered us protectively down the back stairs and through the kitchen past Cook
before I’d even realised I was moving. At the fire exit, she pushed down on the panic
bar securing the fire exit from the inside and propped the door open with her hip.

For a moment, she just stared up at me, looking like she wanted to say something.
Instead, she reached up and
pushed my impossible hair back from my forehead then
hastily swatted Jordan and me out onto the garbage-slick bluestone cobbles of Sancerre
Lane before Jordan could change his mind about taking me out.