All I Ever Wanted (2 page)

Thank you, Lord. The witch is out. A waft of flowery sweet-sickness reminds me not to underestimate her power.

I cross back.

The other half of our house, where Lola lives, is closed up and silent. Each half is a mirror-image of the other, connected by the lounge-room wall and the outside laundry. Lola lives like a ghost; we never see her, but we hear her through the dividing wall as clearly as if she was in the same room. There's a banged-up coupe in her driveway, but it hasn't moved in months and the weeds have grown up around the tyres. Its coat-hanger aerial is twisted into the shape of a heart.

Our place doesn't look different from the other houses—it doesn't pay to make it pretty. Things that tinkle or shine look out of place; anything too grand provokes spite and vandalism, or worse, theft. The night of my twelfth birthday my new bike was on the porch, glowing neon in the dark; a few days later it rolled past with another kid on it. Sometimes I wish I'd got the delinquent gene so I could have stolen it back, but Mum said
, Let it go, get the old yellow bike out and ride that until you
learn to drive. No one will steal that old thing.
It wasn't the first time I had to let something go.

Heat and dust swirl about, sticking my hair to my lips. A baby cries, but it's not one I know. Someone has sprayed driveway gravel all over the front porch with their tyres and the wind has blown the letterbox lid open. The street looks like the set of a ghost town in an old western movie, but there are eyes everywhere.

I stand at the end of our drive and try to hear over my hammering heart. I listen to the telly babbling and the baby crying and Mum having a one-sided conversation.

‘Yeah, she should be back by now…No, I haven't told her…I will, she's just going through that “It's all about me” stage…I couldn't get it myself, I've got Matt's youngest…They could be out in a week, but it could be a lot longer, it depends on the evidence…I know, I'm worried sick about it…Look, I'll tell you more when I know more…We're doing okay…Gotta go, I'm missing the shopping channel.'

I Russian-squat past the lounge window, but she hears me.

‘That you, Jemima?'

If a scarecrow had a voice, it would sound like Mum's. Dry as wheat and chaff.

In that second, I opt for delusion over confession. I grab an old telephone book off the recycling bin and shove it up my T-shirt as she opens the screen door. She fills the doorway. The short trip from the couch has made her breathless.

‘Orright,' Mum wheezes.

‘All good,' I say, my arms crossed over my chest.

She holds out her hand. ‘There's no need to hide it, Mim.'

‘I know. It's okay. I'll stash it in the pit.'

She gives me an odd look, then nods. ‘Don't open it.'

‘As if.'

It still surprises me that we're eye to eye. There's no ducking her glare any more. I guess I'm all grown up.

I hold the phone book tightly, squeeze through the side gate and follow the driveway out to the back shed. The key is Blu-Tacked to the inside of the mooning gnome, where it's been for years. I unlock the shed and step inside. Gusts of cool air, petrol, old grease and… something else. Like bad meat.

Even though my half-brothers don't live here any more, the shed is full of their stuff. I have to tiptoe around bike parts, paint tins and rusty tools. When I lift things out of my way they leave perfect outlines in the dust.

I'll give it five minutes, long enough for me to go through the motions. Wheel Dillon's Harley off the boards, open up the pit, stash the ‘package'.

I lean against Dill's workbench, trying to slow my breathing. How to get out of this one? To have the object of your affection steal your package and roll your bike into a ditch somehow opens up all kinds of possibilities. I have a week, at best, to recover the package and exact a transcendental revenge. Something more imaginative than prawns in curtain hems.

‘Traitor,' I say, my voice bouncing in the space.

There's movement. A sneaky shuffle, and a sigh that gets swallowed up by the wailing wind. On the floor, in the half-light, I see a wet spot. Then another. Then a patch of green slime. A twisted mat of yellowed grass like a tiny straw doll. Finally, a pile of half-digested meat.

I'm breathing hard but there's something breathing harder. Panting, and the scythe of a tail on the dusty floor. Funny how adrenalin can freeze you. Fight, flight or freeze. I can't move. I know what's on the other end of that tail and it's nearly ripped my face off once before.

Gargoyle is one sick dog. He lies like a newborn calf, helpless and slimy. Without moving my legs, I crane my neck to see. I grab a metal file off a shelf but he's still, apart from his chest and his lunatic eyes. Slow steps, crab-sideways, keeping my back to the bench, holding the file like a lightsaber. Gargoyle glares and growls.

His muscles are all bunched up under his loose skin. This is the creature of my nightmares, the vicious sentinel of Tudor Crescent. I've never seen him this close. He's bigger than I thought, but somehow less scary. Maybe it's his eyes, wise and droopy and red-rimmed, watching every move.

‘Puppy had a bad steak?' I sing-song.

Anyone could have poisoned him. The street would be a whole lot safer if its residents weren't living in fear of Tarrant's monster. Gargoyle's slayer would probably have his image immortalised in bronze. What do I do? No way Mum will let Mick Tarrant in her shed to get his pony. If I tell her Gargoyle's in the shed, if she has to scrape her backside off the couch, she might decide to open the package. I need to keep her away from the pit until I figure out what to do.

The beast stares me down and, just when I think my heart can't take any more, he goes all soft. I put the file back on the shelf and hoist myself onto the workbench. How'd he get in here anyway? He could have crawled through the old doggy-door, but he must have been desperate.

I jump down, fill up a bucket of water and push it over to him with a broom. I do the same with an old blanket that puffs dust and smells like childhood.

He sniffs and blows, then turns away in disgust.

‘Jemima!'

Dog and I both jump. He settles back and whines. Maybe I can ask Benny. He's got healing hands and blackfella cures in little bottles the colour of rust. I'll ask Benny.

‘Jemima!'

‘Yeah, yeah, Jabba,' I mumble.

Our eyes are locked as I back away. ‘Go home,' I tell him. I prop the doggy-door open with a stick, so he can see his freedom.

Mum's back lying on her couch, like leftover dough. The baby I don't know is picking at crumbs on the shagpile carpet, a little monkey with wise eyes and deliberate fingers. Everything in the room faces the television, except the baby.

‘What?'

‘Change the kid, will you? I've got to ring for something.' She nudges a bulging nappy-bag towards me with her foot.

I kneel down. ‘Hello. Hello, baby. Who are you?'

He plucks at the face on my T-shirt with his monkey fingers. His ears are small and crumpled, same as Matt's. I like this one.

‘Oh, Tahnee rang. Said you weren't answering her texts. She'll be here about eight,' Mum says, hitting the speed dial.

I take the baby to my room and let him play with my disco ball. He watches his face split into silvery slices and gives me a gummy grin. I blow a raspberry on his cheek and waggle my ears with my fingers. He does one of those contagious baby belly laughs and dribbles on the floor. I lie on my stomach with my chin in my hands and look at him for a while. Babies will let you do that. He has Matt's eyes—my eyes, too—wide and grey-green with dark flecks and wet-looking eyelashes. Dodd eyes. Ocean eyes, except with the baby's I can see clear to the bottom. I feel a tug of connection but I shake it off because there's no point. He'll be gone soon, like the others.

He smacks the disco ball with a fat hand.

‘Yeah, baaall,' I say and reach for my phone on my bed. Tahnee. Tahnee again. A cryptic text from Tahnee. She never bothers correcting predictive text and her messages read like a poor translation.

Then I notice my box of Lonely Planet books is gone. I'd taken them down from my bookcase and boxed them up because their weight made the shelves sag. I run a quick inventory, but only the box is missing.

Of unkind cuts, this one's made with a blunt knife, then salted.

I know better than to tackle Mum when she's glued to the shopping channel, so I change the baby. The nappy is soaked and reeks of ammonia. I pick it up with some tongs, wrap it in newspaper and leave it on the kitchen table like a prank pass-the-parcel. I stack the baby on my hip. We hover in the kitchen doorway, pretending to be interested in creepy Victorian dolls dressed in doilies, until the segment moves on to power tools.

Mum says, ‘Put the kettle on, Mim.'

‘Where are my Lonely Planet books? The ones in the box next to my bed?'

‘Oh, Mrs Tkautz has them. I gave them to her for her garage sale next Sunday.'

‘You
what
?' I shout. The baby jumps and starts to cry.

She warns me with a look. ‘Calm down. They were in a box. I thought you were finished with them. Anyway, what's the point in reading something you've already read? You read them over and over until you're cross-eyed. Stupid books about other people's adventures.'

As always, I'm torn between love and loathing. ‘I want my
books
.'

‘Well, they're gone. Get over it.'

‘You don't get it, I
need
them.'

Those books are my maps. They show me that there is something else out there; they give me hope. They keep me from going crazy in this place.

‘You'll need more than a pile of books to get away, Mim.'

Sometimes she just knows what's in my head. I'm angry with her, but mostly with myself. I feel so helpless. Like I'm swinging on a pendulum and it's too high and too fast to jump off. I jiggle the crying baby and he burps sour sick onto my shoulder.

‘Oh thanks, that's great. Who
is
this?' I hold him away from me by the armpits and he dangles mid-air.

‘Your nephew.'

‘Another one? By the way, that's the last time I do
your
dirty work.'

She props herself on one elbow. ‘What are you on about?'

‘Pick up your own package next time.'

‘Oh. Oh, excuse me, princess. Give me the baby.' She flaps her hands at me. ‘Give me the bloody baby.'

I put the baby on her chest where he sinks into the quicksand of her.

‘One thing, I ask you to do one thing for me, and you can't even do that without complaining.' She hisses, ‘Go on, piss off. Ingrate.' She's blanking me. Pretending to watch the telly.

My room's too close for escape, so I go out the back. I stick my iPod headphones in and tune out to something soulful and deep. Cooling concrete steps on the back of my legs as the sun ducks below the tin fence. The last whisper of the day. A commuter train passes, almost empty because it's after eight. My chest is tight like I've been crying, but my eyes are dry.

These two wars. The first will play out on the street. There will be phone conversations, a calling-in of favours, maybe an exchange of money. The package will be repossessed. There will be blood and retribution.

The second will be a war of silence. Words can be absent, but with my mother you get the gist of it anyway. She oozes disappointment.

I feel reckless.

I stare at the shed and wonder if the beast is dead.

THREE

I drank champagne for the first and last time two years ago, at Matt's twenty-first. It reminded me of Tahnee: pale, sweet, little bubbles of nothing, and good fun if you're in the mood. She doesn't waste air on formalities. Never hello, or goodbye, or how are you. She skips debate and goes straight to the vote. We've spoken nearly every day for nine years. We first sat next to each other in the classroom when we were seven years old and our lives have run parallel ever since. We lost our teeth at the same time, we swapped clothes, toys, families. We played only with each other, we didn't need anybody else. Shared the same hopes and dreams, told each other everything. Only lately, things have changed.

I hear her barge through the front door, barge into my room and, before I can react, the screen door smacks me on the ridge of my spine.

‘Sorry,' she says and sits on the step. ‘Look at my face.'

I look, but fail to see her point.

She grabs my hand and pulls me up. ‘Let's go in your room. Hey, is your mum wearing a tent? That orange thing she's got on.'

‘It's terracotta, and yes, I know she looks like Uluru.'

My bedroom is actually a sunroom, a tacked-on covered porch with glass slats for windows. In summer it's too hot, and in winter too cold, but the alternative is the room next to Mum's. Even with the slats closed, on a warm night like this, the bugs get in. There are leggy shadows on the ceiling where the mosquitoes lie in wait and frenzied moths spin around the light bulb.

Tahnee poses in front of the small mirror on my wardrobe door. Her skin is pink and shiny in the glare. She has mosquito bites on her neck and a hickey on her shoulder.

‘Notice anything different?' She turns her face from side to side.

I do, but I pretend not to. ‘That was one hell of a mosquito.'

‘How can you not know?' she wails.

I know what she's done. She doesn't look any more like a woman than she did yesterday, but I can tell. She's done it. There are beats of silence and a great gap between us, as if she's been away for a year and come back different.

‘Tell me,' I say, because that's what she wants.

She rants and I listen.

Everything about her is in-your-face, like a pop-up book, all colour and texture and gloss. We used to look so alike most people would take us for sisters, but that was before we sprouted lumps and bumps and curves and stopped wearing matching outfits.