Skeletal (15 page)

My eyes closed in relief. I sat back in my chair.

‘She’ll be expelled though. You can rest assured on that one.’

I kept my eyes closed. ‘But you just said you don’t have any proof.’

‘I can manufacture evidence for a school board that I can’t do for the police. That girl’s not coming back here, not into
my
school. Even if it gets me fired.’ She sat back in her own chair and stared levelly at me. The bell rang outside.

‘You’d better get to homeroom. There’ll be enough talk without you skipping class as well.’

I nodded and headed off. Confused. Grateful.

Coroner’s Court 2014

The coroner is calling a halt to all proceedings for the day. When Ms Pearson steps away from the bench she looks half-dazed. As though she’s truly gone back in time, and is struggling to return.

People shuffle out, no one talking, no one together. Disparate souls brought into a group for one purpose only, and disconnecting as that purpose was tucked away for the day, ready to be picked up again tomorrow.

My mother moves slow, looks old, but her tread is light. She doesn’t have a drag in her heel as she had done when she was drinking; her speed isn’t slowed as she positions each foot carefully to avoid a stumble, her balance swooping away.

The room is empty.

I look around the evacuated space. The coroner’s court had become a community centre hall once more. All airs of authority gone.

There are footfalls on the steps outside and someone ventures along the corridor.
A cleaner?
As the steps grew closer I pick up on the gait and know who’s approaching.

The Grey Man enters the room, walks to the front bench, and takes a seat opposite the coroner’s. His head held high, his eyes staring straight ahead.

‘Hey Daina,’ he says. His voice is low but not quiet. It carries throughout the room, echoes off the high ceiling. I could imagine its vibrations, almost see them waving through the air. ‘You’ve been missing for a while.’

True. So true. I’d been missing for a while. Not as long as I would be missing of course. I was going to be missing for the rest of everyone’s lives, and their progeny’s lives, and theirs, and theirs. There were millennia yet to go when I would be missing, will be missing, would be missing, was missing. Eons.

‘I never meant for things to turn out this way, I hope you know that.’ He pauses, and then picks up again, his voice a low growl. ‘I’m sorry that I led you into trouble. I couldn’t foresee any of this happening.’

He shifts his weight on the hard bench, and then stands. He twists his grey hat between his grey hands, and I can see where his knuckles are deformed from arthritis. Odd that I’d never seen that before. Everything else about him was the same. The pressure he exerts on his hat must cause him a great deal of pain. But he still exerts it. ‘I thought you were ready for this. I thought you’d be grown up enough to handle it.’

Because everyone knows fourteen year-old girls are mature beyond their years, right?

‘I thought that if anything went wrong I’d be able to step in and help. I’m so sorry.’

He turns, a neat spin on his back foot that’s almost a dance move. Grace executed. He slides his finger down the crease in his hat and then gently places it on his head. Tipped at an angle, of course.

His footsteps echo out from the floorboards as he walks from the room.

***

Daina 2004

Michelle didn’t come back to school. We waited for a few weeks, expecting always to see her face back in homeroom, or hear from a teacher, or on the school grapevine, but no rumours came to fruition, and then all talk of her subsided altogether.

She wasn’t expelled. Or excluded, as they were starting to call it for some reason. I know that Ms Pearson threatened her with it, but
that
much we definitely would pick up on the grapevine. We were teenagers, not shut-ins.

The longer the time passed from the events of the party-in-the-park night, and the lower the expectation that Michelle would return, bent on yet another form of revenge, the easier it was for me to settle back into a rhythm.

At first, the idea of continuing a friendship with Vila, Susie, Tracy and Mel seemed like it would be too much of an ask. It would be bad enough if they straight up didn’t like me and let me know, but to keep up the pretence of friendship all the while in league with the enemy was too much of a betrayal.

But I forced the feeling down, and continued on. Just the same as I forced the suffocation and bile down when Paul passed me by in the corridor and gave my arm a friendly squeeze as if nothing had happened. As if we were just friends passing by.

Forced the feelings down, and hope that one day – soon - they would go away altogether.

The rape clinic had given me the morning after pill on site, and they’d also taken blood and smears for testing. I called them back within a week for the first results, and was informed that if anything changed in the intervening six months they’d contact me.

I took protection from my “friends” as well. I didn’t take any food from them that wasn’t professionally sealed, and I never shared food or drink once I’d opened it. Mum’s shopping habits didn’t change, liquid first, food second, so I went hungry a lot of the time, but that was preferable. At times when my stomach growled with emptiness it even started to feel good, to feel clean. I didn’t want anything to ever be in my body again except the things that I put there. Control. That was what I took back. Control.

And the main impetus to do any of this was the Grey Man. That was the name my mind insisted on calling him, and in lieu of a formal introduction that was going to stay. His calm delivery of what I should do, and what I should avoid, and hints at something – something important – coming, were the memories that propelled me out of bed the day after Michelle’s art gallery showing, and the day after that, and the day after that.

I had only met the man once, and that at my lowest ebb, but it felt important that I be ready to follow his instructions. I wanted to please him. Like he was my Dad and I wanted to make him proud. If that was what this feeling was. I certainly didn’t have any actual experience to draw on for that comparison.

I turned another year older. My birthday passed without recognition in my household, or out. I couldn’t bring myself to tell people at school, and I couldn’t be bothered to remind my mother. She’d only forget again. She was getting worse and worse at keeping track of anything.

I sloped home from school in a minor sulk, and that was when the Grey Man fell into step beside me. He handed me a parcel.

‘What’s this?’

‘Open it and see.’

I shook the packet instead. There was a soft rattle inside it, like sticks wrapped in cotton banging against each other.

‘Or, you could just shake it until it breaks,’ he added.

He kept his gaze fixed on the footpath ahead of him. There was no overt moves to show that he was paying any sort of attention to his surroundings, but when my foot caught from looking at him instead of the ground, his arm shot out to steady me.

‘What’s it for?’ I asked, still leaving it unopened.

‘Birthday. It is your birthday, isn’t it?’

I don’t know that it improved matters that a stranger knew this, but my nearest and dearest didn’t.

I slid my forefinger under the corner of the brown paper that wrapped it. Brown paper. This guy didn’t understand the art of wrapping; I had paper still folded neatly with accompanying bows from artful presents bestowed upon me in past years. For a while the idea of Christmas presents was synonymous with unwrapping them with care so the paper and decorations could be used again next year. The package had to be good; the present was usually from the $2 shop and lacking.

‘You can just tear it, you know. I won’t be offended.’

I tore the paper back, and revealed a Warehouse gift card and three test tubes nestled in cotton wool in a windowed cardboard box.

‘Um, thanks,’ I managed. The glass tubes looked like the ones we’d used in science experiments at school, not that we did experiments often. Every time we fired up a Bunsen burner the teacher, Mr Cooley, looked like he was about to have an anxiety attack. ‘I’m sure I’ll put them to good use.’

‘The gift card is for your birthday. The other is for a little job I need your help with.’

I flicked the gift card over – there was an amount of $50 scrawled on the inside of the envelope. ‘Thanks!’

‘Well, it’s not every day you turn fifteen, is it?’

I could get some new clothing. Maybe even some shoes. Maybe buy a new calculator and replace the one I’d stolen so I didn’t have it in the back of my head. Maybe that was the magic act that would release the terrible run of events since then.

Lists started to form in my head until the Grey Man went, ‘Ahem,’ and I remembered there was something else.

‘What do you want me to do?’

‘That friend of yours, Vila.’

‘She’s not my friend,’ I said. I thought my tone would emerge as anger, I’d been trying to convince myself that was what I felt. Instead my voice came out sad.

He gave me a squeeze on the shoulder. ‘I know. I’m sorry. But if you can stand to be around her for a week or so longer, that may not matter.’

‘Why?’

He stayed silent, and I put the gift card into my back pocket, and stowed the test tubes in my backpack before slinging it back over one shoulder. He still hadn’t answered. ‘Why?’ I tried again. ‘Is it because of her father?’

‘How much do you know about him?’

I shrugged and tried to think back over the first weeks of friendship. Before the park. ‘I’ve only met him once, but Susie said he does something in medical research. At least I think that’s what she said.’

‘Anything else?’

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t spend any time with him. Her mother is around a lot, but not her dad.’

‘Well, you may need to try. I want you to be in the house at the same time he is. There’s something I’ll need you to get if you can, but you’ll need to be in contact with him before you can even try.’

‘What do you want me to get?’

It was his turn to shake his head. ‘First things first. Get into the house at the same time he is. Take notice, of everything. I’ll be in touch.’

And he was gone.

***

I didn’t want to phone Vila. True, I’d been hanging around with her at school as though nothing was the matter, but meeting her alone without distraction was a different story. I wasn’t good on the phone at the best of times, not being able to see the person I was talking to was hard for me. Disembodied voices freaked me out.

So I decided to just drop by that evening. After all, what was the worst that she could do? Turn me away? So what. I could come back home where I wanted to be, and still be able to say I’d tried.

But when I knocked on the door it wasn’t Vila who opened it, it was her mother.

I could hear Vila. She seemed to be intent on yelling something to the entire world. But she was doing it from another room. Her own, by the direction of it.

‘Daina, how nice to see you,’ her mother exclaimed and pulled me through the door. Her eyes were swollen and her cheeks were flushed. Another screaming match with her daughter.

I tried to backpedal – if Vila saw me now she would be
pissed
, but I was pulled further forward instead.

‘Vila. Vila come down. Your friend is here.’

The scream from above cut off. I smiled at Vila’s mother, and she gestured toward a seat and then walked off into the kitchen.

Well, this wasn’t awkward at all.

Instead of sitting down, I walked to the base of the stairs. I couldn’t hear Vila moving down to greet me. Maybe I should give her a few minutes to get herself sorted.

I turned in the opposite direction to the kitchen and walked out of the lounge. There was a corridor with two doors branching off. One looked to be a laundry, the other an office.

My heart started to beat faster as I moved closer to the office. Don’t be stupid, I chided myself. They left you alone down here. You’re just filling in time.

The Grey Man had told me that I knew why he’d picked me. I didn’t, and now I wondered if he’d mistaken me for someone else. Someone brave, someone who wasn’t a complete screw-up, someone who would be able to force themselves to turn the corner into a room.

I forced myself to turn the corner.

The room was empty of people, but there was a shuffle of papers covering the desk. There was a briefcase also. I walked closer on tiptoes that felt like they were made of glass, and tested the latch nearest me to see if it would pop up. It did.

My heart was now a triphammer in my chest. I could see pulses in my vision from the force of the bloodflow. I felt sick.

I popped open the second latch and pulled the case wide open.

There were more papers, a latched box. A stain leaked from one of the fabric envelopes sewn into the top.

Footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. I pulled the lid closed, the snap as the latches refastened sounding as loud as a starter’s pistol. A man popped his head around the door just as I stepped back from the desk and turned toward the photo on the wall.

‘Ah, hello?’

I jumped. It was half-feigned, half a welcome release of tension.

‘Hi Mr Fa'amoe, I was just waiting for Vila to come downstairs. This is a lovely photo.’

He looked behind him, frowned, and then shook his head. ‘I know I left the door open, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t come in here. This is my private office.’