Yellow (19 page)

April 19, 1979

It said in the paper that McGinty's wife had died. I was making Weet-Bix and went to grab the sugar but Ray swiped it off me and said not to add sugar because my pimples were bad as it was, but he doesn't give a damn about my spots, he was just being a bastard and wanted my Weet-Bix to taste bad. Then Mum snapped at me for being so emotional, but how can you be angry with someone for feeling emotions? Ray was reading the paper, guarding the sugar bowl. He was talking about McGinty's birthmark in the picture in the paper, he said, that bloke's brave, going out in public with that face. I don't think he's brave. I think the monster half of his face is the true half, not the other way around. McGinty yelled at me once when I was little and I had shoplifted a toothbrush because I'd accidentally dropped mine in the toilet and Mum said I should just wash it under the tap and it would be fine and she wouldn't give me money to buy another one. The shop owner caught me and then Mum took me to the police station to give me a fright. When McGinty gave me a talking to his unmarked side turned purple too, he waved it right in my face. He shouldn't have been so mean to a little kid. I cried, and from then on Mum used to threaten to take me to McGinty if I played up. The kids at school today were saying McGinty murdered his wife. One of them swears to have seen it happen, he said he was at the scrap pile and saw it through the window, he swears he saw McGinty strangling Margery after a fight. I believe it. Judy rolled her eyes and said to leave the poor bloke alone, he just lost his wife. I know that she can't see who McGinty really is. She doesn't notice the dark side of people. I mean, she's friends with me, isn't she?

July 15, 1979

Judy and I found a baby Indian myna bird today, it must have fallen out of its nest in the storm. We took it back to my place to find a shoebox to keep it in, and Ray took one look at it and broke its neck in front of us. He said they were bloody pests, an introduced species, and he wished he could kill the whole lot of them. Maybe it's true but there are better ways to go about it. Judy cried and left, and I'm pretty sure she let out the air from the tyres of Ray's truck. He thinks it's me who did it, so he hit me again, gave me a shiner. Or maybe he didn't think it was me, and just wanted an excuse to feel my face against his knuckles. Call me a loser. Mum just smoked her cigarettes and watched, there's a pile of butts on the front lawn from where she throws them from the patio. They have her pink lipstick on the end. She took his side again, she always does, she laughs sometimes when he puts me down and just makes goggle eyes at him. Ray wants me out of the house and I think Mum does too. How much of a loser must you be when even your mum doesn't like you? I think that maybe a few times in my life I've been happy, but I forget what happy feels like. I forget what okay feels like. I forget.

October 4, 1979

I had a dream last night. In my dream I was standing in my living room and I lit a match, and I looked at its shadow cast against the wall, and it was strange to look at it because only the matchstick had a shadow, the flame didn't. I was holding the matchstick and I could see my own shadow too, all slouched like I'm a walking question mark, then Judy was beside me, but the strange thing was that she didn't have a shadow following her. I looked at the place where her shadow should have laid, next to mine, but I realised that Judy's the type of girl who glows, she throws out her own light, and I realised that was the difference between us. That would always be the difference between us. She looked where I was looking and she asked me what that dark thing was that was following me around, and I didn't know how to explain it to her, that my shadow was attached to me. She crouched down, examining it, all confused like she hadn't seen anything like it before, then she went and grabbed a Chux from the kitchen and she tried to scrub it away, like she could fix it that easily. She couldn't, of course. I was so embarrassed, just standing there as she was scrubbing and scrubbing by my feet. Evening was creeping in and my shadow was just getting longer and longer and Judy's knuckles were turning white from the strain of trying to make it go away and I didn't know what to do. All I could think to do was to throw the match, so I threw it, and the curtains caught alight. The fire gnashed at the cheesecloth curtains and then flames started eating everything around us. Judy stopped her scrubbing and she was scared, but I wasn't. I was glad for the flames. I wanted to burn everything down.

November 1, 1979

I'm so scared. I don't think Judy mistakes my blackness for seriousness anymore. I think the darkness frightens her. When I tell her about Nietzsche and nihilism she doesn't think I'm philosophical and deep anymore, or maybe she does, but deep like a black hole she doesn't want to fall down. I don't know how much longer she's gonna stay friends with me. I feel like the boogie monster who lurks in the shadows. Lark's sniffing around her like a stupid golden retriever. I want to throw a ball whenever he's around, make him chase after it. Make him go away.

December 11, 1979

I'm in love with Judy. I've always been in love with her. She's started seeing Lark, and he's an idiot, and she's so much smarter than that, but I think she's had enough of my black moods. She wants sunlight and Lark is this stupid salty dose of vitamin D. I hate him. I'm gonna make her love me. I'm gonna make her love me.

December 12, 1979

I went around to Judy's place but she was heading off down the street and told me to beat it, not in a mean way, she just said she was off to see Lark, that she'd see me tomorrow. I asked her what she saw in him and she sighed and checked her reflection in a car window and said to me, what every other girl in the school sees, stupid. It killed me. He doesn't love her like I do. I told her that. He doesn't love you like I do. It's the first time I said those words to her. She looked like she wanted to bat the words away like flies. Then I kissed her. I grabbed her and I kissed her, desperately, like I wanted to swallow her whole. She threw me off her and wiped her mouth with her forearm and she was so angry at me. I don't like you in that way, Boogie, so back off! She screamed at me. It's like I had handed her my heart and she just threw it so far, then she looked down at her hands and my blood was all over them and she was angry at me for the mess. We have a connection, I yelled at her, desperate. No we don't, she said, I just feel sorry for you, like I did for that stupid baby Indian myna bird. Just leave me alone, okay? And her words were like poison. I felt like I was going to retch when they poured into my ears. You'll regret that, I told her. She rolled her eyes. Uh huh. And she left me. She left me black and broken and sick to go drink milkshakes with Lark. I want to die. I want to die. I want to die. I want to die.

December 12, 1979

I want everything to break. I want everything to be as broken as me. Ray came into my bedroom and he saw the broken mirror, the broken photo frames, the broken radio, and he smacked me on the head and told me to get the hell out, I wasn't wanted there, and Mum told me to get the hell out, I wasn't wanted there, and I've taken the hint. Nobody wants me. I am a human shadow.

JUDY YOU STUPID BITCH, IF YOU'RE READING THIS – IT'S ALL YOUR FAULT!

It's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault it's all your fault!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The mattress under Mum's head is wet with tears now, and it's me who's holding her.

‘He left the diary on my windowsill, open at the last page. It wasn't until the next day that it made any sense to me. He hung himself, Kirra.'

She says those words so softly but they still punch me. They knock the air right out of me, and I start shivering now.

‘They found him swinging from the big tree next to the phone box, I think it's been cut down now. I was at school when they told me, and I couldn't hear anything they said after that because the whole world sounded like I had a shell against my ear, all whooshed. They asked if I was all right, but I wasn't all right, and I collapsed, right there in the middle of the quadrangle. And I swear, love, something broke inside of me when I hit the floor. Not a bone. Not something as inconsequential as a bone. Bones can be fixed.'

She wipes her eyes with the faded bedspread.

‘So I was lying on the ground and I couldn't get back up again, and it was Lark who came and picked me up from the concrete in the quadrangle and he was the one who carried me home in his arms.'

‘It wasn't your fault, Mum,' I repeat, again and again. ‘You were just kids, Boogie did it himself, you couldn't have fixed the blackness. It's not your fault.'

Slowly, her sobs subside.

‘I can never forget, you know? Except for when I drink so much I can't remember anything at all. Boogie was the first person to see me for who I really am. A screw up. A bloody disappointment to myself and everyone around me. There are so many bloody things in my life that I regret.'

‘Do you regret me?' I ask her. ‘You could have been someone if it wasn't for me.'

She cups my chin with her own small hands and tips my face upwards so I have to stare right into her leaking, pale eyes.

‘You are the only good thing that's ever happened to me, Kirra Barley. Don't you ever think otherwise. Never.'

And I believe her, because then she lets my chin free and she knots her fingers with mine and she's holding onto my hand like she wants to keep me safe.

‘There are people you can speak to, they can help you,' I whisper to her. ‘Things don't have to stay this way, things can get better.'

She doesn't let me go as I pat her forehead and shush her, and slowly we both fall asleep, our blonde hair tangling together.

I dream about broken necks, and old diaries, and the phone box down at South Beach. I wake with a start. It's six a.m. and all I can hear is Mum's breathing, the cardboard I'd gaffer taped to the window has flattened all the other sounds. Carefully, I slip out from under her arm and I click the door shut behind me. She doesn't wake up. I run all the way down the street and across the bridge, down to where Boogie is. I'm not even tired, the anger is coiling inside of me, ready to spring.

He's there when I pick up the phone.

‘You lied to me!' I scream at him.

‘I never lied. I'm . . . I'm the only person who understands you . . .' he stutters.

‘Cut the crap, Booger,' I snarl.

‘My name is
Boogie
!' he snarls back.

‘Your name
isn't
Boogie. It's Robert Granger. Or Bobby. Or Booger. My
mum
was the only one who ever called you Boogie.'

‘Judy was the only one who ever mattered,' he spits back, his voice cold.

I laugh now, that manic, awful laugh. It tears at my throat and leaves an ugly metallic taste in my mouth.

‘Oh, right. And look how you treated her! You promised me you wouldn't haunt me. Remember condition number three? No haunting! But you've haunted me my whole life, through my mother, because of that message you left her in your diary! You haunted both of us, and you broke her so badly!' I scream at him. I'm crying now. Worse than crying. It's like my body is more sobs than flesh. Those sobs seem solid. Boogie's silent for a while, and I think my crying is so loud that it's echoing. It's not until a few minutes have passed that I realise that the echo I can hear is Boogie. He's crying too.

‘I couldn't think straight, from all the pain,' he says, his voice strangled through the sobs. ‘I didn't want to break her, I just wanted her to understand how I felt . . .'

The rage springs loose from inside of me as the sky starts to bleed red through the softening dark.

‘Well done. You transferred that pain pretty damned well! Bravo! And what was the whole bullshit about McGinty? The doctors told me that Margery had a heart attack running for the bus, they could prove it. What the hell was that flashback you showed me?'

Boogie stutters again.

‘It . . . it . . . I wasn't lying. I was certain that had happened. McGinty's a monster, you know. Everyone knows that. Just look at him.'

‘You were certain, or you imagined it, the way you imagined you were dark haired and popular and handsome? Tell me the
truth
, Boogie!'

He makes a strangled sort of sound.

‘Real life is full of fakes and bullshit, Kirra! What you can imagine . . . that's the closest thing to truth there is.'

I slam the receiver against the wall and return it to my ear.

‘So why the hell did you get me to do all those things for you, to find those bloody clues that never existed? I stalked McGinty, and swam out to the bombies for you, and dug in the sand dunes that almost collapsed on top of me. You told me that would free you, Boogie! I almost died for nothing!'

His voice is small and cracked when he replies.

‘That was the point,' he whispers. ‘I'm so lonely here, and you're so much like Judy, you have that same glow. You glow yellow, Kirra. I'm so lonely here I could die.'

He makes a sad, snorty laugh at his own black joke, and I drop the receiver from my ear so it hangs limply from the cord. I watch it sway softly, and it reminds me of Boogie, hanging from his neck.

It hits me.

Boogie never wanted me to help him.

He wanted me there with him.

I double over and vomit all over the floor of the booth.

As I start to walk home the phone rings plaintively after me.

How dare he.

How bloody
dare
he.

I turn to face the sound.

‘Go to hell!' I scream at him.

I've never meant those words so literally in my life.