Yellow (9 page)

The next few days pass by in a cloud of chalk dusk and the smell of old textbooks. Noah's gone back to pretending I don't exist, and Willow's by my side, cracking dry asides while Cassie and the others eye us warily. I know they're watching us, trying to figure out their next game plan. As two united targets, we're harder to strike and I know this ceasefire is a temporary respite as they regroup and try to figure us out, but I appreciate it all the same. I know the lull won't last. Even Damien has begun to call Cassie ‘Nipples', and she's exuding a hair-trigger intensity that Sasha and Tara are bearing the brunt of. I know the lick of revenge isn't far away.

Lunch breaks. We wander through the quadrangle and a chip comes flying through the air and bounces off Willow's forehead. An ibis has wandered in from the bush to poke its long nose through a rubbish bin, having completely forgotten that it was once worshipped by Egyptian kings and it should be ashamed. Seeing the chip, the ibis flaps down to snatch it from her feet, and we jump back from the ugly thing. Cassie laughs.

‘What's the matter, Willow? I thought you liked taking our scraps? Maybe your new nickname should be Ibis? Hi Kirra!'

I'm the scraps.

Another chip comes flying, and we duck.

Willow picks up the chip and throws it back, but Lou valiantly steps forward to take the bullet for Cassie.

Use the words, Kirra, I think.

Use the words that draw blood.

I try to think of my practice from the other night, but something stops me. I have a block in my vocal cords, like a strainer, and only soft things can come out.

Use the words, Kirra!

‘Kirra loves birds, doesn't she?' heckles Lou, and the whole bunch of them are squawking at me again, like they did when we had The Circle. Willow flicks her coffee hair and loops her arm around mine, walking me away from them. When we're far enough away, she leans over to my ear, and with a conspiratorial arch of the eyebrows she tells me – ‘I was in love with Omar, too.' With those seven words the shame from the last two years shrugs off me, and a small smile tiptoes back onto my face.

‘He was pretty lovable, huh?'

She winks back at me. ‘Hells yeah, sweet dollface child.'

And we laugh, talking about hooded eyes that always look like they're dreaming and white patches in tangled black hair.

Our last period is science. After class I wait behind as everyone files out. The teacher had leant in too close when he was explaining the Bunsen burners, and his beard is patchy from where the flames had singed the end of it. The room still smells like burnt hair. He's packing up the Bunsen burners, oblivious to me, when I clear my throat loudly.

‘Excuse me . . .'

He jumps, then sees me.

‘Crystal!'

‘Ummm, it's Kirra.'

I've been in his class for two years.

‘Of course, Kirra, what's up little dude?'

He sits on one of the desks, swinging his legs so I can see his mismatched socks poking out through his too-short trousers. The other day has been playing on my mind, the whole idea that I'd have to go out to South Beach again, to the back of the reef. I can't forget how it was out there, underneath the waves, being throttled by blue, and how strong the current was all around me. Boogie says he's still there, but how could he know for sure? A reef shark could have eaten him up before I was even born. I pick at my fingernails.

‘I have a science question I want to ask you . . .'

‘Shoot away, Crystal – I mean Kirra.'

I can't look him in the eye.

‘If a body was dumped in the water near South Beach, how long would it take to decompose?'

The teacher mulls this over.

‘Well, it depends greatly on the placement of the bones. Salt water itself won't dissolve bones, so if the bones are deep enough, where there isn't much water movement, or if it gets covered in silt on the bottom of the ocean, it could last thousands of years.'

‘What if it was weighed down somewhere really shallow, like, on the reef?'

The teacher considers this.

‘Well, that shallow, the ocean currents will erode it away, like the sea does to rock. And then you have to take into account the microbes that cause decay, then the predatory animals that are accustomed to feeding on bone. If you're lucky, twelve years. But even a weighted body will float to the surface in three or four days, and if it's at South Beach reef, the current would dump it onto the shore after that. If it wasn't eaten by the reef sharks first.'

That means Boogie's body isn't there anymore.

Shit.

How can I help him now?

The teacher looks at me from behind his beard.

‘So if you have a body you need to dump, don't do that, little dude. What you should do is get hydrofluoric acid to dissolve the body in. It's corrosive stuff. But make sure you use a plastic tub and not a bathtub, because plastic's one of the only things it won't corrode, and you don't want to make a mess of a ceramic bathtub, do you?'

He winks at me.

‘Good luck with it all.'

I'm just staring at him now.

‘Ummm, thanks?'

As I leave he's tapping on the glass tank again, talking to the lab rats.

I meet up with Willow out the front of school. We walk into town, it's a pretty walk, over the hill and through the area where the people worth talking to live. Frangipanis toss their pink and yellow blossoms across the lawns in wild abandon and seagulls wheel about in the sky. Willow pops a frangipani behind her ear and lights up a cigarette, and our conversations float past the porch railings strewn with drying swimmers, and when we reach the main strip of town our laughter bellyflops into the waves across the street. I feel good. We wander into the library. I like it there. The librarian is this little old lady with hair like clouds, and a face that looks like a bleached prune. I've known her my whole life, and she's always got good recommendations.
To Kill a Mockingbird
and
Catcher in the Rye
were the two latest she'd set aside for me to read. They were the kind of books that stick with you, like the words have glue on them, and they don't leave you, even long after the books have been finished and returned. Like I said, I like reading. It's the closest thing I have to escaping my life.

‘Kirra, dear! How lovely you've come. I have a book I put aside just for you!'

‘Thank you, Mrs Darnell.'

She smiles, that really genuine sort of smile that not many people have, the kind that makes the dusty, dark little library look as bright as the beach across the road. Willow's browsing through the aisles, her hand trailing the spines of the books. I love the way that all the books have different coloured spines, it makes the place look like a wall of rainbows. Mrs Darnell hobbles back with a book for me –
The Bell Jar
, by someone called Sylvia Plath.

‘This one here, it might be a little old for you, but it was your mother's favourite when she was your age.'

She smiles that smile, which kills me, it's so sweet.

‘She used to come in here all the time like you do, with that little ginger friend of hers, always following like a puppy dog. Robert was his name, or Robby, or something like that,' she natters on. ‘You remind me of her so much, you know? Except for those eyes of yours, you're a clone.'

I remind her of my mother?

Jesus, no.

It's enough to make a person take up drinking, ironically, the sheer horror of turning out like her.

‘How is Judy, by the way? Your mother, I mean. Still charming all the town?' Mrs Darnell asks innocently. She obviously doesn't get out enough to hear the gossip.

I bite my bottom lip. I can't lie, my eyes will dob on me, but it never seems right to air your dirty laundry. Family's family, as much as you wish you didn't share their DNA. I look beyond her thick, round glasses and into her eyes, which are so cloudy they're almost no colour at all, like they've just melted into the colour of kindness.

‘Judy's Judy,' I finally reply, with my best attempt of a smile, and she beams back at me, interpreting my words in that naïve, sweet way of hers.

‘Oh, I'm so glad. Tell her I said hello, dear.'

She stamps the book shakily and hands it over to me, and Willow and I leave, the bell that hangs from the doorway singing behind us.

We scrape our change together and buy three dollars' worth of hot chips at the nearby fish and chip shop. We sit at the plastic table at the front, and it's hard to say whether the chips or the sea breeze is saltier. It's like a catwalk, here on the main strip across the road from Main Beach, and people mooch around outside, just to parade and preen in front of each other. Willow rolls her eyes and makes a gagging gesture with her fingers as we're watching them. I smile. I'm no good at posing.

I take out the book Mrs Darnell recommended for me, and I run my fingers across it, imagining my mother reading it at my age, and imagining her being the girl who charmed all the town. My mother is anything but charming. If you looked up charming in the thesaurus she'd be listed in the antonyms section, which shows the exact opposite of the word.

‘Ugh, I think they messed up our order and gave us three dollars' worth of salt with a sprinkle of chips,' says Willow, scrunching her face up. ‘My mouth feels like it's had a run in with a sandblaster.'

I agree, nodding and scrunching up my face after swallowing a chip, sticking my tongue out for dramatic effect.

‘Scooch over, sweet cheeks, and I'll get us some H
₂
O.'

I shuffle my chair across, and Willow's rummaging through her bag for her wallet when a book falls out. A library book. It falls at my feet with a thump and I pick it up. It's from Mrs Darnell's library, and it doesn't have a stamp.

‘You stole this library book?' I ask. My eyes are flashing fire. My stomach's churning. Mrs Darnell is the nicest woman I know; to steal from her is like kicking kittens, or hating rainbows.

Willow stares back at me with a straight face.

‘Yeah, what's the big deal?'

What's the big deal?

She flicks her hair and tucks it behind her ears so I can see both eyes now, and their steely greyness dares me to have a go at her.

‘What's wrong with you?' I ask.

‘What, are you going to judge me now, too?' She's hurt, but I don't care. I think of how nice she's been to me these last couple of days, but then how nice can a person really be if they can steal from someone like Mrs Darnell?

‘Yes. I do judge you!' I cry back at her. She gives me a sharp look that flashes like a knife in the sunlight.

‘All right. Judge me then. I can see why you and Cassie were in the same group for so long.'

With that Willow picks up her bag and stalks away. I stare after her as she walks so calmly and coolly down the street, with all the grace of a cat. Sadness and anger battle with each other inside my belly. I think of how she brought Cassie into this – what did Cassie have to do with anything? I think of how the two of them hate each other. A thousand question marks hurtle through my brain. Is it possible that Willow only befriended me to get back at Cassie? I know how much Cassie's hated seeing the two of us together these last few days, and I know that Willow loved the way Cassie hated it. I mean, did she only stick up for me that first time so she'd have an excuse to throw water on Cassie's dress? Was that all I was good for? And then the harsh truth dawns on me. Why else would someone be so kind to me?

Me.

The speck.

The dot.

The grain of sand.

I suddenly lose my appetite and I chuck a couple of chips at the nearby seagulls. Bad move. A whole flock of them descend, and I get up and move away from there. I start to run, like my veins aren't filled with blood, but emotions.

Boogie's on the line when I reach the booth. It doesn't even need to ring, I realise, and I wonder if he's always there, just waiting for me to pick up the receiver. I tell him about Willow, and school, and how much I hate it. My cheeks are salty with tears, and I drop the phone every now and again to sink down into a ball, because the heaviness of everything feels like gravity's been doubled. I sink down, and the receiver dangles back and forth above my head.

‘You're the only person I can really talk to. Isn't that ridiculous?' I sob, once I pull myself up and catch the phone mid-swing.

‘I'll always be here for you. Always. We can keep each other company and to hell with everyone else.'

I cradle the receiver between my shoulder and my ear, and wipe the wetness from my face.

‘I know. You're the only one.' My words hang empty in that ghost space, wherever Boogie is. But it's not a strange silence, it's a silence fat with truth. Then I remember what the science teacher told me. I'm going to have to let Boogie know. He's been eaten up by a shark and no one can find him now, and I feel absolutely gutted for him. This kid. This lost kid in some lost, lonely space who doesn't even have bones to prove that he ever existed. I wonder if this is why we've found each other, why we were drawn to each other – the lonely and the lost. Is it because both of our eyes have had to learn how to adjust to the dark?

‘Your bones aren't there anymore, I'm so sorry,' I whisper. I tell him about how I borrowed Lark's board and went out to the reef. I tell him about how I was throttled by blue, and how my lungs were clawing at me. I tell him about the science teacher, and what he told me.

‘I tried, Boogie, I really did. I understand if you don't want to help me anymore.'

It takes a little while for Boogie to answer, and for a terrible, stretched-out moment I think he's gone and left me for good.

‘You did all that, for me?'

I nod, which is stupid because he can't hear me nod, but I know somehow that he understands what I'm doing.

‘I'm useless. I can't help myself, let alone anyone else.'

‘Kirra. You are the bravest person I know. You battled the waves out at the bombies.'

‘I'm not brave. I was afraid the whole time. I'm always afraid. I'm a coward, deep down. I can't even use the words like you told me to. Cassie and everyone were picking on us, and throwing chips at us, and it was like my vocal cords had been sliced right through. I was too afraid to use them. I couldn't.'

I think of what Lark calls me, Yellow. That's the colour of cowards. People used to call other people yellow as an insult, to say that they were a chicken. I think of how well that nickname suits me now. Boogie's voice is kind and insistent when he answers me. I feel like I don't deserve his kindness.

‘Only stupid people aren't scared when they face something dangerous. Courage, real courage, comes from being afraid but doing it anyway.'

I lean against the phone booth wall, my hair clinging stickily to my cheeks and neck. I take in what he's told me. I suck it all in. I think of how I felt when I was on that wave, and how it felt like an exclamation mark. Not just surfing, but having fronted up to the waves out there, despite all of my instincts telling me not to. Even when I was on the sand, after I'd almost drowned, I felt strong, in a way, from the fact I'd battled the ocean and the ocean didn't win. I want to tell him thank you except I can't. But I know that he feels it. Another thought bashes into me and sets me panicking.

‘The superintendent's going to get away with it, now that your body can't be found. I don't know how to free you, Boogie. And what if McGinty does it again?'

‘There's still the murder weapon. It's got his fingerprints on it, and my blood. And it wasn't in the water.'

A murder weapon.

Relief washes over me. I can find it. I can help him.

‘I'll find it, I swear to you. Where is it?'

‘He put it in the sand dune at South Beach, the second one from the point, real deep, near the bottom. It's a knife, one of those big long ones that you chop coconuts open with.'

I imagine Boogie being chopped like a coconut, and I have that feeling again, like a spider is crawling down my spine.

‘I can't dig that deep, Boogie, I'd need an excavator.'

Those sand dunes are huge. They were made years ago when people used to mine the sand. An old fallen-down factory sits slumped in the middle, collapsing in on itself, all hunched and broken. The two dunes made from the mining stand triumphantly beside it, higher than any building in the town. I can't think how I could dig deep enough to find anything.

‘It's easy, Kirra. Just dig from the bottom, like McGinty did. If you start at the end of the dune, facing the ocean, walk fifteen big steps and start digging. It's about two metres in. Just take a bucket of water, and wet the sides as you dig the tunnel. Wet sand makes it stable so that you can crawl in and out without it falling in on you.'

I twist the cord around my fingers.

‘Okay. I'll find it for you.'

‘Thank you,' he tells me, ‘I didn't know how much I needed you until I met you. And Kirra . . .'

‘Yeah?'

‘If you can't draw blood with your words just yet, learn how to draw them with your fists. Are you listening to me?'

I nod, again, which is ridiculous because he can't hear me nod, but he gets it and keeps speaking.

‘Pick up your schoolbag.'

‘What?'

‘Pick it up by a strap, only using one hand, now hold it straight out in front of you.'

I do what he tells me, the weight of the bag making it a bit tough, but not impossible. My other shoulder's hoisted up to hold the phone against my chin.

‘Are you seriously telling me to whack people with my schoolbag? I can figure that one out by myself, you know.'

He laughs, this hacking, snorty sort of laugh, completely unsuited to a ghost.

‘Ha ha. No. Look at the way your hand is positioned. Okay now drop your bag and keep your hand held exactly like it was. The angle should be slightly tipped, with the knuckle of your forefinger leading, but it shouldn't be sticking out or anything.
Comprende?
'

I look down at my hand.

‘
Si signore!
'

‘Smart-arse.'

I can tell Boogie is smiling when he calls me that. The way he says it is entirely different from the way the girls at school fling those words at me when our marks are handed back and mine are unacceptably high.

‘Okay, now stand with both feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent a little less than forty-five degrees. Make a fist with both hands, facing upwards, and bring them back so your elbows are pointing right behind you.'

I do as he says. I feel tougher already. It's strange, standing in a way that makes me seem tall and strong instead of the way I normally stand, which is to make myself as small as I can possibly be.

‘Now pick a hand.'

I look down at my right. He goes on.

‘Drive it forward, rotating your fist so it turns into an upright position – so when it's fully extended your hand is exactly like it was when you were holding your bag.'

I do it. It looks like a proper punch, like the ones in the comics with a big, black
KAPOW
in a bubble next to them.

‘Now do it with your other one.'

The phone drops from my shoulder and swings down to give me a friendly whack on the arse when I punch with my left. I pick the receiver back up.

‘There you go, tough guy,' he says.

I laugh at him.

‘I did it.'

‘Now do it again. And again and again. And if your knuckles bleed, do it some more.'

I nod again, that stupid nod. Just before I hang up, I whisper, ‘I'll find the knife for you, Boogie.'

‘You're the friend I've been wishing for all these years,' he whispers back.

I hang my schoolbag from a low branch, one that belongs to one of those pathetic, wind-bitten trees near the phone booth. I stand the way Boogie told me to, feet apart, shoulders back, fists clenched. Strong. I punch into the bag and feel my knuckles impact with my science textbook.
Thwack!
The bag teeters wildly. I use my left hand.
Thwack.
I look down to my knuckles, they're a little bit red, and I look to my skinny, useless arms. Dropping down into the dirt, I start to do some push-ups. I can barely do ten before my arms give way, and I'm there, lying in the dirt, the ants running in their peculiar, jagged way around my cheek.

Get up, Kirra.

I face my schoolbag again, and I think of the words as I'm standing there, my stance strong, my fists ready. I direct my words to the bag. ‘Hey Willow . . . you . . . you . . .'

I stop.

I can't bring myself to say harsh things about her. I don't know why, but my vocal cords are resisting.

Stop lying, Kirra. You do know why.

She walked barefoot to class with me.

That means something.

She might have used me, but I know I can't force any words against her out of my lips without a bitter taste lingering in my mouth. I stop and find my stance again. I start again, with a small, steady voice. ‘Cassie . . . you're so focused on your looks because you know that, deep down, there's nothing much else to you.'

Thwack!
The bag goes flying in a full circle around the branch, and I have to duck to stop it sucker-punching me on its way back around. It didn't even hurt that time. Though my knuckles are throbbing, my words are pushing the pain away. My voice is louder now.

‘Tara, you always try to copy Cassie because you're afraid your own personality isn't good enough.'

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

‘You're so jealous of your big sister, Sasha, that you bully people weaker than you to make yourself feel less pathetic in comparison!'

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!
My voice is almost shouting now. I don't know where this voice came from. It's far too big, I think, to come from someone as small as me. This voice has nails. This voice has fists. This voice draws blood.

‘The only reason you're so cruel, Lou, is because you know that if you stopped being Cassie's henchman, she'd turn on you too!'

Thwack!
The branch breaks and my bag goes flying out into the brush. I look down at my knuckles. They're bleeding. I've drawn blood and I think how pain has never felt so good.