by Kim Kane
Today we were supposed to catch the tram to Youth Strings, but Mum insisted on driving us. I think she just wanted to have a D&M with the other mothers at the gates. There’s almost a competition between the mothers as to who knows the most details and they all talk about Hallie like she’s theirs. On the way, we could see that posters have been stuck up on every power pole and tram stop in our area. There are also police cars everywhere – there are seriously more police cars than pigeons. I know, because Cleo’s been taking photos of them all.
Anyway, Hallie’s parents were on the news again tonight, crying and hugging at Malvern Central while that brother or cousin or boyfriend, whoever he is, the one who spoke at the hope-vigil, kept asking information. Do you get to watch the news in Mildura? Don’t, is my tip. Mum turned it off because the sight of the Knights waving a crumpled poster of Hallie in Barrington-blue was too much. Somehow knowing she also bought her soap at Malvern Central makes it even worse.
Got to go. Mum’s calling me to set the table. How come it’s always my turn?
CC x
From: Alice King [email protected] Monday 25 April 11:24 PM
Hi Celia
Seriously, you are far from average average average, my friend, and you sure do write a funny email, which is really appreciated up here, especially when there’s not much fun going down. Just a lot of hypocrisy. I mean, if there is a God, why the hell isn’t he helping the police find Hallie?
Actually – I tell a lie. I am having SOME fun up here, but it’s completely exhausting. It’s Leilah. She seriously makes me laugh my head off. Like last night – we cracked up till two in the morning about a range of underpants Leilah invented for nuns called Nundies!!!
Other big news is I finally made friends with a day bug and it wasn’t even that hard. Her name is Anika. We were in the same science prac and she has a Princess Leia hairstyle so I could tell she was definitely a good person. She is also double-jointed in her elbows and hips, which is completely cool, and is doing an on-line course in contortionism – beats ballet hands down! She lives out of town on some sort of fruit farm and she’s invited me for a sleepover this weekend. I think you’d really like her. She also has a big imagination and gets As in English and is obviously a big brainiac, even if she’d never heard of Hallie Knight.
Gotta go.
x
From: Celia Beasley [email protected]
Tuesday 26 April 5:24 PM
Hi Alice
Our whole family’s quite funny, actually. Dad says funny is the only way the inhabitants of 18 Belmore Road get by. Well, he used to. Now all he says is ‘Really?’, ‘Interesting!’ or ‘You don’t say!’ to anything Mum says while he’s reading the paper or checking stocks on the internet, and then he goes back into the study to polish his antique gun collection (he got into war history in England). He hardly seems to go into the office at all at the moment, which is weird for a man who’s never had a pyjama-day in his life. At least his gun collection might scare off any abductor because he’d see the guns and assume they actually worked.
My mother’s more freak-funny than amusing-funny. She never stops talking and she only eats foods that are raw, crunchy or make you fart. She was a model on Game n’ Fortune on Channel 9 but that show got axed after the first season because it was ‘before its time’. She’s got these huge photographs of herself wallpapering the rooms in our house. Seriously enormous. Almost-the height-of-a-one-storey-building enormous and they beam down on us like those pictures of Chairman Mao beamed down on the peasants in China. In them, Mum’s holding out her hands over chunky TVs and milkshake-makers and she really believes she was beautiful and that we’re a collosal disappointment because we look more like Beasleys than Pritchards, even though Pritchards have pointy little teeth and pointy little faces if you ask me (and not Channel 9). Despite this, she’s shopping photos of me around to talent agents who are not interested because it turns out they are after girls who are more Pritchard than Beasley too – at least for catalogue work. And that, Alice, is all my mother cares about.
So, I can’t imagine anything better than boarding school even if it is full of nuns. Harry Potter was my favourite book when I was younger, because Harry was an orphan as well as a boarder. If Harry had had my mother, he would’ve spent the whole series consulting plastic surgeons about that scar and wouldn’t have had any time to conquer evil.
This afternoon my little sister, Cleo, and I went down to the park. Cleo’s turned this whole Hallie thing into a Harriet the Spy-type adventure which makes me think she doesn’t actually get it.
Anyway, I know it sounds silly, but, as we were walking, I found myself keeping an eye out for signs of Hallie too. Cleo took a million pics and started collecting evidence in little plastic sandwich bags – things like pebbles and crushed twigs. But as we walked, I realised the truly horrible thing was I didn’t really know what I was looking for. I mean anything could be meaningful. Anything. A navy button could be from Hallie Knight’s uniform. The lid of a Gatorade bottle could be from the last drink Hallie drank. Even Cleo’s pebbles. But unless a clue’s got ticker tape, a knife and a big gory bloodstain, I’d probably just keep walking and that makes me feel so helpless.
Better go. I’m sleeping at the twins’ – Avril and Mia (from my old school) – and their dad’s collecting me in a minute. They’re pretty fun, actually. They’re always doing things like squirting tomato sauce on seats so that when girls stand up it looks like they have their periods.
x CC(Call me ‘CeeCee’. Celia means ‘blind’ and I’d rather be a corn chip – get it?!)
PS Just so you don’t think I’m anything like my mum, I really only like to eat foods that are beige. Always have. Like honeycomb choc tops, Dijonnaise and chips. But not bananas. I hate the stringy bits.
PPS I think my grandma wears Nundies. Her knickers are so big I can fit two legs in one leg hole.
PPPS I’m glad you made friends with a day bug. I hope I make a friend too soon. Is Anika’s dad a real farmer with a tractor and a pitchfork?
From: Alice King [email protected] Tuesday 26 April 10:13 PM
Seriously, I think your eight-year-old sister’s got more chance of finding Hallie than the police. If you ask me, this whole thing just STINKS of those girls that went missing from Eltham a few years back. Remember? Found all wrapped up in those creepy cocoon thingies? I bet you it’s the same cocoon guy. I’ll never forget those girls because one of them was called Esther and we had a babysitter at the time called Adeline too and she had the same dark hair and everything. Why aren’t the police working it out? No imagination!! You girls have definitely got what it takes for detective work though. And, if I had a tenth of your imagination maybe I’d stop getting Ds in English. I bet you get As. I bet you do. I’ve never cracked an A – not even when I was at my old school where there were only about six kids in the class. I did come first in cross-country though. They just never called it an A.
It’s so weird you’re at Ashbourne now. I bet you’ve seen my sister, Tess, on the tram, although I think she walks to school ’cause she’s obsessed with being skinny as well as slutty. Unfortunately it’s only the slutty part that comes naturally but don’t tell ol’ Muffin Tops I said that. Tess has seriously had about ten boyfriends as well as having a million love bites. Completely Bargain Basement if you ask me. Dad even discovered Tess had taken her flyscreen off its hinges so she could sneak disgusting boys through her bedroom window at night.
Sister Mary Bernadette would honestly have a cardiac if she knew I had a sister like Tess, who clearly has a dominant gene for slutty behaviour. And why why why do girls with the dominant slut gene always over pluck their eyebrows into a thin line? Seriously, Tess will be DRAWING hers on by the time she’s 20!
Sister Mary Bernadette insists on us calling her by her full name – Sister Mary Bernadette. She’s the
only nun who you have any hope for actually – apart from the fact that she’s a type of trainee so could definitely still quit the convent, get a bit of a makeover and lead a normal life. But she’s not making any noises about quitting at all. She wants to become a fully fledged nun and marry Jesus.
Sister Mary Bernadette takes us for this class called Grooming, Deportment and Moral Hygiene. It’s a wonder we’re not also learning shorthand and cross-stitch. So prehistoric! Anyway, the point is, having a slutty sister has absolutely NO advantages. For instance, we had to do this writing piece about our family but I had to completely lie about Tess and make her into the sort of person who volunteers to be a library monitor instead of being the slut of East Malvern. She would DIE if she knew I said that. And then I had to make up a whole lot more stuff to cover for my nine-year-old brother Johnny, who actually DID die, but I’m just about NEVER in the mood for talking about it. All I’m saying is that if we had more than five minutes to write, and if I had your kind of imagination, I could have made up a whole lot of interesting things to cover for Tess and Johnny, but instead . . . my piece was very boring and I got a D. I’d give my family a D too. D for depressing. Wanna swap?
Anyway, CC, you sure do make me laugh and I bet those ad agencies will pick you for a catalogue really soon, even if you are a little more Beasley-looking than Pritchard and only eat beige food. If they ever let me out of here I’ll bring you a box of fortune cookies, okay? Got to rush, the dinner bell just rang and I don’t want to miss out ’cause Sister Catherine said we were having minute steaks, which might just mean they won’t last longer than 60 seconds. Ha Ha.
C U CC (extra cheesy), Alice (prisoner number 89573495) x
From: Celia Beasley [email protected]
Wednesday 27 April 6:57 PM
Hi Alice
Who’s Adeline? Don’t you mean Esther?
I’m quite good at English actually. I know it’s a bit arrogant to write that, but I’m really into poetry and, besides, I’m so bad at Maths that English adds some yin and yang to my school report.
But that’s enough about me or I could be my mother. Tess sounds, well, like chipped nail polish, but I’ll definitely look out for her and her muffin tops. I can’t believe your brother Johnny died. That’s so terrible. My cousin Andrew shot himself in the foot when he was training for the army – a proper hole right through the top. It was just an accident and he didn’t die. In fact, he got to lounge around on the couch eating two-minute noodles for a few weeks while it got better.
Still nothing about Hallie Knight. Two police officers were knocking on all the doors in our street today. They flipped out their badges to show us their ID like they do on cop shows and they had guns on their hips. I could see Dad staring at the holsters. Mum offered them skinny chai lattes to warm them up because it was such a bleak afternoon, but they had to refuse even though their fingers and noses were red with cold.
Anyway, the police had a picture of Hallie on a flyer and they asked whether we’d seen or heard anything unusual. I took the flyer and went and sat on the heating duct, which is where I do most of my thinking when Dad lets us have the heating on, and I stared at Hallie’s face. I’ve seen so many pictures of her now, but it’s still so spooky seeing a uniform I’ve only ever regarded as a competitor in inter-school sport on a missing-person photo. It makes it look much less foreign and very familiar. Like we’re suddenly all on the same team.
x CC
PS All that talk about fortune cookies got me craving them so I just had one and it said, ‘This insert has a protective coating’ and the other side was blank! Blank! What’s that supposed to mean?!
PPS Hey, if you ever do feel like talking about Johnny, I’m always here. No pressure or anything.
xCCB
From: Alice King [email protected]
Wednesday 27 April 9:56 PM
Okay, so like I said, I don’t usually talk about Johnny but since you keep asking . . . The truth is, Johnny died because of me and there’s no way anyone can make it any different so don’t even bother trying, okay? Mum also thinks it was my fault, which is why she can hardly look at me and why I got sent up here to prison. So here goes . . .
Johnny drowned even though he was a good swimmer – try working that one out. We were up at Echuca visiting our uncle’s place and there was the hugest rainstorm anyone had seen in years. Seriously, there had been no rain at my uncle’s for practically my whole life. It was really bucketing down and Uncle Howard and Auntie Mandy were pretty much cracking out the champagne and all Johnny and I wanted to do was go outside and get soaked right through. We raced for the back door and Uncle Howard yelled from the veranda to stay away from the river and ignoring him was all my idea. I just wanted to see it gushing, like really gush hard, so as soon as we were out of sight of the house I ran straight down there with Johnny. The whole river was swollen up and raging and bits of broken tree and scrub were all caught up in the current and swirling around like crazy. Johnny grabbed a stick and, even though the riverbank was super muddy, there was this old log we always used to stand on, and I guess he just wanted to feel how strong the current actually was. Next thing I know he’s walking sideways along the log, edging himself further and further along. Then he must have slipped and there was hardly even a splash as he went right under. I stood there, kind of frozen and holding my breath like it was me under the water about to pop up.
But Johnny didn’t; and all I could hear was the furious rushing of water. I thought for a moment he was fooling around and playing some kind of trick on me, but no matter how much I yelled out for him, Johnny never came back up. I should have jumped in, if I’d known he was right there below that log, caught in a snag, still alive, probably hoping like crazy that his big sister would dive down and unhook him . . . screaming for me underwater. Oh God CC, sometimes it’s all I can hear . . . that river and Johnny’s underwater muffled screaming. ‘Alice! Alllllllice! AAAAAALICE!’ . . . as the life was washing out of him. It haunts me. If I had dived down he’d still be alive today. That’s the part I can’t forgive myself for. Not that I couldn’t save my brother, but that I didn’t TRY. Instead, I ran. I didn’t know what else to do and the water was murky CC, murky as mud. Aunt Mandy called 000 and when the emergency people arrived I had to show them exactly where Johnny had fallen in and they dived down with tanks and they found him in less than ten seconds. Anyway, the weirdest part is I never cried and God knows you’d think I should have. I still haven’t. I don’t know why. I just remember standing there when they pulled him out of the river and they carried him like a sleeping baby up to the flat ground and he was all floppy like a raggie doll with his head heavy and hanging backwards and not the slightest hint of life left in it. And everyone else was crying, but I never did. I was just staring at Johnny’s face, thinking how I’d never seen a real dead person before and how a dead person’s face looks nothing like the person you knew. That’s all I could think. How that face on the stretcher with its eyes half-open, being zipped into a bag, was not the face that argued with me or poked its tongue out or laughed like crazy at South Park. That a dead person’s face, looks somehow wintry and pure, as if it already knows more than the rest of us, and that look takes over completely from the face you think of when you remember a person. Just that blank, free face with nothing more to say. I’m pretty sure it’s because I never cried that Mum can’t look at me, like she thinks I’m not sad. Maybe she’s right. I just feel nothing.
Johnny’s room is still exactly the way he left it, with his bed a mess and his stinky socks on the floor. Mum doesn’t let us go inside. It’s like she thinks Johnny was just hers, and nobody else has a right to him. Not me at least. Anyway, I actually do talk to Johnny sometimes when we’re meant to be praying and mostly I just say I’m sorry for not saving him, but he doesn’t answer me. Not ever.
Can’t believe I just told you all that. You’ll p
robs never write back.
Sorry.
From: Celia Beasley [email protected]
Thursday 28 April 6:57 AM
Oh Alice,
I don’t think you killed your brother, really I don’t and if he doesn’t answer you now, it’s probably because he’s too busy drinking lemonade and flying kites and eating honeycomb choc tops up in heaven. Lots of honeycomb choc tops. I bet there are whole hockey fields just filled with kites and honeycomb choc tops and maybe those coloured balls they have in Ikea that you can roll around in.
Anyway, OF COURSE I want to stay friends. What about Tess? Is she sad? Hmmm, big sisters . . . I could do without them. My big sister Jaime is perfect in a singing-dancing-everything-Mum-loves kind of way and I like annoying her. Even though she’s one year older, she’s a midget – so tiny the electronic doors at the pool never open for her. Jaime is right into the school musical, Sweeney Todd at the moment. She’s only Townsperson 67, but she says it’s amazing she got in because she’s in Year 11 and it’s full of Year 12s. The music is shrieky and horrible and Jaime even practises on the tram, using her arms and a big frown to push out the notes. She’s always posting videos of herself on YouTube so she can be ‘discovered’ and then tagging them with the name of kids who have won America’s Got Talent. Dipper.
My little sister, Cleo, is unusual. She’s definitely pretty, but there’s a real gap between what she thinks and how she gets it out of her mouth, so she mainly says nothing (‘elective mutism’) and when she does it’s a sort of grinding, like a mini cement mixer. The proper name for her diagnosis is ‘developmental apraxia of speech and low spectrum autism’ and she’s been like that since she was born. She takes a lot of photos and plays with the peg basket. Yesterday she stole a packet of fortune cookies from my bag and took studio shots of each one against a white sheet. Her speech therapist says she’s just trying to make sense of her world. Hello? Wouldn’t it make more sense of her world to eat them? Actually, if you ask me, she’s about the smartest person in our family – well, certainly smarter than Mum or Jaime. She notices the small stuff – the things most people are too busy to see.