Afterlight

by Rebecca Lim

  ‘So I understand,’ Jordan replied, mouth curving up into a half-smile that momentarily banished the anger in his eyes. ‘But since I’ve inherited your little problem and I need filling in, you wanna…go see? Car’s downstairs.’

  I couldn’t help the stupid leap of hope in my chest. One day, one day when I was cool, or old, or a hundred times better and more different than I was now, I’d look back on this moment of wild and impossible hope, and throw my head back and laugh. It represented an extra—what—hour in his company, tops? But Jordan Haig and I had to be somewhere together, today. I looked down sharply to hide the irrational surge of joy I was feeling.

  ‘Coolio,’ I mumbled finally. ‘Lead the way.’

  As I was scrambling to my feet, Gran suddenly barged in like a pocket whirlwind. She swelled up to almost twice her size when she saw Jordan standing over me, not bothering to wait for an introduction, or an explanation.

  ‘Who are you?’ she screeched in his face. ‘She doesn’t have a boyfriend.’

  Without pausing to breathe, Gran rounded on me next, going a hundred miles an hour like she does when she’s stressed. ‘What does he want? An exclusive? A photo? Did he hurt you? You invite him?’

  My face changed colour a million times then settled on just plain mottled. I felt about two years old, even though I’ve been able to rest both my elbows comfortably on the top of Gran’s head since like, uh, 2012.

  ‘Gran,’ I mumbled. ‘This is Jordan Haig, a…a guy from my year. We’re just going out…for a while.’

  The words for a while came out sounding funny because the sudden look of hope on Gran’s face before she quickly swallowed it down was painful to see. She’d looked the way I was feeling. I’d have to have a quiet talk with her later, let her down gently.

  But Jordan didn’t help things by saying, ‘Being away from Soph, not being able to see her…has almost killed me, Mrs Teague.’

  I think Gran’s breath caught in her throat the same instant mine did. It wasn’t what he’d just said, which my short-term auditory memory was having trouble processing because it was the smoothest-sounding lie I’d ever heard. It was that he hadn’t called me Storkie or Stork the way everyone else did around Gran when they were asking for me. He’d called me by my real name. I didn’t think he’d even known it.

  He was good. So good, I almost believed him.

  ‘It’s an honour, Mrs Teague,’ Jordan added, politely sticking out his right hand, silver jangling. ‘I’ve been asking to meet you, but you know how she is.’ He rolled his eyes.

  Gran grasped Jordan’s hand, glaring up into his face as they shook firmly. As she looked him over, her expression softened. I could tell she liked him, even though her gaze narrowed momentarily when she clocked the edge of the thin, dark tattoo winding around his right wrist, still visible under all the leather and silver and stone.

  But Dad had had one himself. A big Asian dragon with claws and bulging eyes that had worked its way down between his shoulder blades and seemed to blur at the edges, fading as he grew older. The Teagues were no strangers to tattooed men.

  ‘Well, Soph,’ Gran said, too cheerfully and loudly after a moment in which I caught her remembering, too, ‘you might finally have found yourself a keeper. Enjoy yourselves, darlings, you deserve a bit of time out.’

  She ushered us protectively down the back stairs and through the kitchen past Cook before I’d even realised I was moving. At the fire exit, she pushed down on the panic bar securing the fire exit from the inside and propped the door open with her hip.

  For a moment, she just stared up at me, looking like she wanted to say something. Instead, she reached up and pushed my impossible hair back from my forehead then hastily swatted Jordan and me out onto the garbage-slick bluestone cobbles of Sancerre Lane before Jordan could change his mind about taking me out.

  As she slammed the fire door shut, I could hear her bellowing at someone to Get the bleeding hell in line. All class, all the time; that was my Gran.

  ‘Your Gran treat all your boyfriends this way?’ Jordan asked, amusement in his deep voice.

  My face burned as he pointed in the direction of an old blue Commodore parked fifty metres away, its faded paintwork riddled with rust, a P-plate jammed into the lower corner of the rear window.

  Jordan moved before I did, walking towards the front passenger door and holding it open, one dark eyebrow cocked in my direction. Shivering, I pulled the zip of my hoodie higher, the icy wind making my already scarlet nose run again. As I slid into the seat and dabbed self-consciously at my nose with the back of one hand, Jordan slammed the heavy car door shut and went around to the driver’s side.

  He jumped in behind the wheel and the cuff of his shirt slipped back for a moment. Something weird happened again in the vicinity of my heart, like it was falling from a great height. I could see the word jymaux engraved in black upon his skin in tiny letters. It formed part of the dark rim of the tattoo winding around the outer edge of Jordan’s wrist. When he caught me staring, he tugged the cuff back up and fired up the engine.

  ‘It means twin in Norman French,’ he said curtly as he steered up Sancerre Lane and into the stretch of Sancerre Street just outside Floyd Parker’s house.

  Right-o. I sank down in my seat to avoid any telephoto lenses trained on the area while Jordan turned the corner and began telling me about what I’d missed at school. I closed my eyes, just listening and pretending I hadn’t heard it all already from Biddy Cole.

  God, he and I are breathing the same air.

  Jordan was so close. If I put my hand out, I could rest it on his shoulder. It was unreal.

  My destructive train of thought screeched to a halt when Jordan added, ‘So that’s when I worked out my theory about you. You’re kind-hearted to a fault. You let people walk all over you, all the time. And you never speak up for yourself, which is perfect for someone like Eve. She’s incredibly strong-willed. She must have been interesting to know when she was…’

  He hesitated, and the knuckles of his hands went white on the steering wheel, sunlight glinting off the silver around his wrist.

  ‘Alive,’ I interrupted gently. ‘Say it, Jordan. When she was alive.’

  9

  I told him the two things I knew about Eve: that she was somehow the spit of my own mum and that her biker boyfriend had tried to gun her down in a city street, taking out innocent people instead.

  ‘After that, she disappeared, he disappeared, the news story said. And then about a fortnight later, she shows up at my place and keeps showing up until I do what she wants.’

  Jordan was silent for a long time. Though as he eased the car into the bumper-to-bumper traffic on Brunswick Street, he said abruptly, ‘I can say this stuff to you, right? Because you’re okay.’

  Since, like, when? I almost blurted. I had to bite down on the insides of my mouth to stop the words tumbling out.

  His grey eyes found mine for a moment before he looked away. ‘Even Hendo and Seamus don’t know,’ he murmured, pushing a fall of dark hair off his face. ‘It’s not something you want to…advertise.’

  I stiffened in surprise. Hendo and Seamus were Jordan’s too-cool-for-school wingmen. Jordan had a sec
ret too big even for the both of them?

  I found myself holding my breath so hard that purple spots and squiggles started dancing in front of my eyes. Who knew that getting to the bottom of the mystery of Eve would involve seeing inside Jordan’s head, too?

  He said, in a rush, ‘Mum gets impressions, inconclusiveness. She has to work out what they want from the context.’

  He swung the car into a narrow side street on the fringes of the city. Old pairs of sneakers hung by their knotted-up laces from overhead wiring like bunches of dingy fruit.

  ‘Mum’s…clairaudient,’ he added hesitantly, like I knew what that meant without a dictionary handy, ‘but that’s about the extent of it. She hears things, you know?’

  I shook my head, still baffled.

  ‘Voices. She says, I’m more…“gifted”. I’ve always been able to see, hear, smell. God, how weird does that sound?’

  He glanced across at me and I knew I was supposed to react, but it felt like I was hearing him through a heavy veil. None of what he was trying to tell me was really coming together.

  ‘So what I think is Eve—uh, Monica—used you to get through to me. It’s the only explanation. I mean, you’re not one of us, are you? The people who “see” dead people. And the rest.’ He sounded faintly disgusted.

  I opened my mouth to tell him about the glowing man from when I was five then shut it again with a snap. I didn’t want to be one of those people. After Eve, I wasn’t going to be one of those people ever again.

  Jordan swerved around a cyclist going the wrong way up our street.

  ‘I hate it,’ he growled, staring sightlessly at the pollution-stained façades sliding by, the cracked and uneven sidewalks. ‘I wish they’d leave me alone.’ He shot me a sideways look. ‘Like how she smells of violets?’ he said fiercely, scrubbing at his left arm through the leather of his jacket. ‘You get that, right?’

  I nodded in confusion: so it was violets? I hadn’t known that. I just knew I’d never be rushing out and buying any perfume remotely like it. In fact, Eve had just about put me off floral fragrances for life.

  ‘I get that, too,’ Jordan growled again, still kneading his left arm before moving on to his right. ‘But I can hear her through her memories; feel her. See things she wants me to see. Just snatches. And then there’s the rest of them, all talking away like I’m supposed to care. Dropping in and out like crossed wires on a bad line. You can do some of that as well, yeah?’

  ‘Only with her,’ I exclaimed, mentally crossing my fingers at the lie. ‘With Eve. And I can’t actually hear her, so half of it has been lucky guesses, lucky breaks! I don’t get that at all with, uh, others. God, Eve alone is enough to drive anyone mental.’

  My voice faltered to a stop as I realised what I was saying and who I was saying it to.

  ‘Yeah,’ Jordan looked away, frowning. ‘Mental.’

  ‘I didn’t mean that,’ I responded quickly, waving my hands in the air. ‘I’m not sure what I mean. This is mental. But you’re not. Mental, I mean.’

  Oh, honestly, just kill me now, my inner voice moaned as I wailed out loud, ‘I always say the wrong thing!’

  ‘See? See?’ Jordan growled. ‘This is what you do. All the time.’

  Flushing, I saw that we’d entered the city. Abruptly, he pulled into a No Standing zone facing onto a string of eateries that formed the heart of the city’s famed Greek quarter. I looked through the window at the fake stalactites hanging from the ceiling inside the souvlaki joint on the corner. I’d never been brave enough to go in. Ever.

  ‘Well.’ My voice was tentative. ‘It explains how you found me in the middle of a Claudia-and-pals human sandwich. And it explains the total locker meltdown. Eve must have hated being ignored by you.’

  Jordan replied sharply. ‘It stops here. After this, you leave her alone.’

  I glanced across at Jordan in confusion. He’d ceased worrying away at the skin of his arms. His eyes were closed. He might have been asleep except that the lines of his pale face were tight. My own uneasiness skyrocketed when I realised he wasn’t talking to me.

  He opened his grey eyes; pupils dilated wide with… pain? Although he was facing me, his gaze was weirdly unfocused, giving the impression he was looking at something else entirely. A chill raced across my skin, making me fold myself down smaller in my seat.

  Jordan pointed down the mouth of a narrow city lane just outside my window, lined with Victorian-era warehouses and the back entrances of two-storey shop fronts and fast-food outlets. A delivery truck blocked off the far end of the cobbled lane, offloading steel kegs of beer outside the cellar door of a grim-looking pub with barred windows. If I never saw another beer truck in my life, it would be too soon.

  So far, so Melbourne.

  ‘This is it?’ I murmured, still confused. ‘This is what Eve wanted you to see? So I’m seeing it, and it’s not so, um, bad.’

  I popped a menthol cough lolly, my nose now so blocked I could barely taste it.

  Jordan seemed to snap out of his trance at my words. He nodded, scrambling out of his seat and slamming his car door before yanking mine open.

  I climbed out in a tangle of arms and legs, feeling clumsy just because his eyes were on me. An acid spurt of adrenaline flashed through my system as I fished a loose hairband out of my pocket and slung the mess on my head into a low, bushy ponytail.

  Not sure what to do with my hands after that, I shoved them both deep into the kangaroo pockets of my hoodie and gave a giant, unlovely sniff. Jordan nearly sent me into cardiac arrest when he hooked his arm through mine.

  ‘Seeing as how I’m supposed to be your boyfriend…’ he said, and a ghostly smile flitted across his face.

  We entered the laneway. Just being this close to him seemed to pull the world into sharper focus. The layers of graffiti and peeling-away pub-rock posters festooning the walls were suddenly beautiful with colour and texture, and the puddles of filthy water between the cobbles from the overnight rains held a strange surface gleam. A trio of dark-haired cooks in navy aprons on a mid-afternoon smoke-o stared hard at us as we passed by, and I swear I could make out every hair on their unshaven faces as my heart beat hard in my chest.

  It’s just nerves you’re feeling, Stork, I chided myself as Jordan pulled us to a stop a few doors down from where the men still lounged, wreathed in smoke, watching us.

  I looked up at the piss-yellow brick façade of a two-storey warehouse, the air dense with the smell of fat frying. There were very few windows, and each was set high up off the ground and plugged by a rectangular pane of greasy, opaque glass, with iron bars from top to bottom. The place had the ambience of a maximum-security jail and the grey metal swing door set at ground level boasted a large sign that read, simply: Adult Discounters.

  My face flamed as the meaning of the sign soaked in, and I tried to pull away. Even my wildest dreams about Jordan Haig had not featured us walking hand-in-hand through a place that sold plastic sex toys and porno.

  ‘Uh,’ I began, and Jordan snorted at my panicked expression, tightening his hold on me as his gaze ran upward. There was a second, smaller sign above the door that bore the legend: Maximus Lounge. At night it would light up in n
eon, but now it was just a bunch of almost burnt-out tubes forming vague letter shapes.

  ‘Two choices,’ Jordan murmured, almost to himself. ‘What’s it gonna be?’

  I was seeing oiled men in leather thongs. And not of the footwear variety.

  ‘Uh,’ I said again. ‘I think Eve meant for me to sit this one out. She didn’t appear to me, buddy, she appeared to you. She doesn’t need me anymore. Your word against mine that I’m even supposed to be here. So you do it. You go and flail through the afterglow of Eve’s life, trying to work out what she wants. I’ve seen enough to last me. Really, I’m good. Happy to pass the baton.’

  I tried to disengage my arm once more, but again, weirdly, Jordan resisted.

  Then he laughed, suddenly releasing me, and the world was at once colder and dirtier without the warmth of him pressed close. I crossed my arms defensively, but Jordan kept the shocks coming by cupping my face in his hands.

  ‘It’s like a game with this one.’ His gaze was intent, all trace of amusement gone. ‘She doesn’t talk to me directly like the others do, she only shows me things, things she remembers. And I only hear what she heard, or what she said. She only shows herself to me when I’m with you, did you know that? She only lets me see her when you’re there. That’s never happened before: being able to share this with anyone. Other than my mother.’

  His mouth twisted wryly.

  ‘Oh, and the time just after I started primary school. When word got out the little kid in 1F could speak with dead people, everyone was screaming for psych testing. I changed schools a lot before I learnt to keep my mouth shut. So you can see how this is as weird for me as it must be for you. I expected you to run a mile when you found out. But I’m glad you’re still here. Surprised. But glad.’