by Anni Taylor
“Or a five-star hotel,” called Cormack.
Everyone laughed.
“The meals will be more than sufficient, Eugene,” said Sister Dawn. “I hope that answers your question.”
A woman a couple of tables down from us stood. She was tall and severe looking, her dyed-black hair scraped back from her thin face, showing dishwater-blonde roots. Amateur tattoos ran down one side of her neck. “What if the team we’re in can’t complete a challenge due to the actions of one person? Does the whole team get punished?”
“There is no punishment here, Ruth,” Sister Dawn assured her. “We take video recordings of the challenges and make determinations on the efforts of each individual.”
“I really need this,” stated Ruth. “I’m sorry for anyone who gets put in my team, but if you don’t put in a hundred percent, you might see me bust out my mean side.” She glanced around at everyone for effect.
Brother Vito gave a good-natured laugh, clipping a wristband onto Poppy’s arm. “Ruth, you won’t need to get mean. I’m sure they’ll all be pulling their weight.”
“Ruth? More like Ruthless,” muttered Richard under his breath. “She looks violent. I don’t want to get in her team.”
“Me either. She’s missing a tooth, too—she probably fights people in alleyways. Toothless Ruthless.” Poppy pulled her mouth down severely at Richard then lifted her eyes to Brother Vito, shooting him a smile that almost looked shy.
Brother Vito straightened, then dug his hands into the loose pockets of his clothing. “Look, everyone, don’t worry so much. We’re strict, but we’re fair. Stay calm during the challenges and do your best. That’s all you need to do. Any other questions?”
A pretty, brown-skinned girl raised her hand. “What’s with all the ticking contraptions in the dormitory? Greta and Roxy and I can’t sleep properly.”
“You mean the metronomes, Yolanda?” replied Brother Vito. “They’re there to help reframe your minds. Allow them to lull you. You’ll get used to them.” He smiled. “Now, why don’t you all relax and get to know each other?”
With that, the mentors left the garden and returned to the monastery interior.
Richard’s jaw pulled tight beneath his beard. “I don’t know about any of you, but I’m not going to play this calm. I’m here to win. Right to the end.”
Poppy high-fived him. “You and me, baby-chin. All the way.”
He snatched his hand away from the hi-five. “Sorry, popsicle. I’m a lone cowboy. I walk this life alone.”
“Awww, you can’t mean that.” She giggled. “Look, we already have cute names for each other. Baby-chin and popsicle.”
Richard’s lips formed a thin smile, his eyes remaining intent.
Poppy fiddled with her wristband. “They wouldn’t even give us the smallest clue about the challenges. This is bad. God, I’m freaking. Seriously freaking.”
Her anxiety rushed directly into my veins, replacing my blood with fear. “They wouldn’t set us super-hard challenges, right? We’re supposed to get through this. Just the people who slack off would be eliminated . . . right? But I hate it that we can’t all get through to the end.”
“Yeah, wouldn’t it work better if they made it so that all of us got to the end?” agreed Cormack. “It’d look like a more successful program.”
“That’s not how business works,” Richard scoffed. “And if they’re smart, they’ll be running this like a well-oiled business. They’ll be weeding out the weak and only rewarding the winners. Because the winners’d be the ones most likely to kick their addiction, and the mentors know that. That would make the mentors look good. They get a higher success rate than they otherwise would. They’re not gonna want to hand over sixty thousand to people who’re gonna blow it all on drugs and end up killing themselves. How’s that going to look?”
Ruth angled her head around and eyed our table, her expression haughty and suspicious. She seemed to have already gathered some kind of alliance at her table—Harrington and two others. With hunched shoulders, they spoke in conspiratorial whispers.
Ignoring her, Richard pulled himself to his feet and stepped across to the chalkboard. Richard rubbed out what Sister Dawn had written with the palm of his hand and started writing with a piece of chalk:
Challenge 1: 28 = 4 groups of 7
−4
Challenge 2: 24 = 4 groups of 6
−4
Challenge 3: 20 = 4 groups of 5
−4
Challenge 4: 16 = 4 groups of 4
−4
Challenge 5: 12 = 4 groups of 3
−4
Challenge 6: 8 = 4 groups of 2
−2 = The final 6
“This is it, people,” Richard boomed. “You heard what Brother Sage said. Here’s the math. All you have to do is not get into the bottom four each night. What I want to know is what’s involved in these challenges. If anyone knows anything, bring it to me. I’ll pay part of my winnings for any snippets that are worth my while.”
Richard had everyone’s attention. I could sense the tension ticking in the air. We all wanted the end prize.
“Don’t tell him anything,” Ruth warned. “You’ll never see him again after this. You won’t see any of us for dust after this. And I know his type.”
“And what’s that?” Richard asked her, his mouth dropping open in mock indignation.
“You’re a shyster,” Ruth told him.
“And you’re not?” Richard retorted.
“You don’t know the first thing about me, and you’re going to leave here not knowing any more than that.” Ruth eyed him directly, raising her eyebrows snarkily as if challenging him to a debate he couldn’t win.
A blonde girl with her hood low over her face rose to her feet. I thought she was going to jump into the fray between Ruth and Richard, but instead she headed off into the garden, hands clutching her crossed arms. I realized she was the same girl who’d been in the bed nearest to mine. I decided to go after her and check if she was okay. Maybe she’d had an even rougher morning than me.
Yolanda and two women walked down to a sunny spot in the garden, stripped off down to their underwear and commenced sunbathing. The other two women were blondes, with botoxed, puffy-lipped faces. All three shot me bored looks when I asked if they’d seen which way the girl went.
I looked through the tangle of trees until I found the secluded spot where the blonde girl sat, dipping her bare toes into the stream. She glanced up suddenly, startled to see me standing there.
I knew her.
Her face was bare of the heavy makeup that had been packed on it last time I’d seen her, and she looked so much younger now—like the fresh-faced teen that she was, small constellations of pink moles on her cheeks.
She was the girl who’d introduced me to escort work.
Kara Lundquist.
8. I, INSIDE THE WALLS
IN THE DARKNESS LIES THE TRUTH. And in truth lies the darkness.
Happy stories are the things we tell to make ourselves feel better. But they are never true.
9. GRAY
I HEADED OUT TO THE KITCHEN for a beer, but there wasn’t any. I’d drunk it all during the week.
Instead, I mixed some cordial and water and parked myself on a stool.
I’d lost my job and family all on the same day. A hollow pit sat low in my stomach.
Evie hadn’t given any clue that she was that unhappy with me that she was getting to the point of leaving. There’d been no Gray, we need to talk. I hadn’t had a dread feeling looping at the back of my mind. I’d thought it was everything else that was wrong for Evie, not me.
Erase that thought. It was me.
I put my drink down too forcefully on the kitchen bench, making a small crack appear in the glass.
I tried calling Evie several more times, then gave up.
Mentally, I went through a list of places she could have gone. Not her mother’s. She wouldn’t go there. She and Verity had a strained relationship.
Verity was one of those people who enjoyed cutting people down at the knees—even her own daughter. Evie could have gone to a motel, but she’d burn through a lot of money. And it wasn’t like her to waste money like that—she was always so careful with the budgeting. So, that left Evie’s friends. But how many of them would or could take in Evie and the kids for that long?
I drummed my fingers on the cracked glass, realizing I was past the dread of telling Evie I’d lost my job. I just wanted her here, no matter how she took the news.
My mind reeled back to yesterday, when weedy-faced Lyle told me I was no longer needed. He could barely hide his satisfaction when delivering his news. He was one of those types whose ego rested on his office desk, along with his name plate and stupid potted plant.
I’d taught myself coding—a scrawny kid sitting in his bedroom behind his computer, while his parents were in their bedroom asleep after injecting their daily heroin.
In later years, I’d been astonished to learn that even self-taught coders were in demand. There were gaps in my knowledge base though. I needed to go and study coding. But with a family to look after, I couldn’t take time off. I needed to keep working. But I’d never once regretted having Evie and the girls in my life. They gave me a family—something I’d never really had.
I’d only been twenty when Willow was born. Evie had been twenty-two. Twenty-two had seemed so much older to me back then. She’d seemed like a woman who knew everything. Now that I was twenty-four, I knew that twenty-two was still a kid.
Were Willow and Lilly asking for me right now? They were used to me coming home each week night around six— each of them fighting to get closest to me. And they were used to me being there all weekend. I rarely went out with mates. I was happy at home. A dumb kind of happy, as it turned out.
The kitchen went dark around me as night fell.
I remained sitting there, like a lone drunk after the bar had closed, nursing a cracked glass of raspberry cordial.
Finally getting up, I headed out to the sunroom, opened the windows and let the cold air rush in.
And smoked the entire bag of weed by myself.
10. CONSTANCE
“MRS LUNDQUIST, THERE’S A GOOD POSSIBILITY she found herself a boyfriend, and that’s why you haven’t heard from her.” The detective flicked his gaze my way before returning to my carefully laminated photographs of Kara.
“It’s possible, but Kara’s always been so conscientious about her studies,” I insisted. “And she didn’t mention any boyfriend to me.”
The police station smelled vaguely of paint and sawdust. I guessed it had recently been renovated. Papers and folders were lying about in high, messy piles. Even the detective—Trent Gilroy—looked slightly messy, with his hair grown thick past his ears and the uneven frown line in his forehead. It all made me uneasy. I wanted the police station and the police to look sleek and efficient, like a well-oiled machine that could process the information I’d given about Kara and then locate her with laser-sharp precision. Detective Gilroy didn’t look well oiled. He even looked slightly bored.
Gilroy drew his mouth into a noncommittal line. “We’ll do our best to find her. But I will tell you that we don’t have a clear idea that this is a missing-person case. Your daughter is almost eighteen, and she might think she’s old enough to do what she wants, without telling anyone. We have lots of frantic parents of kids that age contacting us. The kid almost always turns up, confused that people were worried about them.” He attempted a smile. “I know, they’d make it easier on everyone if they’d just stay in contact.”
I didn’t return the smile. “Please, that’s exactly what’s not making sense. It’s just not like Kara not to stay in contact. We’ve always been so close.”
He studied my face for a moment then drew a deep, audible breath. “So, you checked with the university?”
“Yes. She hasn’t turned up to any classes for weeks.”
“What about her friends? Other kids from her classes?”
“Yes, I’ve talked to them, too. No one’s heard from her. Her roommate, Paige, dropped out of university two months ago. I had no idea.”
“Your daughter didn’t tell you about her roommate dropping out?”
“No,” I said quietly.
“So, does that sound like she was trying to hide something from you?”
“I think maybe she didn’t tell me because if I’d known she was living alone, I’d have tried to pressure her to come home.”
“Was there any specific reason she wouldn’t have wanted to come back home? She did choose to go a long way from home in the first place.”
“She’s just . . . headstrong.” My voice sounded both stiff and weak at the same time.
He raised his eyebrows—just slightly—enough for me to know he was thinking things he wasn’t saying. “Well, leave it with me, Mrs Lundquist, and I’ll give you a call around this time tomorrow and let you know where we’re at.”
I was giving him the wrong answers. So far, I’d basically told him she was hiding things from me and that she was headstrong. I’d painted a picture of a girl who was likely to go off on her own.
By the sound of it, he’d been through this a thousand times with parents before, with the young person popping up again. Please, please, let that happen for me, too. I want to be laughing about this tomorrow—about my mad-mom dash across the world to find my daughter.
Gathering up my photographs, I rose from the chair and let Detective Gilroy show me out of his office.
Outside, the clouds had cleared to expose a wintry sun.
My phone rang. It was James, wanting an update on Kara. He’d wanted to come with me to Australia, but he was under an enormous workload at his job. My husband held a high-level position at the corporation he worked for, and he was always weighed under. It’d been him who’d told me to go directly to the police. I told him about Detective Gilroy and what he’d said. It was a quick conversation. James was about to head into a meeting.
I slipped the phone back into my handbag.
Putting on my sunglasses, I headed along the city street, finding myself in a large open area. I remembered seeing it from my hotel window—the Darling Harbour Precinct. Crowds, eateries, children’s playgrounds, building work and noise.
A sign near the entrance to the Chinese Gardens offered tranquillity. Paying the small fee to enter the gardens, I went in and settled myself in a quiet corner of their café, looking out onto a pond of koi that was framed with willow trees.
I stirred milk into my coffee vigorously. Detective Gilroy didn’t know Kara. He didn’t know how special she was and what a terrible thing it was that she’d vanished. And he didn’t understand that Kara and I were tight. We talked all the time. We were friends as well as mother and daughter. Weren’t we?
I hadn’t admitted to him that Kara wasn’t exactly like most young girls. She was an aloof daydreamer who only really engaged in conversation when she was interested in the topic. Those were the times she’d light up and talk on and on. She had a fairly narrow range of interests—astronomy among them. A paediatrician had once assessed her as being both highly gifted and on the fringes of the autism spectrum. Her mastery of science and English had her finishing high school two years early and then heading into college at age sixteen. She’d lost contact with her old friends and had found it hard to make new ones. Not that it seemed to bother her that much. Most of the time, Kara seemed to drift along in her own world.
I’d been shocked when she’d first told me of her desire to finish her college education in Australia. Australia of all places! She had a friend she’d met at college—Paige—whose family was moving back to their hometown in Australia, and somehow Kara had decided that she would go too.
James had been firmly set against her going. As I had been. But I’d wavered under Kara’s determination.
We’d flown with her to Sydney and helped set her up in student accommodation at the University of Sydney—a vast, sprawling Vict
orian structure in the centre of the city.
It’d felt like I’d chopped off my right arm when I’d flown back to Mississippi with James and left my little girl behind. In the six months that followed, I’d found nervous joy in all the photos Kara posted on Instagram and Facebook. But without Kara there at home, suddenly the gulf between James and me was laid bare. Guiltily, I was forced to admit to myself that James was a wonderful man who provided me with a wonderful home and lifestyle, but there was no connection between us.
Kara, on the other hand, had seemed happier after she left home. She’d travelled to all kinds of places with Paige and new friends. She’d even found a casual job in an upmarket women’s footwear store.
News of the footwear job had made me smile. It’d seemed an odd place to work for a girl who found the greatest pleasure in going barefoot. Kara went barefoot whenever she could.
She loved the feel of earth under her bare feet, the touch of rain and sun and snow on her skin.
Of all the five senses, Kara’s strongest was sensory. I used to think that anyone would know just by looking at Kara that she was a girl who loved texture. Because she herself was so textured. Her skin was smooth and sun browned, with raised, pink moles on her outer cheeks. She had waves of kinky blonde hair that were gorgeously frizzy around her hairline, in colours ranging from white to a buttery dark blonde. Her eyes always seemed sleepy, as though she were experiencing more than she could see. She had a body made for running and climbing—long limbed and streamlined. From the time she was small, I couldn’t keep her inside. She needed to be outside, rolling on the grass, playing with leaves, building forts in the sandpit, staring up at the stars at night . . .
Where was my barefoot, sleepy-eyed girl now?
11. EVIE
SUDDENLY, WITH KARA RIGHT THERE IN front of me, I didn’t feel as far away from my former life as I had just minutes ago. And that wasn’t what I wanted. I needed to put my past behind me and put on a brand new skin.