At my tone, Trudy raised her eyebrows.
‘Camper,’ he answered. ‘He’s a bit odd but it’s probably nothing to worry about. It looks like he’s been there for a while. I’ve encouraged him to move along. It’s just habit. I always check on anniversaries.’
‘What anniversary?’ Trudy and I said together.
Thom frowned. ‘You know—the young lad. The last one, a year ago. He was…’
‘Don’t say his name.’ Trudy put her fingers in her ears. ‘That’s like inviting them inside.’
I was lightheaded, even though I was sitting down. There had to be a connection. I knew something was about to happen and I wouldn’t be able to stop it.
It didn’t seem that long ago, but a lot can happen in one year. Trudy had come back home but I felt like we were further apart now than when I’d imagined whole oceans between us. Ma and Dad had disconnected. I’d loved and lost: lost Luke, lost Trudy, lost Ma, lost Astrid, lost my job. And Jeremiah. I reached down and found Gypsy’s warm body squeezed under the table next to the couch.
Losing Gypsy.
Losing my mind.
Losing hope.
And if it was exactly one year today, I sensed Pope would be leaving, one way or the other.
Losing Pope.
Thom’s car came down at a sedate speed an hour later. I took my chin off my hands. Everything was okay. If it wasn’t, surely he would have been speeding. Or was it too late to matter?
I let twenty minutes pass, then started walking. My heartbeat was skipping all over the place and I was out of breath. Halfway there, it started raining; I was dripping by the time I reached the forest sign.
‘I hoped I would see you today,’ Pope called before I came into view.
The air smelled fresh and sweet but my relief was sweeter. I hadn’t made a sound; the earth was spongy and silent underfoot.
‘How can you tell when I’m here?’
He was packing up his tent. ‘The insects. You have to listen. The sound changes—it’s as if they’re playing elevator music. The real music starts when they think there’s nobody around. Like people, really.’ His stubble had grown into a full beard. His eyes were still sunken and sad. ‘Hungry?’ He held up a bag of barbecue chips in one hand, a squashed iced bun in the other. ‘One person can’t eat all of this.’ He gestured to a pile of canned food and wilting vegetables in plastic bags.
‘Hey,’ I said warily. ‘I feed you, remember?’
He threw the bun at me.
I caught it, opened the bag and broke off a piece. ‘I suppose you know the ranger knows you’re here.’
‘I do.’ He stuffed the tent into its bag, dirt, leaves and all. ‘We met weeks ago.’
‘He didn’t say anything about you until today.’
‘I asked him not to. Same as I asked you. The last thing I needed was all of you people conspiring to bring the mad man down from the mountain.’
I frowned. ‘You people?’
‘What, you thought you were the only one?’ He winked.
‘I’m sorry—I don’t understand.’
Pope wiggled a tent peg from the ground and shook off the dirt. ‘Others came. Merrilyn from the bakery. Alby. Thomas. They brought food, like you. They tried to get me talking, like you. I guess you’d know most of them living in a place like this.’ He dropped the peg at his feet and wiped his hands. ‘I’ve only had the odd day alone since the day after I got here. You were the first, though.’ He reached over and plucked a leaf from my hair. ‘I’m the best-kept secret that everybody knew and nobody told.’
I sat down and crossed my legs. I wasn’t the only one separating the people in my life. It was a great strategy for keeping secrets, but it didn’t make for much of a safety net to catch you on your way down.
‘I’m surprised and not surprised all at the same time,’ I admitted.
Pope reached into one of his pockets and pulled out Alby’s spare set of laundromat keys. ‘Here.’ He dropped them into my lap. ‘I won’t need them anymore. So, anyway, I’m leaving.’
‘Oh.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘I am,’ I said, scowling, and he smiled. ‘What happened? What changed?’ As I asked the question, I looked up. The bottle was gone. Fragments of glass were scattered under a nearby tree. ‘You opened it?’
‘I needed to read it—I was always going to read it on this day, and I was always planning to leave today if I survived knowing what was inside.’
I screwed up my nose. ‘But I thought you wrote it. I thought it was yours.’ I was so confused.
‘It was my brother’s…Joel.’ He stumbled over the word. ‘The car was his but I drove it back here. It was his bottle and his note. He had just turned eighteen.’ He sat down next to me.
‘Joel,’ I said slowly. Using the tent peg, I wrote the letters in the dirt. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Pope watched, and retraced them with his finger when I’d finished. ‘Me, too. I don’t know why I felt I had to come here. I needed to do something until the world was the right way up again. Does that sound crazy?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘I count.’
He rubbed his dirty hand over his face. ‘So many times I let the phone ring out when he called. And if he didn’t call, I told myself everything must be okay.’ His breath sighed through his fingers. ‘It’s like what you said about not being able to acknowledge your goldfish—that was me. It wasn’t my problem if I didn’t pick up the phone. And then he was gone and we’ve all been asking, why, why, but none of us really wanted to know the answers. It’s hard to know how much is my fault and how much I couldn’t have changed if I tried.’
I swiped at tears before they could spill over. ‘What does the note say?’
Pope was dry-eyed but his expression was haunted. ‘It says, I’m sorry and I love you and God, help me—all the things we never say until it’s too late. Imagine if we said out loud all the things we might write down and stuff into a bottle? I wish I’d picked up the phone. I wish he’d waited.’
I struggled to find the right words. Whatever I said, it would be wrong. My life seemed so short and untarnished right now. ‘Waiting is hard when no one comes.’
He nodded. ‘That’s the truth.’
‘So that’s it, then. You have closure.’
Pope shook his head. ‘Closure. That’s a term people use when they have reasons and answers. I don’t have any of those things. What I have is sixty days in a forest and about a million mosquito bites. I have the kindness of strangers.’ He touched my hand. ‘Being here gave me something to do while I obsessed about not being able to change anything.’ He scratched at a bite on his arm. ‘So no, I wouldn’t call that closure. I call it distraction.’
I sniffed. ‘I hope you’re going to be okay. I hope your family will heal. I hope I don’t see you here again.’
‘I don’t want your hope, Jack. Hope is something small and weak, trapped in here.’ He tapped his chest. ‘Hope is faith without wings. Find faith, instead—it’ll carry you further. Hope is nothing if you squeeze too tight and don’t let go. It lets you down, every time.’
He hugged me awkwardly. I sat on the damp forest floor, letting the rain seep into my pants, watching him pack up the rest of his campsite.
‘I hope I see you again,’ I said softly. I still hope.
Without turning around he replied, ‘We’ll find each other again. We’re the lucky ones. We’re the kind of people who go looking.’ He stared up at the pieces of sky above. ‘Blue skies, Miss Jacklin. Blue skies.’
I didn’t expect to feel so empty when Pope left. Like the night he arrived, I heard tyres sliding on the dirt road to Nula, but I didn’t see him go.
I loved too easily. Did I feel love for Pope? It felt as if I did. Anything beyond like felt like love to me; there was nothing in between. But as I left him behind, the emotion had already started to fray, like the bonds made at school camp over midnight pranks and spinning bottles. I’d outgrown my child
ish love for Trudy and in its place was something stiff and scratchy that needed to be worn in all over again. Astrid: a bright button, something to hold up to the light every now and then with a shrug and a smile. Ma and me—our love seemed like it would keep stretching and fading until it wore so thin, it tore away; Luke would always feel like someone I’d borrowed but had no right to keep. And Jeremiah—my emotions made no sense, a loop with no end. Life would be easier if I could care less. Love would be easier if it was one size fits all.
The sound of tyres on gravel faded. I moved a bead on the abacus to the right-hand side. I wasn’t only putting lines through the days, I had started crossing off people, too. I moved a bead for Trudy, Ma and Astrid, and left one poised in the centre for Jeremiah. He hadn’t called and I couldn’t tell if I was wound up because he might call, or because he might not.
Pope’s words rang true. Distraction worked best when your heart hurt so much you couldn’t be alone with it. Was that what Jeremiah was to me? A distraction?
I ate half a tub of Mobius’s World Famous Homemade Ice Cream and made myself more queasy. Trudy and Mads were asleep. Gypsy had sneaked up onto the couch with me and was slowly squeezing me off and onto the floor. Outside, the trees tapped on the windows and I could hear it, the bug music, the way they played when nobody was around.
I felt the change in beat when a car rattled up and idled in the driveway.
Gypsy pricked her ears and growled.
I rolled off the couch and went to the window, but the car was hidden behind the rainwater tank. A door slammed. Heavy steps on the back verandah. My skin prickled. Nothing good happened at a quarter to midnight.
Gypsy pressed herself against my legs and let out a vicious bark.
I slid the door open a crack. ‘Who’s there?’ I called, but I could tell who it was by the shape of him, standing in the shadows, shuffling from foot to foot. Gypsy pushed her nose into the gap. ‘Stay,’ I said. I pressed my hand onto her head and she backed up.
‘It’s me,’ Jeremiah said. He stepped forward and the sensor light came on.
‘You scared me.’ I smelled beer. ‘You’ve been drinking.’
He had his arms wrapped around his waist as if he was trying to hold himself together. ‘I didn’t drive. Roly’s waiting out front. I’m sorry, I know it’s late. I just needed to talk.’
‘Everyone’s asleep. I’ll come out.’ I slipped on a jacket and slid the door closed as quietly as I could.
‘I was going to call but…’ Jeremiah trailed off. He was a mess: his face was haggard, eyes bleary, pieces of hair sticking up like he’d been running his hands through it.
‘I know. I should have called you, too, but stuff has been happening and…’ I meant that I shouldn’t have waited so long to tell him we were over, but he brightened.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said and dropped his arms to his sides. He moved towards me.
‘God, what are you sorry for?’ I took a sideways step. I didn’t want him to touch me. If he touched me, I might unravel. I’d screw things up all over again. ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. This is my fault. I just can’t seem to say what I really mean. Ever.’
‘You can tell me now,’ he said.
‘It…must have been hard for you to come here.’
Jeremiah smiled. ‘Bravest thing I ever did. Say it, Jack. You’re shaking. You’re breath-holding and slow-blinking. It’s pointless. Eventually you’ll have to open your eyes and breathe out. Look at me. Just say it.’
Cruelty, kindness, truth, lies—they all hurt in the end. It was better to say nothing at all. I squeezed my eyes shut and wished there was an easier way. When I opened them again he’d moved closer. As hard as I tried to look at him, my eyes kept sliding away.
Love is a pie. Of all the things my sister could be right about, it was that.
I shrugged.
Jeremiah drew himself up to his full height, stuffed his hands into his pockets and stepped back. ‘I’ll go. I’m leaving tomorrow night. I’ll wait at the house until five. If you want to come with me for a couple of days, meet me there. If you don’t, well…I’ll see you when I see you, Jack.’
When I heard tyres crunch on gravel, I went inside. He’d given me the easy way out, and he was gone. The wrong wishes always came true.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Tick-tock. Never had a minute hand moved more slowly than this. I watched five o’clock come and go, curled on my side, spooning Gypsy, feeling her uneven heartbeat beneath my palm. How long would Jeremiah wait—at which point would he decide I wasn’t coming? Was he already making excuses for me? Would his waiting be measured by his perfect logic, or blind faith? Would he just wait—endlessly, hopefully, irrationally—like I had, so many times?
Gypsy stirred and lifted her head. She stared at me as if I’d made a sound. Her breath gargled in her throat. I wiped her drool and rubbed her ears but she sighed and moved away—she knew what kind of person I was and she didn’t approve.
My bedroom door opened.
‘I didn’t hear you knock.’
‘I didn’t,’ Trudy said. ‘What’s wrong with you?’ she asked, like an accusation. ‘You can’t stay in here all day.’ She sat on the end of my bed. ‘Thom and I nearly broke up last night. You don’t see me wallowing in it.’
‘That’s because you have no heart.’
Trudy’s bottom lip quavered. Her eyes filled.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t mean it.’ I started crying, too. ‘And what do you mean “nearly”? You know when it’s over.’
‘It feels like it is.’
‘If you don’t want it to be over you should fix it.’
Trudy spread out beside me on the bed. Though it was still an island, we could both touch the walls on either side with outstretched fingers. ‘You can’t swing a cat in here.’
‘Tell me about it.’
Trudy grabbed my hand. She laced our fingers together. She gripped so tightly I got the start of pins and needles. For once, we were in balance—as if we’d both jumped off the seesaw at exactly the same time—just the right amount of wasted love and useless pain, a dash of good but mostly bad, and nobody to blame but ourselves.
‘This falling in love malarkey,’ she said, sniffling. ‘It won’t work. I’ll be doing him a favour. At least the damage is contained. I’ve never told him how I feel.’
‘Congratulations,’ I said. ‘Crisis averted.’
‘Hey, at least we have each other.’ She squeezed my hand. We both stared up at the stained ceiling.
‘There’s that,’ I said dully.
‘You and me. Hearts in tatters, dignity intact. ’
‘Amen.’ I crossed my heart.
‘It could be much worse.’
‘Yeah. Close call,’ I said.
‘We should have kept it simple. I wish he could have left it at sex and the occasional movie.’
‘God, stop!’ I exploded. I swung off the bed. ‘Who are you trying to convince?’
‘What do you mean?’ she said, blinking.
‘I don’t see the problem! He cares about you. You seem to care about him. Do you know what the chances are of that happening to two people, at the same time?’
‘It’s not that simple.’ She jerked away. ‘It’s bound to end—I might as well end it now. You’ll understand one day.’ She got up to leave.
I picked up a pillow and hugged it. ‘See, I don’t want to be brittle like you. I don’t want to hold everything inside so I never get hurt. The falling is the best part, isn’t it, in love? But how would you know—you never let go.’
‘You’re just a kid,’ she said.
‘I’ll be eighteen in nine months. I expect I’ll know it all then.’ I sat down heavily. ‘I think you’re kidding yourself. You’re upset anyway. Tell him how you feel. What’s the worst that could happen?’
She balled her fists and pressed them into her eye sockets. ‘I can’t. It’s too hard.’
‘No. It’s not.’
Trudy had such a long way to fall from the pedestal I’d built. I liked this new Trudy: messy, vulnerable and scared, like me. For the first time ever, I could see right through her.
‘You liked him,’ Trudy said. ‘Jeremiah.’
‘Yeah, I did. I do.’
‘He seems like a nice guy. He was good to you.’
‘He was.’
‘Tell me the best thing and the worst thing,’ she said.
I ground the heel of my palm against the ache in my chest. ‘The best thing…’ I stopped. There was no way to separate a whole tangle of emotions into best and worst. I let my body go loose and fell back onto the bed. ‘I liked him. I loved the way he made me feel.’ I tried to make sense of my thoughts before I let them out. ‘But…I think the problem was…I loved the way I made him feel more than anything else.’ I glanced at Trudy. ‘I suck.’
She nodded. ‘Yeah, sometimes you do. Sometimes we all do.’ She lingered in the doorway. ‘Maybe you just weren’t ready. It’s too soon after Luke. Dust yourself off and move on.’
‘Jeremiah was my version of moving on. How do you steer this thing?’ I yelled and thumped my heart.
Trudy gave me a peace sign and closed my door.
Something screamed outside.
‘Fuck off!’ I screamed back.
I leaned through the open window and caught a glimpse of Ringworm skulking underneath the bushes. He shot out and glared at me from a safe distance with his yellow eyes, tail swishing. I looked down. The smell was stronger here. I parted the leaves and beneath the bush there were at least thirty empty cans of tuna, crawling with ants, fermenting in the heat.
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but I should have known that my sister would always say one thing and do another.
Trudy had been feeding the damned cat, too.
Two days after Pope disappeared, the morning after Jeremiah had left, Gypsy wandered into my room. She stood at the foot of my bed with her front legs splayed and lowered her head between them, blowing so hard that her jowls ballooned on each side.
I sat up groggily and rubbed my eyes. I’d left the window open all night and the rotten smell had almost gone. A cool breeze lifted the curtains and swayed the bare light bulb on its cord. Ringworm yowled nearby, but Gypsy didn’t react.
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