Mirror Me

by Rachel Sanderson

  First class is Australian history. Which means Zeke. My stomach is churning at the thought of seeing him after everything that happened the day before.

  He’s not there when I get to class. I take my usual seat and figure there’s a couple of spare seats in case he turns up late and decides he doesn’t want to sit next to me. Part of the churning in my stomach is dread and part of it is excitement. I’ve missed him so much and I wish beyond all reason that things might just magically go back to the way they were. But what are the chances of that?

  Increasingly slim, it seems, as everybody takes their place and the teacher arrives and starts talking and there’s still no Zeke. I try to ignore my disappointment and pay attention to what’s happening in class, but it’s hard. I keep getting flashbacks to the week before when Zeke was sitting next to me and running his finger up and down my thigh under the table.

  ‘Abbie?’ The teacher’s voice breaks through my distraction. ‘Did you want to share a thought with us?’

  ‘Um, sorry, I wasn’t listening,’ I say, blushing.

  ‘Please try to listen,’ he says, and moves on.

  At the end of class, he asks me to wait.

  ‘Is everything okay Abbie?’

  I nod. ‘I’m fine thanks. Just a bit tired. Had a big weekend.’

  ‘Okay. Maybe have a quiet one tonight and refocus yourself when you come to class tomorrow. Or I’ll have to mark you as present but absent.’

  I look at him, frowning. Is that even a thing?

  ‘It’s a joke Abbie. Sorry, I shouldn’t even try.’

  ‘Okay, no worries,’ I say.

  He sighs. ‘You can go now. If anything is the matter you can always talk to me, or make a time to talk to the counsellor or one of the other teachers. Whoever you feel most comfortable with. We’re here to help, alright? We’re on your side.’

  I nod and leave as quickly as I can.

  I hide in the library at lunchtime and pretend to work.

  After lunch, I have double chemistry. Cara is in my class but we’re doing a group project and we’re in different groups so we don’t end up speaking to one another at all. I try to judge from her expression whether Zeke has said anything to her or not but I can’t tell. She looks grumpy most of the time anyway; it’s the natural resting state of her face.

  I walk down to the surgery after school finishes and wait for a ride home with Mum.

  Dave’s auntie is back behind the reception desk as always, and she glares at me even more intensely than usual from under her purple-framed glasses.

  I pick up a magazine and begin to study it intensely though I can’t take in a single word of the article. My mind is racing. She blames me, I realise. She thinks it’s my fault Dave is dead. Well welcome to the club. I blame me, too.

  Suddenly I’ve had enough. I put the magazine down, stand up and walk over to the counter.

  ‘Your mother is booked through until five,’ she says. ‘Don’t expect to be out of here until at least half past.’

  ‘It’s okay, I’ll wait,’ I say. ‘Is there any news about Dave?’

  She narrows her eyes at me. ‘My nephew is dead. What kind of news were you expecting?’

  ‘Have the police got any leads?’ I say.

  She snorts. ‘It’s not like they’d tell me if they did,’ she says. ‘I’m not immediate enough, apparently. His father didn’t give two hoots when David was alive. Wouldn’t have remembered a single birthday without me to remind him. But now he’s gone, oh Leonard’s shattered, of course.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say, trying to keep my voice gentle. ‘I’m really sorry about what happened to Dave.’

  She looks at me directly and sets her mouth into a hard line. ‘The Good Lord takes us all at the time of his own choosing. Young or old, righteous or otherwise.’

  I see her pudgy fingers fidgeting with a crucifix that hangs around her neck.

  ‘Uh, I guess.’

  ‘You only have to hope that there is repentance enough at the moment of death for Jesus to offer his salvation.’

  ‘Um,’ I say awkwardly. I’ve been raised strictly agnostic and have no idea how to respond to religious topics of conversation at the best of times, and this is far from that.

  ‘Dave was not the tidiest of boys nor the quietest, but I believe his heart was pure, for everything that’s been said about him. And Lord knows the O’Reilleys weren’t blameless either. Though they seem to be made saints of in their absence.’

  ‘I guess people want to remember the good things,’ I say, helplessly.

  ‘If they only knew what I know,’ she says and tuts her tongue and shakes her head.

  My heart beats faster. I do my best look of innocent curiosity.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I ask. She worked for Doctor O’Reilley for years, Mum said. Decades even. She would have known him and his family as well as anybody.

  She looks at me sternly. ‘That is not my place to say. All I will say is this. A man may have a fancy degree and letters after his name but he is still just a man. He is as susceptible as anybody. Flesh is flesh.’

  I nod and frown. What the hell does that mean?

  Before I have the chance to attempt to extract anything further, Mum’s door opens and an elderly woman in an aqua-marine pant suit walks out clutching a prescription.

  I sit down again and pick up the magazine but I don’t even see what’s on the page in front of me.

  ‘Zeke isn’t driving you today?’ Mum says.

  I shake my head, unable to respond, the words catching in my throat. I haven’t told Mum what’s happened yet. The mention of Zeke’s name catches me off guard and before I know it, I’ve started to cry. I’ve been holding it off all day.

  ‘Oh sweetie,’ Mum sits down next to me and grabs a handful of tissues.

  One good thing about doctors’ surgeries is there is an abundant supply of tissues.

  I can’t tell her anything. I don’t even know where to start. I stammer a few useless phrases and shake my head and blow my nose.

  ‘Alrighty. Let’s get you home,’ she says.

  Chapter fifty-five

  The sun sets as we drive. By the time we reach the house, it’s dark. I can dimly make out the shape of Stacey’s motorbike leaned up near the verandah.

  ‘Oh look, now who might have left that there?’ Mum says.

  On the ground by the front door is a big bunch of flowers. I can just make out that they’re a mixture of white daisies and red roses. I pick them up. Could Zeke have left them? He could have driven here this afternoon and left them for me. My heart races. There’s a small card attached. I turn it over and look at it.

  LET’S TRY AGAIN

  There’s no name.

  ‘Well that’s sweet, isn’t it,’ Mum says, opening the door. Light from inside the house floods out. ‘I’ll get you some water for them,’ she says.

  I should call Zeke. I should call him right now and say thank you. Then a sudden fear strikes me – what if they’re not from Zeke? What would I say to him?

  I follow her in.

  That night I dream. The room is pitch black. I know there’s a door somewhere but I can’t see it. I reach my arms in front of me and take a step. Nothing. I take another. I’ve never experienced darkness this complete. I strain my eyes but all I see is blackness. There’s nothing to guide me, nothing at all. I take another step, straining with all my senses for a clue, a glimmer of direction. I step again and this time I touch something – I brush my fingers against it and freeze. It’s cold and hard and stickily wet and then in an instant it’s like every light that ever existed is being turned on, the room is flooded with brightness, and I’m blinking and blind and as my eyes adjust I start to scream.

  She’s hanging in mid-air, covered in blood, wearing the dress. It’s Becky or it’s me, I don’t even know anymore. And I look down and I’m wearing the dress too and I have her blood all over my hands, my arms, or is it my blood? It’s dripping down my front. Then someone tou
ches my shoulder and I wake with a start.

  I’m alone. The darkness of my bedroom is nothing like the intense, blind blackness of my dream. I hear little noises: the refrigerator buzzing, Stacey’s murmur of a snore from the bedroom down the hallway. I turn the lamp on and wait for my heart rate to slow, for my breathing to settle. I can’t get the feeling out of my skin though, of having touched the dead body. And then something clicks in my memory. I jump out of the bed and pull the dress out from where I’d stashed it at the bottom of the cupboard and look at it, heart racing, half expecting it to be soaked and bloody. It’s not. I hold it under the lamplight and look at the tiny details of the print: red roses and white daisies. Red roses and white daisies.

  Just like the flowers that were left on the doorstep.

  For a couple of days nothing much happens. I see Zeke a few times but he ignores me and the sense of disconnect I feel when he does is like falling badly and being winded. I literally find it hard to breathe. Helena is off school sick again, and Cara is hanging with Zeke, giving me genuine pointy-edged death glares.

  I try to think of explanations for the dress. I grabbed a few things from an op-shop not long after we first arrived. Maybe I somehow picked it up in the bundle without noticing? Maybe.

  I don’t see or hear anything further from Andy and though it should feel like a relief, it makes me more anxious than anything. It must have been him who sent the flowers. If it had been Zeke, he would have said something, surely? Surely?

  On Thursday, I get a package from Leah. Chocolate, as promised. Plus a cool t-shirt from Threadless with a robot chicken on it that I know she only got a few weeks earlier, plus her well-thumbed copy of the first book in the Hunger Games series, plus some cute puppy dog socks with little ears sticking out of them that her mum brought her back from Japan that I always loved, plus some dangly earrings that I put in straight away. She’s gone all out and for a little while it makes me feel better, almost.

  Mum knocks on the door tentatively.

  ‘How’re you going?’ she says, edging around the doorway.

  I shrug.

  ‘I have to go pick Tom up from Jamie’s place. We were going to head in to Derrington Delish for Dessert for Dinner. Do you want to come?’

  The memory flashes of seeing Cara and Zeke kissing the last time we were there. I just can’t face it. I don’t want to be around people at all.

  ‘Can I skip it tonight?’

  ‘Oh sweetheart. You must be miserable if Dessert for Dinner isn’t enough to get you out of your room,’ Mum sighs.

  ‘It’s been a kind of a shitty week.’

  ‘What will you do?’

  ‘I might just watch some telly with Zelda or something,’ I say. ‘She’s taken a liking to that German detective show with the dog in it.’

  ‘If you’re sure?’ Mum says. ‘I’ll bring some Devil’s chocolate cake back for you.’

  Chapter fifty-six

  I know it’s not them as soon as I hear the car turning into the driveway. The engine doesn’t sound right – it’s too throaty and gruff. And it’s only been twenty minutes. They’d barely have reached Derrington. Nothing short of a zombie apocalypse would turn Tom back when he’s that close to Dessert for Dinner.

  For a second I feel a surge of hope: it must be Zeke. He wants to see me. He wants to talk to me. He’s driven out to tell me he can’t keep going like this and he forgives me and he wants to start again. But then I think of the look he gave me only hours earlier at school and the hope sours in my mouth, turns to something sharp. Fear.

  I flick the television onto mute and walk slowly through the house. The engine has stopped. I peer out of the loungeroom window onto the driveway.

  Andy’s truck.

  Oh geez, he’s the last person I want to see. I could pretend not to be home, I think. The car is out. The house could be deserted for all he knows.

  He knocks. Zelda gives a low growl and I grab her collar and pull her closer to me. I feel safer with her next to me. I walk back through the house, keeping Zelda close, still not certain what I’m going to do. He knocks again and Zelda barks this time. The light is off in Mum and Stacey’s room so I pull Zelda in there and edge the door closed. I’ll wait it out. He’ll knock again then leave, I tell myself. And I’ll go back to watching bad TV alone in my pyjamas, which is my destiny for tonight and probably every night for the rest of my life.

  But he doesn’t knock again. There’s a long, unnerving silence. Then I hear a sound that makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. A scraping noise. I know exactly what it is.

  Mum keeps the spare key under the big rock beside the back door. She must have told him where it is. He’s going to let himself in.

  For a second I am literally petrified, the fear turning me as useless as stone and then, a second later, I’m furious. What the hell is he doing letting himself into our house? And then I think of all the little things that have gone wrong and required his attention: the dysfunctional water heater, the busted sensor light. He could easily have engineered all of that. And Mum has paid him for it. Including in truckloads of cake.

  I hear a click as the key enters the keyhole and the mechanism responds. And in that instant, I see my options as clearly as though they were set out in step-by-step diagrams in a detailed and helpful manual. One involves me hiding in the dark. And the other –

  I open the door and stride down the hallway, Zelda at my side, even though my legs feel like jelly and I want to cry. I get to the door just as it opens.

  ‘Andy?’ I say loudly. He looks startled, then guilty, then something else. ‘I thought I heard someone knocking. I was just having a rest. I had my headphones in. Can I help you with something?’

  I see the uncertainty written on his face.

  ‘Sure, I just, um, actually… I needed to see you. And I thought if you weren’t home… I was going to leave a note for you. Somewhere private, you know. Didn’t really want your Mum finding it.’

  Zelda starts to growl – a low, unsettling rumble. I pull her closer to me.

  ‘Well here I am,’ I attempt to smile. ‘Do you want to come in for a coffee? Mum should be home any minute.’

  ‘If that’s not a problem. Thanks, I’d like that. I wanted to see how you were going? After the other day?’

  I look at him, standing there in the doorway. He looks so sincere, so innocent. The fear I felt a minute ago seems ludicrous now. Maybe things are just different in the country. Maybe using the spare key and letting yourself into somebody’s house when they’re out to leave them a note isn’t actually the weirdest thing in the world to do.

  ‘Of course,’ I say. ‘I was just about to have one myself.’ I shut Zelda into the laundry – I have to physically push her through the doorway – and then I turn and Andy follows me down the corridor.

  He settles himself in one of the kitchen chairs, leans back and watches me as I get the kettle on. I really wish I wasn’t wearing my puppy dog pyjamas. I’ve even got the puppy dog socks on that Leah sent me, the ones that have little ears sticking out and a little pink tongue. Fabulous.

  ‘How are you?’ he says. ‘I’ve been thinking about you a lot. Since…. well you know.’

  ‘It hasn’t been the best week,’ I say. ‘But I’m okay. Thanks.’

  Instant coffee. Sugar. Boiling water. I cross the kitchen to get the milk out of the fridge and he still watches me.

  ‘I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said,’ he says. ‘About moving back to Sydney.’

  ‘Oh, that probably won’t happen. Sometimes I just feel like I’ve had enough, that’s all. My family drive me crazy, but I’d miss them too much to go anywhere without them, and they’re all so happy here I couldn’t ask them to move.’

  Pour milk. Stir. I carry his cup carefully over to the table.

  ‘Aren’t you having one?’ he looks up at me. ‘I didn’t mean to put you to any trouble…’

  ‘It’s fine. I’ll make a pot of tea. Mum will want some
too when she gets home,’ I say, hoping he’s taking the point. Our window of unsupervised time is limited.

  I get the big blue teapot down. It’s one that Dad brought us back after his first few months working for MSF. Hand crafted by nomads and fired with camel dung, or something like that. Actually, it’s beautiful. I get hit by a memory for a second – it happens like that sometimes, they just come out of nowhere – of Dad pouring hot water into the pot and Mum laughing. That was when we thought he was coming home, when we thought it was just a phase he was going through – his mid-life must-save-the-world thing.

  I choose a tin of tea at random and sprinkle in some leaves.

  ‘See what I was thinking was, maybe you’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe you feel like things are bad when they’re just unsettled because they’re getting towards how they should be.’

  I bring the pot to the table, an uneasy feeling growing at his words.

  ‘I mean, you’re meant to be here. But maybe Zeke was a mistake because maybe you’re meant to be with someone else. Me.’

  There’s a kind of glow in his eyes as he gazes across the table at me. I break his gaze, pick up the pot and swirl the leaves the way Mum always does, for something to do.

  ‘You’ve been so helpful, and we have really appreciated it. But I don’t feel like I know you that well. And Zeke has been my friend since we first arrived. And I know everything is kind of messed up with him at the moment, but I do really like him still.’

  Plus I’m only sixteen years old and you’re at least twenty-three and I’m pretty sure that’s illegal, I think but don’t say.