Text copyright © 2016 by Low Ying Ping
Illustrations by Chee Jia Yi
Published in Singapore by Epigram Books
www.epigrambooks.sg
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without written permission of the publisher.
Published with the support of
National Library Board, Singapore Cataloguing in Publication Data
Names: Low, Ying Ping. | Chee, Jia Yi, illustrator.
Title: Mount Emily / Low Ying Ping; illustrations by Chee Jia Yi.
Description: First edition. | Singapore: Epigram Books, [2016]
Identifiers: OCN 933605791 | ISBN 978-981-46-5593-4 (paperback)
Subjects: LCSH: Teenage girls—Fiction. | Friendship—Fiction. |
Time travel—Fiction.
Classification: LCC PR9570.S53 | DDC S823—dc23
ISBN: 978-981-4655-94-1 (ebook)
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First Edition
For my dearest daughter
chapter one
atsy Goh could not believe how infuriating her mother was being. What was the big deal about a sleepover? Aren’t I already in Secondary One, and almost 13? she thought. All her friends went for sleepovers, so why couldn’t she too? And it wasn’t as if she had wanted to go to some random friend’s house. It was the house of Elena Tan—her best friend since forever.
She was still fuming when she arrived at school and made it to the assembly point just as the bell rang. Elena, who stood behind her during morning assembly, nudged her and whispered, “Hey, what’s wrong? Even your hair’s on fire.”
Patsy smoothed down her unruly, wiry hair as best as she could with irritation. She hated the messy way she looked, but somehow found it nearly impossible to remember to brush her hair; when she did remember, she would invariably be running late and not have the time to do it. She would end up just scrunching the whole lot up in a sorry-looking ponytail. She glanced back at Elena. Her friend, who was totally unlike her, had a perfectly straight parting at one side of her head, and her jet-black hair fell neatly down before curling obediently at just the right angle above her shoulders.
Patsy heaved a deep sigh that meant “everything’s wrong today”, and Elena quietly neatened the pleats of Patsy’s pinafore from the back in a show of sympathy.
The two girls attended Mount Emily Girls’ School, affectionately called “Mount Em” by its students. The school derived its name from being located on Mount Emily Road, which bordered on the picturesque Mount Emily Park. Founded nearly a hundred years ago by missionaries who had come to Singapore, the school building was old and rather run-down, but also spacious, with lots of greenery. Thirty years earlier, their mothers had attended the very same school. In fact, their mothers had been classmates and good friends too. This was what made the bond between the two girls all the more special. No one else in school had a history as long as they did. Patsy liked to think that their friendship had practically been fated.
That morning, old Mrs Kwek’s science lesson seemed to go on forever. Patsy tried to keep herself from nodding off by trying to figure out if Mrs Kwek’s beehive-like bun of hair was real. At long last, the recess bell rang and Patsy jumped at the chance to talk to Elena.
“I said, ‘Why can’t I sleep over at Elena’s next Friday?’” Patsy recounted, her voice growing louder and louder as she became increasingly agitated, “And she said, ‘You know the eighth of August is my best friend’s death anniversary and your dad isn’t free so I need you to come with me to visit her grave and why must you do your sleepover that day anyway,’ and I said, ‘Because that’s when all of Elena’s other friends can make it,’ and she said, ‘Why do you need to sleep at somebody else’s house when you have your own house,’ and I said, ‘Everybody does sleepovers and I’m already almost 13,’ and she said, ‘You’re not everybody!’”
“Okay, okay,” Elena said soothingly. “Don’t get so worked up.”
“I’m not worked up!”
“Fine, fine. Why don’t you let your mum cool off and ask her again in a few days? Or maybe I could ask my mum to ask her?”
“You’d do that?” Patsy asked hopefully and a little doubtfully.
“Yes, yes. Anyway, don’t be angry anymore. We still have 20 minutes of recess left. Let me show you something interesting.”
“Hmm?” Patsy asked warily. She hoped it wasn’t anything too adventurous. The last time Elena had said that, she had made Patsy go with her to Mount Emily Park at dusk so that they could investigate the abandoned wooden shack at the far end of it. The park with a view of the city area beneath the hill was a delight to be in during the day, but at twilight took on a sinister aspect. Mindful of the rumours that ghosts haunted the area around the old Mount Emily swimming pool nearby, where drownings had occurred long ago, Patsy had been terrified they would encounter a spectre and prove once and for all that ghosts exist, or, a lesser evil but horrifying nonetheless, come upon a poisonous snake. In some remote corner of her mind, she even feared that Mrs Kwek might suddenly rise up from the grassy shadows to glare at them over her thick glasses. In the end, all they found at the shack were empty bottles of beer and a strong smell of piss.
“Where are we going?” Patsy asked as she allowed Elena to lead her away from their classroom and down several flights of stairs.
Elena looked furtively around, then whispered, “You’ve heard about the ghost of Mount Em, right?”
Patsy groaned. “That old story about how a girl vanished into thin air? You mean you believe that load of rubbish?”
“What load of rubbish?” Elena chided. “It’s a well-respected legend, all right? It’s been around for decades and lots of people have seen the ghost.”
“Like who?” Patsy challenged.
“I don’t know anyone myself,” Elena admitted, “but I’m sure people have seen it. Otherwise where would the legend have come from?”
By then, they had arrived at the part of the school that housed the science laboratories. Patsy shuddered as they walked past the chemistry lab with the real skeleton standing sentry just inside the open door. This part of the school was usually quiet when no lab lessons were going on and it gave her the creeps.
Elena led Patsy down one final flight of stairs at the end of the science corridor. “Here we are!”
“No ghost to be seen,” Patsy declared loudly, making a show of looking around. In front of her was just another corridor running parallel to the science corridor above. There were two storerooms on this level, but nothing else of interest.
Elena rolled her eyes. “Not so easy. Follow me.” She walked past the storerooms, then, to Patsy’s horror, proceeded to climb over the railing at the end of the corridor. She was heading, Patsy realised, for the slope located just beyond the storerooms.
Mount Emily Girls’ School was built on a hill and there were a number of corridors in the school that ran over exposed slopes. Some persistent grass tried to grow on these slopes, but the lack of sunlight prevented them from flourishing, resulting in despondent tufts of dusty green interspersed with patches of brown soil. Elena had brought Patsy to one such slope. Reluctantly, Patsy followed Elena to scramble over the railing, which rather ruffled Patsy’s law-abiding conscience.
“I hope that’s the only illegal thing we’re going to do today,” she murmured, glancing around nervously.
“Not at all,” Elena said brightly. “We’
re going to dig!”
“What?!” Patsy stared at Elena, then turned to goggle at the slope. It was inclined at an angle of about 45 degrees and stretched for about five metres before tapering off to a sort of narrow landing. A short stretch of wall connected the landing with the ceiling, above which was the science corridor. Another wall closed off the top half of the slope on the side nearest the railing. On the other side, the slope ran on for a good distance before hitting a wall at the far end and an open walkway at the top of the slope. Away from the gloom of the science corridor, the grass here could flourish under the open sky and was a lush carpet of green.
The lighting at the slope under the corridor was rather dim but amid the shadows Patsy could make out the dry soil and clumps of bedraggled grass that littered the slope.
“As the legend goes, this is where the ghost was seen, right?” Elena asked.
Patsy nodded, feeling her flesh tingle a little as she remembered the stories their seniors had told them during Orientation Week. “What’s that got to do with digging though?”
“Don’t you know? The body of the girl was buried here, right at the top of this slope, and today, we’re going to find the body!” Elena announced with a flourish.
“I’ve never heard of that part of the legend before,” Patsy said suspiciously. “Did you make it up yourself?”
“Oh, you never hear of anything,” Elena said carelessly, hitching up the skirt of her pinafore and starting to climb the slope. Patsy’s cheeks burned. She knew Elena was not deliberately trying to be mean, but didn’t she know how hurtful her words could be?
Patsy hesitated, then got onto her hands as well and crawled after Elena. The soil was grubby and she didn’t like the feeling of the half-dead grass on her fingers, but she continued on. “We can’t dig, though,” she said as she neared the top. “We’ve got no tools.”
Elena was already squatting at the top, hunched over to avoid hitting her head against the underside of the corridor. She produced a small metal ruler from her pocket and pried tentatively at the soil. “You’re right, the soil is too hard.”
Patsy was about to breathe a sigh of relief when a voice called up to them from a distance. “Are you two digging?”
Elena and Patsy looked down. No one was there.
chapter two
atsy felt a shiver go up her spine, then she spotted a girl standing just beyond the railing they had climbed over. Ordinarily, the walls and ceilings of this part of the school building would have obscured the girls from the view of passers-by, but now Patsy could see a girl peering up at them. She must have bent down to pick up something she had dropped, for she was now squatting and looking through the bars of the railing. Patsy could tell she was a prefect, from her tie.
“Are you digging?” the prefect asked again.
“Oh, no,” Elena said. “We’re just looking around.”
“Well, you’d better come down now, or I’m going to have to book you,” the prefect said good-naturedly. She straightened and stood beside the railing. The girls could only see her legs as the wall flanking the upper half of the slope blocked the rest of their view of her. They looked at each other, Patsy silently willing Elena to give up the silly game. But before either girl could voice her thoughts, they saw the prefect walking off, obviously thinking the wait wasn’t worth her effort.
Patsy sighed in relief. “We’d better go,” she said. “Recess is almost over. We’re going to be super late!”
“Yes, but we’ll be back tomorrow, with better tools,” Elena said cheerfully.
Patsy sighed. She thought of telling Elena that she didn’t want to investigate a ghost story, but she knew Elena would just go ahead and do it on her own anyway. Worse, she might ask another friend to accompany her, and Patsy couldn’t bear the thought of Elena sharing a potentially exciting adventure with someone else. It was a constant source of insecurity to Patsy that she didn’t have any close friends other than Elena, whereas Elena seemed to have so many friends.
And this was supposed to cheer me up, she thought woefully as the two girls ran back to their classroom.
True to her word, Elena arrived in school the next day with a small rusty spade and a screwdriver she had scrounged up from home. However, they didn’t have time to carry out their mischief during recess as Mrs Kwek, who was partially deaf, did not hear the recess bell and droned on for a good 10 minutes before she finally responded to the frantic waving of several girls with an impatient “What?!”
“Did you ask your mum whether she could talk to mine about the sleepover?” Patsy asked as they trudged over to the slope during their lunch break.
“Oh, I forgot! I’m so sorry!” Elena said. “My mum came home late last night, and you know what a bad memory I have.”
You remembered your tools all right, Patsy thought grouchily. But then, there wasn’t any point in being angry with Elena. You couldn’t even pick a quarrel with her as she was always so apologetic. She would cheerily admit that she was wrong and apologise profusely, but was sure to forget again the next day. Am I less important than your mystery ghost that doesn’t exist? Patsy thought a little sulkily as she ambled up the slope after Elena.
She shook her head to try to rid herself of all these negative thoughts. The truth was, she was still feeling rather down as she had not yet made up with her mum. In fact, the two of them had not spoken to each other at all since the previous day’s quarrel. Her unhappiness was further compounded by the endless torrents of WhatsApp messages that Elena and her friends kept sending to their shared chat group the whole of the previous evening as they made plans for their sleepover. Was Elena so insensitive that she didn’t realise Patsy would feel miserable on seeing those messages? She had thought of removing herself from the group, but she feared that if she did, she would never be added back by Elena. She had also toyed with the idea of sending Elena a message to remind her of her promise to speak to her mum, but she didn’t want to seem too needy. In the end, she had simply muted the chat and hidden her mobile phone in her wardrobe so she wouldn’t be tempted to look at the messages.
“Here,” Elena now instructed. “Take the spade. I’ll use the screwdriver to loosen the soil and you can scoop it away. I do think we’re going to find something today!”
“If I don’t chop off your fingers with the spade first,” Patsy grumbled. Nonetheless, she scooped when instructed and soon the girls fell into a steady rhythm where Elena would stab at the ground several times and then Patsy would clear the area of the loose soil.
After 15 minutes, Patsy said, “You know we’re not going to find anything, right? Is this where we start pretending we’ve found something so we can go back?”
Elena opened her mouth to retort, but before she could say a thing, both girls noticed, at the same time, the faintest hint of blue in the now five-centimetre-deep hole. Elena grabbed the spade from Patsy and began scooping away the soil furiously.
Patsy watched with growing alarm. Now’s the time to tell her to stop, she thought. Who knows what we’ll find? But she somehow couldn’t find the words. Although a part of her disliked the risks and uncertainties that came with all of Elena’s adventures, a larger part of her admired and envied the ease with which Elena threw herself wholeheartedly into the exciting world she created for herself. Patsy loved excitement too, but only within the safe confines of a book. So, unable to stop her friend, Patsy watched with increasing horror and fascination as Elena dug around the blue object.
When Elena finally unearthed the object, the two girls sat and stared at it. A blue marble the size of a ping-pong ball lay exposed in all its grubby glory on its carpet of soil.
Patsy was the first to break the silence. “That’s it? That’s your dead body?”
“Well, no, but this is something special too, isn’t it?” Elena said defensively. “I’ve never seen such a huge marble before.”
Patsy bent down to look more closely at the marble. Soil smeared its surface, but she could still see that wi
thin the glass was an intricate pattern made up of infinite shades of blue. The more she stared at it, the more the pattern seemed to churn, until she wasn’t sure if she was imagining it or if there really were blue fumes emanating from the swirls.
“Elena,” she began, but everything seemed to whirl at that moment and she felt an overwhelming sense of nausea. Before she could say another word, she slipped into unconsciousness.
Patsy awoke on the landing at the summit of the slope to find a girl staring anxiously into her face. Patsy sat up quickly. She felt as if she had just woken from a deep sleep, physically refreshed yet mentally disoriented. What’s going on? Did we get caught? Patsy thought. She remembered the prefect who’d seen them digging the other day. Was this girl that prefect? She couldn’t be sure.
The girl looked at her for a moment, then said, “I found you lying here asleep. Are you…are you Patsy?”
Patsy stared at her. “What do you mean? Stop joking. Where’s Elena?”
The girl bit her lip, then said quietly, “I’m Elena.”
Patsy gasped. She stared hard at the features of the girl. Now that she’d said it, the girl did share some similar features with Elena. They had the same sharp cheekbones, big eyes and long lashes. They even had the same shoulder-length hair. But she wasn’t Elena. Patsy was sure.
“If you’re Elena, then how come you don’t know I’m Patsy?” she finally countered. “Stop joking and tell me who you are now.”
“You don’t look like Patsy either,” the girl said. “Look.”
Only then did Patsy realise the girl was holding a compact mirror. With some hesitation, Patsy looked in the mirror, and her whole world fell apart.
Staring back at her with both fear and fascination was a girl with a plain face, neat bangs and tightly plaited long hair. She knew whose face she was looking at. She had seen that face every day, in the old photograph of a group of good friends that stood on the dressing table in her parents’ room.
It was the face of her mother when she was 13.
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