by Erin Gough
‘God, I shouldn’t be saying any of this. Forget I spoke.’ Natasha rubs her face. She slides out of the booth. ‘Your brother’s on in ten. You coming?’
‘I’ll, ah, just finish this drink.’
‘Suit yourself.’
I watch her stalk across the room.
A sudden urge overtakes me. I need to see Will. To see if she made it out of the newsroom okay. To tell her not to worry about Natasha. About anything to do with Natasha at all.
I wait until Natasha is out of sight, then send Will a quick text:
How are you? Do you need me to do anything? I can drive over right now. I have a first aid certificate! And do not worry about Natasha returning any time soon, she is deeply preoccupied. Let me know. H XXX
Her response is swift. Very swift.
All good. Speak later.
I stare, disappointed, at the text.
I put away my phone. I try to think steadily about Natasha’s comments. Perhaps it is not my place to relay this particular news to Will.
If only the two of them would talk to each other!
Like a lasagne fresh from the oven, I let the situation settle on the metaphorical bench top.
If Arthur likes Natasha as much as Natasha clearly likes Arthur, she could help mend Arthur’s heart. And that could resolve Will and Natasha’s delicate … situation … delicately.
I should not say anything to Will about what Natasha said to me.
But it occurs to me: if Amelia can solve this particular problem of Will’s, maybe it isn’t all she can solve.
Chapter 19
* * *
WILL
I am climbing into a taxi with Harriet Price. On a Sunday. Before coffee. Life, it’s safe to say, has become weird.
Mum’s in the front yard with her bum in the air, tackling a weed. Does she garden every Sunday morning? I’m never up before eleven on Sundays so I don’t have a clue. It’s strange being awake this early: the street so quiet, the air so crisp, the sunlight refracting off roof tiles. If I were to ever commit a robbery, I decide, now would be the time of day to do it.
The weed comes free; Mum crashes onto the lawn, dirt spraying across her sloppy joe. I turn away from the taxi window in embarrassment and slot my seatbelt into its holder as we ease away from the kerb. ‘Are you going to tell me where we’re going?’
‘I told you already. It’s Amelia-related business,’ Harriet says.
‘So I’m giving up my Sunday because …?’
What I’m supposed to be doing, and in fact have promised a couple of people I’ll be doing (Mrs Degarno, for example, and Mum), is mapping out my major work. I even pocketed a Stanley knife from the Drama Club’s set design stores to size my canvas.
Harriet reaches over and gingerly touches my bandaged arm. ‘How is it feeling? Is it healing okay?’
She’s wearing jeans. This is new. On school casual clothes days she always wears skirts with various rotating knitted items. Today she has on a yellow cardigan, but also skinny jeans and yellow Converse sneakers. The outfit is working for her.
I inhale the smell of stale cigarette smoke and bottled air freshener. ‘It stung for a while, but it’s fine.’
I try to gather clues about where we’re going from the stuff she has with her. On the floor are a medium-sized satchel and a small cotton bag. This doesn’t help. She could have a baby ferret inside each of them for all I know.
‘Does today’s adventure have anything to do with the handwriting business you mentioned last night?’
Harriet pauses. ‘Sort of, yes. But before we get into that, I checked Instagram again, and Amelia Westlake’s email account.’ She is picking at the stickers on the inside of the door. ‘Still no word from that girl.’
‘If only somebody – a well-respected person in a leadership position at the school, for example – could demonstrate it was okay to come forward,’ I say.
Harriet says nothing.
The taxi trundles through the quiet streets, past shops and rundown warehouses. They’re not streets I often go down. But then, I usually catch buses, and they follow the main roads.
At the next corner I notice a green arrow sign, and on the green arrow, a picture of a little white plane.
My chest feels suddenly tight.
Another corner. Another green arrow. Another little white plane.
I could kill her.
I look at Harriet. She has placed a hand on my arm and is leaning towards me. Her mouth is moving, I can feel her breath on my face, but the pounding in my ears makes it hard for me to hear what she’s saying.
It’s always hard to hear things on a plane. The noise of the engine mutes everything else: stewards asking for meal orders, the rustle of food being opened, screams. That’s how you know you’re not in a disaster movie. In movies you can hear every word people speak. In real life it’s all chaos and engine roar and your own mad heartbeat.
Harriet is talking to me about Chuck Close. Have I heard of him, she’s asking. She’s asking me. About Chuck Close.
Of course I’ve heard of Chuck Close. I’ve seen his paintings at the Museum of Contemporary Art. I’ve pored over books of his portraits that my dad owns.
‘The American portrait artist,’ she says as we round another corner, sliding closer on the plastic-wrapped seat of the taxi. ‘He works with photographs and grids. He puts one grid on the photograph and one on a giant canvas and copies the photograph cell by cell.’
My heart has begun to pound against my ribcage.
‘Each cell is an artwork of its own. But when you put the cells together they make up the portrait perfectly. It’s so intricate, the work he does, that the finished product is almost indistinguishable from a real photo.’
Her voice rings high over the drone of talkback radio. We turn another corner, following the arrow sign in the direction of the little white plane.
My glands fizz.
‘Do you know why he does it? What keeps him so motivated?’ Her smile is bright. ‘He has a condition called face blindness. He doesn’t recognise faces, even the ones of people he knows. By studying a person’s face so carefully, by tackling it piece by piece, by absorbing it in small morsels, he gets to know the face so intimately that he overcomes his condition.’
The taxi drives into the shadow of an overpass. Above us is a sign that reads ‘Domestic Terminals 2 and 3’.
Blood is thick in my ears.
‘So what I’ve done,’ says Harriet, rooting in her backpack as the taxi slows to a halt beside the terminal’s revolving doors, ‘is booked us on a flight to Brisbane. There and back. Just for the day. I thought it was best to start with a relatively short distance. We can make some Amelia-related mischief when we get there, perhaps send a postcard or two. And my grandmother is expecting us for lunch.’
I feel my stomach heave.
Harriet places the cotton carry bag on my lap and squeezes my arm. ‘Here you go.’ She empties out the contents: a magazine, an iPod, a plastic-wrapped muffin and a small stack of note cards. ‘Don’t you see, Will? You can do this. All you have to do is break down each moment, just like Chuck Close does. To help you, I’ve written out the steps. You can follow my instructions, see?’
I open the taxi door and vomit into the gutter.
The terminal boardwalk is crowded with people, most of them pulling bags on wheels. I don’t look up to see if any of them have noticed. Instead, after wiping my face with the tail of my shirt, I undo my seatbelt and make a beeline for a concrete pillar. I lean heavily against it, shielding my eyes with a hand.
Harriet rushes out of the taxi. She puts a hand on my arm again. ‘Are you okay?’
I look at her for a long moment.
‘What the fuck does it look like, Harriet?’
‘Oh. I –’
It takes willpower not to retch again. I gulp it down. ‘You think it’s easy, do you? You think you can fix this “problem” of mine with a set of note cards? Like my fear of flying is some sort of
public-speaking exercise? Is that it?’
Her eyes widen. ‘I just thought –’
I press my hands to my knees and lean forward, panting. ‘Don’t you think if it was that easy I’d have done it already? Sucked it up and gone to Perth? He’s my father! Of course I want to see him. What is wrong with you?’
‘I was only –’
‘Do me a real favour and stay the hell away from me.’
I stumble past her to the taxi rank.
It’s not until the taxi’s winding back through the warehouses of Sydenham, leaving Harriet Price in her little bubble of ignorant perfectionism far behind, that my muscles finally unclench. My heart rate settles. We drive past a neighbourhood park where the early sun’s turning dew into mist and play equipment into molten silver, and the whole foggy, glittering scene is like the Yosemite Valley of a Californian impressionist, or even better – those dreams where an angel comes down to tell you your destiny, his wings backlit by Heaven’s high beams.
Only this isn’t the Destiny Angel but the Angel of Revealing the Bloody Obvious.
I should never have started a hoax with Harriet Price. There are so many reasons it was a bad idea. I tick them off.
She’s a meddler.
She’s patronising.
She’s snobbish.
She’s uptight.
She’s straight-laced.
She’s overly ambitious.
She has zero personal style.
She’s clueless.
She’s as half-baked as a bloody lamb roast.
She chooses half-full over half-empty every bloody time.
She’s a joiner. Joiners are the worst.
She’s unbelievably repressed.
She has a grating enthusiasm.
She says meaningless things like, ‘Everything happens for a reason’ and, ‘There’s no “I” in team!’
She wears a weird-smelling moisturising cream.
By the time I get back home I regret having given her my number. Eighteen missed calls. I add ‘obsessive’ to my list of her negative personal characteristics and go to my room.
Screw Harriet Price and the prestige car she rode in on.
What I need to do is get back to the things that matter, like my major work. I take out my oversized canvas and rule a line down one side. With the stolen Stanley knife I slice the canvas with the precision of a micro-surgeon. Now all I have to do is decide what to paint.
I consider my ideas one by one. A stalling aircraft – but how do you pictorially represent that? The toxicity of the smoke spiralling from the burning upholstery of first-class seats: again, difficult to draw. I finally settle on a jet engine ingesting a flock of Canadian geese.
Somehow though, I keep picturing a confounded Harriet Price standing by the automatic doors at the domestic terminal of the airport.
Clearly the best thing is to avoid Harriet from now on. I’m calling an end to Amelia Westlake. We’ve achieved a lot, but continuing it isn’t worth the hassle of dealing with the prefect from hell. I begin by blocking Harriet’s number from my phone and deleting it.
At school on Monday, I steer clear of the year-twelve common room, the staff foyer and the PAC storeroom. Given the number of times Harriet has cornered me outside the newsroom, I decide to avoid that, too.
‘Rotten tooth,’ I explain to Nat during English while Fowler is defending Ernest Hemmingway’s sexism.
‘Huh?’ Nat says.
‘I’ve been visiting sick bay for painkillers. It’s why I haven’t been around to the newsroom at lunchtimes lately. For some reason the pain always kicks in at noon.’
‘Sounds awful,’ she says, her gaze drifting.
Since when does Nat lose focus when I speak to her?
She turns back suddenly. ‘Listen, I’ve been meaning to talk to you.’ She sounds serious all of a sudden.
I sit up.
‘I think it’s best if we put a pause on the … extra-curricular stuff for a while,’ says Nat. ‘Things are getting busy with overdue study, and deadlines are tight at the Messenger …’ She trails off, watching for my reaction.
This is unexpected, but to be honest I’m relieved. I suspect she’s reached the same conclusion as I have – that there’s simply no chemistry between us. It’s her gentle way of saying as much, and coming from Nat, who is usually the opposite of gentle, I’m especially grateful for it.
I smile to reassure her. ‘That makes sense.’ I pause.
‘Really?’ She gives me an apologetic grimace.
‘Totally.’ I nod. ‘I’m really busy right now, too.’
‘Okay, great,’ Nat says. ‘I mean – that works out, then. For both of us.’ She looks embarrassed.
I try to think of something else to talk about. ‘Hey, random question, but did you know Harriet Price had a girlfriend?’
As soon as the words have left my lips I regret them. Nat snaps to attention. ‘Why are you asking me about Harriet Price?’
I think fast. ‘I heard recently she’s dating the captain of Blessingwood, that’s all,’ I say.
Nat studies me broodily for a while, and then her expression relaxes. The dreamy look she wore a minute ago returns. ‘Everyone knows that,’ she says mildly. ‘It’s just that you happen to live under a rock.’
‘Right,’ I say, feeling a pulse in my throat. ‘If you say so.’
As Fowler and Nakita Wallis lead an open discussion on the albatross as a metaphor, I steal glimpses at Nat. What’s going on with her? She looks uncharacteristically content – happy, even – almost as if one of life’s great truths has been revealed to her.
‘I’ll try to make it to the newsroom today, but I’m not promising anything,’ I tell her when class is finished.
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Nat says. ‘We’ve had to move out anyway.’
‘How come?’
Nat rips the paper off a stick of gum. ‘The place got broken into and there’s glass everywhere, and the police don’t want us to disturb anything.’
I stare at her. ‘The police?’
‘They’re taking fingerprints, DNA, all that. Some of the glass has blood on it so they reckon that whoever it was that broke in cut themselves on the way out. Not that we can work out what’s been taken.’
I finger the sleeve that covers my bandage.
Nat looks at me strangely, almost like she’s never been so pleased. It makes no sense.
Unless she knows about my involvement in Amelia Westlake.
Oh crap. That’s it. She saw Harriet at the Deep Fryer gig and worked it all out. And my question just now about Harriet confirmed it for her.
Of course.
She is revelling in her secret knowledge before confronting me.
I try to remember what Harriet told me about Nat’s recent investigations. I was trapped in the newsroom at the time and was kind of preoccupied. I didn’t get a chance to follow it up in the taxi, either. Something about handwriting? Nat collecting samples? Analysing our cartoons? I’m pretty sure that was it.
Shit.
If only I knew for certain. If I could just quiz Harriet for a minute, I could ask her exactly what Nat told her that night so I’d know how to handle her. Otherwise, Nat might trick me into telling her everything, just when I’d hoped to pack Amelia Westlake into a neat little box and send her off to deep-freeze storage.
I’m going to have to break my Harriet ban. Instead of wagging Biology to avoid her – our only class together now that our swimming rotation in Phys Ed is over – I’ll pull her aside and we can shore up our alibis.
I take my usual seat at the far right of the lab benches. I keep an eye on Harriet’s usual seat: at the front, in the direct line of Mr Van’s desk.
The class files in.
Palmer Crichton is sitting behind me. She leans over and murmurs in my ear. ‘Have you placed a bet yet?’
I turn around. ‘Is this the Amelia Westlake sweep I’ve heard about?’
She nods. ‘Even if you’ve betted, you
may want to place a new one. Some new information has come to light.’
I wonder what’s she on about. ‘Oh yeah?’
‘Prisha Kamala has come forward about a trip she took to her local newsagency last month to get some materials for a class project,’ says Palmer, close to my ear. ‘The newsagency was short on neon pink cardboard. Apparently another Rosemead student had bulk-bought fifty sheets of the stuff the day before.’ She tilts her head. ‘Want to guess where Prisha’s local newsagency is?’ But Palmer doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Mosman,’ she gloats.
Crapping maloney. Has Harriet really been so stupid?
Palmer is clearly pleased with herself. ‘It’s definitely shortened the odds on some of our contenders, let me tell you. There are only six people in our year who live in Mosman. Prisha, Beth Tupman, Lorna Gallagher, Harriet Price –’
I bite the inside of my cheek. ‘Does Nat Nguyen know about this analysis of yours?’
Palmer nods. ‘She’s crosschecking our findings against some tests of her own this weekend. She’s pretty confident we’ll be able to narrow it right down. Which means we’re only taking bets for another two days. Come on. It’s your last chance.’
‘I don’t have any change on me, sorry.’ I turn back to the front.
Beth Tupman, who is Harriet’s lab partner, is one of the last to arrive. Usually they arrive together, but she’s by herself.
Mr Van begins class. Still no Harriet.
Twenty minutes into the lesson, her empty seat stands out like a human ear grafted on a mouse.
Where is she?
She isn’t in Biology on Thursday. I do a few walk-bys of the year-twelve common room. Nothing.
Where the hell has she disappeared to? Is she sick? Injured? Did something happen at the airport after I left? Is that why she tried to call me eighteen times? Maybe she tripped over a baggage carousel and shattered her kneecaps. Maybe she was abducted by a drug cartel to smuggle illegal substances in digestible bags.
Or maybe she’s been at school the whole time but with a new haircut so I haven’t recognised her. Has she finally seen sense and ditched the Butterscotch BlondeTM?