Burnt Snow

by Van Badham

  Her voice startled me and I spun around. ‘What?’

  ‘The little guy in the purple robes.’ She walked towards it – I saw it stood in the centre of a hinged wooden triptych. ‘Don’t you love how the lining of the robe accessorises the gold crown?’

  ‘What’s his name?’

  ‘San Cipriano,’ said Nikki. ‘That’s the town that Dad’s family are from in Colombia. He’s the patron saint of something. Father Rossi says it’s Saint Cyprian in English – and he’s huge in, like, Nowhere, South America. Our surname’s supposed to be De San Cipriano – “of the town of Saint Cipriano” – but Papa shortened it to Cipri when they came to Australia because that took less time to spell out.’

  I looked at the little bearded figure. He had a golden ball in his hand. Compared to the weeping, bleeding Jesus on the wall, he looked almost playful.

  He was made of wood. In no logical universe were his painted wooden eyes looking at me.

  And yet, as Nikki guided me into the kitchen, I suppressed a desire to call Dad and see if he would come here immediately and pick me up.

  58

  The kitchen was a brighter place than the cold lounge room. Instead of spooky wooden figurines, it had candy-coloured magnets holding school reminders on the fridge, yellow floral wallpaper and a fruit bowl full of oranges on the kitchen table. The girls were in a good mood as they fossicked through the shopping bags and searched the kitchen cupboards looking for cake tins and mixing bowls.

  Michelle turned on a radio and starting to sing along to a pop song I didn’t know. I was given a bowl, a spoon, cake mix and a set of instructions, and took my place in an assembly line of cupcake makers as Nikki donned an apron for herself and improvised aprons for everyone else by wrapping tea towels lengthways around our waists. Sugar flew everywhere; the girls sang, I pretended to; we licked spoons and greased tins and munched through a whole packet of corn chips.

  I felt like a real teenager for the first time in my entire life.

  ‘So are you gonna tell us about the Dan thing?’ asked Kylie while the radio station had an ad break.

  Michelle was instantly radiant but Nikki wouldn’t let her speak. ‘Nah, that’s for later,’ she said. ‘We have to make these first and watch the movies and eat the cakes, then we’ll have a total, formal Tell-All later.’

  While the cakes were in the oven, we took turns going into Nikki’s room to change into our pyjamas, even though it was still afternoon. When it was my turn, I undressed and redressed slowly. Lauren and Sue had rooms as boring as mine, only with more books and, in Sue’s case, anatomy posters, but Nikki’s room was so full of decorations that, despite myself, I paced the carpet peeking at the objects she’d assembled.

  The back of the door had an interesting montage: it was covered in pictures of female movie stars and singers as well as cut-out photographs of Nikki and Ryan. A photo of Ryan in makeup and a dress stuck out for the joy he displayed blowing a red-lipsticked kiss at the camera. Some bookshelves at the end of her bed carried holders packed with magazines and book titles like The Actor’s Handbook and Nail that Audition!, as well as a set of American romance novels of which Nikki had both clearly collected all fifty and not read in years. It was while looking at this shelf that I realised the main difference of this room to the others I’d seen in the house – Nikki’s room had places with actual dust.

  On the built-in wardrobe Nikki had another montage on a hanging corkboard. It was also covered in casual snaps of familiar faces: Kylie in a bikini top and denim shorts leaning against a surfboard, Fran at the beach wearing a wet white blouse that exposed her bikini underneath, Michelle in a pink puffer jacket and a miniskirt, pulling a face … and Belinda wearing a strapless party dress, sneering, hand on hip, sticking her fingers up at the camera. There were photos of the boys too – snaps of parties, campfires and beachside picnics. When I saw how happy they all looked, I felt excluded from their world, like a dork.

  Doing up my pyjama shirt, I wandered towards the dressing table where Nikki’s jewellery spilled over from sequinned boxes, fighting for space with brushes, hairclips and more makeup than I’d ever seen. Around the mirror, Nikki had strings of brightly coloured yarn where little pegs held magazine articles, old concert tickets, cards and notes. The notes were pretty banal: they were either from the girls telling her she was hot, or from Ryan saying much the same thing.

  I was about to leave the room when I saw in the mirror that the stupid lovebite had not faded over the course of the day. There was no way I could get away with a scarf at a pyjama party – the bite was now more pink than red but it might as well have been an arrow pointing to itself. I panicked.

  My eyes scoured the makeup on the dresser. Desperate, I picked up a small stick of Nikki’s concealer, dabbing some on the bruise. Even though it didn’t hide it completely, it did fade the colour. I found a compact and fixed the concealer to my neck with powder. Then I pulled my hair out from its band and shook it over my shoulders. The mark was still there, but I convinced myself you’d have to look for it to see it.

  I was sliding the compact back in its place on the dresser when the edge of my hand scraped something cold – a small heart-shaped frame about the size of a matchbox that contained a photo of the unmentioned sister in the family portrait. I picked it up; in this photo she was older and her hair was still bleached, but longer. Same huge brown eyes. Same blank, almost disappointed expression.

  It occurred to me that there might be information written on the back of the photo. Listening for sounds beyond Nikki’s door, I slid the edge of my thumb into each of the two clasps that held the silver to the plastic backing of the frame. The backing popped from the frame and I saw one word written in blue biro on the back of the photo itself. Marlina.

  Knocks thundered against the door – I jerked on my feet and both pieces of the photo frame fell out of my hands onto the carpet.

  ‘Hey, loser!’ called Nikki from behind the door. ‘Are you going through my underwear? What’s taking so long?’

  ‘Coming!’ I bellowed, dropping to my knees and scrabbling under the dresser for both pieces of the frame. My blood was racing and thumbs shaking so much I struggled to press the backing in.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Nikki demanded.

  I wiped my fingerprints from the silver with the hem of my pyjama shirt and thrust the frame back in its place. ‘Just a minute!’ I called over my shoulder. Getting to my feet I scurried towards the door; I opened it onto Nikki looking suspicious and irate.

  She was staring over my shoulder to determine what had been mussed up in her room, and her voice was disturbingly controlled. ‘The cakes are out of the oven … Were you going through my stuff?’

  ‘Can you keep a secret?’ I said to her.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I borrowed some concealer.’

  ‘You should have—’ she admonished, but the words died on her lips when I pulled back my hair and pointed at the bite.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ I told her, buying myself some time. ‘Please don’t say anything.’

  Nikki’s hands flew to her mouth. ‘Oh my God!’ she screamed into her palms.

  59

  ‘I think we should decorate them with birds, to commemorate the day our school turned into a horror movie,’ said Michelle, staring at the cupcakes.

  The past fifteen minutes had been agonising. Not only had we been trying to decide whether the cupcakes were cool enough to put icing on, but Nikki kept putting her hand over her mouth and rolling her eyes at me.

  I grimaced.

  ‘What is going on with you?’ Kylie barked when Nikki did it again.

  ‘Nothing! I’m sorry,’ giggled Nikki. ‘I can’t concentrate. Something about birds?’

  ‘We should put them on the cakes,’ said Michelle.

  Nikki giggled. Kylie fumed.

  Michelle turned to me. ‘You do Art. Can you draw birds?’ she asked.

  I shook my head. ‘Not with icing.’


  ‘Just do a base colour and sprinkle them,’ said Kylie, her head snapping towards Nikki when Nikki giggled again.

  Michelle handed me a mixing bowl. It was going to be a long evening.

  The idea for peppermint and orange essences was based on the decision to make exclusively chocolate cakes and enhance their flavour. Apparently, drops of essence had already been added to the cakes we’d baked and icing was eventually made in three colours and flavours – white for plain, orange for orange and pale green for peppermint. It looked more like a bake sale for the Irish Society than catering for a girls’ night.

  When Kylie disagreed with Nikki about the application of peppermint icing to what she was convinced was a choc-orange cake, Nikki’s response was to dab peppermint essence on her fingers and streak the fluid under Kylie’s nose. Kylie retaliated by grinding Nikki’s face into an orange taken from the fruit bowl. Nikki howled with laughter, but her attempt to get a second swipe of peppermint at Kylie missed and instead her hand collided against Michelle’s face with the force of a slap. Michelle took a scoop of peppermint icing from a bowl, and Kylie held Nikki down while Michelle lovingly smeared it across Nikki’s giggling mouth. I started laughing so hard that I didn’t notice Nikki scrape up a handful of the orange icing and lunge towards me. Her fingers clipped my lips and I took a reluctant swallow of the smooth orange paste. I poured orange essence on my hand and smeared it on Michelle’s nose, and then we were all laughing so much amongst the sugary mess that I don’t know who it was who took the peppermint oil and streaked it in a line across my forehead.

  Suddenly I wasn’t laughing.

  My skin where the oil had touched it was burning cold. I heard laughter, weird laughter. My vision sharpened; I could see Michelle, Nikki and Kylie recovering from amusement to confusion to concern, while thunderous laughter pealed in my ears, drowning out the noises of the Cipris’ kitchen.

  The yellow kitchen tablecloth shone and glare from every bright colour in the room blinded me. Still the sticky oil burned on my forehead, my head swayed and the laughter grew louder. I tried to mime the word ‘Help’ – I was incapable of speech.

  The girls’ faces were pale and then blurry, as if I was looking at them underwater while I floated away. I tried to reach for them – my fingertips felt the same burn as my forehead. Again, I tried to mouth ‘Help.’

  I heard someone else’s voice then, as dark as it was unnatural. The voice of the laughter.

  She – is – under – the – house.

  Marlina.

  She – is – under – the – house.

  60

  A gasp – the same gasp you make when you are saved from drowning and you take your first gulp of air – and snap! With my rushing, desperate inhalation, the voice was gone, the burning cold was gone, the smell of Nikki’s house, the cakes and store-bought flavouring flooded my senses so quickly I gagged and thought I was choking. I coughed, Michelle and Kylie grabbed my shoulders. Nikki was instantly at my elbow with a glass of water. I gulped it down.

  ‘What the hell happened?’ asked Nikki.

  My eyes were watering, but I swallowed again.

  ‘I just blacked out,’ I said after a few more sips.

  ‘This was like in Maths when I had to get you that chocolate milk,’ said Kylie.

  ‘Or when you passed out in Modern and Psycho Boy Junior had to catch you,’ said Nikki.

  ‘I’m all right,’ I said. I wasn’t. I was so freaked out that I wanted to call the police.

  ‘Did you hallucinate?’ Nikki pressed.

  There was something in her tone that reminded me of our conversation this afternoon, something that wanted to talk about cupcakes, not … whatever had just happened.

  ‘I blacked out,’ I repeated.

  Nikki laughed – it shocked me. ‘You freak. It’s all this oil and stuff. You’ve had some weird reaction. You know if you muck around with this stuff when you’re pregnant you can abort yourself.’

  ‘Or have demon babies,’ said Kylie.

  ‘You reckon that’s what it is?’ I asked, sincere.

  Michelle nodded. ‘Do you want to go home?’

  Before I had to chance to answer, Nikki said, ‘Go outside, get some air and we’ll make sure you stay off the peppermint cupcakes while we watch our movie. Freak.’

  I walked towards the kitchen sink where I splashed some cool water on my face and rubbed at my forehead until it was not only clean but almost raw. Behind me, I heard the girls silently organising the icing of the cakes and knew that, somehow, they were communicating about me.

  ‘I feel a lot better,’ I said loudly from the sink.

  Nikki was on her feet, unlocking a screen door and then a back door. I stepped outside into a small flowery backyard that was cool and green under the shadow of trees that pushed against its back fence.

  I picked up the faint trace of a smell I knew, and I followed it to a lemon balm shrub next to a lavender bush. This was all I needed to be convinced that, whether it was the oil, post-traumatic stress disorder, repressed lust for Brody, or my crazy imagination causing me to freak out, I was all right. I squatted down, rubbing my hands on the leaves of the lemon balm. I wanted its scent on my fingers, so I could sniff myself back to this garden if I had a weird reaction again.

  More minutes must have passed than I’d thought, because a swing from the screen door announced Nikki in the doorway. ‘Yo, we’ve finished icing everything,’ she said. ‘Are you right to carry stuff downstairs?’

  Downstairs. Under the house.

  61

  With each step down the stairs I felt like I was walking closer to cold, cold death. I tried to focus my attention on carrying the cupcakes iced with patterns of love hearts as well as the word Freak! that Nikki had decorated just for me. The smell of orange swirled in my nose; it went some way to warding off the mothball aroma as we walked past the Virgin Mary. There was a door on the right of her that I hadn’t noticed – Nikki flicked its handle and opened it onto darkness.

  We were under the house. I shuddered.

  A switch was flicked. Yellow light illuminated the blood red carpet of a completely enclosed hallway.

  ‘Have you been here before?’ I mumbled to Michelle.

  ‘A thousand times,’ she said in a light voice. ‘Why?’

  I left her question unanswered, seeing an empty garage in the space to the right. We turned left. Another door popped open and Nikki shuffled down more stairs into a reassuringly bright space.

  This was the TV room of the Cipri family home, and its main feature was a big floral couch that sat in front of an upright piano on the back wall. Nikki directed me across a circular purple rug to put my plate of cakes on a side table.

  In this white-walled space, I felt ridiculous for my freak-out upstairs. The mutilated corpse of a missing older sister was nowhere in sight. Natural light poured in from high windows that ran the length of two walls. A bunch of white roses hung over the frame of a suspended ceiling light.

  ‘That’s for the Tell-All,’ Nikki informed me, pointing. ‘I’ll explain later.’

  Nikki must’ve set up the room the previous night. There were tea lights in glass holders along all the windowsills, and she had an oil burner on the side table that she filled and lit.

  A soothing fragrance spread throughout the room. Passing around a stack of soft blankets and cushions, we set ourselves up to watch a DVD of Nikki’s choosing, honouring the movie in the time-honoured way of sleepovers: munching on corn chips and eating cake.

  A few minutes before the movie ended Nikki’s mother poked her head around the door to ask how we were doing. She was as short as Nikki, but plumper; the gold cross from the family portrait was still around her neck. She appeared again when the movie was over – this time, bearing a tray of hot empanadas with a dipping bowl full of tomato sauce. Despite the cakes we’d consumed earlier, and several protestations of being too full to ever eat again, we devoured every single one of the little pastry pies.

/>   When all that remained of the tray were some crumbs, an empty bowl and the obligatory ‘I’m so full, I’m so full’ soundtrack, Nikki sprang to her feet. She darted out of the room with the tray and she thumped it on the stairs, shouting for her mother to come get it. In seconds, she was back at the doorway.

  ‘Okay, so who’s gonna help me?’ she asked, waiting.

  I was still chewing the remains of an empanada. It was Kylie who piped, ‘Do what?’ and got on her feet.

  ‘Get some stuff out of Marlina’s room,’ said Nikki. ‘I got everything ready next door.’

  62

  I was going to ask Michelle who Marlina was as soon as the others were out of the room, but Michelle was already moving the cushions and blankets off the purple rug. I could hear Kylie and Nikki so clearly through the wall that I realised any question I asked would be overheard.

  ‘What is this stuff?’ I heard Kylie say.

  ‘Check it!’

  ‘Is all this yours now?’

  Nicky replied, ‘As long as Mum doesn’t realise what it is and throw it out.’ Then the girls were back, carrying a plastic storage box between them.

  Michelle was standing. ‘You’re sure your mother won’t come down?’

  ‘Totally won’t,’ said Nikki. ‘She and Dad are going out. Someone keep an eye on the time on the DVD player. We have until eleven to get this stuff back.’ The clock she mentioned read that it was almost seven. Nikki squealed, dropping a black cloth over the television. ‘How fun is this?’ she asked. ‘Everyone, turn your mobiles off.’

  ‘Wow,’ said Michelle, pulling items out of the storage box. ‘No more trying to dig up our own sticks—’

  ‘—or make pentacles from plates and laundry markers,’ said Kylie.

  Pentacles? My stomach felt heavy and it wasn’t because of the food. When I reached for my bag and grabbed my phone, some sense of pre-emptive protection made me text, At Nikki’s. Thanks for this. See you tomorrow. to both of my parents. When the messages had been sent and I switched off the mobile, I felt sick with dread. I thought I heard a bird fluttering outside the room and the sudden noise made me queasy. The girls were setting out objects that something in me didn’t want to look at.