If there’s lingering suspicion in Morgan’s eyes, he blinks it away. “It’s fine. Tell Tim it was cool hanging out with him for a little while. And listen, I hope your mum calms down and doesn’t give you too much grief.”
Maybe it’s because he doesn’t push for explanations, or the way he smiles at me with his crooked front teeth – Morgan makes me want to be more honest with myself. So why then do I lie to everyone that Dr Ingrid’s therapy worked? Is it because I don’t really agree with my diagnosis in the first place? Or am I just so desperate to be normal that I’m wishing Sparrow into flesh-and-blood existence, instead of the blight on my mental health he most likely is?
I know things aren’t right with me – conjuring up Sparrow today is evidence of that. The worst thing I could do is drag anyone else into my mess, least of all the Fishers. I know I should talk to my parents. I know I need to arrange a session with Dr Ingrid now instead of waiting until June.
I also know I won’t do any of those things.
Instead, I’ll try to figure out how to get a mute girl to talk.
12
THEN
28 MARCH 2008
TRANSCRIPT FROM THE OFFICE OF DR INGRID BALLANTINE, PHD CHILD AND ADOLESCENT PSYCHIATRY, NEWCASTLE CHILDREN’S CLINIC
PATIENT: NATASHA CARMODY, 9 YEARS OLD
IB: You look a bit different to the last time I saw you, Natasha.
NC: I turned nine a couple of weeks ago. And also, I had a haircut.
IB: It looks very grown up. Did you celebrate your birthday with friends?
NC: Just Mum and Dad. And Tim.
IB: Did–
NC: I don’t really have any friends right now.
IB: Don’t you? You don’t play with the kids from your class?
NC: I used to, but they don’t want to play with me any more.
IB: Why’s that, do you think?
NC: They call me Freak and stuff. One kid says I’m a schizo.
IB: A schizo? What do you think they mean by that?
NC: Mmm, not sure. I accidentally got locked inside the storage room and I got pretty scared. I cried and kicked the door and stuff and now they think I’m weird.
IB: A bit like that dream you told me about, where you were stuck in a box. Was it a bit scary like that?
NC: …
IB: Do you sometimes feel lonely at school?
NC: Umm … not really. I’m not sure.
IB: Do you feel like your teacher and classmates don’t pay you much attention?
NC: I didn’t do it on purpose. I accidentally kicked the doorstopper loose when Mrs Brooks asked me to get the paintbrushes.
IB: Okay …
NC: She had to go all the way to the staffroom to get a key. I was stuck in there. I thought my air would run out. I was really scared and I kicked and cried. Some kids were laughing at me when she got the door open.
IB: Oh, I see.
NC: I thought maybe it was … [muffled]
IB: Can you speak up for me, Natasha? I can’t hear you very well when you bury your face in the cushion like that.
NC: …
IB: You said, “maybe it was” …?
NC: Him.
IB: One of the boys in your class?
NC: No, him.
IB: Your friend that comes to visit you?
NC: He’s not my friend. He plays mean tricks, so I thought it might be him.
IB: Has he come to visit you at school before?
NC: No. Well, I thought I saw him once in the library, but I think it was just my imagination. When I ran up and down the aisles looking for him, there was no one there and I got in trouble from Mr Halliwell for running.
IB: Ah. So perhaps it was your imagination after all?
NC: Yeah.
IB: Do you think there might have been other times when you thought you saw something but it could have been your imagination?
NC: Umm … maybe.
IB: Can you remember telling your mum and dad that you saw the little girl at the carnival being taken away?
NC: Yeah. That was real. It wasn’t my imagination.
IB: Okay, let’s think about that day then. Let’s think about the little girl who went missing.
NC: Her name’s Mallory Fisher.
IB: Yes, that’s right. Mallory. Who did you see Mallory with?
NC: Morgan. That’s her brother. He goes to my school, except now he doesn’t. They’ve moved away.
IB: And that’s who you saw Mallory with that day?
NC: I followed them to the toilets.
IB: Was your aunt with you? When you went to the toilets?
NC: No. She had something to do so she left me. I had to meet her at the ticket booth at closing time.
IB: You were all alone at the carnival?
NC: Mm-hmm.
IB: I remember you told me that sometimes when you felt lonely your friend would come to visit you. Do you remember telling me that?
NC: Yes. But he’s not my friend. And he was there. I didn’t ask him to come though.
IB: You seem to have a special connection with him. Do you think maybe he comes when you need him to?
NC: No! I don’t need him. I don’t even like him. He was really mean to me at the carnival. He played a trick on me and put me in a box. He trapped me inside!
IB: In a cardboard box?
NC: No, like a hard one.
IB: A trunk?
NC: Yeah!
IB: Like the one in your dream?
NC: This wasn’t a dream. He really did it. He locked me inside.
IB: Your friend?
NC: He is NOT my friend!
13
NOW
I wait patiently for the sun to burn off the haze from my spot under Port Bellamy Pier. It’s a peaceful morning, save for a hiss of wind through the beach grass and the distant hum of fishing dinghies heading out to sea. As the sun creeps higher, I bracket a few shots with my DSLR even though I have more than enough coastal images for my folio already. The dwindling likes on my Instagram pics tell me what I already know – it’s all generic picture-postcard stuff. I doubt my folio will make the cut at university interviews unless I come up with something more personal.
It doesn’t help that my heart’s not in it this morning. Things are strained at home since the shopping centre incident, and Mum is barely speaking to me.
She’s saying plenty to Dad, though.
“I thought she would have outgrown this unpredictable behaviour,” she said last night. I sat on the listening step as she and Dad cleaned up after dinner. “I really don’t know, Rich. How’s she going to move forward after high school if she can’t be trusted with any kind of responsibility?”
“Maybe it’s a long-term thing we’re dealing with,” Dad replied. “All we can do is take each day as it comes. It’s obviously not as simple as her outgrowing it.”
“So, what then? You think there’s still a jealousy issue going on? You think she left Tim there alone on purpose just to see what would happen?”
I had to bite my lip at that comment. What kind of person do they think I am? How could Mum think I’d put Tim in harm’s way “just to see what would happen”?
Keeping some distance between myself and Mum right now is the only way to prevent saying things I’m bound to regret. If we could get out of each other’s faces for a few days, it would give us both a chance to calm down.
My phone’s alarm chimes, letting me know the school’s computer rooms will now be open. I’ve got a memory card full of images to back up for editing later this week. I slip on my socks and shoes, brushing the sand from my uniform. A tiny bulge inside my blazer pocket crinkles, and I dig my hand inside to remove a scrunched-up piece of paper.
Aunty Ally’s phone number is scrawled across it in my mother’s handwriting.
*
I turn the paper over and over in my fingers during the ten-minute walk to school, and by the time I’m on my way up to C Block, I know I need to call now before I lose my n
erve.
Pausing on the deserted stairwell, I take a steadying breath before dialling my aunt’s number. She answers after six rings with a fumble and a muffled swearword.
“Ally? It’s Tash here. Your niece? From Port Bellamy?”
Silence stretches just long enough for me to hear her yawn.
“Tash? Oh, hey, honey,” she says. Her voice is deeper over the phone, coarse and phlegmy. “It’s good to hear from you. Wasn’t sure if you got my message. You know, your mother …”
Yeah, do I ever know my mother. “I’m sorry I’m only just getting around to calling you back.”
“No worries. I remember being your age, so much happening all the time,” she says. “So, listen. I was calling about the second weekend in March.”
“Okay …?”
“How would you feel about coming up here for a couple of days?”
After that visit when I was eight, I’ve had no desire to return to Willow Creek House, with its crack-riddled stucco like the caked-on face paint of a leering clown. I remember the way dampness clung to cushions like mouldering dead spots, the unsettling way shadows reached for me behind my back as the sun moved across the sky. And my questions about what really happened in that house have always terrified me. If I imagined it all, it means I was a disturbed child talking to myself, seeing things that didn’t exist.
And if I didn’t imagine it? Well, that’s so much worse.
Then again, maybe revisiting Willow Creek might create some breathing space between me and my mother, show her I don’t need her in my face all the time to cope. Being in that old house again could help me make sense of what happened there, what was real and what wasn’t.
“Umm, okay,” I tell Ally. “Why not? I can bring my camera.”
“Perfect. The light around here is beautiful in the evenings. You probably can’t remember that. It’s been so long since you were last here.”
It almost feels like I should apologise for the things I said and did that reflected on Ally’s inability, in the eyes of my parents, to make me feel safe in her home. But I have to push all that childhood stuff aside. I’m seventeen now and everything is different. Ally and I both know I’m not that kid any more.
“You remember Benny, right?” Ally asks. “Poor old boy’s getting on in years. Still thinks he’s a puppy, mind you.”
“Yeah, of course I remember Benny.”
“So if I leave you alone with him for two nights, you won’t have any issues?”
Swapping the phone to my other ear, I frown at the empty corridor. “You won’t be there …?”
“No, sweetheart. I’ll be at a yoga retreat, no dogs allowed.”
I flush with embarrassment. Here I was thinking Ally was inviting me up there because she wanted to spend time with me. But is it really so bad? I do like dogs, and I’ll get a house to myself for two whole parent-free days. If Mum and Dad see I can survive without them, surely that’s got to score points when I pitch the idea about university.
“Benny’s really no trouble,” Ally says. “Sleeps most of the time anyway. A quick walk once a day and he’s a happy old fool. Aren’t you, buddy?” I hear the metallic tink of Benny’s dog tag and imagine him stretched out on the bed beside her. “So what do you say? Wanna escape those nagging parents and do your own thing for a couple of days?”
Well, when she words it like that …
“Yeah, okay,” I hear myself saying. “Sounds good.”
As soon as the words are out of my mouth I have to resist gobbling them up again. I feel dazed as Ally promises more details via text, as I hear myself agreeing to everything she says and cheerfully signing off. I try to tell myself that this doesn’t change anything – I need this break from Mum, I need to prove my independence. It makes no difference whether Ally’s there or not.
Except, of course it does.
Now I’ll be at Willow Creek alone.
*
Most of lunchtime is spent trying to convince Sadie to join me on my weekend at Willow Creek. I try to dress it up like some kind of two-day girly pamper session even though that’s not her thing at all and it’s definitely not mine.
“Dude, my mum has two catering gigs lined up that weekend,” Sadie says. “I’d get out of it if I could but I don’t wanna leave her flying solo.” She bites into her apple, winces, then lobs it into the nearest bin. It lands inside with a hollow thud.
I pick at my sandwich, my appetite suddenly dwindling. “I understand.”
“Anyway, I thought you were creeped out by that place,” Sadie says. “You sure you wanna go back there?”
“I was a little kid with a big imagination,” I say, trying to assure myself at the same time. “How bad can it be? It’s just an old house.”
Sadie looks unconvinced. “How about this aunt, though? Why did she suddenly crawl out of the woodwork?”
“What do you mean?”
“No contact for years and now she’s getting all chummy?” Sadie narrows her eyes. “What do you reckon she wants?”
“Dog-sitting,” I say, laughing. “I think you can put your notepad away, Sherlock.”
We eat in silence for a few moments, watching students milling around the quad.
“Hey,” Sadie says, nudging me, “did you notice your stalker started school this week?”
“Who?”
“Skinny jeans.”
I redden. “His name is Morgan. And by the way? Not a stalker.”
“Okay. So what do you call following you and your brother around a shopping centre?”
“He wasn’t following us. It was a coincidence that we even ran into him.”
“A coincidence he turned up at the exact moment Tim decorated himself with a burger?”
I shove my sandwich back into its paper bag and fold my arms. “What’s your point, exactly?”
“Maybe he was watching you guys the whole time. Maybe he was waiting for an opportunity to swoop in and be the big hero.”
“That would be bad because …?”
“Didn’t say it was bad. It’s just so friggin’ transparent.” Sadie digs around in her bag, her hand emerging with a banana.
“I really have no idea what point you’re making.”
Sadie rolls her eyes as she peels the banana, plucking away the stringy bits. “Come on, Carmody. For a bright girl you’re slow on the uptake sometimes. He likes you.”
I give her a blank-faced stare.
“He like-likes you,” she says. “It’s so obvious. He’s always looking for a reason to talk to you or help you out.”
“I’ve seen him on, like, three occasions, Dee.”
“Yeah. And two of those he was all, ‘I’m Mister Sir-help-a-lot at your service, m’lady.’”
I can’t help sniggering. “Mister Sir? Wow. That’s a serious title.”
“Yeah, well, he’s seriously obvious about it.” Sadie leans back on the silver bench to rest against the warm brick wall. She bites into her banana, making her next words all gummed-up and sticky. “Just be careful, okay? I’m not sure I trust him yet.”
“You don’t even know him.”
She points the stump of her banana at me. “Exactly.”
I’ve only shared English with Morgan since he started, and I don’t think he even realises we’re in the same class. As soon as he walked into the room yesterday he was intercepted by Christopher Tan who seems to have found a kindred spirit in his obsession with zombie films and George RR Martin. He didn’t see me slumped in the back row.
“So, I’ll tell Mum you’re not available second weekend of March,” Sadie says, as the bell signals lunch is over. “She can call our neighbour Lilly if she needs another set of hands. Although Lilly’s slower than dirt and just about as interesting.”
Forcing a laugh, I feel my nerves twitch with the realisation I’m going to be all alone at Willow Creek. I have to remind myself this is a good opportunity. Maybe even a turning point.
As we part ways at the stairwell, Sadie backhands
me lightly on the shoulder. “Watch out for that stalker, ‘kay?”
I roll my eyes and give her a sarcastic double thumbs up.
As I head upstairs to B Block, Sadie’s words turn out to be prophetic. Morgan’s standing outside the art room with Rachael Tan when I get there.
“Hey, you,” he says as I join them at the classroom door. “I was beginning to think you lied about going to this school.”
“Well, here I am. I guess we don’t have many classes together.”
“Uh, hello?” Rachael says, flicking a curtain of black hair over her shoulder. “Aren’t you both in my brother’s English class?”
Morgan gives me a puzzled look and I screw my hands up into fists. I won’t let Rachael make a fool out of me again. Not in front of Morgan.
“Are you still heading up to Greenwillow in March?” I ask him.
“Yeah. How’d you know about that?”
“Your mum mentioned something when I was at your party.” I don’t elaborate that I was eavesdropping on her conversation with a neighbour at the time. “I’m going to be staying at my aunt’s house in Willow Creek on the second weekend of March.”
“Really?” His face lights up. “That’s awesome. We can hang out! You know, if you want to.”
My whole body hums at the thought of it, at Morgan’s shy smile, at the sight of Rachael grinding her jaw.
“Of course I want to. So … should we swap numbers?”
Morgan laughs as he pulls out his phone. “Who’s been suggesting this for a while now?”
Our art teacher arrives in a flurry of coloured beads and green tea scent, clapping us into the classroom like she’s rounding up sheep. I trail in after Morgan and see that Rachael’s already chosen a spot. Each art table sits three across but Rachael’s spread her stuff over two spaces, ensuring there’s no room for me. Morgan doesn’t notice this, however, and drags a stool over from a nearby table for me to squeeze in beside him.
Mrs Liotta explains our new art assignment, a mixed-media project based on our interpretation of Dreamscapes. We’ll be divided into small groups and we’re expected to work together in class as well as outside of school. I should be excited at the prospect of adding new work to my photography folio. Instead I’m completely distracted by how close Morgan is sitting, the way his bare knee accidentally brushes my thigh.
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