by Lia Weston
They pulled up near the gates behind a row of four-wheel drives. Evie jumped out of the car and opened the boot. Mary saw several of the fathers eyeing her mother, and scowled at them over the bonnet.
‘Here,’ said Evie, pressing a laden container into her hands.
‘This is like two tonnes of dessert,’ said Mary. ‘Even I can’t eat that much.’
‘It’s to share with your friends.’
‘Yeah, good luck with that.’
Evie smiled and kissed her. ‘You’ll be fine. All you have to do is be yourself.’
‘Is that what you’re doing?’ said Mary, looking at Evie’s emerald green dress and neat black pumps.
‘Do you know what “tabula rasa” means, babyduck?’
‘No.’
‘Well, there’s something for you to look up.’
Evie stood at the gate for longer than Mary wanted, her emerald dress swirling against the iron bars, waving with her beetle hand. Mary hitched her uniform down again and followed the chattering throngs. It didn’t matter what Evie said. Mary knew she was on her way to social death.
Mary’s peers took two painful days to size her up. If she had been pretty, or one of those bouncy, chatty girls, her transition into a social group would have been relatively effortless. Unfortunately, her long nose shunted her appearance from ‘cute’ into ‘interesting’, and her suspiciously good grammar cemented her outsider status as soon as she opened her mouth. As a result, Mary spent two lunchtimes walking among the shrieks of her classmates’ groups, pretending that she was just checking out the grounds rather than searching for a potential friend. On the third day she gave up the pretence and went to the library.
Sweet Meadow High’s library appeared to actively discourage reading as an enjoyable past-time: everything was beige and pointy, the utilitarian carpet marked with Blu-tack ghosts.
Mary pulled a speckled chair up to a table and unpacked her lunch. In the silence, the plastic wrap crackled. She anchored the corner of her book under her bag to keep it open, and bit into her sourdough roll and the soft saltiness of smoked salmon.
Engrossed in a chapter a few minutes later, Mary turned her head to dig a seed out of a molar and caught a flash of movement at the far end of the stacks. Was it the librarian? She waited, her finger still in her mouth, but no one came forward.
Mary returned to her book, kept one eye out, and tried to chew as quietly as possible.
It continued for a couple more days. The same desk, a different lunch, again a movement in the stacks and the feeling of being watched. She wasn’t game enough to go after whatever it was, but by Friday she was packing Austen instead of Stoker.
The sun pressed itself against the window. Gurgled laughter drifted up from the grounds outside, punctuated by a basketball slap. Mary was too enmeshed in Austen’s eighteenth-century matchmaking – ‘for he was rich, and she was handsome’ – to notice that she had company.
‘You’ve dropped something.’
Startled, she looked up. A boy, balancing a stack of hardcovers on one hand, stood in the aisle between 794.00 Indoor Games of Skill and 795.00 Games of Chance. He was very pale and painfully thin. One long finger uncurled and pointed to the desk, where a chunk of poached chicken had fallen out of Mary’s bagel to land in a mayonnaisey splurt.
‘Crap.’ She grabbed a tissue from her bag.
Mopping up, she was acutely aware of the bulldog clip in her hair, and tried to curl her toes in her sandals so he wouldn’t see the scuffed polish. The boy leisurely looked her over. She waited for him to reveal himself as a psychopath or, worse, a prefect.
‘This way.’ He turned and disappeared between the stacks.
Mary stared after him, holding a tissue full of chicken and mayonnaise. Could it be a trap?
Curiosity finally galvanised her legs; she snatched up her bag, book and the remains of her lunch and took off after him.
Thirty years had vanished. Evie knew exactly where she was going. Her palms itched.
She kept glancing behind her, though no one would be following.
Would everything still be there? Of course it would. This was Sweet Meadow; houses and families stayed until they rotted.
Then she remembered the hole where the Vogels’ house used to be, and Joy Piece.
Evie spat the dust out of her mouth and kept going.
The cloud cover had knocked off the worst of the heat, but it was still unpleasantly warm. The walls of Sturn’s orchard dipped and rose as she walked, patchworked with stones and lined with jacarandas. Beyond them, rows of almond trees were heavy with fruit, the hulls splitting in the sun. The dirt rose under her feet, captured and danced by the breeze. A pair of rosellas swung past, bickering.
The gate was indeed the same, the treehouse just a few rows beyond. The gate’s latch, however, was rusted into place and refused to move. She’d have to climb over.
Her pencil skirt refused to come to the party. The material was so unforgiving she could barely get onto the lower slat, let alone swing a leg over.
‘Okay,’ Evie murmured, and paced by the gate, absent-mindedly chewing her thumbnail, ruining one-tenth of her new manicure. ‘Okay, okay, okay.’
She could go home and change, but into what? All of her well-loved jeans had disappeared into the mouth of a charity bin as part of her Sweet Meadow makeover. Why hadn’t she thought to purchase capris? Marilyn Monroe wore capris. This was what happened when you used Rita Hayworth as a template instead of Mae West. Mae West would have climbed over a fence or two in her lifetime.
Evie surveyed the landscape with a well-practised eye. No one in sight. Not even a tractor.
Her hands went to her zipper.
She laid the skirt carefully over the least dirty part of the gate, then leapt up and swung over, relishing the air on her legs after the skirt’s constricting hug.
Evie ran through the trees, trying not to giggle. At the base of the treehouse she looked around. Still no one.
The treehouse steps were intact. She wiggled one but it held. After a final glance around, she started climbing.
She remembered the treehouse being the size of a large room. To an adult, it was tiny. Evie bent to avoid clocking her head on the doorframe. The timber smelled crisp and dry. The curtains had disintegrated. A comic book lay in the corner, yellowed and curling.
She counted the floorboards from the north side, laid her hand on the fifth and found the gap she was looking for. Unfortunately, it was designed for child-sized fingers. She could barely get her pinkie in.
She looked around for potential leverage. Besides the comic book, the treehouse held two marbles, a scorched doll’s head – belonging to Nathan’s crybaby cousin, if she remembered correctly – and a pencil.
She tried the pencil, which immediately snapped. Evie clutched the shards to her forehead. Don’t swear. Try not to swear. Bugger bugger damn it.
The steps. Evie crawled over to the entrance. The second step tapered to an edge; that might work. She took hold of each end and methodically started working it back and forth off the trunk. Stopping to wipe the sweat out of her eyes, Evie spied a cloud of dust making its way down the orchard road. A moment later, a four-wheel drive appeared at the gate.
Evie whipped her arms inside and flattened herself on the floor. After a few breaths, she inched forward to peer around the opening. A short, red-faced man stood at the gate. Evie slowly withdrew again and waited.
‘Bloody kids.’
After a few more moments, the engine bawled back to life and the four-wheel drive moved off.
Evie wriggled forward to finish wrenching at the step, which slid off the nail with a shriek. She rolled over and jammed the edge into the gap. The board finally gave.
The metal cigarette case was still there, wedged into a hollow. She lifted it out and ran her thumbnail under the join. The piece of paper inside was so thin it was almost transparent. She leaned on her elbows to keep her fingers steady as she unfolded it. It had not crumbled
into dust, despite sitting in a tin through twenty-six summers. It was almost a miracle.
There were only two lines on the page, with two uneven signatures underneath. She read it out loud, although she already knew the words, which had come to mind several times over the years, and frequently of late.
They had said nothing at first, but sat forlornly in the corner holding hands while the birds wheeled past the windows.
‘Mrs Kalbfleisch said your dad died because you’re so naughty.’
‘Mrs Kalbfleisch is a mean old bag,’ said Evie. ‘She can just shut up.’
‘How long will you be away?’ Nathan sniffed and rubbed his nose on his sleeve.
‘Probably forever. Let’s make a vow,’ said Evie, scrambling to her knees. Her shorts, a present for her eleventh birthday and only a week old, were already torn. She extracted her pocket knife, prising some sap off the blade. Grabbing Nathan’s maths book, she ripped a sheet out of the back.
‘We’ll get in trouble,’ said Nathan.
Evie rolled her eyes. ‘I’m leaving today. They can’t do anything, duh.’
‘What if they see us?’
‘No one’s here.’
‘Your dad . . .’ said Nathan, looking over his shoulder.
‘He’s not a ghost yet. Mrs Spranz said you can’t be a ghost until you’re dead for a year.’ She finished scribbling and pushed the paper towards him.
‘I, Evie Fleur Bouvier, promise to always be forsworn to my eternal love, Nathan Frank Reid, for as long as we both shall live,’ read Nathan. ‘What’s “forsworn” mean?’
‘It means you’re bound together forever,’ said Evie, who had heard it once on TV and thought it sounded suitably impressive. ‘Now you write the same thing.’
Nathan obediently wrote.
‘You’ve got to write it with the names reversed, dummy.’
Nathan scratched out the page.
Evie held the pocket knife to the sky. ‘And now, the final curtain.’
‘What curtain?’ said Nathan.
‘It’s like an oath.’ Evie jabbed the pocket knife blade into her fingertip, producing a ruby bead. ‘Here.’
Nathan dutifully put a hand out to be stabbed. ‘Ow!’
Evie rolled her eyes again. ‘Say, “I swear”.’
‘I swear.’
With great solemnity, they pressed their bloody fingers together.
‘We will always be together,’ intoned Evie.
Nathan’s eyes glimmered like river stones under water. ‘We will always be together.’
They clung to each other. The treehouse echoed with noisy sobs.
When they broke apart, Nathan lifted his head from Evie’s shoulder, leaving a long trail of snot.
‘Ew, gross,’ said Evie.
Evie sat back with the paper in hand. A blood vow. Imagine doing that now. There was no blood vow with Gabe, just a delirious, rose-coloured haze.
They met when he staged a one-man protest at the university, crashing into the Womyn’s Room. Although helping to forcibly eject him from the premises at the time, Evie found she couldn’t stop staring at him, nor he at her.
Gabe pursued her relentlessly, bulldozing through Evie’s wariness. She had never met someone who seemed to exhale life as he did. Everything he touched turned to gold, and Evie was gilt from head to toe.
She also realised now that if she had been seduced straightaway, or if her friends had liked him, or if his family had liked her, Gabe would have lost interest far earlier.
She had managed to eke it out for a while, at least. He had adored her as much as she had worshipped him, even with all her imperfections. At least, she thought he had. The first affair had been a surprise. As had the second, third, and fourth. God only knew what else she had been blind to during their marriage. She should ask Nathan about it; he spoke to God quite often, apparently.
Evie looked at the paper again and had to grin at the ‘forsworn’. God, what kind of television had she been watching? Something trashy while her mother was otherwise occupied with church duties or housework or Evie’s father or her mother’s friends or all the other things that claimed her attention except Evie.
Evie stuffed the cigarette case in her blouse and climbed back down through the branches.
To her relief, there was no one in the laneway.
Unfortunately, there was also no skirt on the gate.
Mary followed the flashes of the pale boy’s shirt through the labyrinth of stacks, further and further back into the building. The fluorescent lights diminished to a single row. Beige carpet gave way to slate then tessellated tile, and the shelves got dustier and emptier as she went. The boy’s ghostly form glided ahead, then disappeared.
The tessellated tiles pointed her towards a heavy wooden door which was slightly ajar. She hesitated before pushing it open.
The first thing she saw were the books. They pulled on her chest like a magnet. She moved forward, bag forgotten, boy forgotten. Rows and rows of dictionaries and thesauri, philosophy, psychology, drama, archaeology. A shelf of Brontes, including Anne. Mary gave a squeak at the Austen section, and another at two rows of Doyle, moving along the dark wooden shelves, fingers greedy.
‘Mary Lunar Pleasant. Lunar?’
Mary’s hand froze on the spine of The Coming of the Fairies.
There were neat rows of desks lining the centre of the room, each bearing an inkwell and brass footrest. At the end of the rows was a bigger desk which homed a neat stack of hardbacks and the pale boy, head bent over a keyboard. Above him, set high in the wall, was a small window. A shaft of light illuminated the dust motes dancing in the air.
The boy looked up. ‘Hippie parents?’
Mary, still with her hand on the book, tried not to panic. He knew about her. Personal information. She’d been right. It was a trap.
‘Hippie parents,’ said the boy, going back to the screen. ‘Your English scores would explain the squeaking. Nice work.’
‘What?’ said Mary, all thoughts of possible rape and murder forgotten. She headed for his desk. ‘You’ve got . . . How do you know my grades?’
‘And an A in Drama, I see.’ The boy swung the screen around to face her. There, in merciless print, were her academic transcripts.
Mary turned to him in disgust. ‘It’s supposed to be private.’
The corner of his mouth hiked up. ‘If it’s online, it’s not private.’
‘Why were you watching me in the library?’
‘Actually, this is the library. The other place is just the add-on.’
She crossed her arms. ‘You didn’t answer the question.’
‘Research.’
‘On what?’
‘On you.’
If he killed her here, no one would ever find her body. He was probably one of those freaks who did things with corpses. He’d prop her up at the desk with a volume of Roman architecture, slowly decomposing, studying for all eternity. Then again, she could probably kick him pretty hard in the balls if she had to; there wasn’t much to him.
‘I was curious as to your choice of reading material.’ He rose and moved past her to the shelves. ‘I think this will appeal.’ He pulled out a large blue volume and held it up.
‘The Tibetan Book of the Dead?’
He was between her and the door. Mary’s eyes flicked to the window. Too high. A ball-kicking it would have to be.
The boy sighed when she didn’t budge. ‘I don’t get to recommend books very often, especially around here.’
The appeal to her intellect was obvious, but flattering. Mary wavered.
‘Mary Lunar Pleasant,’ said the boy, ‘I am not a stalker. I am merely an intellectual island.’
Mary relented and took the book.
‘I’m also curious as to how you’ve ended up in the hallowed academic halls of Sweet Meadow High,’ said the boy. ‘Seems a shame to leave such a stellar transcript behind, especially heading into your final year.’
‘Family stuff,’ said Mary
, flipping through the pages.
‘Bad time to have to make new friends.’
Mary shrugged and continued flipping.
‘If you don’t mind me saying so,’ said the boy mildly, ‘you don’t appear to be very good at it.’
Mary used her finger as a bookmark. ‘I like books and plants.’ She looked at him. ‘And you’re the first person here who’s talked to me.’
The boy regarded her for a few moments, then stuck his hand out. ‘I’m Travis. Welcome to the underworld.’
CHAPTER FIVE
Evie scanned the ground, then climbed the gate to check the other side, trying not to panic. She had no phone with her, no purse, nothing but a cigarette case with a piece of paper and a promise.
She was so busy not panicking that she didn’t hear the motorcycle until it rolled to a stop behind her. Evie clutched the top of the gate and prayed that she would somehow blend into the landscape or be mistaken for a life-sized sculpture. Why had she picked red French knickers, for God’s sake?
‘Everything okay?’
She looked over her shoulder. A pair of sleepy eyes was contemplating her from underneath a visor.
It was that guy from the morning tea. Dave? Bill? Phil? Phil. With the mother in the playing-card hat.
‘Great!’ said Evie, pivoting so she wasn’t so spread-eagled. ‘I’m just, you know, taking a tour. By myself.’
‘Right,’ said Phil, looking at Evie’s knickers.
‘I have misplaced my skirt,’ said Evie with as much dignity as she could muster.
‘Need a lift?’
She gave a small sigh. ‘Yes, please.’
Five minutes later, she found herself wearing Phil’s helmet, leather jacket and red chequered shirt, trying not to clutch him too tightly as the motorcycle bounced across the ruts in the road. The metal box stayed wedged inside her bra, the edges hidden by the jacket’s heavy material.