Preloved

by Shirley Marr

  I’m sorry, but the statistics are clear. One in three marriages result in divorce. That’s reality. That’s my parents’ marriage.

  I screwed my thoughts up and threw them away so Logan couldn’t read them.

  “Logan – remind me what we’re doing again, apart from reliving your glory days?”

  “Helping your friend Nancy Drew look for clues. Like this one.”

  “Oh my God, that’s Rebecca.”

  “Stacey.”

  I got up off the table and I walked right up to the image. But all I did was cast a big ugly shadow so I reluctantly stepped to the side.

  She looked beautiful with her blond hair and short purple dress with the oversized rosette at the waist, which somehow managed to look quirky and different rather than outdated and try-hard.

  It was definitely Rebecca. We were best friends in the whole world so I should know. And Rebecca was wearing a tiara on her big hair and a sash across her body that declared she was Belle of the Ball.

  I looked at the matching sash on Logan that made him the Beau. My heart had what felt like a mild seizure and I involuntarily took a step back.

  “Oi. What do you think of the top spunk on the left?”

  “Are you wearing a shoestring tie? What are you, a Texan?”

  Logan grinned back at me.

  “Hey, it’s the height of formal fashion. I was the best-dressed guy there.”

  “You mean it was the height of fashion. Don’t make me cringe.” By that I really meant that he looked cute in a retro way and I didn’t think his black suit and white shirt, with the red carnation at the pocket, looked bad at all.

  “Chill out, Miss Matey. I bet if I asked you to the ball, you’d spaz out.”

  I turned red. I wiped both my hot cheeks, pretending they had something on them.

  As a matter of fact, no one had asked me to the upcoming ball. That was good. Me and Rebecca had decided we weren’t going to go anyway. Well, more like Rebecca had decided it wasn’t “something she would do”, but regardless I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to share their coming-of-age memories in the back seat of a limo with me. We were going to stay in and watch craptastic movies instead. That sounded good to me.

  “I’m not going to spaz out, okay?” I said.

  “Good then,” replied Nancy who was standing at the door. “In fact, it’s better than good!”

  I had forgotten all about Nancy.

  Nancy went to inspect the working projector. I quickly slipped my hand over the forward button so it looked like I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t until my hand started going numb with pins and needles that I looked down and noticed I had put it through Logan’s hand. I pulled my hand back.

  “I admit it. I underestimated you. No offence or anything, but you don’t seem particularly to excel at anything and based on past experience, everything you do seems to come out wrong. Amy, what are you doing?”

  I stopped trying to blow hot air onto my hand. “Nothing.”

  “Anyway, I went to the library and – hang on, isn’t that …?”

  Nancy walked up to the screen and scrutinised the image of Stacey. Then she doubled back and put the book she was carrying down on the other side of the desk, walking right through Logan at the same time.

  Logan stepped back and went to stand in the corner.

  “Brrr! Now I understand, Amy. There’s an absolutely freezing draught in here. I wonder where it’s coming from?”

  Nancy looked around the room briefly, then went back to flipping through the book. It had “Middlemoore SHS Yearbook 1988” printed on the cover and some strange artwork that featured an android hooked up to various machines. I presumed this was some student’s “interesting” impression of the future.

  “That boy is the one from your locket.” Nancy pointed at the projector screen. “And look at the girl – she’s wearing the locket.”

  It felt kinda weird that I was wearing the locket. Like I was some creepy copycat who badly wanted something she couldn’t get, so all she could do was pretend.

  “Look at this.” Nancy held up the colour spread in the middle of the yearbook and turned it towards me. It was a collage of all the ball photos I had seen, with the one of Logan and Rebecca–Stacey in the middle.

  “Sweethearts Stacey Gibson and Logan Feldman – Middlemoore SHS’s own Romeo and Juliet!” read Nancy.

  Logan Feldman. A little piece of my heart jumped at knowing his last name. Which was silly, since I wasn’t a primary school kid who desperately needed both our full names for a love calculator test.

  “Romeo and Juliet? Ugh. Did the ‘journalist’ of this piece even do English? Don’t they know that Romeo and Juliet had a tragic ending? Who wrote this stupid thing?”

  Nancy flipped irritably at the pages.

  “Oh my God.”

  Nancy’s face suddenly went as white as a sheet. If I didn’t know any better I’d swear she had just seen a ghost.

  I craned my neck to see.

  “Look at this,” Nancy whispered.

  She had flipped to the back of the book, where blank pages were left for students to sign messages. I picked my way through the scrawls.

  SG + LF I can’t believe you are both gone.

  Logan and Stace, you will be missed.

  Stacey and Logan, we hope you will be found again.

  I could feel prickling all over my skin like ice, even though Logan was nowhere near me. He was standing at the other end of the room, a sad quiet shadow.

  “I’m sorry,” I mouthed to him. I knew that he was a ghost, that he had to have died, but I’d wanted to pretend he was my own lovable imaginary creature, neither living nor dead. Like a unicorn. A Care Bear. A perfect boy. Seeing the proof was a reality shock.

  “For a moment,” said Nancy. “I thought that this Stacey looked just like your friend Rebecca.”

  “Do … do you believe in reincarnation?” I asked Nancy. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

  Nancy bit the inside of her mouth. “Look, because I obviously come from a smarter and more modern generation, the answer should be no. But sometimes I want it to be true. I do. Even when my mum tells me I shouldn’t be such a pain in the arse or else I’ll be reborn as a cow.”

  “Your mum says that?”

  I was surprised that Nancy’s mum told her stuff just like my mum. But not as surprised as I was that Nancy’s mum told her she was a pain in the arse. I had always thought Nancy was every mother’s dream daughter.

  “Amy?” Logan was kneeling at my side. “Can you ask your friend to help us? I’ll owe you for life. Please. I’m begging you.”

  He looked pale. Even for a ghost.

  But he said “us”. He didn’t say “me” or “you”, he said “us”. We were a team.

  I breathed out heavily and a sigh came out with it.

  “Nancy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you please help me find out more about what happened to these two students?” I asked and then I added, “I’ll owe you for life.”

  A large but sad smile spread across Nancy’s face. And I thought for the first time how nice Nancy looked, because it was the first time I’d seen her smile.

  “You know the implications, right? If I say yes, it means that we’ll meet again in the next lifetime because you’ll need to pay me back.”

  “Not if I pay you back in this lifetime,” I said. I really liked Nancy then. “But it’d be nice to know that I’d see you again in another life. Nice to know I’d meet someone I knew.”

  We both went quiet and shy.

  “I think that’s why people cling to the idea of reincarnation,” said Nancy, finally. “The idea that if you stuff up in this lifetime, you can redo it all again. Or if a love story doesn’t quite turn out the way you want in this life, you can hope for another chance in the next. A second chance.”

  Nancy looked down at her hands, and it looked like she was thinking about herself.

  I thought about Mum’s v
intage shop. How she believed if she found something broken and lovingly and put it back together, that someone would come along and love it again.

  I turned towards Logan. Was he here because he was getting another chance with the girl he once loved? And I had agreed to help him.

  I could say no. I didn’t owe him anything, but I knew that I would say yes.

  I knew that he only had to ask and without even hearing the question, I would say yes.

  “Help me become whole again, Amy,” said Logan, gently in my ear.

  I smiled at Logan encouragingly and mouthed, “I’ll help you. I promise.”

  He smiled back at me. He looked so beautiful that fireworks should have gone off in my heart and flamed into the sky, but instead, it felt like something in me died and fell to ash.

  “Meet me at the State Library tomorrow at 10 am. We’ll raid the newspaper archive.” Nancy rubbed her hands.

  Tomorrow? As in Saturday?

  As in Nancy wanted me to hang out with her on the weekend?

  “I know,” stated Nancy, as if she could read my mind. “It’s strictly business.”

  “Why hello there, fair ladies. TGIF!”

  Michael appeared at the door and stood there casually, with his schoolbag over his shoulder and a textbook tucked under his arm. Dressed in a cream-coloured bodysuit with a blue grid pattern running all over it.

  “Bloody oath,” commented Logan. “If he spends all his free time making stuff like this, no wonder he can’t get a date for the ball.”

  “If I can so politely ask, why are you wearing that stupid skin-tight outfit when it’s forty degrees outside and you clearly don’t have the figure for it?” snapped Nancy.

  I exchanged a sympathetic look with Michael. Obviously Nancy had never seen TRON.

  “Are you looking for Rebecca?” I automatically became defensive. “’Cos she’s not here.”

  “Actually, I was looking for you.”

  My eyes widened. Was he trying to pull another one on me? After the ambushings, attempted extortions and proverbial ponytail pullings, I wasn’t up for any more shenanigans.

  “I’m going to an Eighties movie marathon.” Michael cleared his throat. “And I thought about you. No Princess Bride, sorry, but they’re showing TRON, The Dark Crystal, The NeverEnding Story and The NeverEnding Story II.”

  What? Hang on. Was Michael Limawan casually asking me out on a date?

  “So?” asked Michael.

  I remembered the conversation I had overheard between him and Nancy. Was Michael only asking me ’cos I was Asian too, or because he really liked me?

  Both were equally disturbing. Anyway, casual dates led to serious dates and then marriage and then marriage breakdowns and then …

  “They made a sequel to The NeverEnding Story?” Logan exclaimed. “That I gotta see.”

  “No, you don’t!” I found myself blurting out. “It came out in 1990. Two years after you died. And it is crap! Pure, diabolical crap!”

  I stormed off.

  I left both Michael and Nancy behind with their mouths gaping. I knew they were only trying to be nice, so what did I do? Completely freak out and run away. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to crawl into myself, where it was safe.

  “Miss Matey.” I could feel Logan on my heels.

  “To hell with that!” I said. “Don’t call me that. I said I’m helping you, but it doesn’t mean we have to be buddy-buddy – got it?”

  I wasn’t going to make my parents’ mistakes. I wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t.

  What was I even thinking? I’d mixed up all my thoughts. I was so confused.

  “Hang on. Don’t have a blue,” said Logan. He tried to grab my hand, but I pulled myself away. “No wonder you’ve worked yourself into something chronic and everyone is worried about you. You make it so hard for yourself.”

  “Leave me alone,” I whined. But I stood very still as Logan looked at me with his very blue and very worried eyes, while I fumed on the outside and turned to liquid inside.

  On my way home, disappeared within myself, I tried not to think how much I liked it when Logan called me his Matey.

  Instead, I drifted into my favourite daydream.

  In it, I bump into Dad with his new girlfriend.

  In it, I tell both of them exactly how I feel.

  I ask Dad if he knew that Mum and I sometimes went without dinner. If he knew that we’re so poor that sometimes the electricity and water got cut off (who on earth goes through that?) and if he knew what it felt like not to have a shower for three days. If he knew Mum cried and pretended it was because of something else.

  I tell the girlfriend that Dad was an alcoholic and he never called Mum “dear” or “love” like other husbands did and he would never be a decent father to her future children because since he’s been gone, he never rings. He doesn’t send me birthday cards and stick me if he even knows how old I am.

  In this daydream, sometimes his new girlfriend slaps him and runs off. Sometimes she thanks me later for telling her the truth.

  As I walked home, I felt the coldness of my own heart against my skin; I felt the warmth of my skin against the locket. I picked it up and stared at it, stunned and captivated for a moment. I shook it off and kept walking, indignant, hoarding up all my black feelings and enjoying them one by one, like individually wrapped dark chocolates.

  Chapter 8

  Okay, I was helping Logan. But three minutes into the ordeal, I wanted to leave.

  “What do you think of this one?” asked Rebecca, pressing a shiny deep green number to her body.

  “Tell her it looks fair dinkum excellent,” said Logan.

  I pretended he wasn’t there.

  “Rebecca, I don’t understand why we are shopping for new Eighties-inspired dresses when we can just get like real Eighties dresses. You know, actually from the Eighties?”

  “Yeah, I know that. Especially since your mother runs a vintage shop. But old clothes are kinda ewww. Plus they smell funny. Isn’t it great that the Eighties are back in mainstream fashion?”

  “But you hate mainstream … actually, forget I said anything.”

  I hated clothes shopping. Or maybe that was just something short girls with no boobs and no cash would say. I watched the other girls in the store stare at Rebecca’s tall, shapely figure with a mixture of admiration and jealousy.

  “I’m gonna pull a move,” said Logan.

  “Just wait, okay?” I hissed, trying to hide behind a rack of dresses. “Inside a snotty boutique packed full of plastic-carrying princesses is not the right time.”

  I had promised Logan I was going to tell Rebecca about him. I had a horrible sensation in my stomach only because, like, a billion things could go wrong when you try to tell a girl that her Eighties-flavoured boyfriend from a past life was trying to hook back up with her.

  Logan shrugged and went to stand in front of a full-length mirror. It was strange that he could see his own reflection. Hang on. Was that vampires?

  I watched as Logan did a Michael Jackson hat flip. Show-off! I thought, but I ended up smiling anyway because he executed it perfectly.

  I flicked through the rack half-heartedly.

  Newsflash: there had been a last-minute change of plans. We were going to the ball – the Eighties-themed ball – after all. I was in denial and not mad about finding out who or what had caused Rebecca to have a change of heart.

  I picked up a glistening black number that had the same texture as a garbage bag. I turned over the price tag and almost gagged at the long row of numbers following the dollar sign. “Shit!” I said out loud. “And there’s hardly any fabric! Someone tell me what I’m actually paying for?”

  Rebecca ignored me and picked up a hot-pink dress that had ridiculous-looking ruching all the way down both sides and a ruffled fishtail. Logan followed closely behind her. I watched as he stood next to her and looked into her face as she browsed the racks. At one stage he stared longingly down the nape of her neck.

>   I frowned. I think my brain hurt. I was tempted to cover both my ears to block the overly loud and obnoxious pop music blasting in the store and just scream “this is not happening” over and over.

  “Fair dinkum, is this music or is it a four-minute loop of something that sounds like a chipmunk singing over a dentist’s drill?” Logan asked me. He was suddenly over my shoulder and I baulked.

  “It’s called modern music. That’s what those darn modern kids are dancing to these days,” I replied, trying to sound ironically upbeat. I’d decided no one was going to hear me talking to myself because it was so loud – unless of course I decided to speak just as the song ended abruptly.

  Dammit.

  The skinny sales assistant, whose nose was somehow able to point high in the air despite the heavy-looking piercing in it, glared at me.

  Everyone else stared and I slunk off to stand by the side of the store, like an embarrassed ball boy who had accidentally stumbled onto the court while an important set was taking place.

  I stood there chewing on my thumbnail as I watched a tall boy in black appear. He marched up to Rebecca and gave her a kiss right on the mouth.

  I think Rebecca’s change of plans had just arrived.

  “You know Benji, right, Amy? I’m sure I’ve told you about him. We met when he saw me reading Prozac Nation after school. It must have been destiny, because it just happened that I was alone that day you had detention with the freaks at the library.”

  No, I didn’t know Benji. But thanks for making me sound so desirable to meet. Wait – an important scene in Rebecca’s movie happened without me?

  “Far out, brussel sprout, what’s up with this dude?” asked Logan.

  Benji. With gorgeously angular features, but a not-so-gorgeous sulky expression.

  “He’s an emo,” I replied. Oops. I said it out loud. Drats again.

  “I’m not an emo,” replied Benji. “Don’t use that as a derogatory term and use it to pigeonhole me just because I wear black and have piercings and rebel against a suppressive society.”