Only Daughter

by Anna Snoekstra

  “Everything is fine.” And then, hating myself for it but not knowing what else to say: “I’ll call you later.”

  I know I should at least kiss him before I leave, but I can’t bring myself to go to him. So I just smile at him weakly and half run down the stairs to wait for the cab.

  It’s when I’m waiting, already feeling guilty, the wind whipping my hair around, the last of the light turning everything silver, that I get the message. My phone beeps and I think it must be Jack, asking what went wrong. But it’s not. It’s from that number I don’t know.

  Leave now or it will happen again.

  14

  Bec, 16 January 2003

  Lizzie took a folded white sheet out of her bag and laid it out for them to sit on. It was hot in the garage, the air conditioning didn’t go that far, and it stunk of mould and stale air. The hot water tank hummed in the corner. They didn’t have to whisper anymore. You could never hear anything from in here.

  “Ellen’s still coming, isn’t she?” Liz asked.

  “She said she would stop by after she closes. Matty didn’t reply to me, though.”

  “That’s okay,” Liz said. “We only really need four to do the spell.”

  “The spell? Wow, you’ve really gone all voodoo on us now,” Bec said.

  “Fuck off!” she said, but her eyes sparkled. She was excited.

  They sat on the sheet cross-legged. Bec noticed how close her knee was to Luke’s. The hairs on his leg were almost touching her. It gave her goose bumps. She wondered if he even noticed. Perhaps it was all in her head after all; she’d just exposed herself as a dumb girl with a dumb crush. She felt so stupid.

  They watched as Lizzie unpacked the box slowly, taking out one item at a time. Two thick church candles. A small metal dish with a rose engraved at its base, a lighter, some sage still in its supermarket packaging and a pair of silver scissors. She placed them carefully on the sheet in the centre of their triangle, the dish in the middle and the candles on each side. Finally, she revealed four copies of a spell that she had printed from the internet and passed the scissors to Bec.

  “What?”

  “We need a lock of hair.”

  “What!”

  “Oh, come on, Bec, don’t be chickenshit,” said Luke.

  Usually she would have smiled when he said something like that but this time it stung. Usually she would have chopped off a piece of hair and laughed about it like it was no big deal. But right now, she didn’t want to. She felt somehow like she had to keep what was hers. As if everything that made her herself was slipping away too quickly. But she hated the way they were both looking at her, so she picked up the scissors and held them to a piece of hair behind her ear and snipped. A little strip of orange lay on her palm, lifeless like a dead goldfish. She held it out to Liz, who picked it up between her thumb and forefinger and carefully placed it in the metal bowl.

  Bec eyed the spell in front of her. It was ridiculous. Half the words were in Latin and some of it even rhymed. This was so idiotic.

  “Ellen’s going to hate this,” she said.

  “Why?” Lizzie looked hurt, which made Bec feel unexpectedly happy.

  “Cos it’s dumb. You’ve just printed any old thing off the internet.”

  “No, I didn’t! I researched for ages!”

  “Calm down, ladies,” Luke said.

  “We aren’t fighting!” she said to him.

  “Sure seems like it to me.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence and Bec felt stupid and angry again.

  Lizzie wouldn’t look at her. “Well, we’ll just see what Ellen thinks when she gets here.”

  Right on cue, Bec’s phone lit up. Ellen was at the front door. She jumped up to let her in, happy for an excuse to get out of there, even for a moment. As she walked to the garage door, she stepped on something, and a tiny jingling noise sounded as she did. She looked down. The little silver bell rolled out from under her foot. She kicked it out of the way and kept walking, pushing it out of her head.

  Ellen looked at her dubiously when she opened the door, but Bec didn’t even care anymore. When they got back, Luke and Lizzie were talking quietly, their faces close together, his smile broad and real.

  “So is Matty coming?” Liz asked Ellen when she noticed her.

  “He said he had a friend’s birthday to go to.” The lie was so obvious, no one even needed to say it.

  “Oh, well,” said Liz, “here’s your copy of the spell.”

  Ellen looked it over and Bec knew what she must be thinking. She didn’t say anything, though, and Liz looked at her and raised her eyebrows like she was right. Bec wondered why it was that Lizzie was taking control of this; it was her house and her haunting.

  “How do you know this isn’t just going to make it angry?” Bec asked.

  Lizzie looked at her strangely. “What do you mean?”

  “We don’t know why it’s here or what it wants. It’s violent, though. We know that from the blood.”

  “I agree with you, Bec. I don’t really believe in these things, but if there’s any chance this is real then I don’t know if we should be playing around with it,” Ellen said.

  Bec raised her eyebrows right back at Liz.

  “But it’s not real,” Liz said.

  “It is!” Bec could feel the hurt showing on her face.

  “You said it yourself, Bec. You said the blood came from you. I thought we were just mucking around to make you feel better.”

  “I didn’t say that!” But Bec remembered she had said it, before the party the previous night. She’d said it to make Lizzie come into her room, and the lie came through in her voice.

  A moment of silence, all of them staring at her. Then Ellen stood.

  “Don’t go already!” Bec said, her throat tightening.

  “For fuck’s sake. What’s your problem? I was so worried about you, Bec. I thought there was something going on here, something awful. But all you want is attention. It’s the middle of the fucking night and I’m not a fucking teenager!”

  A red blotchy rash crept up Ellen’s neck and onto her cheeks as she spoke. She never raised her voice, but her words were so sharp they were like a slap across the face. She turned on her heel and walked straight out of the garage. Luke got up to follow.

  “I should make sure she’s all right.” He didn’t look at Bec as he walked out.

  The piece of her hair blew out of the bowl as the door opened and shut. She supposed Lizzie had intended to burn it. She leaned forward and picked it up, and it felt so soft and light, she was suddenly glad she hadn’t had to watch it turn black. Exhaustion flooded through her body.

  “I’m so sorry, Bec. I didn’t mean it to go like this.”

  “If you go now you’ll catch up to them.”

  “I thought I was going to sleep over.”

  Bec stared at the lock of hair in her hand.

  “No,” she said quietly.

  “What’s with you? You’re acting so crazy!”

  Bec’s hand clenched around the hair. When she looked up her eyes were blistering, but she didn’t raise her voice.

  “I’m not crazy. I’m just sick of having a moron for a best friend.”

  “Bec!” Lizzie looked like she’d been slapped.

  Bec almost smiled. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. You’re a complete idiot. Your brother’s a loser and your dad’s a pervert.”

  “He is not!”

  Lizzie didn’t look hurt anymore; she was looking at Bec like she hated her.

  “Take it back,” Lizzie pushed, her voice cold.

  She couldn’t look at Lizzie. If she did she would have to say sorry, because she already was. If she apologized then Lizzie would stay, and Bec just wanted to be alone now. Perhaps forever. So instead she just listened. She listened as Liz put everything back into the box, the swish of her skirt as she rose to her feet, the whisper of her footsteps through the laundry and the quiet thud of the front door as she closed it softly
behind her.

  Then, as Bec sat alone on the white sheet that glowed like a ghost from the light coming from the laundry, she hated everyone.

  In the morning, Bec’s pillow was wet. Splotches of damp on the bleached white cotton. She couldn’t remember her dreams, but they must have made her cry. Maybe they weren’t dreams at all, but the events of last night played in a loop. She had never fought with Lizzie before, never in almost five years of friendship. Looking at her phone, she expected to see messages of apology from her, maybe one from Luke asking how she was. But her screen was blank. They all thought she was a liar.

  Pushing off the sheets before she could let the painful thought take hold, she got out of bed and left her bedroom. It was Big Splash day and there was no getting out of it. Walking past the twins’ room, she looked in. They were standing next to Paul’s bed, looking into his backpack. “Don’t forget sunscreen,” she said.

  They jumped at the sound of her voice and turned around quickly, blocking what was behind them.

  “You’re such a nagger,” Andrew said.

  “Well, you don’t want any more freckles, do you?”

  They rolled their eyes at her. She looked at them suspiciously for a moment and then kept walking to the bathroom. Maybe this would be a good thing to do today. Just hang out with kids in the sun and scare herself on water slides.

  She showered, put her swimmers on, lathered herself in sunscreen, tossed a dress on over the top and rolled up a towel to put in her bag. It felt good to do something, even if her body still felt hollow. The boys were waiting for her in the kitchen.

  “I’ll just have a coffee and then we can go, okay?”

  They smiled at each other, clearly excited. Putting the kettle on, she realized how happy she was to be taking them out. Soon they’d be teenagers and they wouldn’t need her anymore. They might not even like her. They’d stink and have deep voices and maybe even girlfriends. The idea seemed ludicrous. Sitting down with her coffee, she tried to imagine them without their full cheeks and puppy fat. She couldn’t.

  “Hang on,” she said, realizing. “You’ve both forgotten your towels!”

  They looked at each other and Paul smacked his head with over-the-top exasperation.

  “Silly old fool!” he said, and they both burst out laughing.

  “Go get them, then!” she said.

  They jumped to their feet, but just before he ran out of the room, she noticed Paul’s eyes slide to his backpack as he got up. Like he was thinking of taking it with him. There was something in there he didn’t want her to see.

  Part of her didn’t want to look. Just wanted to let the day be golden. But she had to.

  In the first pocket: just his Discman, his scruffy Velcro surf wallet and house keys. She zipped it back up, feeling slightly guilty, then opened the other one. Supplies for a booby trap. Her body went cold. She could already picture it, see the water of the swimming pool turning pink. Her insides twisted.

  Not bothering to zip the bag back up, she got up and walked straight out of the house, slamming the door shut behind her. Part of her knew it was her duty as big sister to stay and talk to them about what was in there. To make them understand that actions had consequences. To explain to them what it meant to hurt someone, that it wasn’t a game, that it wasn’t funny. But it was just too much for her. It was that house. That house made everything inside it ugly and warped. She needed to put as much distance between her and the house as possible. This was meant to be her golden day of innocence and fun.

  Bec walked and walked, not sure where she was going. The towel stuck out of her bag at an awkward angle, banging against her back with every step. Her cheeks were hot and wet, from tears or sweat she wasn’t sure.

  She was almost there before she realized her feet were taking her to Luke’s house. Some unconscious part of her brain knew that she had to tell him that she wasn’t a liar. Part of her wanted to tell him everything. To open that part of her mind that hurt to touch and let all the poison out.

  From the road, it was just a wide driveway and some eucalypts, blocking the building from view. Once you took a few steps up the drive you rounded the corner to the squat brown brick apartment building. Not very remarkable in any way, but knowing it was where Luke lived gave it some kind of breathtaking mystique to her. It could have been the Notre Dame or the Taj Mahal. It looked about four levels high, with two economic cement balconies protruding from each level. But she knew he lived on the ground level. He’d told her once about how his friend used to bash on his window to wake him up. Matty had given them all a lift one night and they’d dropped him off; she’d memorized the address instantly.

  It felt peaceful, with the shade from the trees, the humming cicadas and the sting of the eucalypt smell in her nostrils. It would be a nice place to live. She went up to the door and knocked, her heart hammering. She waited for a few moments, leaning like a rag doll against the letterboxes. Looking around, she noticed the buzzers and felt instantly embarrassed, even though there was no one around. How stupid to knock on an apartment building. The buzzers had only numbers, though, not names. The choice seemed to be between sitting out the front like a stalker or pressing the buttons one at a time until she lucked out. But that might get him into trouble with the other tenants.

  There was nowhere else to go. She couldn’t go home; she couldn’t go to Lizzie’s. Pushing her fingernails into her palms, she tried to force herself not to cry. The only thing worse than him finding her sitting on his doorstep would be for him to find her sitting on his doorstep weeping like a crazy person.

  Ducking under the low-hanging branches, she crept around the side of the building. If she could figure out which apartment he was in then it would all be okay. She peeked into the first window. The room was dim. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She gasped and ducked back down. Inside was a middle-aged man with a huge bulbous stomach sleeping naked in bed. A hysterical laugh almost escaped her, but she took some deep breaths and shuffled through the dead leaves to the next window.

  There would be three apartments on the bottom level at most, so she crossed her fingers there would be no more gross naked men and straightened up to look inside. There was no one there. Just an unmade bed across from an old desktop computer, with a dividing wall from the kitchen and an open door where the carpet turned to cracked white tiles. The bathroom, she guessed. And on the floor was a scrunched-up Mc-Donald’s shirt. The window she was looking through was wide open. He was clearly not home, though. Without really thinking about it, she hoisted herself up onto the window ledge and jumped down onto his bed.

  Standing in the middle of his room, Bec couldn’t believe what she had just done. But she didn’t leave. No, instead she lay down on the bed and took a big breath in of his smell. Stretching out on the bed, she felt the warmth of his pillow, the soft cotton of his sheets, imagining him coming home from work and slipping into them. Swinging to her feet, she went into the bathroom, looked at his toothbrush, studied the shaver and mouthwash he must use every day. Opening the cupboards in the kitchen, she inspected the dry pasta, the spices, the half-empty jar of Nutella. Noticing the dirty plates in the sink, for one crazy moment she considered washing up for him.

  This was all crazy, though. Her mind seemed to clear and she realized what she was doing. She had to get out of here. Now. But as she went to the bedroom to start clambering back out the window, she heard a noise that made her heart stop beating: a key sliding into the lock.

  In that split second, her mind became crystal clear. Surveying the distance, she knew she wouldn’t be able to get out of the window in time. Flattening herself against the carpet, she rolled under the bed, pulling her bag and beach towel with her just as the door swung open.

  He stood in the doorway in shorts and a T-shirt, a coffee in one hand and the remnants of a croissant in the other. As he turned to close the door behind him, she saw the line of sweat between his shoulder blades. She tried to not breathe, even though she felt li
ke she was about to start hyperventilating. The noise of the door closing seemed too loud in the silence of the room. She heard him chewing on the last of the croissant, scrunching up the paper bag and throwing it into the bin. He crossed the room and the mattress squeaked above her. She could hear him swallowing the coffee and the soft beeps of his phone as he wrote a text message. Then, when it was almost too late, she realized that he could be writing a text to her. Oh, God. She slid her shaking hand inside her bag and slipped her phone out. It lit up. She quickly pressed the button to open the message, almost dropping it in the process, before the alert noise went off. Sorry last night went so badly, it said. Hope you are okay.

  She swallowed. That was way too close. Her hands were shaking. The carpet was beginning to itch her neck and it stank of old cigarette smoke and damp. The box spring was just inches above her nose, and if she reached out her fingers, she could have touched the backs of Luke’s ankles. She could see each brown hair up close, see each follicle they protruded from.

  After a few more anxious minutes of more texting, none of which came through to her phone, the mattress squeaked again. Luke took a step forward, dropped his shorts and then his underwear, and then she saw the T-shirt fall onto the carpet, as well. Before he walked through the bathroom door, she got a look at him from the neck down: pale buttocks, pimples on his back and black curly hair almost completely concealing his flaccid penis. The bathroom door closed, the pipes squeaked and the shower began to run.

  She had only a few minutes, tops.

  Pulling herself out from under the bed, she got to her feet, ready to jump out of the room while she still could. Then his phone received a text. It lay on his bed and she could see from there who the text was from: Lizzie. Even though her heart was hammering, she couldn’t help but pick it up. I’m okay, thanks for thinking of me.

  She opened the sent message folder. He had sent Lizzie the exact same text that he’d sent her. Down the list was almost entirely girls’ names, mostly hers, Lizzie’s and Ellen’s. She opened some at random: Always have such an amazing night with you. Been thinking about you today. They were all things he’d written to her but he’d sent them to so many other people, too.