We held a seance today: me and Susie Sioux and April. The ouija board spelt out HELP TRINITY HOLLY. If you put a comma in there, it says: HELP TRINITY, HOLLY. I think I’m here to fix something in your life. Does that make sense?
Anyway, if you get this letter, write back. We can figure it out together. But don’t do anything you might regret. Or, more accurately, that I might regret! I don’t want to come back and find my life has been trashed. Ha ha.
The mom called up the stairs that dinner was on the table.
I have to go. I hope you’re okay. Write back asap. Love …
She wondered if ‘love’ was a little too familiar – if ‘from’ would have been better – but once a thing is typed on an old typewriter, it’s there for good, no delete, no backspace, no autocorrect. So she left it, and signed off.
Holly
Day 4
MONDAY, 3 MARCH 1980
6.48 am
School. The word nudged Holly awake. She had to get up for work. She had classes to teach, kids to wrangle, art folios to assess. She rolled onto her side and opened her eyes.
Yellow sunflowers, orangey tulips, red flowers. The LED display on the wood-grain digital clock announced the time in jumbo-sized numbers: 6.49.
She didn’t work at a school; she was a sixteen-year-old student there.
‘Trinity! Did you hear me?’ she heard the mom calling up the stairs. ‘You’ve got school.’
‘I heard you,’ Holly called back.
Obviously she wasn’t leaving the house. The world outside was dangerous. If she went to school there’d be traps, their saw-toothed jaws rusted open, waiting for her to set foot into them. All of Trinity’s friends would be watching her. There were too many ways to trip up. Also, there was the whole complication of which classroom she was supposed to be in when. Where her locker was. Where the toilets were. No. She was going to stay in this house, close to Brother Orange, and wait for a reply from Trinity. They needed to work out how to swap back. She wanted her old life. Bad hair and all.
She’d tell the mom she was sick again, that she had concussion, that she didn’t know who the president was. Whatever she needed to say to make sure she stayed home. But then the mom called up the stairs, ‘We’re going. I’m dropping Lools off at early-morning practice. We’ll see you tonight,’ and the front door closed.
Holly smiled to herself. No need for an excuse.
She pushed off the blankets and walked over to the desk, sat down and stared at the page in the typewriter, willing it to have some kind of reply on it. It was totally blank. Come on, Trinity, answer.
What was going on back in Melbourne, all those years into the future? Had anyone noticed that she seemed different? It was probably Tuesday there by now, so she’d have missed the staff meeting and her meeting with Kristen about the Year 11 folios. And had Michael come back from his golfing long weekend yet? Had he come over with a present for her birthday? Not wanting to be mercenary, but she was expecting something good. Maybe he’d organised that special dinner he had promised.
And then Holly had an awful realisation. If Michael went around to her place, he’d expect that they’d tumble into bed at some stage. It was only reasonable. That was what they did – they were grown adults. But Trinity was only sixteen. Panic swelled in Holly’s stomach. Michael couldn’t come around. He couldn’t put his hands on Trinity. It was all kinds of wrong. She wasn’t even sure what the term for it would be, but it was bound to be illegal in all jurisdictions.
The typewriter did nothing. Holly finally started typing, impatient.
Did you get my letter? I need you to write back to me.
Stone-cold silence. Waiting for Trinity’s reply was anxiety-making. Holly pushed her chair away from the desk and walked out of the bedroom, heading towards the bathroom. A shower would help. She washed her hair, tried to scrub all thoughts of Michael and Trinity out of her brain, avoiding looking at this body in order to give Trinity some privacy.
The hot water felt good on her skin, but the water pressure wasn’t the same as home. The shampoo was fruity and smelt like chemicals, and the shower curtain glommed to her legs in a clammy way. No, even in the shower with her eyes shut tight as water ran down her face, she was keenly aware that this wasn’t her life.
She towelled herself off, not looking in the mirror, then went back into her bedroom (not her bedroom), put on a dressing-gown (not her dressing-gown), and went downstairs to have some breakfast. The LA Times was folded up on the breakfast bench, exactly as it was every morning. Today’s front-page headline read, Body of Kidnaped Girl Found.
As dramatic as the headline was, it was the spelling that initially struck her. ‘Kidnaped’ should have a double ‘p’. K-i-d-n-a-pp-e-d. Holly wondered how such an obvious spelling mistake could have ended up on the front page of a major newspaper. And then she remembered. Here it was ‘color’ instead of ‘colour’, ‘apologize’ instead of ‘apologise’; inches and feet, miles, degrees Fahrenheit.
Holly unfolded the newspaper and started reading about the girl who’d been kidnaped with a single ‘p’. She’d gone missing from Atwater Village a few weeks back. Her body had been found yesterday in the Forest Lawn area near Adams Hill. Another suspected victim of the Mariposa Murderer.
Lying on the nature strip outside, staring up at the sky. ‘Trinity? You okay? There was a guy. He was trying to lift you into his car.’
Was it the Mariposa Murderer? The guy who’d stopped to pick her up? Maybe she’d been wrong to discount that guy, to consider that he’d simply been helping a girl he’d seen faint as he was driving past. But then again, what were the chances of it being the same guy? She wasn’t even sure where Mariposa was. Or Forest Lawn, for that matter. It could be all the way across the other side of the vast sprawl of LA, far from Los Feliz.
Had Trinity fainted, or had she been hitchhiking? Was he a good guy or bad? Then she had a chilling thought: was that why they’d swapped places? To save Trinity from him? Did she need to go to the police about this?
Holly went back upstairs to ask Trinity, to find out exactly what had happened the afternoon they’d swapped. She was sitting down at the typewriter, fingers at the ready, when she heard something downstairs. Someone was sliding the back door open.
She looked out her bedroom window to the driveway. The car wasn’t there. The mom hadn’t come back for something she’d forgotten. The back door slid shut. There was definitely someone in the house. Whoever it was, they were moving around downstairs. Adrenaline flooded her body.
Body of Kidnaped Girl Found. The Mariposa Murderer.
HELP TRINITY, HOLLY.
Lewis standing over her, asking if she was all right. ‘I asked him what was going on, and he said you’d fainted and he was going to drive you home. But I pointed to your house’ – all the little ducks lining up in a row, realisation bobbing – ‘and said, “Except she lives there.”’
Lewis had pointed out to the guy exactly which one was her house. The one she was standing in, right now. And now the same guy had snuck in through the back door and was downstairs somewhere, looking for her.
Holly had done enough karate in her life to know that a girl Trinity’s size didn’t have the bulk to beat a grown man. And then she realised this was her advantage − the man wouldn’t be expecting a black belt on the offensive. He’d be expecting a girl who’d maybe scream, maybe put up a bit of a fight, but not a true competitor. Even if this body had never done a lick of karate in its life, it had youth and agility on its side, while Holly had the knowledge in her head. Holly could think through the moves, and Trinity could stitch this guy right up.
Holly moved quietly down the stairs, alert for any sound. There was a scraping noise in the kitchen. He hadn’t seen her yet. Her way was clear to the front door. She could simply bolt. She moved towards it, but then she stopped. This guy knew where she lived. If he wanted to get her, he’d simply come back later. Or maybe he’d come back when Loolah was home alone. No, this had to en
d now. That was what Holly was here for.
Help Trinity, Holly.
She crept towards the kitchen doorway and peeked around it. The guy was standing at the kitchen bench, his back to her. She could see a bag on the bench beside him. She took a deep breath, whispered, ‘Yoi,’ to herself (which meant ‘steel yourself, get your stance right, be prepared’) then slipped forward, pure karate focus, and hooked her foot in front of his ankle, yanking his leg towards her and pulling him off balance.
The guy threw out his arms and yelled. A bowl flew through the air as he fell. Frosted Flakes and milk splattered every surface.
Lewis looked up at her from the floor. ‘What the fuck,’ he said.
Holly blinked at him, and then relief flooded her, mixing with adrenaline and bursting out of her in a hooting kind of laughter. Of course, she should have known. Even from the back – the slim build, the clothes, even the ankles were familiar to her.
‘Oh,’ she said, struggling to control her giggles. ‘Morning.’
He looked around at the mess she’d made, then shook his head and grinned. ‘Mate,’ he said, ‘you should have just told me you wanted the last of the Frosted Flakes. I’d have been happy to take the Buc Wheats.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know why I did that. I think I’ve been a bit on edge ever since that guy, you know, out the front. I thought you were him.’
Lewis looked at her, all joking put to the side as concern washed over his features. ‘You okay?’ he asked. ‘You starting to remember it?’
‘Bits and pieces. Not much.’ She grabbed a tea towel and started wiping down the cupboard fronts, which only served to smear milk and cereal further. ‘I was worried that he’d come back to get me,’ she said, sitting back on her heels and looking over at Lewis. ‘I mean, seeing as he knows where I live.’
‘How would he know that? For all he knows, you were walking along a random street. He couldn’t possibly know this is where you live.’
Holly blinked at him. He didn’t remember.
Lewis pointing to her house. Telling the guy, ‘She lives there.’
Some things were obviously clearer for her from Friday afternoon, the strangeness of it imprinting every detail into her brain, whereas Lewis had been distracted, worried about her. He remembered the overview but not the minutiae. Then again, maybe she was wrong. Maybe she was the one misremembering. Maybe he hadn’t pointed to her house and said, ‘She lives there.’
‘Do you remember what sort of car he was driving?’ she asked.
Lewis shrugged. ‘An American car. White. Like every other American car on the road over here.’
She knew what he meant. They all looked exactly the same to her too. Riding her bike to the dad’s house, it had just been long, boaty 1970s American car after long, boaty 1970s American car.
‘What did he look like?’ she asked.
Lewis frowned. ‘He had his cap pulled right down. And then he just dumped you and split, and, yeah, I should have taken his numberplate or something, but I didn’t even think of it. I was making sure you were okay.’
‘You know, I’m sure it was nothing,’ Holly decided. ‘Obviously I fainted, he stopped to help, and then he figured he didn’t need to worry once you came over. Anyway, I think I’m only succeeding in smearing the milk even further.’ She just wanted to move on from the Mariposa Murderer. Which, of course, the guy probably wasn’t. ‘This calls for some heavy-duty mop action.’ She went and grabbed the mop from the laundry, then came back into the kitchen only to find Lewis hunched down cleaning up where she’d left off. ‘Stand back,’ she said, nudging him with the mop. ‘Let the expert take over.’
After cleaning up and a bowl of Buc Wheats each, Lewis put his dishes in the kitchen sink and said, ‘Okay, let’s make tracks, we gotta get to school.’
Holly reactively shook her head. ‘Oh. No. I’m not going.’
Lewis laughed. ‘Yeah, right. Come on.’
‘No, seriously,’ Holly said. ‘I don’t feel good. I’m dizzy. I think I’ve still got concussion. From the other day.’
‘Trin,’ Lewis said firmly, ‘you can’t keep cutting school. Your mom’s paying me in premium cereal to come here each morning and drag you out. So, yeah, go get ready, I don’t wanna be late.’
7.28 am
Holly stood upstairs in the bathroom and looked at her face. Not her face. Trinity’s. She didn’t know how to do this make-up. Or this hair. She tried to remember how she’d looked when she’d first stood in front of the mirror on Friday afternoon: black eyeliner, messy hair. April and Susie Sioux had both clocked how strange she’d looked yesterday with her hair brushed and eyes unblackened.
‘Hurry up!’ Lewis called up the stairs.
She rustled around in a drawer and found some hair gel, but changed her mind. She was going to be in a stressful environment – she had to feel comfortable. She made an executive decision to pull the hair back up into a simple ponytail, the way she wore it most days when she was teaching. Taking out an eyeliner pencil, she ran it lightly along her top eyelashes and added some mascara. Stepping back, she took one last look at herself.
She was wearing a short denim skirt and a T-shirt with Godzilla printed on the front of it. A nylon Pan Am satchel holding her schoolbooks was slung over her shoulder and a jumper was tied around her waist in case she got cold. Her hair was glossy in its high ponytail. Her face looked fresh.
But it wasn’t her. At least, it wasn’t Trinity.
Holly pulled the hair tie out, took the gel from the drawer and ran a large blob of it through her hair. She ran the eyeliner under the eyelashes and across the top of her lid, taking it up towards her eyebrow, giving herself an overblown punk look.
And there she was. Trinity from Friday afternoon.
Resistance was useless.
And that’d be a sweater tied around her waist. Not a jumper. A sweater.
7.56 am
There were certain places in the world that Holly would always recognise, whether she’d been there or not: the Eiffel Tower, the Golden Gate Bridge, Sydney Opera House, the Chrysler Building. Also, John Marshall High: the iconic American school that had featured in movies like Bachelor Party, Nightmare on Elm Street, Pretty in Pink and Grease, among others.
John Marshall High towered over Holly in a memory-expanding way. The brickwork, the sprawling lawns, the leafy trees, even the yellow school bus parked out the front – she knew this place. She spent more time here per week than she did at home.
She and Lewis joined the flow of students walking through the front doors. Inside, the corridors, lockers, noticeboards, stairwells – they were all familiar.
There were students dressed casually in T-shirts and denim. Girls in Peter Pan-collared floral shirts and floral skirts. Boys in chinos and button-down collars. Couldn’t-give-a-shit girls in overalls with singlets. Surfer chicks in baggy windcheaters. Boys in checked shirts. Perfect girls with flicked-back Charlie’s Angels hair. Shy boys who wore their hair over their eyes. Messy girls with hair like Trinity’s. Fresh-faced girls with pale make-up and pink lipstick. It was a real mix.
So different from the students at the school where Holly taught, dressed in their identical blue uniforms, with identical blue ribbons in their hair.
She looked around and realised Lewis had gone in a different direction, but it didn’t matter. The locker-lined corridors were familiar. Her feet knew the way. She stopped instinctively at her locker, opened the padlock without even having to think. 0229. Second month, twenty-ninth day. Her birthday.
It was only as she clicked the lock and opened the locker door that she realised in Australia she would have the code plugged in as 2902. Twenty-ninth day, second month.
She jammed the Pan Am satchel into her locker and took out her maths book. (Math, Monday morning first thing. She knew this as surely as if it had been written on the timetable taped to the inside of her locker. Which it wasn’t. The timetable was taped there all right, but it was blank.) T
hen she looked around her at the people walking past. They were people whose names she knew – people whose parties she’d been at, whose cars she’d driven in.
She saw Molly and Katie, their books bundled up in their arms.
Molly in a Wonder Woman costume running past her and Susie Sioux, cradling a Halloween goblin that she’d nicked out of someone’s front garden as a dare. ‘Oh my god, run! They totally saw me take this!’
Ash and Daniel.
Ash driving them to Santa Monica in his mom’s car, his surfboard squished between her and April in the back, Susie Sioux riding shotgun up the front.
Carl. The strangeness of his freshly shorn hair.
‘Turns out, the thing I really liked about him was his curls,’ April had said. ‘I mean, you can’t break up with someone because they’ve had a bad haircut. Can you?’ The jury of Susie Sioux, April, Heather and Trinity had been evenly divided on whether it was a legit break-up excuse or not.
There was Scott, leaning against the wall talking to Jennifer, who’d just broken up with Kevin. Amy, who couldn’t be trusted with a secret. Jess, who couldn’t be trusted with a boyfriend (her own, or anyone else’s). Heather – voted Most Likely to Be Prom Queen (also juror on the case of Breaking Up with Carl Because of Bad Haircut).
She knew every single one of them. These were her friends. She shut her locker door, jigged the padlock into place, tucked her maths folder and textbook under her arm. April came over and put her arm around Holly’s shoulders. ‘How about the séance, that was so cool, I’m still freaked out about your typewriter.’ She steered Holly towards her first class of the day.
Holly wondered what it going to be like, sitting on the other side of the classroom from what she was used to. Being a student instead of a teacher. How was her day going to pan out? And more importantly, what sort of student was she?
8.17 am
Maths. Or, more accurately, more Americanly, math.
It's Not You, It's Me Page 7