And then I hear something that makes my hair go static and my body prickle up.
It’s the sound of a voice I haven’t heard for a long time.
It’s loud, constant and cheerful.
It’s the voice of someone I know.
Gabby.
Gabby?
That can’t be right, I think to myself. I put my finger into the cookbook I’m looking at, close it and poke my head around the shelf.
I can’t really see who’s there. The other girls, who are clearly not Gabby, are blocking my view and there’s a mum with two toddlers in the way as well. I go back to my recipes, shaking my head, my eyes glancing over a section called `10 Ways to use Quinoa’. Maybe I should get this for Grandma for Christmas, I think to myself. She’d love it. But then I hear it again.
“No seriously, you guys. You have to get this book. It’s the best book ever. It’s like the king of all books. I was obsessed with it for weeks. I’m still obsessed.”
It’s her voice.
Those are her words.
It must be her.
I step out, push past the toddlers and through the group of girls. There in front of me is my best friend, Gabby. The person who stood up for me, protected me and got suspended for me. My eyes are saucers and I can hardly move. But my face is smiling like I’ve just been given a puppy.
“Gab!” I say, and I move in for a hug.
In slow motion, I see Gabby’s face flit from surprise to recognition to terror. And then it changes one more time. To a blank nothing. She sidesteps the hug and leaves me hurtling towards a shelf of books about vampires. I bang my chin on the edge.
Ouch.
I whirl around, confused. Am I dreaming? Is it just someone who looks like her? I stare again, but I’m not wrong. It’s definitely Gabby. Her build, her hair, her style of clothes. She’s even wearing rainbow toe socks on her feet. I can see the toes through her open shoes.
“Gabby?” I say, but this time it’s a question, and there’s disbelief on my face.
She looks at me, through me and past me. And then she says to her friends, in her voice that I know means ‘I’ve had enough now. I’m upset’; she says, “Let’s go, you guys.”
There’s a whisk and whoosh of air and then Gabby and her friends (new friends?) are gone, out of the shop, heading back into the mall.
I rub my chin. No blood. But there will be a bruise. I’m shocked and confused and whirling and going crazy. Is it really her? If it is, what have I done to make her behave this way? And then, in one long, quick, furious rush of red, I am angry.
Sometimes you have to fight.
Now is the time.
I move out of the bookshop fast, hitting a pile of thriller novels as I go. “Sorry,” I say, but I don’t stop to pick them up. I need to get to Gabby. My shoes slide on the shiny mall tiles but I run anyway.
“Gabby,” I say when I’ve caught up to her. I say it loudly, with her voice, so that everyone will listen.
“Gabby. You have to listen to me.”
Her friends turn around to see me, a strange girl; red-faced and breathless, yelling at them, demanding attention, but Gabby stays faced in her one direction, turned away from me, her back to my face.
“Is that Gabby?” I ask her friend, black haired and blue eyed, wearing jeans and a yellow t-shirt. “Is that Gabby Smeeton?”
She frowns at me, confused. “Yeah.”
“Does she live here?”
The girl looks confused. “Not here. But in Mollymook.”
“Make her turn around,” I say. Demanding, firm, fighting. “Make her talk to me.”
She taps Gabby on the shoulder. “This girl says she knows you,” she says, her voice going up at the end. Like a question.
Gabby shakes her head and her friend shrugs her shoulders at me. “She doesn’t want to. You should maybe go.”
The red surges into my face. “I will not go,” I say. “I will stay and I will talk to her. Even if she won’t talk to me.” I walk around the group so I can see Gabby’s face. She lowers her eyes to the floor. My heart is beating crazy-furious but I have to say the words that are rushing into my mouth.
“Why didn’t you phone me? Why did you cut me off? I can’t understand it. I’ve been so worried, and so upset. Did you get suspended? What even happened? I’m so mad, and now you’re acting like, I don’t know, like you don’t even know who I am. I’m your best friend, aren’t I? You even said so. Maybe I haven’t been a good best friend, I don’t know. But I tried, didn’t I? And I miss you.”
My words come out in a big gush and then trail off into nothing. I look at her one more time, but she still won’t face me and I know there’s nothing I can do. I walk away and sit on a bench like an old person, resting my head in my hands. Gabby’s friends regroup, their shocked mouths going double time. Did you hear that? What was she on about? Oh my gosh, I can’t believe it… They move away, chattering and looking back with looks of, first, hatred, then pity, then just plain ‘she’s nuts’.
And all I can do is sit and wait.
Chapter 26
When Grandma and Adrian emerge from the supermarket which is all brightly lit with glossy, smiling, fruit-eating images, I can’t hold back the tears. A dam door has been pulled up and a lake’s worth of crying is falling out.
“Jazmine,” says Grandma. “You okay?” She looks concerned, as far as I can see through wet, steamed up eyes and she pulls my shoulders towards her so she can see my face.
“Did something happen?” she asks, but I can’t answer. All I can do is look in the direction Gabby and her friends went and gabble something about ‘over there, and then she wouldn’t look at me and cut me off and…’
“Take a breath,” she says, so I push my chest out and in a few times. “Can you stop crying?”
I gulp a few sobs down and do that sniffy, breathless thing. “I think so.”
“Let’s go to a café.” It’s Grandma’s answer for everything. She grasps my hand tightly and I’m too miserable to be embarrassed about it in public. Plus it feels good. Strong. Like I’m not alone.
The café is dark brown with dim lights and comfy seats. There’s no music playing and hardly any customers so it’s easy to hear every word Grandma says. I put myself into the chair and rub my eyes. “Sorry,” I say. “I’m really sorry.”
Adrian leans over and pats my hand. Kind of like a grandpa would do, I guess. “Don’t apologise,” he says. His smile is like the radiator heater Mum puts on at home when it starts getting cold at night, before she decides she can afford to switch on the real heating. Just being close to it makes me feel snug.
We order coffee. That is to say, Grandma orders some kind of hazelnut thing, Adrian gets a pot of tea and I get talked into a hot chocolate. “It’ll help,” says Grandma, after I’ve shaken my head a bit.
“And we’ll have that pistachio and cranberry toast of yours as well,” she says to the waitress. “Lots of it.”
Then she turns to me. “Now. Do you think you can talk about it?”
I start, restart and correct myself some more before it all finally comes out. “And she just wouldn’t even look at me.”
“You’re sure it was her?” Adrian says.
“It was her. But it was like she was pretending she didn’t know who I was.”
The coffees and fruit loaf slices arrive and for half a minute we play jigsaw puzzles on the table trying to find a way to fit it all on. I sip my drink. Grandma was right. It does help.
“So the real question is, what do you want to do about this?” asks Grandma, squelching melted butter in her mouth. Adrian hands her a napkin.
My brain is stuck. “What do you mean?”
“What do you want to do about this?” Grandma says. “What do you want to happen?”
In my head, somewhere, a cymbal goes off. Boonnnngggg. A big, clangy, echoey sound; a sound I’ve never heard before. My eyes open wide. Grandma’s words have grown arms, reached out and shaken me. I’ve never
seen things this way before and it is so stunningly clear and easy that I can’t believe it’s taken me until the age of 14 to get it.
“I have a choice,” I say. Slowly, to myself.
Grandma thinks I’m talking to her so she answers me. “Yes. You do.”
A seedling of courage sprouts and grows in my chest and I know what I’m going to do.
“I want to find her. I want to look for Gabby.”
Back at Grandma’s, with groceries put away and extra cups of tea made and drunk, Adrian sets me up on the computer.
“I know a bit about it,” he says, fussing around the mouse. “But you’re probably all up to date with how the google thing and the wiki-whatsits and everything work.”
I smile and nod and say thank you but when it’s just me facing a blank screen, I realise I have no idea how to find someone who’s disappeared. Gabby’s not on Facebook or anything. She always said she wasn’t interested in ‘being stalked’, as she put it.
Erin argued with her. “It’s not stalking. It’s just saying hi to your friends.”
“Are you my friend?” Gabby asked her.
“Duh.”
“So, hi.”
It’s pointless to look on social media so I try to remember the company Gabby said her dad worked for and search for a list of their staff but it’s too big and the website is just about how amazing their vision for the future is, all in really, really long words, so I get into a dead end. I google her mum but she doesn’t have a blog or anything so then I’m stuck and about to feel like this was all a stupid idea and that I’m doomed to fail and why even try, rah rah rah…
And then it hits me.
The obvious solution.
I put Gabby’s surname into the White Pages, take a tiny breath and hit enter. Up come four listings for the South Coast. And one of them is in Mollymook.
“There’s a phone number,” I say. Grandma hands me the phone and I take it and ring the number, hardly daring to breathe while I do. The phone purrs a few times and then someone picks it up and says ‘Hello?’ and it’s Gabby’s mum, friendly and happy and familiar.
“Hey, is that Mrs Smeeton?” I say. My stomach is in pieces but I’m going to keep going anyway. “It’s Jazmine here. From before. I used to hang out with Gabby.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting but it’s certainly not a happy, delighted voice on the other end of the phone, asking me how I am.
“It’s been ages,” she says. “How’s school going?”
“Good,” I say. I’m still kind of scared but I take a deep breath and almost shout it out. “I’m visiting my Grandma and she lives close. Can I come over and see Gab?”
Adrian is a kind man, I think to myself, as he drives us all the 45 minutes to Mollymook, but now’s probably not the time to ask Grandma if they’re going to get married. She’s sitting in the front, looking out the window and pointing out things as they fly past.
“That’s the harbour,” she says, nodding at the blue and gold speckled water across the other side of the road. “You can get down to the breakwater that way.”
“Can we go there?” I say suddenly. “Can we stop there on the way?”
“We’re really close to Gabby’s place,” says Adrian. “Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure,” I say. I’m gripped with an urgent need to breathe. To clear my head. To get brave.
Adrian makes a swing to the right and we head down the tree-lined street towards the beach. There’s a jutting peninsula of rock and random, piled-up concrete megablocks ahead of us, with a path out to the horizon.
Grandma is slow on her ankle; Adrian helps her with her crutch, and I run ahead into the breeze and the salt and the tiny drops of spray. On the ocean side the waves break on the rocks, foaming and crashing and smashing apart but on the harbour side the water is still and calm, reflecting the sunlight back at me like a golden mirror. Out there. In here. I want to look at the boats and the buoys and the tiny ripples of life in the flat water but my eyes keep getting drawn beyond the rocks, right out to the never-ending straight line of what’s beyond.
I walk to the absolute end of the breakwater and then climb out onto the boulders as far as I can go without giving Grandma a heart attack. The wind is flapping my hair and bawling in my ears and looking out, I feel like I’m completely alone. But for once, it doesn’t matter. There is the harbour, and there is out there, the rest of life. And I know which way I want to go.
I throw my hands up and out and inhale everything, all of the things, all the air and spray and life and colour and then I breathe it all out again, all at once.
Time to fight.
Gabby’s new place is almost identical to where she lived before. New street, new house, new driveway, new garden. Everything’s shiny as well. And kind of the same as everything else around it.
“Do you want to go in on your own?” asks Grandma.
“Probably,” I say. “Will you wait?”
“As long as it takes.”
I get out of the car. The driveway seems long, but maybe that’s just my nerves. They’ve got the same doorbell as before. I ring it. There’s a click and a bang and the door opens and there, before me, mouth wide open in disbelief, is Gabby.
“Hey,” I say, and I watch her face. No change. Just pure stunned mullet. Then she shakes herself alive again and goes to close the door. I’ve thought this out, though. I’m prepared. I’m just about to stick my foot in the door like they do in the movies, even though I think it will probably hurt with sandals on. Thankfully, I get to keep my feet intact. Out through the hallway, into the light comes Gabby’s mum.
“Jazmine!” she says, her face lit up with a smile. “So glad you came by! Gabby, I forgot to tell you when you got home. Jazmine called and said she was nearby so I said of course you’d love to see her.”
I raise my eyebrows at her and step inside as Gabby’s mum sweeps open the door. Gabby’s face is a mixture of pain and fury but I look past it. This is about getting answers, that’s all. We stand awkwardly in the entrance for a few seconds until her mum rescues the situation. “Well, don’t just look at each other, girls. Come on in, Jaz. Are you hungry? I’ve got home made mini quiches.”
We eat (quiche and cookies) and drink (home made lemon and ginger squash) and I carry on some kind of stilted conversation with Mrs-Smeeton-I-mean-Ann while Gabby sulks over her drink and then it’s really time. To talk.
“Gab, are you going to take Jazmine upstairs? Show her your room?” says her mum. She points to the staircase and makes meaningful nodding faces. Gabby lets out a stifled groan and drags herself off her chair. I keep my face calm and follow her up the stairs (shiny brown timber with a stainless steel railing) and through a freshly painted white door. She shuts the door behind me and leans back against it, face turned away and hands behind her back.
“What?” she says. Her voice is tired. “What do you even want?”
Chapter 27
There’s a silence hanging between us. Gabby still won’t look at me. She just stands there, face turned away, her foot jiggling.
I don’t talk. Instead I look around her room. It’s a different shape to the old room. Bigger and more of a square. But everything’s come with her; the boy band posters, the crammed bookshelves and her laptop on her white computer desk. The big double bed seems smaller in here but it’s still stuffed with cushions and soft toys. And then I spy a familiar ear poking out of a crowd of fur.
“Wally?”
My face breaks into a smile and I climb on the bed and pull Gabby’s wombat out of the pile. He’s still wearing the ribbon Gabby put on him to bring him to school. I hug him close and snuggle his nose to mine.
“So cute!” I say, and then I sit on the bed, looking at Gabby, waiting for her to smile as well.
She doesn’t.
Instead she scuffs her toe against the carpet.
“You should just go, Jaz,” she says. Her voice is heavy.
My eyebrows furrow. “I just
wanted to see how you are. Where you went.”
She plays with the tie from her dressing gown, hanging from a hook on the door. “Why would you even care?”
I can feel my face start to go red. “Because you’re my friend? Because, maybe, I miss you?”
“You don’t even know me,” she says. “So you can’t actually miss ‘me’. Like, logic?”
“I do know you.” I sputter the words. “You’re my best friend.”
“You think I am. You want me to be. But I’m not really that person.” She turns her face to look at me. Her eyes are hard. And sad.
I swallow; hold Wally a little tighter.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” I can hear a waver in my voice. “You’re not making any sense.”
Gabby sighs, a long, hard, tired breath out. She slides down the door onto the floor, pulling her dressing gown with her.
“Look. Jazmine. I’ll say this once, okay? And then you’ll understand it. And then you can go.” She breathes in and out again and looks up to the ceiling. “We move. That’s what we do. My dad’s job makes him move, like, every year or two. So I change schools. And, every time, I find people I can hang out with, and I’m happy and I’m funny and I find some people who like me, and it’s okay.” She puts her head down and digs her finger into the carpet. “But it’s not me. That’s what no one gets. It’s not really me. The Gabby you think you know isn’t the real one. So when I leave, you don’t miss me, because I was never really there, and, because it wasn’t really me, I never really cared about any of you.”
She looks straight at me. “Do you get that?”
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