Hitch

  Her skin prickled as she felt the eyes at the rest stop on her, some of them sizing her up, others hoping she wouldn’t approach them, pitying her, perhaps even envying her. She’d been told by people that they wished they could be free like her. She tried to be this idea of being free, then, but she was stuck in the small world of herself, unable to grasp any of the liberty on offer.

  She and Sid used to catch insects when they were kids. They’d trap moths and other creatures and watch them bump up against the plastic of the bug catcher. They caught a caterpillar once; it was fluorescent green with a yellow underbelly and a series of stumpy, clumsy-looking legs. They decided to mark it in the hope they could release it and find it again later. Amelia had drawn a black line on it with a felt-tip pen, and the ink seeped into the soft green flesh, spreading so that the line grew thicker, blurred around the edges. She still remembered how squishy the caterpillar was beneath the pressure of her hand, how she could have stabbed the pen all the way through it. And how it had already been moving slowly, but when they released it into the veggie patch it was even more slow and dopey, resting on a leaf. Sid thought they’d hurt it but Amelia argued that it was just tired, that its leaf was like a couch and the creature was having a rest. The caterpillar died and the murder meant their bug-catching club became top secret, and though it lost almost any link to bugs, it remained a place where secrets lived and breathed, with the knowledge that they could and would always do so.

  A group of three sat at the last table in the row. They looked about her age. A woman with black hair in a high, messy bun sat with two men, both in cut-off jeans and thongs. One of them wore a cap, the other had shaggy bleached hair. The three of them leaned into each other, taking photos, a picnic of white bread rolls and deli meats spread out before them. Amelia couldn’t make herself move towards them. She stood, her feet immobile, staring at them till the woman looked up. The woman waved. Lucy trotted over, accepted a pat and a piece of meat.

  ‘Nice dog,’ the woman called.

  ‘Ta,’ Amelia said. She looked to her feet, the familiar fray of her shoelaces. She punched the side of her legs with each fist, tried to spark life into them. Her thighs were tight, holding their own. She called to Lucy and they returned to the highway.

  She retraced her steps, walking back towards the entrance to the rest stop. There was a patch of gravel where potential rides could pull over. The shade from a tree was a narrow bar on the dirt, and she stood sideways in it, thumb out.

  Traffic buffeted her as it passed, the bigger cars forcing her to step back or rebalance before reclaiming her strip of shade. The pain in her shoulders made her guts churn. She counted the cars, negotiating with herself; at fifty, she stepped back from the road. She swung her pack off her shoulders and rested it against a tree. As she stepped back up to the white line of the highway, a battered brown Kingswood flicked its indicator on. The car drove past but the driver caught her eye in the rear-vision mirror and pulled dramatically off the road, skidding for a metre or so on the gravel, lifting a haze of dust. Before Amelia could approach, a woman was out of the car and leaning over the open driver door, her hand a brim over squinted eyes.

  ‘You okay?’ The woman spoke much too loud for the distance between them.

  ‘Yep,’ Amelia said.

  ‘Well, shit,’ the woman said, lifting a hand to her chest. ‘Thought you’d had an accident or something.’

  ‘No, I’m fine. Sorry,’ Amelia said. She took a few steps closer, stopped.

  The woman seemed shaken, angling her head towards the ground as if to gather some strength before continuing. ‘What are you up to then? And don’t you dare tell me you’re out here hitching …’

  Amelia shrugged, scuffed her foot in the dirt.

  ‘Oh god, the nerve of ya … do you have any idea the nutjobs that are out here? There’s a reason people don’t hitchhike anymore, sweetheart, and it’s a bloody good one.’ The woman crouched to look into the car and said: ‘You better not be gettin’ any ideas, missy.’

  Lucy emerged from scrub and trotted to Amelia. ‘Ah,’ the woman said, ‘well at least you’re not completely alone. Fi, have a look at this.’ The passenger window lowered and a teenage girl in oversized sunglasses pulled herself out of it, perched on the ledge.

  ‘Hi,’ the girl said with a nod, and Amelia lifted her hand in a wave. Lucy walked over, her snout pointed upwards. The girl dangled from the car and held a hand out. Lucy sniffed, licked, then accepted a pat.

  ‘Jump in then.’ The woman pointed to the car with a twitch of her head. ‘We’re not going far, but at least you won’t be out in the middle of nowhere.’ Her face wrinkled into well-used smile lines.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Amelia said. ‘I’d really appreciate that.’

  ‘Go and get that mountain of a backpack. I’ll open the boot for ya ’cos it’s a bloody nuisance – there’s a knack to it.’

  Amelia waited in the back seat, sitting on the driver’s side, while the woman and the girl went to use the toilet. The seat covers were scratchy, a brown and red tartan that was worn thin where it had rubbed against sitting bodies. Old parking tickets sat up on the dashboard and a plastic bag hanging from the gearstick overflowed with food wrappers. There was a sense of closeness in the car. She looked up. A collage of photographs was tacked to the vinyl ceiling. Mostly teenage faces stared down at her wearing suspended smiles, the girl from the car one of many young bodies pressed in lined-up embraces, arms dangling over shoulders. The woman was up there, too, with the girl and a man, all pulling cross-eyed faces, dressed in neon green and pink.

  A buzzing came from the centre of the car. Lucy stepped forward and investigated the well between the two front seats. A phone sat face up. It vibrated again, setting coins underneath it rattling. Amelia’s own phone had been mostly still and silent. Even so, she’d destroyed it weeks ago, ground it up against bricks till the screen splintered and went black.

  Messages stacked up on the phone, punctuated with x’s and emojis, vegetables to vomiting faces. Life was brimming over from this car, bursting at the seams; Amelia felt she was the white styrofoam takeaway container in the footwell, holding a few stale crumbs.

  The phone buzzed again and Lucy sniffed at it, left wet streaks from her nose on the screen.

  ‘Out of it, Luce.’

  The eyes of the photos overhead seared into her. She considered removing herself, retreating to the surrounding bushes. Sweat gathered on her top lip and she licked at it, held the saltiness on her tongue. There was a sourness to the air in the car and it might have been coming from her. She lowered her window; the handle was stiff and it jammed three-quarters of the way down.

  The woman and the girl walked back to the car together, laughing at something, and the girl allowed herself to be brought under the woman’s arm and squeezed. The girl’s grey singlet was short, leaving a band of skin visible above her green shorts. A pendant dangled on a long chain between her breasts. Amelia was sure these two could tell each other everything, that they knew every last detail of each other’s busy lives; that in some ways, they were the same person. Amelia’s own mother had encouraged this telling of everything but neither of them quite managed it; they couldn’t access the shelves where this endless and rich information about themselves was stored. Not like this pair. They were tapped into a rich source.

  The girl screeched, then nuzzled her face into the woman’s chest. Lucy let out a low bark; Amelia quietened her with a hand on the back. ‘Shhh, girl. We’re okay,’ she said. ‘We’re okay.’

  The woman’s keys were laden with key rings, which rattled as she approached the door. ‘Right, let’s get this show on the road,’ she said, plonking into her seat, causing the car to sink. A dog figurine on the dashboard became animated, wobbling its head. The girl slipped into the passenger seat, the door cracking as she pulled it shut. She unscrewed the cap of a drink and it gave way with a fizz. As she held the drink to her mouth, thin scars, crossways along her wrist, glimmere
d in the sun. The action was over quickly, and when Amelia searched for the scars again she couldn’t see any blemish on the girl’s skin.

  ‘Let’s start with your name then,’ the woman said.

  Amelia cleared her throat, gave her name. ‘And this is Lucy.’

  ‘Well, I’m Leanne, and this is my daughter, Fi.’

  Fi turned in her seat, gave a curved, left-to-right wave. ‘Hey,’ she said. She stuck a fist out and Lucy licked her knuckles. From the corner of her eye, Amelia searched the girl’s arms for signs of damage.

  The girl lifted her oversized sunglasses onto the top of her head, pinning long strands of hair with dyed red streaks behind her ears. She had yesterday’s make-up on. The skin beneath her large hazel eyes was speckled with glitter, and black chunks of mascara dotted her cheeks and the inside of her nose.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said, licking a finger and wiping it beneath each of her eyes. ‘I’m a mess.’

  ‘You’re fine,’ Amelia said. She’d been staring again.

  Fi moved her sunglasses back to her face, pushing them up on the bridge of her nose with an index finger. Her shiny hair was set free again, along with a waft of watermelon shampoo.

  ‘I literally look terrible,’ Fi said.

  Leanne slapped at the air near her daughter, shook her head. ‘I dunno where she gets this rubbish from,’ Leanne said, appealing to Amelia in the mirror.

  Leanne drove out of the rest stop, the car lurching as she mishandled the clutch. There was a car fast approaching on the highway but she eased out in front of it. Amelia looked out the back window. The car caught up to them, the driver flashing their lights in anger.

  ‘Thanks, darl!’ Leanne yelled into the rear-vision mirror, raising a meaty arm, then using it to shift through the gears.

  ‘So, where you from then?’ Leanne said. ‘I’m assuming you’re not local …’

  ‘From a little town on the east coast,’ Amelia said. ‘No one’s heard of it.’ It was nice to imagine for a moment that everything had begun in the white room by the ocean.

  ‘I know what it’s like to come from one of those towns,’ Fi said. She arched her plucked eyebrows and turned around with a thump, facing forward. She kicked her thongs off and put her feet on the dash. The sunshine highlighted fine hairs on the joints of her big toes, and a few around her ankle that had escaped the razor.

  ‘We’re going home, to Tailem Bend,’ Leanne said. ‘I’m happy to drop you anywhere along the way.’

  ‘Okay, thanks,’ Amelia said, trying to place Tailem Bend on the map in her mind.

  ‘You two headed anywhere in particular?’ Leanne said.

  Amelia closed her eyes as they accelerated, feeling the wind on her cheeks. ‘Melbourne,’ she said.

  ‘What’s there for you, sweetheart?’ Leanne said.

  ‘A friend. My best friend.’

  ‘Oh, good. Great,’ Leanne said, and there was relief in the way her shoulders rose as she took in a deep breath, sank as she let it go.

  ‘Where’s Tailem Bend?’ Amelia said.

  ‘Three hours south,’ Leanne said. ‘It’s one of them places no one’s ever heard of.’ She smiled, half-turning her head.

  The car settled into silence. Occasional signs showed distances decreasing as they drew closer to the towns and cities beyond. Leanne squirted hand cream from a bottle wedged beside her seat, steered with her thighs as she rubbed it in to her skin. Fi was soon asleep, her head crashing forward and waking her up with a start. Amelia took in the photographs above her, spotting Fi amid the different crowds, learning the composition of her posed faces: slight pout; widened eyes, so that she looked at the edge of fear.

  ‘Been at work,’ Leanne offered, breaking the quiet and jolting Fi awake. ‘This one’s been at her friend’s place, getting up to mischief, no doubt.’

  ‘As if,’ Fi said, stretching her arms. There was still no sign of the marks Amelia had seen. ‘There’s nothin’ to do in Crystal Brook.’

  ‘I reckon you’d find something, little miss,’ Leanne said. She leaned back in her seat, flattened a hand near her mouth as if telling Amelia a secret. ‘She’s got a new boyfriend, you see,’ she said.

  ‘Mum!’ Fi said, pushing Leanne’s arm.

  The car was quiet again. Fi gathered her knees to her chest, making a dark crease where thigh met calf. She was long and lean, no hint of an adult’s extra folds of flesh. There was a pinkish patch above Fi’s shoulderblade; around it, a few threads of sunburned skin that had not yet peeled. Amelia wondered if her boyfriend kissed that new patch of skin; if he held her naked, took her breasts into his mouth; whether he sucked his fingers and put them far up inside her. Whether Fi liked it or whether she didn’t know what to feel.

  Amelia snapped the rubber bands, felt each sting burn then fade. The tightness of the elastic had left bluish imprints in her skin.

  ‘What you doin’ out here then?’ Leanne said, shouting over the noise of the wind buffeting through the open windows, and an overtaking motorbike.

  Amelia leaned forward in her seat. She spoke loudly, too: ‘Just travellin’.’

  ‘Huh,’ Leanne said. ‘And how’s that working out for ya?’

  Amelia watched the road rushing towards her, disappearing beneath the car, and she missed the intimacy with it in that moment, wished the rising heat of it against the soles of her shoes, her calves. ‘So far so good.’

  ‘Living the dream,’ Fi said.

  ‘Living the dream,’ Amelia said, settling back into her seat. She placed her chin in her hand, let the wind draw tears from her eyes. Lucy circled on the seat and then curled up, blinked slowly.

  ‘You in some kind of trouble?’ Leanne said.

  Fi turned in her seat and lifted her glasses. She rolled her eyes, mouthed ‘Sorry’.

  ‘No,’ Amelia said. ‘No trouble.’

  ‘You sure? I’m a nurse, and the mother of a teenage daughter,’ Leanne said. ‘I can smell trouble.’ She lifted a hand off the wheel and waggled a ringed finger, the skin clogged up around the metal. ‘Don’t think you can get off the hook so easily.’

  Amelia’s cheeks flared. She ran her index finger between Lucy’s eyes, down to her nose and back up.

  ‘You on the run?’ Leanne said.

  ‘I’m just seeing the country, taking it in.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Leanne said.

  Amelia repeated herself, leaning forward again between the seats.

  ‘Well, you’re on the run from something, that’s clear as day,’ Leanne said. She adjusted her grip on the steering wheel, puffed hair out of her face. ‘I get the message though. I’ll stop being nosy,’ she said. ‘But just know: wherever you go, you gotta take yourself with you.’

  Amelia sank back into her seat, clenched her fist hard so she could feel the neat line of her fingernails in her palm.

  ‘You’ve heard that before, huh?’ Leanne said.

  ‘Yeah,’ Amelia said.

  Leanne unwrapped her hands from the steering wheel, changed her grip, and there was a sense she was preparing another barrage.

  ‘What’s Tailem Bend like, anyway?’ Amelia said.

  Leanne cleared her throat. ‘Well, it’s quiet … there’s the railway, the river,’ she said. ‘And it’s not far from the coast.’ Leanne shrugged, and there was something newly deflated in her.

  ‘There’s really not much happening,’ Fi said.

  There was an appeal in that for Amelia; perhaps there was a place like the white room there. Maybe the river lapped at the shores. Maybe she could sleep. There might be another of the white room’s little whirring fridges that spoke to her through the night. Or the same shelves where she could unpack and set out her belongings in neat rows. And maybe out here she wouldn’t see Zach holding the door open for someone at the bakery, or the line of his shoulders disappearing beneath a wave.

  ‘Sounds good,’ Amelia said. ‘Sounds really good.’

  ‘I’ll drop you in town if you wanna check it out,’ Le
anne said. She paused, then continued: ‘I’ve just finished my fifth night shift in a row so I’m a bit out of it. You’ll have to forgive me if I got a bit pushy back there. Just can’t help myself.’ Leanne winked at Amelia in the rear-view mirror.

  ‘No worries,’ Amelia said.

  She leaned her head against the warmed interior of the car. The vibration of the vehicle travelled through her skin, into her eyes, around her skull. A sense of lightness overcame her, and she sat with it; her dry mouth stretched over dry teeth, forcing fissures in her lips to open. The smile tasted of metal.

  ‘What is it, darl?’ Leanne said.

  Amelia was caught. ‘I’ve just got a good feeling about this place, I think.’

  Leanne nodded slowly, tapped her fingers on the wheel.

  Lucy stood up as if sensing a change. She licked at Amelia’s chin, then pawed at her thighs in play.

  They continued to notch up kilometres. Fi became engrossed in her phone. Crows took flight from the corpses of roadkill as they approached, and Leanne straddled the carcasses that were small enough, swerved around animals too big. Amelia closed her eyes as hot wind dried the sweat on her face and made whips from the knotted clumps in her hair. At lunchtime they stopped for a toilet break and Leanne and Fi shared a sausage roll and hot chips from a servo. Leanne got a black coffee in a paper cup, insisted on buying one for Amelia too. The coffee burned down her throat, made her stomach churn and grumble.

  ‘Yes!’ Fi said when the car started up again. She turned the radio up. Leanne broke into song, releasing an impressive voice that managed to match the yodels of the pop singer. Mother and daughter danced, bouncing their shoulders up and down, synchronised. Fi’s voice was gentler than her mother’s, unable to hit all the notes, but it had an appealing crystal effect, as if it were a vase that would shatter into pieces if dropped. Neither displayed any shyness as they sang, their voices meshing in a way Amelia thought would only be possible for a mother and daughter. She watched their elbows swaying from side to side and was mesmerised. The skin, the point of bone at the joint, the veins visible when Fi straightened her arms to click, all of it had started in Leanne. Amelia had a bodily craving for her mother then, a hollow deep in her gut. She wanted to press against her – she’d even bear the way her mother would twitch and pull away, just slightly, quick to bristle and overheat underneath affection – in order to get up close to her wit and naivety, her gentleness and irritability, all contained in that breathing, beating body. But the closest she could get was her own disappointing, nauseated, lead-weight body; she was all she had left of her mother.