by Kathryn Hind
Amelia approached the dilapidated pier, hooked her shirt onto a rusted nail. She pulled, hard, and the material gave, accompanied by the sound of tearing. She hooked it again, pulled, repeated the process, getting faster and faster. Her arms burned till she could hardly feel them, till they were lost to lightness. When she was finished, she held the shirt up. The material flapped open in angled, straight lines, her chest and back sliced through. She returned to her pack and threw the destroyed shirt on the ground, tried not to look at it.
Amelia pulled on her shoes and socks. She removed her rocket pen from its compartment in her pack and dug out the postcard from the restaurant by the river. She stepped onto the pier, facing a gauntlet of rusted nails. Many of the planks had rotted away to leave gaping holes with only narrow beams to balance on. She began picking her way across; Lucy stayed behind, sniffing instead at the base of the pier’s foundations. The first gap came a few steps in where two planks were missing. Amelia hopped across it easily. The next gap was a big one. There were at least a dozen planks missing, requiring a five-metre or so balancing act on the outside beam of the pier. The wood creaked as she stepped onto it, her arms stretched out on either side of her for balance. The breeze pushed her and she wobbled, leaning slowly over to the left then quickly to the right as she overcorrected. With pen and postcard in one hand, she skittered along the last few steps, made it to the safety of four planks in a row. Andrew loves Nicole 4 eva was scratched into the wood. Andrew was committed; as Amelia worked her way to the edge of the pier, his declaration of love was on every remaining plank.
She was at the last challenge before the end of the pier when she fell. She was balanced, just a few steps away from the end, and then there was only air beneath her foot. She went down heavily, and cried out as her inner thigh took the hit. She clenched her legs and managed to straddle a beam, her feet dangling above the water. She scrambled to solid footing at the end of the pier.
She examined her grazed knuckles, checked her legs for cuts from nails. She had kept hold of her belongings, though the postcard now sported a smear of fresh blood. Her leg was already stiffening up around the injury. She rested on her stomach and caught her breath, writing with a shaking hand.
I’ve had enough, she scrawled onto the postcard in big letters, not bothering with the code. Can I come over?
Can I come over, the same line they had used over and over as children, calling each other up from just a few streets away.
She licked a finger and scrubbed at the blood and mess on the postcard. The injury on her thigh pulsed, as if it had its own heartbeat. Amelia closed her eyes, focused on the pain. She lay with it, still, and let it bloom inside her, let it surround her; she thought of Sid’s place, the end of the road, and when her mind wandered elsewhere, she brought herself, again and again, back to her body, to the pain; she touched the skin, hot and already swelling.
It started to rain again. She watched the drops hit the river, breaking the water’s surface. Each landing was a silent bomb, an explosion of ripples. The spots increased until there were too many to distinguish, the river stirred up into a warzone. The postcard suffered some heavy drops, making the ink run in places, and she tucked it under her arm for protection.
She closed her eyes, the rain growing sharper against her back, against the exposed skin of her neck, her scalp. She lay there, unable to move. When she opened her eyes it was much darker and she was shivering.
She rolled onto her back and looked sideways, where her body had left a patch. The space where she’d been was drier and lighter than the rest of the pier. She watched that pale version of herself as it was sprinkled with raindrops. She stayed, staring at the wood, the place the outline had been, till it was a dark, slippery brown. Her eyelashes caught raindrops, and when she blinked they loosened and slid down her cheeks. Streaks of dirt ran down her arms like mudslides, and perhaps if she stayed there long enough, she would erode completely.
Lucy was back on the shore, the neat triangle of her sitting beside the upright backpack. She seemed to be staring straight at Amelia, as if by watching her she could stop her disappearing.
The rain grew softer, more sparse, then stopped. Amelia lay sprawled on wooden planks, her body numbing; she wriggled her toes and fingers in order to find them.
The sky cleared in time for sunset; her arm was splayed out beside her and she watched it as the sky turned the skin different hues of pink. The sun had done this same thing at her mother’s funeral; she had sat beneath a stained-glass window, and her arm turned green, red and blue. She had watched the colours creeping up to her elbow as the service progressed and knew her mother would have appreciated the bright, changing shapes.
Amelia lay on the pier, still, heavy, until the colours of the sky faded. She forced herself up, and there was a hollowness within her as she picked her way back to the shore.
On the fifth day of the Overland Track, Amelia and her mother had sat on the deck at Pelion Hut. It was late after-noon and the clouds drifted, sometimes framed the peak of a mountain, sometimes concealed it. Her mother said her hands were cold. Amelia’s were warm, her confession pulsing at her fingertips. She held her mother’s hands in her own, thinking that maybe through that touch, her mother would just know about Zach, know all the things Amelia wanted to say. One ear poked out of the green beanie her mother wore, and she preferred the quiet, Amelia knew, so she said nothing.
Lucy was pleased when Amelia made it back; she jumped up to press her front paws into Amelia’s thighs. Amelia dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around the damp fur, hard body. Lucy endured the hold for a second before wriggling down and out of it. Amelia wanted to press her face into the wet-dog smell, but Lucy was done, restless and ready to go.
As she left the river, Amelia threw her Rage Against the Machine T-shirt into a metal bin. She turned her back on it, walked a few steps away, then hesitated. She retraced her steps and looked down into the rubbish. The torn material lay on top of discarded bags of bait; the fishy, gutsy smell rose to her nostrils and drove her away, pushed her onwards.
Her shoes squelched, and the impact of each step made the inside of her hurt leg throb. As they passed through town, she stopped regularly to place her cool palm over the heat of the injury, felt the hard lump at the sorest point.
An op shop displayed a ragged Santa costume on a model too thin for the role. Further down, she reached a red postbox; she searched for the extra stamp she’d stashed somewhere among her things. Lucy sat beside a puddle and watched as Amelia checked all the zipped pockets, then dug through her pack. She tugged clothing, pots and odd bits of food out, making a pile on the wet cement, only to remember a safe compartment down the side of the bag. The stamp was there. She shoved her things into her pack, the muscles in her arms burning with the effort. Still, she wanted to bash her fists against something but refrained, let the urge boil up then settle.
Sid’s postcard was wet, and bent at one corner. She stuck on the stamp and let the card fall through the slot. As soon as it was gone, she wished she hadn’t let it go, wanted to get it back and compose something stronger, less desperate. The postbox looked at her with yellow information stickers for eyes, its slit for a mouth, regarding her as if it had something to say. She looked back at it. It said nothing. She got to her knees, placed her open palms on its sides, put her forehead against the wet metal, and begged, pleaded for the creature to spit the postcard back out. It did nothing. The town shut her out, curling in on itself the way she used to do when shielding a winning hand from Sid with her body, holding the cards close to her chest.
They walked, following signs to the highway. New blisters formed on her wet feet. Lucy trotted half a length ahead, her tongue bouncing; she pressed on as if she, too, was committed to putting Tailem Bend far behind them.
The headlights of the highway stretched Amelia’s shadow long and thin in front of her. Wind moved through eucalypts beside the road, until she reached a place where the trees were burned, the
blackened bones of branches still, reaching into the sky. A gravel shoulder widened beside the road and she dumped her pack there. She dug out a can of Lucy’s food: beef and marrow. Lucy sat facing her, whimpering as Amelia scrambled around for the can opener.
‘Just a sec, girl. You’re okay,’ Amelia said. ‘You’re okay.’
While Lucy devoured her meal, Amelia dragged her pack onto its side then sat down and leaned against it. Prickles and sharp rocks pinched her thighs. She fought to keep her eyes open.
Lucy snorted as she licked the remains of her food. A car went past, sounding its horn. It braked up ahead and she stood. The car pulled over, indicator flashing. She scooped up Lucy’s bowl, threw her pack over one shoulder. It was hard to keep her balance as she ran; her pack tugged on her arm, pulling it at painful angles, threatening it out of its socket.
Breathless, Amelia arrived at the passenger-side window, Lucy at her heel. She bent down to the person in there, a figure with dark curls, but as she did so the car screeched and took off, the back tyres passing only centimetres from Amelia’s toes. There was laughter and something flew out the window, landed softly at her feet. The top of a burger bun sat in the gravel, the bread puffy, a little smear of mayonnaise where it had skidded on the ground.
The driver of the car held down the horn as they sped away, and then the engine faded out of earshot. The smell of exhaust lingered. Lucy sniffed at the bun, pawed it over so it was wet side up, pasted with mayonnaise and strips of lettuce. She stood over it, panting. Amelia picked up the bun, nursed the soft, dry side of it in her palm; the sesame seeds pressed gently into her skin, shifted, came loose and lodged between her fingers.
A car passed and Amelia was too close to the road, the rush of air powerful against her cheeks, pushing her back a step. She wanted to hold the bun close to her, to keep it. Lucy disappeared into the scrub. Amelia crouched to lay the bun to rest, nudged it back into the place of its abandonment.
She followed Lucy away from the road, scrambling down a rough trail that weaved through long grass.
‘Lucy!’ she called.
Branches scratched past her and the stirred leaves released captured raindrops. Cool water found the back of her neck, drummed against the canvas of her pack.
The noise of passing cars lowered as they walked, softening until it could no longer be heard. The path gave way to a high wire fence. Amelia stood right up close to Lucy so her hot, damp side moved in and out against her calf.
Behind the fence, a single floodlight was sentry to a large, square paddock. It took a second for Amelia to realise what she was looking at: a train graveyard. Several abandoned carriages sat with no tracks on which to come or go. A well-used hole was dug out beneath the fence and Lucy lowered herself, pushed her way under. It was only then that Amelia saw the yellow warning sign, a stick figure demonstrating the shock of an electric fence. Lucy was unscathed; she waited on the other side, panting, her eyes and the white patches of her fur reflecting the moonlight.
Thunder rumbled in the distance. Amelia slung her pack into the hole and followed it down. A strap caught on a stray wire and she untangled it in the half-light. With both feet beneath her bag, she pushed it under the fence and, legs trembling, up the other side of the hole. Water soaked through her shirt, got to the skin on her back. Once the pack was up the other side, she flipped onto her belly and crawled beneath the fence.
Thistles grew between slabs of concrete, nipping at the exposed skin on her legs. Scorched patches marked the location of old bonfires on the ground, with empty bottles of liquor and cigarette butts scattered at their blackened edges. Her feet crunched over broken glass as she moved towards the carriages. She stopped, then touched Lucy’s back so she stopped, too. Amelia listened for signs of life, of others; there was a rustle and grunt somewhere near the perimeter fence, but after a few moments she determined it to be an animal.
Graffiti screamed down the sides of the trains, rendered a dull orange by the light. She moved towards the carriage with the fewest broken windows, stepping over huge, rusted train parts to get there. Lucy sniffed, zigzagging ahead as she followed a trail. Amelia climbed on top of a giant tree stump and peered into a broken window, careful not to touch the sill’s jagged teeth. There were seats with ripped upholstery and the glint of brass surrounding tables: a first-class carriage.
The door was loose, hanging from the top hinge. She walked up rickety steps and entered the carriage. Lucy pushed past her, made her way up the aisle. Curtains hung from the smashed window, but on the opposite side the window was still intact. The table there was smooth underneath Amelia’s fingertips. She laid her pack out on it then walked down the carriage, running her hand over the tops of seats, wondering how many bodies had been there before her, how many people could fit in this space that was now all hers.
Sections of the train wall were missing, revealing the padding within. There was an edge of piss and rot in the air. Lucy scratched under one of the seats and sent something scurrying. Amelia dug her fingers deep into a headrest, listened; the scrabble of claws, a creature retreating. She breathed again, turned around and went back to her pack.
A gust of wind blew through the carriage, sending a plastic bag skittering up the aisle. It suckered onto her leg. She sat on her seat and was suddenly hungry. Delving into her pack, she found a can of tomato soup. She wiped the crust of dog food off her opener before using it, then drank from the can’s metal edge. The soup was rich and her empty stomach kicked from the acidity; she managed four mouthfuls.
She closed the door as best as she could then drew the curtains across her window; the light from outside fell across her in slits where the material was torn. She pulled articles of clothing from her pack to drape across her. With a pair of socks for a pillow she lay across two chairs, tucking her legs up. Lucy jumped up on the seat opposite and circled, lay down, stood, then circled again before settling.
‘Good girl,’ Amelia said. ‘That’s a good girl.’ She stuck her hand out beneath the table and Lucy licked it.
Amelia’s guts fizzed and her stomach pushed out, bloated. She lay back and pulled a shirt up to her chin, nestled deeper into the seats. Her hands rested on her hipbones and they jutted out more than they had before, most of the lumpy, squishy stuff gone; she was glad to be minimal, to carry nothing extra.
Rain started again, lightly at first, before setting in in earnest. Drops from tree branches overhanging the carriage fell the loudest and without a pattern. She closed her eyes. When she’d walked the Overland Track with her mother, she had a proper raincoat. The third and fourth days were wet and when her mother spoke, the rain falling on Amelia’s hood made it difficult to hear. ‘What?’ Amelia said, turning to her mother, whose face was darkened by her own hood.
‘I said, isn’t it amazing I haven’t hurt myself on all this rough terrain.’ A few steps later her mother lost her footing, slid down the path for a while before being caught by tree roots, laughing the whole way down.
She woke to something moving inside the carriage. She could feel the change, the presence of a stranger. Her neck was stiff and her eyes were slow to adjust; she blinked through an orange fuzz. Lucy was there, her silhouette sitting alert, facing the door of the train. Listening through the drumming of rain on the roof, Amelia waited to hear the sound again, the noise that had woken her.
A footstep and a movement of air, shifting wisps of hair at her cheeks; body odour, smoke. She could make out the shape of human legs by the door. The figure moved closer.
Amelia sat upright, knocked something to the ground.
‘Oh shit, sorry bud.’ It was a man’s voice, hoarse and slow. ‘Didn’t realise this space was occupied.’
‘What do you want?’ Amelia said as she gathered her things. Lucy stood on her seat, sniffed at the intruder.
‘Whoa, you’re a lady!’ The man shouted out a broken window: ‘Oi, Ricky, come and check this out. There’s a chick in here!’
He returned to her, stood at
the table. He reached out and she backed herself against the wall. She froze as the man touched her head, firm but gentle, moving his hand across her forehead, her matted hair.
‘Wow,’ the man said. His breath smelled of marijuana.
Lucy let out a low bark.
‘Don’t touch me,’ Amelia said, her heartbeat violent, filling her ears.
The figure retrieved his hand. ‘Just showing my appreciation, angel girl.’
Someone new entered the carriage, colourful glow-in-the-dark bracelets all up the figure’s wrists. ‘You all tuckered out, eh?’ the new man said, leaning over her. He picked up the remaining soup off the table. ‘You from the doof doof?’ he said, then slurped from the can.
‘What do you want?’ Amelia said again.
‘Hey, easy now,’ the first figure said, pressing the air down with his hands. ‘You don’t own this place.’
The second figure had found her pack, began sifting through its contents. ‘Got any more food?’ he said. There was a rustle of something as he opened it.
‘Get out of my things,’ Amelia said.
‘Whoa, angel girl, where’s the love?’ the closest figure said. ‘We’ve got stuff to share, don’t worry. Sharing’s caring.’
He blocked her way as she tried to get out of the booth. She climbed across the table, bumped her head on the ceiling. On the opposite seat, Amelia landed on some part of Lucy, making her yelp.
‘Out,’ Amelia hissed, and Lucy scrambled down from the seat.
The first intruder stepped in front of her again, so she couldn’t get past without pressing against him. He was shirtless, his skin hot and wet, taut over a round, hard stomach; she pushed him to the side, her fingers brushing his chest hair.