The Shadow Girl

by John Larkin

His father seemed to loosen up, just for a moment. There was even a hint of a smile playing at the corner of his mouth.

  ‘They found Old Man Tomasich’s body this morning. What was left of him. He’d rotted right through. Stomach must have burst with all the gutrot he guzzled. Judging by the state of him he’d been dead about a month.’

  In the dark recesses of the house he could hear Anthony laughing. He felt a shiver run down his spine as someone, something, walked across his grave.

  I wake around four in the morning. The dead hour. My father said that this is when the door to the next life is open and it was easy for spirits to slip through. Both ways.

  Although he wasn’t a very happy man, he was big on ghosts, and I just hope he’s a little happier now that he is one. I wonder if he’s in hell because of the terrible things he did in his life. I wonder if Mum’s in hell for sticking a carving knife through his neck. Or maybe they have justifiable homicide in the afterlife. If they do, I hope Mum hooks up with a good barrister, like my imaginary mum.

  I wrap myself in the doona and step out onto the balcony. A Cheshire Cat moon grins down at me through the trees. In the absence of God, it’s nice to have something watching over me, even if it is just a well-lit lump of rock. The air chimes with the cold but there are no ghosts about. Not here. Which is a bit weird if you think about it. I mean, if I were a ghost I wouldn’t be hanging around a dilapidated farmhouse like old man Tomasich. I’d go for a five-star hotel. Kick back and watch a few movies. Loaf about by the pool.

  I try to picture my parents but I can’t get a fix on them. Mum was beautiful to begin with but her soul must have been damaged beyond repair. I didn’t really get it at the time, but I can see it now. Her smile, which used to light up like a Christmas tree, ended at her lips.

  My father is easier to remember for some reason. He always wore a moustache. I’d never seen him without it. He wasn’t as bad towards me as he was with Mum. Just absent. Even when he was there he was somewhere else. Dreaming of the old country. Dreaming of ghosts. We only ever connected through stories. Unlike Mum, Serena and Creepo, my father was a great reader, and he always told me stories on long car drives. I suppose that’s one of the things that he missed most about Europe. The history. The books. The ghosts. What with the wars and everything there must have been so many dead wandering his old home that there was hardly any room left for the living.

  I gaze up at the stars, which are shining brighter than I’ve ever seen. I suppose I’ve never been up at this time before. It feels as though I could reach out and touch them. I make a wish instead. The stars twinkle in the cold. It takes so long for their light to reach the earth that they could have all winked out by now. I could be wishing on something that no longer exists. Ghost stars.

  I crawl back into bed but I’ve slept enough. I watch a movie until the sun starts to rise, then I head on down for the all-you-can-eat buffet breakfast. It’s for gluttons at their worst. Breakfast is included in the price of the room, but really, a bowl of cereal and one and a bit slices of toast and I’m stuffed.

  By the time I get back to my room the bed-making fairy has been in and tidied up, which is something I could happily get used to. Serena was always banging on at me to make my bed, which was pointless seeing it would only get messed up again. She never said anything worth listening to anyway.

  I’m about to go check whether my other clothes are dry when I notice that there’s a keyboard in front of the TV. My room has internet access. I don’t have to go schlepping around the streets looking for my new school, I can do it from my bed right now. If only I could get educated the same way. I could get on with working on my vaccine for that eye-eating African worm instead of hanging around the fast-finishers’ box waiting for the doofuses and durnoids to complete their work.

  It’s tempting to go for a school in the ivy belt, but with those you’d probably have to supply a certified history of your family tree plus a complete DNA profile.

  I pull up a map of the rail network and trace a line to the outer suburbs. I’m guessing they won’t be so picky out there, especially near the jail. They’ll be used to kids like me. Broken homes. Broken bones.

  I decide against going Catholic. The Catholic schools will probably be connected in some way, and not just through Jesus. I don’t want to suddenly pop up on someone’s radar. If Dr Chen’s right and I’ve been reported missing, the police or social services will have contacted my old school. I’ll go public.

  At nine o’clock I phone the school that I’ve chosen. From my research it’s in a fairly tough area, though not so tough that’ll I’ll get stabbed through my kidneys for not giving up my pencil sharpener.

  The woman who answers the phone has been on the compulsory surly-old-hag training course.

  I tell her that I’ve just moved into the area and need to enrol at the school. She sighs so deeply I think she’s having an asthma attack. When she’s recovered she tells me that we need to come up to the school to fill out some forms. We? She clarifies this by telling me that I have to be accompanied by either a parent or guardian. I tell her that it won’t be easy. She asks why. I tell her that my father isn’t around any more and that my mother is a junkie. Then she’s mumbling something in the background. I think I hear her say ‘Another one!’ but I can’t be positive. She eventually comes back on the line and tells me that I need a parent, grandparent or guardian; just one will do and also proof of address. Then she hangs up.

  I grab the complimentary notepad and pen from the bedside table and crawl back into bed. This is going to be harder than I thought. No wonder homeless kids don’t go to school. It’s a huge effort just getting in to one.

  I tap the pen against my teeth while I try to think. I consider phoning Alistair McAlister, Dr Chen, or Marco Rossini and asking them for some help. No. This is my biggest test yet and I want to – need to – sort it out by myself.

  I look back at the TV screen. The hotel’s homepage is still up. That’s it. You’re supposed to be able to get anything on the internet, so why not a parent? Even a temporary one.

  I look up actors’ agencies first but then I figure that anyone who’d take on a gig like this couldn’t be a very good actor to begin with. I need someone who’s fairly unscrupulous. Someone who’ll happily take cash from a kid for doing something a bit suss.

  And then I crack it. I trawl through several websites. It’s staggering just how many of them there are. Most of them are pretty gross but then I find one in the right area. There’s a list of phone numbers on the website plus the contact’s details and a brief bio.

  I try the first number on the list. She sounds tired when she answers. Perhaps her work is nocturnal and she’s been up all night. Never really thought about that. I start to outline the proposal but I’ve no sooner started than the woman tells me I’m a sicko and hangs up. The second one is friendlier but tells me that she doesn’t do kinky and also hangs up. The third one tells me I’m a psycho fantasist, which is a new word for me and one I’ll have to look up. Thirteen calls and a major rewrite of my script later I hit the jackpot. We have an intelligent and productive conversation which costs me five hundred dollars. Her name is Narelle and her accent is so thick I’m positive she’s putting it on. We agree on a time and a place to meet the following day and that’s it.

  After I’ve tapped some more questions into the omniscient being again – for train timetables and unknown words (I am not a fantasist) – I go for a walk to the mega-mall.

  I start at Alistair McAlister’s café but unfortunately he must be at uni so I go to the bookshop. I opt for Pride and Prejudice, so soon I make my way back to my hotel with the book, plonk myself in a sunlounge by the pool and spend the entire afternoon reading. Tomorrow my work begins, but for now – bliss. The novel is basically about this mother who’s trying to marry off her five daughters so that she (the mother) can have a better life and
not get thrown out onto the street like a dirty handkerchief when her husband croaks it. The mother, who’s more or less a pimp, doesn’t really care who her daughters marry just as long as the husband is rich and has somewhere for her to live, preferably a castle. Mrs Bennet even tries to get the two eldest daughters, Jane and Elizabeth, to marry this mutant slimy cousin of theirs because the cousin will get the house when Mr Bennet croaks it. I don’t know why the daughters couldn’t score the house. Some obscure, sexist English law, I imagine. Anyway, maybe because the book was written like yonks ago, they didn’t understand genes too well back then; because if they had then I’m sure Mrs Bennet might have lightened up a little, as least as far as marrying the cousin goes. At my old school I’ve seen the results of what happens when close relatives marry, and trust me, you don’t want to go there.

  It’s the breathtaking language of the novel that keeps me by the pool until it’s almost dark. Some of the passages are so beautiful that I read them over and over again for the sheer poetry. ‘An unhappy alternative is before you, Elizabeth. From this day you must be a stranger to one of your parents. Your mother will never see you again if you do not marry Mr Collins, and I will never see you again if you do.’ I wished someone cared about me that much. How could you read that and not want to move into a bookshop? Story-wise, however, it’s a bit of a letdown. If Mrs Bennet’s daughters had been five brainless skanks who went shopping every day until they maxed out daddy’s credit card, then she might have had something to complain about. But really, hooking them up with a bunch of chinless wonders so that she won’t become a seamstress? Give me a break. And, while we’re on the subject, Mr Darcy, one of the great heroes of English literature? The guy’s got about as much backbone as a quadriplegic jellyfish.

  I close my eyes and try to imagine what it would have been like living in that era but I come up well short:

  After a light supper my dear Aunt Serena and I repaired to the drawing room where we embroiled ourselves in our needlework. Following a brief discourse on the trials and tribulations of our respective days we proceeded to accompany each other on the piano-forte.

  Shortly thereafter my Uncle Anthony entered the room complaining of his privations.

  ‘Bloody shit of a day,’ he opined.

  ‘Anthony,’ chastised my aunt. ‘Such profanity. And in front of the girl.’

  ‘Put a sock in it, woman,’ he interjected.

  My uncle removed the twist top from his evening beverage, slumped down on the chaise longue and released from his poster- ior an explosion of wind of such velocity and odorousness that the wallpaper peeled.

  ‘Anthony!’ beseeched my aunt. ‘A modicum of decorum please.’

  ‘Better out than in,’ he ejaculated.

  See! It just doesn’t work.

  THAT NIGHT, THE FIRST OF THE GHOSTS COME HOWLING INTO MY room, swirling around my bed in a vortex and trying to suck up my soul. I hang on tightly to the side of the bed but it’s a close thing. I could so easily just slip away. The light beneath the door offers little protection against the spectres my memories have stirred. I tell them to leave me alone, that I have things to do before I can go with them. I flick on the light, hoping that ghosts are terrified of bedside lights. The inner curtain billows in the breeze, more ghost-like than any ghost. I get up and slide the balcony door closed.

  The next morning, the room is bright and peaceful. The bedside lights are still on, their glow timid compared to the sunlight streaming in. There’s no sign of the ghosts. I catch a train to the outer suburbs, changing at the north-west junction. I’ve never really been to the outer suburbs before, only zoomed through them on the freeway heading off on holidays. I was usually too absorbed in my father’s ghost stories to look out the window at the high-voltage power stanchions and the crap graffiti on the freeway’s anti-noise walls.

  They’ve got malls out here too. Huge mega-malls just like the ones in the ivy belt, or maybe even bigger. I don’t understand it. I can tell from the houses that some of the people who live out here don’t have much money, but maybe that’s the point. What they have, they spend.

  I meet Narelle at the agreed place and am immediately disappointed. She doesn’t look anything like me. For a start, she’s white. Snow white. If she got any whiter she’d be transparent. Still, my non-existent father could have been from somewhere else, which would explain me. She’s also covered in so many tattoos she looks more easel than human. I’m grateful tattoos aren’t hereditary. There’s nothing in this world, or the next, that I love so much that I want a permanent reminder of it burned into my skin. Not the flag. Not my parents’ names or my star sign in Chinese. Not a mermaid, a scorpion or a flying horse. Nothing.

  I assume the woman standing under the big clock is Narelle. She seems kind of jumpy and looks like she’s waiting for someone.

  ‘Narelle?’

  She looks me up and down. ‘That depends. You got the money?’

  I take the five hundred dollars out of my pocket and hand it to her. She looks at the money and counts it out. It’s hundred-dollar notes so it doesn’t take her long. Even so, she checks it twice. Then she folds it up and stuffs it in her handbag.

  ‘There’s a slight problem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Any kid willing to sling me five hundred bucks to play mum for an hour would happily pay a thousand.’

  Oh no. I’m being hustled. It’s time to get streetwise and hustle her right back.

  ‘Not this kid.’

  ‘Fair enough.’ She turns to walk away. ‘See ya around.’

  ‘Hey! Give me my money back.’

  Narelle turns back to face me. ‘What money?’

  Damn she’s good.

  ‘First rule of life on the streets, kid. Don’t stump up the cash until the service has been rendered. Unless you do my job, in which case you get it in advance.’

  She’s got me. Either I pay her another five hundred or I’ve got to find someone else who’ll probably charge the same or maybe even more.

  ‘Fine,’ I snap. ‘I’ll pay it.’

  She looks at me and folds her arms. ‘Let’s have it then.’

  I manage a half-smile. ‘You’ll get it when the service has been rendered.’

  Narelle grins. ‘Good for you, kid.’

  I might be learning some life lessons from Narelle. It’s just not the sort of education I’m looking for. No advanced maths. No top English class. No science. Absolutely nothing about eye-eating African worms. Just some stuff about not getting ripped off by someone who looks like she’s walked off the set of The Jerry Springer Show.

  Speaking of which, I can’t turn up to school with Narelle looking like she is, even out here. How she managed to wiggle her scrawny butt into her skin-tight jeans without a couple of warm shoehorns to help her I’ll never know.

  ‘Narelle,’ I say tentatively, not sure how she’ll take my fashion critique. Still, I’m the client. ‘We need to get you some different clothes.’

  ‘I thought you said on the phone that I was s’pose to be a junkie.’

  ‘A junkie, yes. Not a . . .’ I trail off. The elephant enters the room, and Narelle goes right ahead and mentions it.

  ‘A prostitute?’

  ‘Well, yeah.’

  ‘Honey, I am a prostitute. That’s how you found me, remember?’

  ‘Yeah, but I don’t want the school to know.’

  ‘But it’s okay if they think I pump shit into my veins?’

  I see her point.

  ‘Kid, if you think I’ll be the only pro with kids at this school of yours then you’re not just out of your league, you’re out of your mind.’

  She looks at me. I fold my arms.

  ‘Okay,’ she relents. ‘But you’re paying.’

  Of course I am.

  ‘What are
you, anyway?’ she asks as we head off to the shops.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Are you Middle Eastern? South American? South African? Part Asian?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘Okay. If they ask, I’ll just say your father was in the American navy or something.’

  ‘They won’t.’

  ‘Be proud of who you are, kid. Sometimes it’s all we’ve got.’

  And so my temporary mum and I go shopping. I thought she might go for designer labels, but in the end she settles for a pink fluoro tracksuit from a no-name outlet. It’s not exactly subtle, but somehow it blends in. And except for the dolphin and Yin and Yang on her neck, the tracksuit covers most of her tattoos.

  The shops aren’t far from the school, but we queue for a taxi. While we’re waiting, Narelle chugs down a couple of smokes. For some reason she seems nervous. Perhaps it’s the idea of going back to school. Facing authority figures. When we finally get in a taxi the driver complains about the short distance and the smell of smoke, but Narelle suggests that he get on with his job and stop effing complaining. She then offers him a bit of career advice, firmly reminding him that he’s an effing taxi driver and if he wanted to be an effing brain surgeon, he should have stayed at school for a bit effing longer. I can’t help thinking that the office ladies at the school had better effing watch out.

  I thought the school might be in a bit of a war zone or prison yard. All desolate, cold concrete and huge razor wire fences to keep the vandals out and the students in. Instead it’s lovely. Some of houses leading up to it are kind of run down and overcrowded, with rusted cars and broken furniture out on the front lawns. But the school is like an oasis. A bit like my old school. The neat front lawns at the entrance are bordered by flower beds. The trees provide a wonderful shaded canopy and someone has even installed some bird feeders and built possum houses in a couple of them. Whoever looks after the school cares a lot. This place isn’t in the ivy belt. It’s not even in the suburbs where you have to choose between the Bible or the Koran. Out here it’s either Ford or Holden and supporting the wrong football team could see you on life support.