Shift

by Em Bailey

  We started by searching around the perimeter of the hall, checking behind every bush and tree and dark space. I even looked into the fancy fountain with the carved dolphins out the front – and saw nothing but my own face bending and wobbling on the water’s surface. Next we searched inside, pushing our way past the laughing girls on the dance floor, the cuddly couples and the guys getting secretly drunk behind the potted palms. I checked the toilets and the cloakroom. Katie wasn’t there. Ami had also vanished.

  Lachlan and I met on the front steps. Lachlan looked at me. ‘Where to next?’

  Katie could be anywhere. ‘Let’s look down the street,’ I said.

  It was good to get away from the hall and we walked along together, checking the doorways, the bus shelters and behind the bins lined up in the alley beside the Rainbow Hotel. Then we took the path that led down to the beach. As my heart began to thump, I told myself I wouldn’t lose my grip. So what if this was the first time I’d been back since the Incident. I’d ridden alongside it not so long ago. Walking on the sand wasn’t so different, was it?

  You won’t even be able to see the water. It’s too dark. Just get on with it.

  As we got nearer, I tried to remember everything Dr Richter had told me to do when I felt the panic coming. Control my breathing. Remind myself that I was not my past. I couldn’t let Lachlan hear me breathing like a wonk, because then he’d ask what was wrong and I’d have to lie, or tell him what I’d done.

  The wind was growing steadily stronger, making the jaggedy bits of dress around the shark bite flutter like tiny flags. As we stepped off the path onto the sand Lachlan stopped and looked at me. ‘She’s probably not here, you know,’ he said. ‘I bet she caught a taxi and went home.’

  I knew he was probably right. And if the situation was reversed, Katie wouldn’t be out searching for me. If I quit now I’d be home in half an hour, safe and warm in my fortune teller’s tent, letting Luxe smooth everything away. But that was the soft option. The old Olive option.

  I kicked off my shoes and dug my feet into the cold sand. ‘You go if you want,’ I said tightly. ‘I’m going to look a bit longer.’

  ‘I’ll stay too then,’ said Lachlan, beginning to remove his jacket. ‘You take this.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’m not cold.’

  Lachlan swung the jacket over his shoulder and we trudged along, calling Katie’s name and scanning the sand for people. A chant began circling in my head: This is pointless, useless, hopeless.

  Lachlan stopped, head tilted, listening. ‘I heard something,’ he said.

  A lot of trucks used the beach road, especially at night, avoiding the speed cameras and the traffic lights. I stood beside him, listening hard. At first, nothing. And then the faintest of noises. It could’ve been a seagull. Or a cat. But somehow it just wasn’t either of those things. There was something in it – some tiny note of distress that caused Lachlan and me to sprint towards the high wall that divided the beach from the road. Lachlan reached it first and scrambled up. At the top he leant back, holding out his hand. I hesitated. I was pretty sure I could get up that wall myself. Then I imagined what Ami would say. For god’s sake Olive, just let him help you.

  So I reached up and Lachlan grabbed hold and hoisted me over. A moment later I was on the footpath beside him. The sound came again, much closer now. And clearer.

  ‘Look,’ said Lachlan, pointing to a crumpled pile in the middle of the road – too small to be a person. Too still. It’s a bag of rubbish. Someone’s chucked it out of their car window.

  Then the shape moaned and in a flash Lachlan was there, crouching down. ‘It’s Katie,’ he called.

  I hesitated on the curb for a moment – trucks and cars had a habit of appearing from nowhere along this stretch of road – then I ran over to join them. Katie was curved into a C. I took one of her hands. It was icy. ‘What happened?’ I asked softly. ‘Did you fall? Were you hit by a car?’

  Katie shook her head slowly, the street lights revealing how streaked with dirt her face was.

  Lachlan stared along the road and I could tell he was worried. ‘Can you stand up?’ he asked Katie. ‘Can you walk?’

  ‘No,’ said Katie, her voice cracking. ‘I can’t.’

  Lachlan looked at me. ‘We have to get her off the road,’ he muttered. ‘There’s something coming.’ He put his arms around Katie, saying gently, ‘I’m going to pick you up now, OK? Tell me if anything hurts.’

  In one swift movement he’d scooped Katie off the road and carried her – cradling her like she was a child – over to the footpath. I’d only just made it off the road when a truck whooshed past, horn blaring.

  Lachlan folded his jacket and slipped it under Katie’s head.

  ‘Am I dying?’ she whispered.

  ‘Of course not,’ said Lachlan. ‘But I’m going to call an ambulance. Just so you don’t have to walk back into town. OK?’

  Katie nodded, and Lachlan pulled out his phone and walked off a little way. A moment later I heard him speaking to the emergency services, explaining where we were, what the situation was – like he’d done this a thousand times before. And I suddenly felt ashamed for sneering at him for being Mr Lifesaver Guy. He was amazing.

  Katie smiled sleepily. ‘It’s funny. I was so cold just before but I feel toasty warm now.’

  I looked at her drooping eyelids. Surely that wasn’t a good sign. ‘You have to stay awake,’ I told her, rubbing her arm.

  ‘Just a little sleep,’ Katie said softly.

  When Lachlan returned, he took one look at Katie and frowned. ‘We need to keep her awake and warm,’ he muttered to me. ‘Let’s lie down next to her. We’ll try to warm her up that way.’

  To be honest, my reserves of body heat were pretty low by then – the shark-bite costume wasn’t such a good idea, all things considered – but I lay down beside Katie, my body pressed up against her side. I half-expected her to push my arm away angrily, but she didn’t. Lachlan lay down on her other side, his back to the road, and stretched his arm over Katie’s body so that it came to rest on my shoulder.

  Katie’s eyes were still closed and her breathing was beginning to slow and deepen. ‘OK, Katie,’ I said loudly. ‘Let’s imagine you’re famous. Your agent has booked you for this fantastic acting job in Paris and I’m a journalist writing a piece on you.’

  ‘And who am I?’ asked Lachlan.

  ‘You’re the photographer,’ I said.

  One of Katie’s eyes flickered open. ‘Which magazine do you write for?’

  ‘Uh … Grazia. Now, I understand that you are 172 centimetres tall?’ I said, in a poncy journalistic voice.

  Katie’s eyes sprang open and glared at me. ‘Olive, I’m 175.’

  When Lachlan laughed, his hand shook my shoulder.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘Of course, 175. Now, Katie. I believe your first big break was winning a Sweetest Smile on the Beach competition run by your local paper. Can you tell us what you think is behind your huge public appeal?’

  The three of us lay like that for ten minutes while we waited for the ambulance. Squished up tightly together, me asking Katie questions to keep her awake, all the while intensely aware of Lachlan’s hand on my shoulder. Every time his fingers moved across my skin, I wondered whether he was doing it on purpose.

  Finally there was the blare of the ambulance’s siren, the flash of lights, coming closer and closer.

  Lachlan and I rode in the ambulance with Katie. The paramedics wrapped us all up in these shiny silver blankets that looked like something you’d find in a spaceship. At the hospital Katie was whisked away, leaving Lachlan and me to answer about a billion questions. They kept asking us what had happened, why Katie was so skinny, what medication she was on, and we answered everything the same way. That we didn’t know.

  This was followed by the drama of calling Mum. I’d been planning just to return home and not mention any of this, but the hospital insisted that we were picked up. Naturally Mum freaked when
I called from the hospital, and it took many minutes of talking over the top of her to explain that this time I was there because of Katie, not because of anything I’d done.

  Finally the moment came when everyone stopped asking questions and taking details, and it was just me and Lachlan alone in the waiting room. And I found myself wondering if I should tell him everything, unprompted. About Dad, the Incident, my meds. The reason I looked so different to those six-month-old photos on the school blog.

  I knew Katie would have blabbed already, but I thought maybe it’d be different hearing it from me. God knows how distorted and stretched the gossip had become in her hands.

  I guess I felt like I owed it to Lachlan. The truth. Because once he’d heard the full story, he might understand that I hadn’t turned him down because I didn’t like him, but because I did like him. Because I knew he deserved better.

  When I turned towards him, he was watching me with this expectant look on his face. Like he knew I had something big to say, something important.

  A moment passed. And then another. Go on, you wonk, I ordered myself. Speak. But I couldn’t. The words seemed to catch and be drawn back inside me.

  The waiting room door was flung open and Mum rushed through, smothering me with her arms. ‘Oh, sweetie,’ she said, sobbing. She hauled me to my feet, oblivious to Lachlan sitting next to me. ‘Let’s get you home. You must be exhausted.’

  I looked over at Lachlan, wishing there was some easy way I could explain, just from the look on my face, how messy and complicated my life was right then.

  Lachlan nodded at me, and then looked away. ‘Bye, Olive,’ he said quietly.

  All the way home in the car, I could still feel where Lachlan’s hand had rested on my shoulder. I replayed his goodbye over and over in my head. Remembering the tone of it. It had seemed so sad. Disappointed. But the worst thing was how final it sounded. Like Lachlan had given up on me.

  The local paper published an article about what had happened that night. Young heroes save tragic teen beauty. God knows how they heard about it. They’d sourced pictures from our school blog. One of me with my arm around Katie, both of us with big smiles. I looked at that photo for a long time. I wasn’t the only one who’d changed. The Katie who Lachlan and I had found crumpled on the road was nothing like this girl with glossy blonde hair and a wide smile.

  A close friend of the victim said that Miss Clarke’s physical and mental state had declined dramatically recently. ‘She was totally obsessed with the idea that she was overweight, even though the opposite was true,’ the friend reported. ‘She said she’d rather be dead than fat. And she just wouldn’t accept help.’

  ‘One guess who that close friend is,’ I said to Ami. It’s strange reading about something you were part of, written by someone who wasn’t there. Things get twisted around. The article made it sound like Katie had lain down on the road, that the whole thing was a suicide attempt.

  ‘No-one’s going to believe that,’ I scoffed.

  ‘Don’t bet on it,’ said Ami grimly.

  Soon after the article appeared the news went round at school that Katie was being treated for anorexia. And Ami was right. No-one seemed in any doubt that Katie had chosen to lie down on the road, wanting to die. I guess to them this seemed like the logical explanation. But they hadn’t seen the confused expression that was on her face when we’d found her. The one that was so clearly saying, how the hell did I get here?

  The next thing that happened was that a whole lot of rumours sprang up about the fight between Katie and Miranda at the formal. Who had said what. Again, nothing matched with what I’d witnessed.

  Miranda was just talking to Cameron and Katie went crazy at her for no reason. I heard that over and over. The jealousy was eating her up. Everyone just bought the lies completely. I didn’t hear a single person say they didn’t believe it.

  Meanwhile, Miranda drifted around looking all sad and noble, acting like she was devastated about it all. ‘Poor Katie,’ she’d say, shaking her head sorrowfully. ‘It’s so tragic that anorexia has messed up her head.’

  Everyone nodded and said how brave Miranda was. What a great friend.

  At first I fumed about how stupid everyone was not to realise that Miranda was manipulating the situation to suit herself. But after a while, I wasn’t so sure. That’s the trouble when you’re the only person who believes something. You start wondering if you’re wrong. And it seems so much easier to let go and just be carried along by the current like everyone else.

  My doubt grew like one of those weeds that you see in cracks in the footpath – the ones that can eventually push up concrete. Ami believed my version of the events, of course. But she hadn’t been there. The person I found myself really wanting to talk to was Lachlan. To find out if he’d seen things the way I had. But Lachlan seemed to be staying out of my way. I hardly ever saw him – and when I did, he was always looking in the other direction.

  I knew I had no right to feel upset. It’s what you wanted, I kept reminding myself. You should be relieved. So why wasn’t I?

  I arrived at school one day to find Ami waiting for me by the lockers. She looked at me closely. ‘You’re starting to doubt yourself, aren’t you?’ she said. ‘About what happened at the formal.’

  ‘Maybe a little,’ I admitted.

  ‘Well you shouldn’t,’ said Ami firmly. ‘You were there. You saw it all.’

  ‘I guess,’ I said, and then paused, trying to decide if I was actually going to say what I’d been thinking for a while now. ‘Ami. The way Miranda destroyed Katie …’

  Ami nodded slowly. ‘Everything lines up doesn’t it? All that crazy shapeshifter stuff.’

  My throat constricted. ‘But it can’t be true, can it?’ I needed Ami to tell me this was rubbish. ‘This is the real world. There’s no such thing as –’

  ‘Isn’t there?’ said Ami, interrupting me as she leant in close. ‘But it explains everything.’

  I fell silent for a moment. It was usually Ami who pointed out why my crazy theories were pure wonkishness. Having her say something like this – it was unnerving.

  ‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ I whispered. ‘That stupid website? It’s – it’s not logical.’

  ‘It was a stupid website,’ agreed Ami. ‘But sometimes the illogical answer is the only one. She’s dangerous, Olive. She admitted she slipped something into Miss Falippi’s drink and then got everyone believing our hippy home-room teacher was some kind of addict. Now she’s trying to kill Katie.’

  Kill Katie. I shivered. Was it really as serious as that?

  Ami’s eyes were narrowed. ‘And don’t tell me you haven’t noticed how she now looks exactly like Katie. Or at least, like Katie used to look. It’s just like the website said. Miranda is draining her.’

  ‘But we’re the only ones who think there’s something weird about Miranda,’ I said desperately. ‘So why would we be right?’

  ‘Because we’re special, Olive,’ said Ami darkly. ‘That’s why we can see what’s going on when everyone else is blind to it. You aren’t affected by her the way everyone else is.’

  What about Lachlan? He didn’t seem affected by her either. Did he think there was something weird about her too? I wished I could just bowl up to him and ask, without caring how insane I sounded. I swallowed. ‘I don’t know, Ames. It seems so unbelievable.’

  Ami was silent for a while. And then she said in a low voice, ‘You know about parasitic wasps, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, yeah,’ I said. ‘I’ve only been sitting next to those insect posters for six months. Why?’

  ‘Remember how the mother wasp doesn’t lay her eggs in a nest or a hive? She lays them directly into the body of another insect – you know, like into a caterpillar.’

  ‘Right, so the eggs hatch in a dead caterpillar,’ I said, pulling a face. ‘Gross.’

  ‘Not dead,’ corrected Ami. ‘Alive. The wasp larvae stay inside the living caterpillar as they grow, feedi
ng on its blood and flesh until they’re big and strong enough to bite their way through its skin.’

  ‘That’s disgusting.’ My own skin was tingling, like there were things crawling over me.

  ‘There’s more,’ said Ami. ‘The baby wasps release this chemical that messes with the caterpillar’s brain, so it doesn’t realise what’s going on. It’ll even try to protect the infant wasps as they’re eating their way out through its skin because it thinks they’re part of its own body. Then once the baby wasps are gone, the caterpillar is left to die.’

  ‘Ami!’ I said, feeling nauseous. ‘What has this got to do with Miranda?’

  ‘Well, I just wonder if that’s what shifters are like,’ said Ami. ‘Not like elves or goblins or whatever magical creatures people think of when they hear the word shifter. Freaky disturbing stuff happens in the natural world all the time. We just don’t think of it as happening in the human world. But why shouldn’t it?’

  I felt unsteady. Ami was watching me very carefully. She nodded at me. ‘You know it’s the truth,’ she said quietly. ‘Katie is the juicy little protective caterpillar. But she’s almost completely dried up.’

  The corridor was full of people but somehow I could hear the rhythm of my heart, beating loudly.

  ‘If we’re wrong, Miranda’s just a bitch,’ Ami said, her voice soft but steady. ‘But if we’re right, Katie’s in danger.’

  I slammed my locker door, just as the second bell went. ‘I’m going to see her,’ I said. ‘Right now.’

  ‘You better hurry,’ said Ami. ‘In case Miranda gets there first.’

  The clinic was one of those ugly, boxy buildings – the sort that made your heart sink as you approached it. This I could say from personal experience, as it was the same clinic I’d spent time at myself after the Incident. Inside, someone had attempted to make it look a little friendlier. Paintings had been stuck up on the walls, mostly done by patients. One wall was covered with paper honeybees inscribed with positive messages. Bee confident. Bee kind. Bee a friend. Out the back was a garden.