by Emily Gale
I sit in the quiet – not that it’s ever quiet in my head. Nine years ago, something supersized my memory. It became a riot of information: dates, weather, news, feelings, smells, sounds, things that everyone else forgets. I recall scenes dating back years. Everything that was said.
I would make a brilliant Facebook memory-notification generator. If I had any friends. Remember when you got pupil of the week for making that board game? Remember the time you found a huntsman in the art cupboard? Remember the time you tried to sit next to your friend but another kid pushed you out of the way? All of that is in my head, crystal clear.
Tracey wasn’t with us back then, but Jean and I used to call it magic. It started right after Adie left. A trauma trigger? I don’t know – is it wrong to call something like that a trauma when people go through so much worse? All I can say is that Adie was my best friend, and when she went, I changed. Everything since then has been up close and photo-real.
My brain is like an overstuffed attic. Here’s a box: The Day Before Year Three. It was Sunday, 31 January (no calendar required). The air was muggy all day. I sat on the floor between Jean and the television. She was watching Federer play Murray in the Australian Open. I wore striped leggings and a yellow singlet; Murray’s shirt was blue for most of the match, but then he changed to a white one. Federer won 6–3, 6–4, 7–6, and his last point was a blistering forehand that Murray whacked straight into the net.
Murray cried when he lost. So did Jean, even though she’d been cheering for Federer the whole time. She wiped a fat tear across her cheek with the back of her hand and left a dark grey streak from her mascara. ‘I’m being silly again,’ she said.
Meanwhile, I imagined how it would feel the next day when I told Class 3F about my magic. We always started off the year with getting-to-know-you sessions and I was going to blitz this one. Who needed Adie? I was going to make new friends. I didn’t tell Jean what I was planning because the magic was new and Jean was worried about it.
I wasn’t worried.
Scan the attic, find the next box: First Day of Year Three.
‘Class 3F, this is circle time, not rolling-around-on-the-floor time. Everyone sit up straight, please, legs crossed, eyes on me. Henry, I said eyes on me. Thank you. Rachel, get your finger out of there. Okay, class, it’s very exciting to be starting a brand-new year. I SAID IT’S VERY EXCITING, CHRISTIAN AND BILLY. Ssshhhhh … settle down.’ That’s Mr Freeman.
‘Okay. So you know that my name is Mr Freeman, but what about something you don’t know about me? Well, I’ll tell you something and then we’ll go around the class and you can all tell me something about you.’
Mr Freeman’s thing was wiggling his ears. Henry’s thing was burping the alphabet, but Mr Freeman stopped him at ‘J’. Billy’s thing was walking on his hands with his legs crossed. I thought that was excellent.
When it was my turn, I stood up. ‘Give me any date from last year and I’ll tell you which day of the week it was and something that happened on that day.’
I saw a few noses wrinkle. They didn’t understand what was about to happen. That was fine; I was about to make them gasp.
‘Twenty-fifth of March,’ said Mr Freeman.
I didn’t miss a beat. ‘Wednesday.’
Silence.
‘It rained so we had indoor recess.’ I pointed at Henry. ‘He had a chocolate cupcake from his sister’s birthday.’
Mr Freeman frowned. ‘Henry, is she right?’
‘How should I know?’
‘Well, when is your sister’s birthday?’
‘Er … dunno. Which sister?’
The class started to fidget. Mr Freeman thanked me and told me to sit down, it was someone else’s turn. I refused. Someone started to giggle, and it spread quickly.
‘Stop laughing!’ I shouted. ‘You don’t get it! I remember everything!’
Mr Freeman got angry, but I couldn’t stop. I wanted everyone to understand. My head was bursting!
The next thing, I was banished to the reading corner, full of shame. How had the day turned out this way? When I looked across the room, there was someone alone in the opposite corner.
Milo Witkin.
He saluted me, with a sad, serious face, like he understood. Nothing I’ve seen him do or heard him say since then has convinced me that he’s not the most amazing boy in the world. Like today, catching me when I was falling.
Or being a human shield between me and a glass wall. Same difference.
Some people will say they remember a particular event like it was yesterday. But it has to be extraordinary to have this effect. Love or death, mainly.
I remember everything as though it happened today, as if the event occurred in the moment before the one I’m in right now. Not just extraordinary things. Murray’s shirts, the muggy air, the final shot, Jean’s tear. The smell of memories. And, most of all, how I felt at the time. Exactly how I felt.
I don’t forget.
I can’t forget.
Another box: The Day Before Year Four. Category-five cyclone in Queensland. We got the tail end of it. A tourist was hit by a gum tree. ‘Serious head injuries’ – those were the exact words they used.
There was nothing more about that tourist. So much of the time news starts but doesn’t finish. Bad news gets swallowed by worse news. There are missing children in my head and I don’t know if some of them made it home. I try to keep the news out and let the poetry in. Rupi Kaur, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker and, my soulmate, Emily Dickinson.
Another box: The Day Before Year Five: Tuesday. A bad day. Twenty-five thousand ducks killed to stop the spread of avian flu. I liked ducks at that time. I mean, really liked them. I cried for hours and begged Jean to let me miss the first day.
The Day Before Year Six: Monday. We picked apples to make a crumble. I had my first go at lighting the stove. It took me ages to work up the courage to hold the flame close enough to the gas, then came the sudden whoomph! and it was done. Tracey was with me – she lived with us by then. That memory can still make me jump. I can taste the apple, sweet enough to curl my tongue.
The Day Before Year Seven: another Monday. Jean did reiki on me because she was freaking out about high school. Performing natural therapies on me calms her down. By then I had a constant, low-level dread of school, the kind you don’t expect to improve.
The week before that was a big heatwave. Eighty cows died. Knowing this is completely useless, like the dead ducks and the bad weather and Andy Murray changing his shirt halfway through the final. No one cares any more. No one cares what’s in my head.
The Day Before Year Eight: Monday.
The Day Before Year Nine: Sunday.
If you really want to know what it’s like to remember almost everything, I’ll tell you: it sucks.
Jean pops her head around my bedroom door. ‘Love you, baby.’
She blows me a kiss, which I catch in my hand and press to my cheek, because we’re both total dorks.
‘When’s Tracey coming home?’
‘Late. Lots of cases at the moment. We’ll see her for breakfast. Night-night.’
Jean doesn’t mention Adie. I bet that was Tracey’s advice.
‘Night, Mum.’
Before long I hear Jean snoring. My eyes are wide in the dark and I can’t stop turning over the way I felt when Adie looked right at me today and didn’t know me.
But then I think, Wait, did anyone else know her?
All evening I construct the castle for Planet_JakeLOL and chat on and off to Dan. At ten o’clock my phone makes a rare sound – someone called e_e_dickinson has sent me a private message on Instagram.
e_e_dickinson: Is this Milo?
I click on the small round profile photo next to the message. It’s a pale woman with neat black hair and a serious face. All the images in her feed are swirly words on a white background. The most recent one says: I’m nobody, who are you? Are you nobody too? I enlarge the profile picture, screenshot it and do a Google imag
e search.
It’s Emily Dickinson the poet. I look up some of the swirly words – all lines from Emily Dickinson poems. This person has posted every day for almost two years.
All of this brings me no closer to figuring out why they’re contacting me. Or how they knew it was my account. My username is tawny_frogmouth3078 and none of the posts are of me.
tawny_frogmouth3078: Who’s this?
e_e_dickinson: It’s Juliet. From school.
Juliet who fell on top of me today?
tawny_frogmouth3078: How did you know this was my account?
e_e_dickinson: So it is you. I recognised your hand. In the photo with the Christmas beetle.
This is unusual. First, that Juliet can identify me from a photo of my hand. Second, that she’s looked back through three hundred or so of my photos to last December, when I found a Christmas beetle on the river path. I can’t think of any reason for her to contact me apart from the only reason anyone from school talks to me: she needs computer help. This should be quick. It’s usually a case of ‘Have you tried restarting?’.
tawny_frogmouth3078: What can I help you with?
e_e_dickinson: An ID check.
tawny_frogmouth3078: Go ahead.
e_e_dickinson: The girl who walked into English today.
tawny_frogmouth3078: What about her?
e_e_dickinson: Do you remember her?
tawny_frogmouth3078: No.
e_e_dickinson: Yes, you do.
tawny_frogmouth3078: Do I?
e_e_dickinson: Think back.
tawny_frogmouth3078: To what?
e_e_dickinson: Primary school.
tawny_frogmouth3078: I prefer not to.
e_e_dickinson: I get that.
tawny_frogmouth3078: Thanks. Are we done?
e_e_dickinson: No. I want you to remember.
tawny_frogmouth3078: I thought you got it. That I’d rather not.
e_e_dickinson: I do. Please, Milo. There’s no one else I can ask. Adie Ryan. She left in Year Two.
Situation mystifying. Juliet hardly speaks for years, then one day she falls on top of me and now she’s sending me intense messages. I feel compelled to help her, but I’ve stored most of the seven-year-olds who didn’t like me at primary school in a dark corner of my mind, minus their faces.
tawny_frogmouth3078: Sorry, don’t remember.
e_e_dickinson: Would you say you have a poor, fair, good or excellent memory?
This feels like an interrogation. Faces from back in primary school start to come to me, separating from the amorphous blob like bits of a lava lamp. If I don’t stop, my mind will start to replay scenes that I’ve tried to forget.
e_e_dickinson: Are you still there, Milo?
I glance at the castle I’ve nearly finished, then at the messages from Juliet.
It’s easy to switch off the phone.
But now there’s an intruder in my head. What’s so special about Adie? What’s so special about Adie? What’s so special about …
This could be a long night.
My brain cycles through English class, the high street and Juliet’s messaging for ages. It only stops when my little sister walks into my bedroom and sticks a legal contract in front of me.
‘Sign this, Milo.’
Sophie is eleven going on thirty and roughly five feet of strong will. Legally binding documents with decorative hearts and flowers in the corners are her new thing. Don’t think of the hearts and flowers as sentimental – they’ve been recruited to soften the words. Previous examples include:
I, Milo Witkin, solemnly agree to play Operation with Sophie. If I do not agree, I may find that certain things start to go missing – and you know what I’m talking about, Milo. Yes, your precious laptop. This document is subject to the laws and regulations of the land. Signed: Milo Witkin
I, Milo Witkin, will always bring my sister a toilet roll when she calls out for one … etc., etc., something about drawing on my face with a Sharpie in the night if I don’t sign.
I, Milo Witkin, will take my sister to the shopping centre once a month … etc., etc., on penalty of a dead arm.
I, Milo Witkin, agree to let my sister borrow my iPhone every evening between 4 pm and 5 pm because it’s very unfair that Sophie isn’t allowed to have one until she turns thirteen … Failure to oblige will result in said iPhone going down the toilet.
And each time with hearts and flowers in the corners.
I think it’s sweet. Sort of. Mum, Dad and me are usually doing our own thing, so Sophie is the force that keeps us a foursome, running between us like copper wire, transmitting messages.
Tonight’s contract begins:
I, Milo Witkin, loving big brother of Soph …
That sounds ominous.
… agree to produce a portrait using the finest-quality pencils. TONIGHT! It should be very good, but not too good. If I do not do it …
Here it comes.
… bad things MAY OR MAY NOT start to happen on and around my face. For example, pus-filled pimples, enormous sties, mouth ulcers.
‘Soph, you can’t give a person pimples. They just appear.’
‘There are twenty everyday habits that can give you acne. I can make it happen while you sleep.’
‘Why do you want a portrait, anyway?’
‘Miss Marshall gave us holiday homework. She hates me because I can’t draw, but she loves Grace and the others who can draw and now they’ve got an Art club and I’m not in it and I want Grace and the others to take me more seriously and this is the best plan, so please can you please-please say yes?’
I’m not sure if she’s talking fast or I’m thinking slow. ‘Miss Marshall hated everyone when I was there.’
‘I don’t care. I want to be the exception.’
‘Soph, I don’t do portraits. Have you ever seen me draw a face?’
‘It can’t be that different. You’re always drawing. And I’ve been meaning to tell you: the pencil-behind-your-ear thing you keep doing is the opposite of sexy.’
‘Don’t say “sexy”. You’re eleven.’
‘I won’t say it ever again if you promise you’ll draw the portrait. Come on! You’re really good and I’m not.’ She turns the corners of her mouth down surprisingly far.
‘I draw maps – that’s it – and stop sucking up to me. It’s weird.’
‘SEXY! SEXY! SEXY!’
‘Sophie!’
‘Come on, Milo. Maps and faces aren’t that different.’
‘A face is a face, a map is a map. I’m not helping you cheat.’ I hand the contract back to my sister.
I draw maps a lot. I’ve been drawing them since I was little, when I could only hold my pencil in a fist. At first my mum didn’t know what my maps were, and although I had a lot of words in my head, I couldn’t find the right ones to explain. As a result, a lot of the maps were stuck the wrong way up on the fridge.
I started small scale, drawing the rooms in our house as joined-up squares and rectangles, a wonky sort of flatplan, and tracing the pathways I walked. I don’t really remember what I was thinking back then; I just remember always doing it.
My maps got bigger and more complex as I got older. I loved the minute detail of things. I mapped the way to primary school, the shop on the corner. Later on, the river, the way to high school. The routes I can take to avoid Ben Brearley.
My maps only cover my own small life, and I like it that way. They’re personal, like diaries.
‘It doesn’t have to be perfect, Milo. In fact, it can’t be. I want Miss Marshall to think it’s brilliant, but Grace and the others also have to believe that I did it.’
‘Soph …’
‘Draw it with your right hand because that’s your rubbish one. Yes. That’s a great idea, actually.’
I laugh and shake my head. ‘You shouldn’t trick someone into liking you – even Miss Marshall. Just accept that you and her aren’t meant to be.’
Sophie blinks, and I see her eyes look watery. ‘I can�
��t accept that,’ she says softly.
She’s got me. I laugh as she grabs my hand, wedges the fat multicoloured pen against my palm and closes my fingers around it.
It’s late, around midnight. Mum and Dad are sleeping. Soph’s been in six times to check on my progress. Each time, I’ve covered my (completely blank) sketchpad with my arms and hissed at her to get lost.
I’ve fallen into a pit of YouTube videos about how to draw faces. But when I try to move the tip of the pencil towards the paper, there’s a gravitational anomaly, some force that throws me off. My mind casts around for Sophie’s face but finds another. Wren.
Today, after we’d sat in the chair on the street, as close as I’ve ever been to anyone, I said something funny. She looked at me and for a second we were locked in. Then she hit my arm and it was over. But that’s what I want to draw. Her face in that split second, a shot to the heart. The next time she looks at me like that, I think I’m going to kiss her.
I’ll go gently, as if the paper is her skin. I need a circle to start.
The first circle … looks like a pumpkin. If Wren thought that was how I saw her head she’d kill me.
Second circle: unidentifiable misshapen vegetable.
Third circle … is over before I get halfway, like there’s clear wax on the paper that spoils my intention. This is crap. Stop overthinking one damn circle.
I flip a page back to the map I was drawing. It shows the places where Wren and I go exploring, and bleeds out into the other parts of Melbourne I know: the route to the artists’ market she likes, the roaring freeway we pass underneath, the twisting river that makes you feel like you’re nowhere near a city, and the roads that lie in grids.
Suddenly, I see Wren’s chin in the curve of the Yarra south of Richmond. Exhibition Street is the farther outline of her face. That dark tangle of Yarra Bend Park is where her hair would start to twist away, in line with the freeway and on to Heidelberg.
It’s happening. Her face is in the map.
My pencil finds the curves I need and leaves the paper where the roads don’t make the shape I want them to. I shade in patches of streets that show up her cheekbones, the dip of her chin and the shadow underneath her nose. I let the streets show through when they need to and darken the others with an eyebrow or a nostril.
