I take a deep breath and open the door.
‘We had to come,’ Helena says, going straight for a hug. ‘Duncan told us what happened. Oh my god, who would do something like that? It’s disgusting! Are you okay? We were so worried…’
‘I’m okay,’ I say. ‘Just a bit freaked out.’
‘I saw Dave coming out of the principal’s office,’ Cara says. ‘He looked like he’d shat himself.’
‘Do you think it was him?’ Zeke says.
We’ve hardly spoken since the Ball-fail and I feel a sudden glow from his presence, though I tell myself it’s just some kind of chemical-hormonal thing, it doesn’t mean anything.
‘It must have been Dave, that shit-head,’ Cara says emphatically.
‘I don’t know,’ I feel exhausted even thinking about it. ‘Maybe. Or maybe it was some other random unidentified person who wants to make my life miserable.’
‘But who would do something like that?’ Helena says again, outraged and perplexed in equal measure.
Mum sticks her head in. ‘I’m making hot chocolates, do you all want one? Marshmallows on the side?’
‘That would be awesome,’ Helena says.
‘If it’s not a problem,’ Zeke says.
‘Mmmm, marshmallows!’ Cara says. ‘Forget on the side. You can put mine straight in.’
I look at the three of them there in the doorway and feel a sudden rush of something unexpected. Something warm and gentle and comforting. They’re my friends, I realise, as though the concept had never even occurred to me before now. Something bad happened, and they came. Which is what friends do. There are three of them, standing right now in my doorway, checking up on me. Three friends. That’s a pretty good number.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I say, ‘do you guys want to go and sit in the lounge room? I don’t know if four people would actually fit in my bedroom.’
As we walk down the corridor, Zeke says quietly ‘Your hair actually looks pretty good like that.’
I’d almost forgotten. I put a hand to it – it feels so weirdly short now, and it kind of sticks out.
‘Yeah it’s super-jagged. I love it,’ Cara says.
‘I’m going to dye it,’ I say.
‘What colour?’
‘I’m thinking black. I’m not as brave as you.’
‘I don’t know about that,’ Cara says. ‘That was pretty full on what you did, cutting it all off like that. Did you have a mirror at least?’
‘It was in the social studies classroom. I don’t think the light was even on.’
‘Wow, Abbie, way to go,’ she says and gives me a huge grin.
That night I dream I’m in a strange house. It’s silent and dark but I know there’s someone else in there with me. I’m walking from room to room, trying not to trip over anything, trying not touch anything, bump anything, trying not to make a sound. I’m desperate to find the way out. There’s blood everywhere, so much blood, it’s sticky and slippery, I’m spreading it as I walk. I know something bad has happened here. Something really bad.
Then I see a corridor, and at the end of the corridor, a closed door. I have to go through it, but I’m terrified. I hear a noise. Whoever is in the house with me is getting closer, they’re going to find me. That door is my only way out. I force myself to move, to walk, I reach the door, I touch the handle then –
‘Are you okay?’
I’m jerked from sleep into waking. Mum’s beside me. She’s turned the bedside lamp on. The room is flooded with soft light. My heart is pounding, I’m sweating, I can hardly breath.
It felt so real. Everything about it felt so real. I almost expect to look down and see blood pooled on the floor.
‘Just a bad dream,’ I manage to say.
‘I heard you making a noise. I was up reading.’
‘Sorry,’ I say.
‘Don’t apologise Abbie, oh sweetheart, don’t say sorry,’ Mum hugs me and she sounds like she’s close to tears.
I put my arms around her but I feel like part of me is still in the dream – caught between something terrifying that I need to escape and something horrifying that I don’t want to see.
I promise Mum I’m okay and eventually she goes, leaving my lamp on, leaving the door open.
I try to go back to sleep but I can’t. All my senses are on high alert. Every sound I hear outside – the whisper of a breeze, the cracking of a branch, the murmur of a car’s engine in the distance like the sound of the ocean far away – makes my muscles tense as I strain to hear more. I’m gripping the sheet with white-knuckled hands.
I keep telling myself, over and over: I’m safe. It’s okay. I’m safe. I’m not alone. Nothing bad is going to happen. But my body doesn’t believe it. My head pounds from the effort of keeping the dream at bay. Even as I’m exhausted, desperate for sleep, I can’t let go.
Then something happens. I remember the sensation of Zelda, sitting on my foot, leaning her bulk silently against me. And I realise she made me feel safe. If she was here, I would be able to stop listening, stop worrying, I’d be able to sleep. Just the thought of it is a relief.
I’ll tell Tom, I think, first thing in the morning. I’ll tell him we need to get Zelda.
Eventually exhaustion takes hold, and I fall into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Chapter twenty-one
‘Remember, this is just a trial,’ Mum says, looking back over her shoulder at the three of us in the back seat. Tom is sitting on the left, I’m sitting in the middle and Zelda is leaned up against me, with her nose to the glass of the window, which is open just a crack.
‘Yes Mum,’ Tom says mechanically. He’s staring at Zelda with a star-struck, lovelorn expression.
‘She likes the car,’ I say.
‘Yeah, Margaret mentioned she was a good traveller,’ Stacey says from the front. ‘Better than my old daschy Poppy. It would only take a block or two and Poppy would be spewing. And dog spew – that is stinky stuff. You can never really get it out of the upholstery.’
‘Lovely imagery,’ Mum says. ‘I can see why you got the job at the paper.’
I give Zelda an experimental pat, and she pulls her nose out of the window and turns and looks at me for a moment.
‘Hey there,’ I say in a soft, encouraging voice.
Truth is, I might be feeling just about as star-struck and lovelorn as Tom. She’s a beautiful dog. I can’t believe, I really can’t believe, that she’s coming home with us. I can’t believe I almost didn’t let her.
When we get to the house she hops out of the car and trots to the nearest tree and starts sniffing.
‘Does she need to be on a lead?’ I ask Mum, suddenly anxious. I don’t want to lose her when we only just got her. And this isn’t home yet – if she ran off, she wouldn’t know where she was or how to find her way back to us.
‘Try calling her,’ Mum says. ‘Margaret says she’s well-trained.’
I crouch down so I’m at her height. ‘Zelda!’ I say, ‘Come here!’ And she turns, pauses only for a few seconds, then trots over to me. She wags her tail, a couple of broad strokes like a windscreen wiper, and gives my face a lick.
‘Good girl,’ I say and rub her neck. ‘Do you want to come and see the house? Come on!’
When we get to the veranda, she pauses and tenses. I see her hackles rising slightly. She makes a low, gravelly growl.
‘It’s okay, this is where we live. Come and have a look.’ I try to keep my tone light and gentle.
‘Remember what Margaret says, we shouldn’t rush her. Let her do things in her own time,’ Tom says.
I nod, and crouch down next to the dog, wondering not for the first time what happened to her. Who would have hurt such a beautiful animal? Who could have possibly abandoned her?
‘There’s nothing to worry about,’ I say. ‘You’re safe with us.’
‘We’ll see you guys inside,’ Stacey says, and she and Mum head into the house.
‘I’ll get her a treat,’ Tom says. ‘That might
help her settle.’
‘Good idea,’ I say.
He lets himself into the laundry and I hear him rustling with bags and opening a packet.
‘Here Zelda, this is for you. There’s more inside.’
He holds out a strip of dried unidentified meat in his open palm the way Margaret showed us, and Zelda nuzzles and takes it from him.
It takes three more treats and a good ten minutes to get her in through the laundry door, but once she’s in she seems to relax.
‘Welcome to your new home,’ Tom says.
I ask Mum if Zelda can sleep in my room with me, but she says dogs sleep in the laundry. I say this is an arbitrary rule, given we’ve never had a dog before. Mum says it’s a universal law: dogs sleep in the laundry. And that Zelda is lucky to be an inside dog at all. And that we’ve already spent seventy dollars getting her a doggy bed and she’s going to use it. I decide not to push it.
Instead I take a pillow in and lie beside her as we get her settled in. She takes up a lot of space when she lies down and stretches her legs out. She’d probably take up most of the bedroom floor if she slept in with me. She might crush me during the night if she was allowed on my bed.
At least she’s here, I think. She’s safe, I’m safe. If anyone comes or anything happens, we’ll get some advance warning.
I spend ten minutes telling her what a good dog she is, and about all the things we’ll do together over the weekend, and how happy we are to have her. Eventually Mum tells me I need to go to bed.
Before I get into my PJs, I send Leah a picture of Zelda.
Now you HAVE to come visit.
The reply comes within about a second
OMG I am so there
Then a second later
She’s so beautiful!!
Then a second later
You’re SO LUCKY
Night Leah I message.
XX she replies.
Chapter twenty-two
It’s taken a week, but I’ve stopped getting startled every time I look in the mirror. The colour is interesting, as my mum says. My fringe is wonky and I can’t get my hair to do anything I want, but the general impact is what I was aiming for.
I no longer look like Rebecca O’Reilley.
I don’t look like myself anymore, either.
‘You’ll get used to it,’ Cara tells me the first lunchtime after I come back to school. ‘It takes a little while, but it’ll stop feeling so weird.’
She shows me some photos of herself. Cara is a master of reinvention, as it turns out. A couple of years ago she was skinny and blonde with no boobs. Her hair has jumped from platinum to red to black to blue, with a dozen different styles along the way.
When I ask her why she changes it so much she just shrugs and says, ‘I have the attention span of a goldfish,’ and Zeke laughs.
‘True story,’ he says.
When I see the way he looks at her, I look away at the far fence, squinting like there’s something in my eye.
‘Ready?’ I hold up the lead and Zelda drops to a sit, tail bashing against the floor, looking at me intently.
We’ve got into a routine. Early morning and as soon as I get home in the afternoon, we walk. Usually it’s only for twenty minutes or so, which I’m sure isn’t long enough for her, but at least she’s getting to orientate herself, sniff all the trees and fenceposts, snuffle at things in the grass, choose a spot to pee each day.
I get Zelda’s lead on and we head out together down the drive, turn right and start on up the hill. Some days, if I’m feeling particularly energetic, I’ll jog. I hate jogging on my own but having her there makes it fun, though I’m pretty sure I’m slowing her down. Today is Saturday and I’ve got nowhere to go and nothing to do except study, so I figure we’ll take a longer walk.
We head up the hill, turn right at the T-junction and take the road along the ridge-line. To our right there are paddocks scattered with sheep and cows, the occasional horse. Lots of piles of dung. To our left is scrubby bushland. The trees look like they’ve grown too fast and too close together. The ground is a tangle of blackberry and long grass. An occasional dirt trail heads in from the road and out of sight. I think it’s a reserve of some kind, though it’s not particularly scenic.
We round a bend and disturb a flock of white cockatoos digging for grubs beside the road. They squawk in loud protest and flap until there are a few metres between us.
We come to a dirt road that heads away down the hill. I’ve never noticed it before – we don’t often come this way. Zelda veers towards it, the pressure on the lead suddenly increasing, and I go with her. I’m happy to explore. We’re not in any hurry and I feel safe with her beside me.
The road traces a path back down the hill, twisting and turning. The trees are taller and shade the road. In the distance, off to the right, I can see somebody riding a dirt bike in a paddock. It looks like they’re just having fun, making big figure eights, round and round. The sound of the engine floats on the air, a high-pitched mosquitoey kind of whine.
I’m starting to get tired – I’m still not really used to running so I slow to a walk and pause for a moment under a tree. I’m breathing heavily and I’m sweaty, but it’s a good, clean exercise-sweat. Zelda looks at me and whines and pulls at the lead. She looks back down the road.
‘Just a minute girl, I need a little break.’
My shoe-lace has come loose and my shoe has been rubbing, so I bend down now to re-tie it. I only let go of the lead for an instant but that’s all it takes. Zelda looks back at me and then bolts. I’ve never seen her run so fast – she’s a streak of grey, the lead trailing behind her.
‘Zelda! Zelda! Hey come back!’ I yell. ‘Damn it.’
I run after her, the tiredness I felt a moment ago buried by a rush of adrenalin. I see her vanishing around a bend. She’s much, much faster than me. I round the bend and then stop. At the bottom of the hill is a dead end. The road peters out into a ditch bordered by tall dry grass and a tangle of weeds. I can’t see Zelda at all. To the right is a driveway, lined by pine trees as regular as pillars. At the end of the drive I can just make out a house. Then I hear barking.
I take a breath, my lungs burning from the exertion, then head down the driveway, composing excuses and apologies to whoever might live there that my crazy dog has just paid them an uninvited visit.
The drive is lined with tall, dark pine trees. The house couldn’t be more different to ours: it’s huge, has two storeys, and looks like it might be a hundred years old or more. It is built from some kind of silvery-stone. There are no cars parked in the driveway and I can’t see any sign of anyone around. I hear Zelda barking but still can’t see her.
As I get closer, I begin to notice things that don’t look quite right – I’m not sure exactly why, it’s not something I can put my finger on, but the closer I get to the house, the greater the sense of wrongness becomes.
The garden is overgrown. I can tell that it must have been carefully planned and laid out, but it hasn’t been maintained. The rose bushes are covered in faded, dead flowers. Weeds are crowding out the smaller plants. Everything has run to seed. A small tree which had been staked to help it grow straight has died and not been removed.
There are none of the things you usually see around a house that’s lived in: no bikes leaning against a wall, no outdoor shoes sitting by the door, no secateurs or forgotten cups of tea. The blinds are pulled shut on all the windows. It’s bare. And, there’s no other way to put it, I feel it inside me as I approach, it’s silent. My sweaty hair and skin suddenly chill me.
Zelda gives another loud bark from around the back.
I take a wide loop around the house, keeping an eye on the windows to make sure there’s no sign of movement. If anybody is home, Zelda has made sure they know we’re here.
She’s at the back door, sitting the way she does when she wants to be let in and feels that demonstrating how well-behaved she is will help her get what she wants.
Then I see the door and my mouth goes dry.
‘Shit Zelda!’
There are dozens of scratches from where she’s raked away at the door, digging at the paint with her claws. It’ll have to be repainted. The owners will kill us, I think. I take a closer look.
It’s weird though. The marks look old, and there’s no sign of flaked green paint on Zelda or on the ground, despite the gouges having taken significant chunks out.
I swallow.
As I come closer, the strangest thing happens. Zelda turns to look at me and growls, a low deep rumble.
‘Zelda?’ I raise my hands, palms facing out, and squat down to her level. I reach a hand tentatively towards her. ‘Zelda-pup, it’s me…’
She licks her lips and looks to the door, then looks back at me again and whines.
Suddenly there’s a sound that makes me jump. It’s my goddamn phone. I pull it out of my pocket, heart racing.
Got my Ps woooohoooo we are on our way to meet the dog
Zeke.
‘Come on,’ I say, tentatively reaching for the lead, which is hanging down beside her. ‘Enough exploring. Time to go home. Your adoring fans will arrive any minute.’
She whines again but lets me pull her away from the doorstep. I take another look at the damage.
‘Did you do that?’ I ask her but she only looks at me.
It looks old, I decide. Some other dog must have done it, years ago. Which is lucky because I don’t have any paper to leave a note and I’m sure as hell not banging on that door. The place gives me the heebie-jeebies.
I drag Zelda a couple of steps. She’s like a dead weight on the lead, then eventually something in her just gives up and she follows me away from the house.
Chapter twenty-three
I’ve been avoiding Zeke as much as possible since the night of the Derro Ball, and I feel a rush of anxiety as I watch his battered old Corolla pull up. Helena waves excitedly from the front passenger seat and Cara lounges in the back.
Mirror Me Page 9
