by Fiona Wood
I’ve successfully zoned out in maths so when the teacher asks me a question, I honestly don’t know the answer.
Coming out of the classroom for lunch, Jayzo heaves his body sideways slamming me into a bank of lockers in the same casual way jocks did that kind of thing at my old school. Prick.
Outside, I sit alone. A nerd-girl invites me to sit with her group but I tell her I’m okay. I’m lying. I’m the opposite of okay. I’m nokay. I don’t even have enough spit to swallow comfortably.
When any new kid started at my old school he was given a year level mentor, a prefect mentor, a house tutor mentor, a teacher mentor, introduced around, signed up for extracurricular activities, forcefully integrated, then fully monitored. Here, it looks like I’m on my own. That means the image makeover will be difficult unless I talk to people. The only things anyone could possibly know about me are: tall, sometimes answers to ‘dickhead’, silent in class, frowns, slouches, surname pronounced ‘surreal’ not ‘cereal’, chews with mouth shut.
Might be easier just to get loser/loner tattooed on my forehead and be done with it.
When school is over I walk off through the screaming, shoving tangle of kids and go to Fred’s. He’s halfway between school and home. Plan B and the Gazelle both work at the university. Fred is the only kid from my old class who lives on this side of the city.
After a day of the impossible, silent image makeover, which boiled down to me trying to look cool when I’m not, it’s a relief to be heading towards Fred, who likes me well enough as the dag I am.
When I get there, I walk right into the middle of Fred vs. step-mother: the acne treatment show down.
‘It’s not getting any better; I want the heavy artillery drugs,’ says Fred.
‘You’ve got to at least give the cream a chance to work,’ says Plan B.
‘Why can’t we fast forward? Cut to the chase?’
‘We’re doing exactly what the dermatologist recommends. It’s not negotiable.’
Fred changes tack.
‘I’m pretty sure Mum agrees with me.’
‘Don’t go there, Fred. Your mother, your dad and I talk; you can’t use wedge politics on us.’
‘That in itself is unfair. I’m the only kid I know from a broken home who can’t win a trick.’
‘There’s me, now, ‘ I say. ‘I’m not winning any tricks.’
‘How’s your mum’s business going, Dan?’ Plan B asks.
‘Mostly trial cooking so far. But I think she’s seeing her first client today.’
‘Smell fixed?’ she asks.
‘They were coming today.’
‘Temperature?’
‘It’s still a fridge.’ I’m playing for sympathy and it works. She offers me a muffin.
‘Say hi for me. And you . . .’ she looks at Fred. ‘Take a coat and get a haircut while you’re out.’
‘What time’s the Gazelle home?’
‘He’ll be home by seven and I wish you’d stop calling him that. He’s trying to lose weight,’ she says.
We walk past the shops on the way to my place.
Fred buys us Mars bars. He’s fully briefed on my family’s finances.
‘Isn’t this like pimples’ favourite food?’ I ask.
‘Nah, that’s crap. It’s all about hormones and genes. I blame the Gazelle.’
We walk along eating and checking out the shop windows.
At the Sacred Heart op-shop, I stop. Just what I need, sitting there, front and centre – a big set of dumbbells.
They’re five dollars, but when Fred tells the shopkeeper about me having no money, she lets us have them for a buck. Fred pays.
We’re walking along carrying them – they’re pretty heavy, five kilos each – when I see Estelle coming towards us. It’s too late for evasive action.
My heart is banging into my ribs. This will be our first actual face-to-face encounter. I want it to be perfect. I know there’s not a hope in hell of that. She gives me a half smile. Or maybe it’s more of a semi eyebrow lift. Instead of eyebrow-lifting back, I stop and blurt: ‘These are not for me.’
‘Who are they for?’ asks Fred, surprised.
‘Well, they are for me, but I’m not using them as weights, I’m using them as . . .’
Fred catches on, better late than never, and comes to the rescue.
‘Doorstops?’
‘Yeah. Doorstops.’
She smiles. ‘Oh, okay.’
She says it very slowly, as though wondering why I’m telling her about them. I’m wondering the same thing.
She keeps walking.
‘Bye, Estelle,’ I say to her back.
She turns. ‘How do you know my name?’
I freeze. Not only do I know her name, I also know she’s named after her godmother who lives in London. I know stuff I shouldn’t know.
‘We’re in the same class,’ I manage to get out.
‘Oh. Okay. Yeah,’ she says, and walks on.
‘Who’s she?’ breathes Fred, through a stretch of fudge and caramel.
‘She lives next door.’
‘She’s hot.’
As ever, master of the understatement.
‘Raised as a heartbreaker?’ He’s referring to her nearnamesake, Estella, in Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. We did it last year in Acceleration English.
‘Knowing my luck, I’ll never find out.’
‘Yeah, and thanks for introducing me,’ says Fred.
‘She’s my unattainable girl.’
‘All the more reason for introducing us. She’s probably got unattainable friends who’d be perfect for me.’
We walk on, weighed down literally and metaphorically.
7
WHEN WE GET TO my place there’s a dirty big silver tube coming out of the front door, connected to a truck making a loud noise. Carpet Miracles are working their magic inside and I walk into the house for the first time without feeling sick.
Fred sniffs like a terrier.
‘That’s an amazing improvement.’
We walk deeper into the freezing gloom. Howard comes barking out to greet us, and my mother emerges from the back of the house with a young woman who looks to have been crying for quite a while.
‘Thank you so much,’ she says, holding my mother’s hand. ‘I could have ended up married to . . . my father.’
In response to Fred’s Jerry-Springer-alert look, I say, ‘I think she’s speaking about the personality type, not her actual father.’
‘Come back when you find the right Mr Right,’ says my mother, who looks a bit teary, too.
The woman hiccups and sniffles her way out the front door.
‘You can’t run a wedding cake business if you talk them out of getting married,’I say.My mother ignores this sound observation.
‘How was school?’
Fred tries to take the heat. ‘I’m not back till tomorrow.’
‘Dan?’
‘Meh.’
Not satisfied with a ‘meh’, she’s about to launch into more annoyingly specific questions, so I cut her off at the pass.
‘Is there anything to eat?’
‘Sure. Wedding cake samples. Help yourselves. Only eat the old stuff in the end container. What are they for?’ The dumbbells.
‘Doorstops,’ says Fred. What a joker.
‘Good, we need some more junk around here.’ She heads back to the kitchen.
Fred and I make our way along the chequerboard tiled hallway past enormous bookcases full of cracked leather-bound books, ancient orange and green Penguin paperbacks and travel guides, and walls jammed with eighteenth century engravings, wonky maps and framed, fossilised lace and embroidered samplers. Fred pulls out a book, The Chrysalids, by John Wyndham, and nearly drops it in surprise.
‘That’s awesome.’
He shows me. A wasp has built its multi-pod cocoon along half the length of the book,the curly,delicate nest gluing the page together like cement. The original inhabitants are long go
ne. A feather-light desiccated spider nestles in one of the little caves.
‘You can keep it,’ I say.
‘Don’t the books belong to the trust, too?’
‘They’ve taken away all the valuable ones. These are mostly pretty worthless, all filled with mildew or something.’
We continue upstairs. The flowering carpet’s dark colours remind me of a fairy book illustration from somewhere just outside the edge of my memory. Each step has a copper carpet rod. It must have been a pain for Carpet Miracles.
Fred stops for a good look. He’s still getting his head around this joint. Even the upstairs landing is a kingdom of junk. He steps back, kicking into an elephant foot stand full of old umbrellas and walking sticks.
‘It sucks that you can’t sell some of this. You’d be set up.’
‘It’s a very Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink sort of bummer,’ I say.
‘Very,’ he agrees.
That’s from a poem we had to study where people are lost at sea, dying of thirst, as if you couldn’t guess.
In my room Howard prepares for a snooze. This involves him walking around in small circles scraping and patting his bedding into shape. He’s very fussy and doesn’t relax until he’s satisfied. Then he curls up, heaves an almighty sigh and is snoring inside a second. I’m getting used to his sounds at night – it’s like having a little engine sleeping next to you.
‘When we got here, Howard ran upstairs and scratched like a maniac at the door of Adelaide’s room. When we let him in, he went and got that and followed me to my room.’
Howard cocks up one ear, as he always does when he hears his name.
‘He remembered where his bed was? That’s pretty good,’ says Fred.
‘And I think it reminds him of Adelaide. It’s a bunch of her old cardigans knotted together.’
Howard snuffles down deeper, listening and agreeing.
‘Who’s that?’ Fred asks, peering out the window.
There’s a guy with luggage, letting himself into the building at the foot of the garden.
‘Must be the stables guy. He gets to live out there for as long as he wants. Like us and the house.’
‘It’d be worth the trust’s while to knock off him and your mum.’
The same thought has occurred to me.
‘I’ve told her to watch her back. She says it’s the least of her worries.’
‘Which side’s Estelle on?’
‘Over there,’ I point to the left.
‘So, you’d be able to hear her if she’s in her garden.’
‘Yeah.’
He looks up and around.
‘You share a party wall with her,’ he says. ‘That’s something you’ve got in common.’
‘Knockout icebreaker, Fred. I’ll try that one.’
‘Where’s your laptop?’
‘School took it back. You know how they’re leased . . .’
I can see Fred wants to kick himself. He hasn’t had much time to adjust to my new no-money life.
‘I was emailing you from our friendly municipal library when you were away.’
‘This is bad.’
‘Bad for me,’ I say, desperately trying to lighten it up for him. ‘Means I have to see you in person . . . actually talk to you.’
‘What about your phone?’
‘Gone. But when I get a job, I’ll get a pre-paid.’
‘Where does that door go?’
‘It’s like a storeroom, airing cupboard, upstairs hot-water service, linen press sort of room.’
Fred tries the handle. It doesn’t open because I’ve locked it, and the key is in my pocket.
‘It’s jammed,’ I lie. Howard snorts. Even in his semiconscious state he’s onto me. How does he do that?
Fred heads off to do his holiday homework, chomping on a piece of wedding cake sample – it’s our only snack food – and I go back upstairs to feel bad all over again about my visit to the attic.
8
IT HAPPENED ABOUT A week ago, when my mother was getting frantic about ‘rodents’ and the impending council health inspection, which would mean she could, or could not, start operating her business.
We’d both been hearing the bumps in the night and even though it sounded more like possums or cats than rats to me, I said I’d check it out. That night I dreamt of morose health inspectors, large rats in suits carrying clipboards, stepping around the happy little attic rats who’d come down to party in the kitchen, and I woke to a distinct scratching noise followed by a bump from overhead. It sounded like something being dropped, and it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. I stuffed my head under a pillow but heard the scratching again. I sat up and dinted the pitch darkness with my torch. Paper- sharp slices of wind were sighing through gaps in the window frames, moving the heavy curtains gently, so they looked to be breathing in and out. I shivered with cold and horror, and zipped the light around the room once more.
There was a dark shape near the door – it was Howard doing the scratching. I put on a jumper, grumbling but happy to take him out – better by a long shot than cleaning up something biological in the morning. And besides, I’ve promised him he’ll never have to suffer the indignity of having to pee inside again.
As we walked along the landing there was another distinct bump from overhead.
The next night after dinner, when my mother was elbow deep in marzipan research, I went into the storeroom and climbed the ladder attached to the wall under a manhole. Fourteen rungs. The old-fashioned rounded ones. They dug in, even through sneakers. The ladder was set out only about six centimetres from the wall. When I got to the top and undid the stiff manhole bolt, something was weighing down on the cover. It wouldn’t budge. I gave it an awkward shove with my shoulder and head, and heard a crash from the other side as something heavy hit the attic floor.
I froze. Someone had tried to block this entrance to the attic. My mind spat through a kaleidoscope of nasty possibilities – psychotic criminals, hungry rats, ghosts taking the form of small children with vacant eyes, sick little smiles and pointy incisors . . . a vampire ghost? That’s just dumb. Ghosts don’t eat. It would have to be one or the other. Enough. I gave myself a mental smack on the side of the head, started breathing again, and ventured up another rung for a look.
I zipped the torch beam around. Nothing scuttled or charged from the blackness, so I hauled myself into the space.
Like the rest of Adelaide’s house, it was large, dusty, and full of stuff – mostly trunks and wooden storage crates. A box of books had been blocking the manhole cover and had tipped sideways and spilt when I shoved. Who had put it there? I walked around checking between trunks and bits of furniture. Whoever put the box there had either used another exit to get out of the attic, or they were still here. A wave of goosebumps shivered across my skin.
There must be another hatch down into the house. I found it hidden behind a huge camphor-wood chest, but it too had a heavy box on top of it. Much as I searched around, I couldn’t find a third access point back down into the house. It was creeping me out. I swung the torch beam up and looked into the roof cavity. There was the round window you could see from the street, but I couldn’t imagine anyone getting out that way.
As the beam of light washed back down the party wall, I noticed a gap in the brickwork, about a door’s width and half its height, blocked from the other side. This was the wall separating our attic space from Estelle’s. Looking more closely, I could see the gap was blocked by flattened cardboard removal car-tons. I gave a tentative push and they fell in with a bit of a crash. I stopped breathing, but there was no response to the noise, so I crawled on through.
This was not a space for rats, or possums, or even ghosts. I saw in a glance that it belonged to a girl. Estelle. I checked again, making sure I couldn’t hear anything, and shone the torchlight around. My heart thumped like a maniac. Of course I knew I was trespassing, and not just by being on someone else’s property – no, this
was a private space. Despite that, there was no way I was leaving without having a look around. I didn’t consciously decide to stay and snoop, I just did it.
There were candles everywhere – in a huge pair of blackened silver candelabras sitting in the middle of the floor, in tall crystal candlesticks, in small Venetian glasses. There was a large nest made up of brocade curtains, faded cushions and intricately patterned patchwork quilts. Next to it was a pile of books and a mohair rug.
On a small desk sat a glass paperweight, a miniature black lacquer Chinese cabinet with hand-painted ivory inlay panels – I can’t help the cataloguing, it’s all that time I spent with Posy – some very old notebooks or journals filled with delicate copperplate writing, a doll with a porcelain face, dressed in French sailor’s clothes, some exercise books and pens, a small bottle carved from pale green jade. Embroidered silk shawls decorated the walls. Estelle had tied ribbon loops onto the corners of the shawls and pinned them up with drawing pins. Overlapping Persian rugs half covered the unpolished boards. Some of the candles must have been scented because the place smelt like vanilla, and something spicy.
I opened a few of the cabinet’s drawers – a stash of lollies, some beads, a few little silk tassels, some pens and three dead Christmas beetles.
The sound of a door shutting loudly made me flick off the torch and listen as though I were one giant ear.
It was Estelle, singing loudly, the way people do when they’re attached to an iPod. She had a good voice.
Then I heard someone else, although Estelle obviously didn’t.
‘Estelle, Estelle! Estellle!’ Knock, knock, knock. Knock knock knock.
That must have penetrated because Estelle said, ‘What?’
