Danny’s mum must hear us talking, because the front door swings open and I look up into the face of a woman who is exactly like Julia, but thirty years older. ‘You must be Lil.’
‘Yeah. Ah, yes, Mrs Taylor. I’m Lil.’
Finally the shoelace surrenders and I can kick off one shoe, and start desperately working on the other. But I should probably stand up and greet her properly. I sort of hobble with the one shoe off, and (sure enough) green toenails popping out of the holes in my sock, and the other shoe still on.
‘Hi,’ I manage to say.
‘Come in. Julia’s in her room.’ Great. She assumes that because I’m a fifteen-year-old girl, I’m here to hang with Julia.
‘Just have to get this shoe off. I’d be no good in Japan.’
She looks down and then up, taking it all in. Clearly she likes her teenagers to be a bit neater than I am. ‘Japan?’
‘Mum, she means because they have to take their shoes off all the time.’
‘Yes. Well, I expect they don’t have laces.’
I can see exactly where Julia gets her sense of humour. Luckily, we must bore her, because she just disappears like she’s finished with us. I finally manage to rip the other shoe off, almost removing my heel in the process. Danny sighs, with relief I think. Maybe he thought he’d be here for another hour, waiting for me.
‘Come on, I’ll show you around.’ He seems older in his house. Maybe it’s because I wasn’t expecting him to live in a mansion, so now I see him differently. He walks down the hallway and I have to skip to keep up with him. As he passes various rooms, he indicates with a flick of his hand what they are. ‘Dad’s study. The lounge. The playroom. Spare bedroom.’
‘This place is massive.’
‘Yep.’
And it is. It not only has heaps of rooms, but they’re huge, too, as if a team of giants lives here. It seems crazy that you need all this space just for four people, but maybe they like having their own wing. I guess if I lived with Julia I’d be pretty happy not to run into her in the morning, and fight over whose turn it was to have the first shower.
‘Bathroom number three.’
I laugh at this. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Nup. We’ve all got one.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Dad jokes that it was his civic duty to keep the local builders in business for a year, so he built a huge house. Took them nearly two years in the end.’
‘You must almost be able to go a whole day without seeing each other.’
‘Almost.’
We zigzag down another hallway. This house is bigger than my new house and my old house put together. It’s not a particularly nice kind of big, though. Just big. It’s all cream and neat and there’s no stuff anywhere. I guess they’ve got a room they can store all their stuff in. The stuff room. We walk past a couple of ugly paintings and I can’t help but stop and look at them. One is a painting of a large green bowl with purple grapes cascading down the side. And the other is a flat bowl of red apples. They are the sorts of paintings you do when you’re learning. Everything slightly out of perspective and flat looking. Before I say anything I check the signature in the corner. Sure enough. There’s a J Taylor.
‘Julia’s?’
‘Julia the first.’
It takes a minute for me to work out what he’s saying. I must look confused because he adds, ‘My mum.’
‘Oh. Right. They’re both Julia.’
‘And this is my room.’ He walks in but I don’t. I can’t. It feels all too weird. ‘You can come in.’
‘Nah. It’s okay.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. Your mum.’
‘Lil, the house is huge. She never comes down here.’
‘Really?’
‘We can play a horrifically violent video game and you can go home scarred for life, if you like.’
‘Why didn’t you mention that before!’
And I start to walk in, feeling all right about being alone in the bedroom of a boy I hardly know, when I hear a voice behind me.
‘You’re everywhere I look.’
‘Oh, Julia.’
‘Don’t you have a home to go to? Oh yes, of course you do: it’s Tilly’s home.’
‘Jules. If you’re going to be a bitch, then shut your door.’
‘Why did you bring her here, Danny?’
I love it when people start arguing about me as if I’m not there. Particularly when there’s nowhere I can escape to.
‘Because I’m being friendly. You should try it.’
‘I already have friends. I don’t need any more.’
Sighing, Danny turns to me. Maybe he’s realising it was a really bad idea to invite me over. ‘Let’s get out of here, Lil.’
‘Fine by me.’ As I walk away from Julia, or Jules or whatever she wants to be called, I wish I’d peeked into her room before going. I love sniffing round in people’s houses, and I doubt I’ll ever be invited back here, so there probably won’t be another chance.
Danny’s mum is on the phone when we walk past. She holds her hand up as if she wants us to stop, but Danny just waves back and grabs my hand, like he’s pulling me out of there. I feel so weird holding his hand, and I’m almost relieved when he lets go so I can put on my shoes. I’m too embarrassed to look at him, and focus completely on tying my laces.
‘Sorry about Julia.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘She’s been like this since Tilly—’
‘I probably would be too if my best friend, Ruby, went missing.’
‘She didn’t go missing. She ran away.’
‘Sorry, I thought – well, Julia said she was missing.’
‘Yeah. Well Julia is wrong.’ His tone is sharper than I’ve heard from him before. What does it matter whether she went missing or she ran away? Maybe it’s easier to bear if you know someone left voluntarily. Although, that’d make it worse, maybe.
‘Are you angry with her?’
‘Can we stop talking about Tilly?’
Any closeness that I felt with Danny when he grabbed my hand before has gone. Now I feel awkward and nervous around him, and wonder what else we can talk about.
We walk down the long drive. I can feel my phone vibrating in my pocket and I wonder if it’s Ruby. I’m not sure how Danny would react if I answered it. He might be one of those people who get offended if you answer a phone or a text when you’re with them. I don’t know him well enough, and anyway I don’t really want to talk to her when I’m with him. Now in particular, because I don’t know what she’s ringing to tell me. The problem is, if I don’t answer, she’ll assume I’m sulking or worse: that I’m jealous, and then it’ll put even more distance between us.
‘My phone’s beeping. Do you mind?’
‘Go for it.’
Of course by the time I grab it out of my pocket, it’s stopped. One missed call from Ruby.
‘You can call them back if you want –’
‘It’s okay. I’ll just text her.’
Texting while I walk has never been my strong point, but I’m trying to do it as fast as I can so Danny doesn’t see the message, and it doesn’t take up too much time.
‘With Danny. L8r.’
I smile as I hit send. It’s pretty much what she sent me yesterday and I wonder if she’ll assume I’m messing around.
As we’re about to walk out of the driveway, a dog starts barking behind us. I immediately start to hurry, but Danny spins round as the dog throws himself up onto him.
‘It’s okay, it’s just Luther,’ he says as he wraps his arms around the dog and pulls it close. It’s the dog from the river. My whole body has stiffened. I often have this feeling when I’m around big dogs, especially if they’re like this, because they remind me of the one that terro
rised me when I was little.
‘He’s friendly.’ Danny smiles at me as his face is getting licked.
I don’t care if he’s friendly.
Luther starts sniffing my fingers and I pull them away, hating the feel of his hot breath on my skin. He mustn’t like my quick movements, because he snarls at me, rolls his lips back and shows his teeth.
Danny seems surprised. ‘Luther!’ he says sharply as he pulls the dog away. I feel stupid being scared, but I can’t help it.
‘Sorry! He’s not normally like this.’
‘Dogs and I don’t really—’
‘No worries.’ Danny stands up, clicks his fingers and Luther bounds back down the drive. As Danny turns to look at me, he smiles. ‘River or river, Lil?’
‘Let me think – river!’
‘There’s nowhere else, really. That’s where we usually go after school. It’s pretty much the only place to hang.’
‘Do you swim there?’
‘There’s a spot where it’s safe enough to – but not where you saw us at the bridge.’
I’m breathing more normally, now that we’re off his family’s property and walking back into town. Mum’s probably wondering where I am. She was never home until after five when we lived in the city, so she didn’t have a clue what I got up to after school, but now she’ll know that I wasn’t there when Max arrived home.
‘It’s weird. If I was walking around in Melbourne, we’d meet up with heaps of kids from school.’
‘Yep. Here there’s just cows.’
He’s right. There are cows – lots of them – mooing at us from the fence lines.
‘So why did you move here?’
‘Dad was out of work and Mum got a retrenchment package, so they thought it made sense.’
‘No one moves here.’
‘Yeah, so I worked out.’
‘I’ve been nagging my parents for years to leave, but they won’t. They love it. They’re a bit like Julia. They know everyone and everything. But I’m planning to leave as soon as I’ve finished school.’
‘That’s three years away.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘No one I know thinks that far in advance – not much further than some party that’s coming up.’
‘Well, it’s different here. Most of us want to escape.’
We’re on the edge of town now and I’m glad we don’t have to walk past my house, just in case Mum’s watching from the window to see where I am.
Two weeks ago I didn’t even know Danny, and now we’re walking through town together like we’re almost friends. Ruby and I have a few friends who are boys, but none of them are cute. They’re just boys we happen to be friends with because we like the same music or movies or something. But I don’t hang on my own with boys very often. It’s usually in a group, so this is a bit strange.
Danny slows down. ‘That’s old Samuel’s house.’
It’s even more falling down than ours is. A total ghost house, it could’ve come straight out of a movie.
‘We used to knock on his door and run away.’
‘Nice.’
‘Yeah, he loved it.’
‘Does he still live there?’
‘Uh-huh. He must be ninety, but he’s pretty scary now. No one plays there anymore.’
There’s an old lady in the front garden of the house next door. She’s kneeling on the grass and pulling out weeds. Her garden is immaculate. Beds of flowers all arranged in colours and patterns, with pinks and reds together, yellows and oranges, and lots of green.
As we pass, she looks up and smiles. ‘Afternoon, Danny.’
‘Hi, Mrs Cotton.’
‘Who’s that you’re with, then?’
Danny doesn’t give me the chance to say anything: he’s already talking for me. ‘This is Lily Frost.’
‘Ah yes. You’re new. Moved into the Sarenson house.’
‘That’s right,’ I get in quickly.
‘Nice that Danny’s taking you under his wing.’
The way she says it makes me feel like it’s not nice at all, like it’s something to be scared of. Danny fusses next to me, ready to go.
I’m ready too. ‘Nice to meet you,’ I say and start walking.
She doesn’t bother to answer. She’s already busy with her weeding. As we move away from her, Danny whispers, ‘She’s a pain. Knows everything that’s going on. She would have already known who you were. I hope Julia doesn’t end up like her.’
The thought makes me laugh. ‘No chance.’
‘You never know in this town, Lil. It does weird things to the best people.’
As we walk across the oval, some kids are kicking a footy to their dad. I remember doing that. Max was crap at it, but I loved it. The feel of the leather Sherrin in my hands. Booting it off my foot and watching it fly. Sometimes Max wouldn’t even come, so I’d have Dad all to myself for an hour, just kicking the footy back and forth, loving the rhythm, desperate for each kick to be better than the one before. And then Dad changed jobs and he wasn’t around much for a while, so that came to an end.
One of the kids kicks the ball and it bounces along the ground and stops not far from us. I can’t help it – when I scoop it up, it feels the same in my hands. I try to remember what to do. I drop it on my foot and boot it as far as I can, forgetting for a second that it’s been a while. My shoe flies off, following the ball into the air and then down. ‘Oh, crap!’
I hear one of the kids laugh, but at least Danny doesn’t. Instead, he runs off to grab my shoe. As he hands it to me, he smiles. ‘Did you forget to do up the laces?’
‘I know, crazy hey. It took nearly an hour to untie them and then one kick of the footy and it flies off.’
‘Next time, I’ll make sure I have a footy by the front door so you can get them off in a hurry.’
Next time? I’m so embarrassed that I fiddle around with my shoe, pretending that it takes more effort than it does, so I don’t have to look at him. But when I do finally look up, both sneakers back on, he’s grinning at me. I can’t think of anything witty to say, so I just start heading down to where the river is, and hoping the football doesn’t get kicked in my direction again. This time I’ll ignore it.
As we slide down behind the oval I get that prickly feeling like I did when I first went into the attic. Not fear exactly, just something that’s making me wary. It’s probably the cold air. The river’s low down in the valley, so of course the air’s colder. Danny walks forward, into the thickest part of the bush, and the branches scratch at my arms. And as we push through, we leave the picnic area behind and reach the track where the air’s even colder.
‘This place –’
‘I know. I never used to come here on my own.’
‘It’s too quiet.’
‘Not really. If you listen, you’ll hear all sorts of sounds, but they’re not human.’
He’s right. The breeze is gently blowing through the trees, making all the leaves move.
As we round a bend to the river, my heart starts racing. Something’s wrong. I’m not sure I should be here with Danny. There’s a flash, a figure, something in the bushes and I spin round, frightened, trying to see what it is. Danny stops. ‘Lil?’
Staring into the bush, I wait for it to come back. My whole body’s tense and ready to run from whatever it is. The feel of something on my arm makes me scream.
‘Lil. It’s just me –’
I look down and see his fingers on my arm.
‘It’s okay. There’s nothing there.’
‘There was. Something.’
‘Probably a possum.’ His fingers still grip my arm, but he smiles at me, trying to get me back from wherever I’ve gone.
‘It’s okay,’ he says softly.
‘I don’t like this place.’
He sta
rts leading me along the track, and I’m still shooting looks left and right to see whatever is watching me. My head hurts. I just don’t feel right.
Danny slides down the dusty slope to the river. He turns back for me, looking up, I want to follow him, but I don’t like this place. I can still see that face screaming under water.
‘Lil –’ His voice drags me back and without thinking about it, I step off, my bum hits the ground and I slide down three metres, crashing into his legs and almost sending him sprawling backwards into the river. I grab his jeans and the two of us laugh, embarrassed at the mess of arms and legs. I jump up first, brushing off the dirt, and step away from him, wanting to take charge of where I am.
The river is moving slowly. I watch a stick ease its way into the edge of the current and then spin once and drift dreamily downstream. ‘Why can’t you swim here?’
‘There are heaps of tree roots and rocks. It’s dark water.’
Danny grabs for my hand again. It’s soft and warm in mine. He leads me out onto the bridge; the rattly timber boards are loose at points, missing a nail or just old and fragile.
‘Where’s the rest of the bridge?’
Danny shrugs. ‘It broke years ago in a huge storm. They were supposed to fix it, but –’
‘So how do you get across? Can you jump?’
‘You can. But you shouldn’t.’
‘Have you tried?’
‘Once.’
‘Did you make it?’
With arms stretched ridiculously wide, he grins as if to say, “I’m here aren’t I?”
‘So if I ran really fast along the bridge and leapt across, do you think I’d make it?’
‘Maybe. Maybe not.’
‘I bet kids do it all the time.’
Instead of answering, he leans against the wobbly railing, grins at me and then delivers a huge and crazy howl at the water. Then he looks over his shoulder.
Haunting of Lily Frost Page 11
