Haunting of Lily Frost

by Weetman, Nova

  ‘But why would it be colder up here? I thought hot air rises,’ I say, hoping he’ll pick up the clue.

  ‘Old house. Lots of draughts getting in, probably. Maybe we can patch it up a bit for you.’

  ‘Yeah, whatever.’

  ‘It takes a while to fit in,’ he whispers.

  ‘I don’t want to fit in.’ I know I sound like a whingeing brat, but I don’t care. ‘I don’t like it here, Dad.’

  ‘I know, honey.’

  ‘Do we have to stay?’

  ‘For the moment we do.’

  ‘Why? Can’t we just go home to the city?’

  ‘Lil, you know when I went away last year?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘I had a breakdown.’

  ‘What? I thought you were in Hong Kong.’

  ‘No. I had a breakdown. It was all too much and coming here was a way to change our lives.’

  ‘Why didn’t you tell us?’

  ‘You were just kids. I didn’t want to worry you.’

  ‘I was just a kid? And now I’m what?’

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  I don’t. I thought I was still a kid. Is he telling me because he thinks I’m old enough to cope with the information? I don’t want to know this sort of thing about my parents. They’re supposed to just be there.

  ‘So we’re stuck here, Lilian. Sorry.’

  ‘Lilian?’

  ‘Yeah. That is your name.’

  ‘Only when you’re cross with me.’

  ‘It’s three in the morning. I’m tired.’

  I try to shrug Dad’s arms away, because I don’t want him crowding me anymore. ‘Okay, thanks. Or not thanks. Whatever. I just want to go to sleep now.’

  ‘Sure, honey.’

  As he walks out, why do I feel like I’m drowning all over again and that his strong arms and lungs won’t do anything to save me now? It’s just me here, and a ghost with an agenda that I don’t understand. There’s no point trying to tell my parents anything, because their big plan is making a new life in a small town and trying to fit in.

  11

  looking for answers

  Dad and I are driving along in silence. All I can think about is the fact that Tilly is a ghost. She must be a ghost, which means she must be dead, which means that she didn’t run away like Danny said. She died. And if she died then surely her friends have to know more about it than they’re admitting to, because they’re the ones who told everyone she ran away.

  I’m not sure what Dad’s thinking about, but I’m really glad he’s letting me just sit. Normally in the car he’d be playing some awful middle-aged radio station and making us suffer through him singing along with some tragic song he loved when he was young, but today even that’s off.

  Driving back to the city from Gideon is just like it was when we’d been away on an overseas holiday for a month and home didn’t feel so homely for the first day or so. It’s not that Gideon seems like home, but ten days away from my old house has shifted the way I see it.

  The grass is patchy, the outside walls need painting and it looks bare and unfriendly. Almost like the new house did the first day we saw it. There’s a FOR SALE board out the front, with glossy, cleverly angled photographs of the kitchen (much smaller than it looks), my bedroom (much rattier than it looks) and the backyard (much narrower than it looks). There’s some stuff too about lifestyle and family and it being the ultimate house close to all the right schools and parks.

  As Dad stops the car, he reaches out and grabs my hand before I can make a run for it. ‘Why don’t you go and see Ruby, while I talk to the estate agent?’

  ‘I can see the agent if you like,’ I say, giving him my sweetest smile. ‘And then whisper loudly in a couple of ears about all the stuff that’s wrong. You know – crazy neighbours, rising damp, termites – and see if people are still interested in buying. What do you think?’

  I thought it was funny, anyway. But he looks irritated and lifts up his sunglasses to make sure that when he talks to me, I’ll be able to see his eyes. ‘Get out of the car.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ I say and salute him.

  I have to walk past the long line of people waiting to look through my house, and as I do I check them out. Boring, boring, yuppy, too posh, boring. The idea that one of these people will take up my old space, stick posters up on my walls, snore in my bedroom, dream in my house, is more upsetting than I’d expected.

  I scan faces, trying to find someone I’d be happy to let it go to. And there’s a kid – a girl with short-cropped hair. She’s holding a bunny, a ratty-looking thing, and standing behind the legs of a man. She looks about four. Stripy leggings, spotty top, a pair of shorts with flowers. Nothing quite matching, like she’s dressed herself in all her favourite things. She’s about the age I was when we moved into this house. About the age I was when I drowned in the next-door neighbour’s pool. She’d be no threat. Ruby wouldn’t be her friend the way she made friends with me. She can stay. She can have the house.

  When I look away, I see Ruby smiling at me. She’s obviously watched me checking everyone out. Before I can even make it to her front door, she rushes at me with a big fat Ruby hug. ‘Finally! I’ve been waiting all morning.’

  ‘Dad drove really slowly and we kept getting stuck behind trucks full of animals.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Enough to put you off eating meat.’

  She keeps squeezing me. I guess maybe she’s missed me as much as I’ve missed her. ‘Come on, let’s go inside.’

  We both start talking at once, gabbling over each other to get our apologies out.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I start.

  ‘No. I am,’ she says.

  ‘I’m more.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘How’s Tom?’

  She grins at me, her big brown eyes shining. I guess that’s what love looks like.

  ‘So you don’t like him then?’ I say trying to mess with her.

  ‘Who would’ve thought?’

  ‘I’m happy for you.’

  ‘I know you are.’

  ‘Is it good?’

  ‘Yeah. So good. He’s kind and funny and really hot and all the things I always thought he was.’ She looks over my shoulder, like she’s seeing him while she talks.

  ‘That’s a relief. It would’ve been a bummer if you’d wasted ten years thinking he was hot, only to find out he wasn’t.’

  ‘Even Mum likes him.’

  It’s strange how before all this – before me moving away and her hooking up with Tom – Ruby and I could talk non-stop for hours about anything. Now I feel weird hearing about it. It’s like it only happened because I wasn’t here. ‘Looks like I left at the right time.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I gave you space—’

  ‘Oh, Lily, that’s crap.’

  ‘Is it?’ I say under my breath. I know I’m angling for a fight. It’s what I do when I’m hemmed in and mad at the world, even though I understand it’s not Ruby’s fault.

  ‘It’s true, though. You and Tom might never have got together if I’d been around.’

  ‘Please. I haven’t seen you for ten days. Could we just not do this?’

  ‘Okay.’ I shrug as if I’m agreeing to have chocolate ice-cream instead of pistachio.

  As we head down the hallway I stop. Something’s different. It’s all changed. The couch is where the brown velvet chair was, the paintings are gone, and there’s a big red lumpy-looking lamp in the corner of the room.

  ‘Mum’s been cleaning –’

  ‘Oh.’ And this is what happens. I leave and everything keeps going. Soon I won’t know how anything looks, because it won’t be the way it was.

  ‘Are you crying?’ she says.

  ‘No. It was really glary in the
car.’

  ‘Crap.’

  ‘It was. I forgot my sunglasses.’

  ‘They’re on your head.’

  ‘I forgot they were on my head.’

  ‘Just because the couch moves doesn’t mean anything,’ Ruby says quietly.

  ‘It does.’

  ‘It doesn’t. It’s just a couch. If it had moved while you were still living next door, you wouldn’t have cared. In fact you probably wouldn’t have even noticed.’

  ‘But I’m not next door. And soon one of those skanky people out there will be.’

  ‘It’s just a couch,’ says Ruby, because really what else is there to say?

  ‘I know.’ And I wipe the tears away using my sleeve.

  ‘Please don’t blow your nose on your sleeve,’ she says.

  ‘I won’t. I’m not five.’

  ‘Sometimes you act like you are.’

  ‘Just because you’ve got a boyfriend –’

  ‘Just because you haven’t,’ she says meanly.

  ‘I don’t want one,’ I say, trying to defend myself.

  ‘Whatever.’

  Why don’t I tell her about Danny? Why don’t I share what happened and find a way to make sense of it with her. We sit on the edge of her bed, not quite touching. It’s like we’re just getting to know each other all over again.

  ‘So do you want to hear about Tilly’s ghost?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It was down at the river. It, she – she was dead – dripping wet skin – she took the hoodie off me.’

  ‘You sure it was a ghost?’

  ‘Totally. She had bluey-grey skin like she’d been dead for ages. And there were patches peeling off her face, and her hands were freezing.’

  ‘Lil –’

  ‘Yes, I know what you’re going to say. You’re going to tell me I’m making it up or something because I’m bored. Well I’m not. It happened.’

  Ruby stands up and walks over to the window. She leans her head on it and watches what’s happening outside.

  ‘Ruby?’

  ‘They’ve all gone,’ she says.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The skanky people next door.’

  ‘Oh. Right. So Dad’ll be here in a minute.’

  And he’ll take me back to Gideon and leave my best friend here because I can’t tell her I want her to come with me. I’m just angry with her.

  ‘Look, I didn’t think I’d be seeing ghosts,’ I say, ‘and I didn’t think you’d be hooking up with Tom, or that I’d be living in Gideon. I didn’t think any of this would happen. I thought I might get to go to camp, maybe paint my nails green and look forward to crashing some party. That’s as far as I’d got.’

  ‘That’s enough. You’re being a bitch. I didn’t cause any of this.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  She bangs her head softly on the window and I see her smile, like she’s trying not to, but it’s sort of bubbling out. And then she whirls round and laughs at me as I try not to laugh back.

  ‘You’re pathetic,’ she says.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Jealous? Really! Tom is a boy. He’s way cute and hot and I really like him, but you’re Lil. You’re my bestie. Don’t be jealous.’

  ‘You mean it?’ Again with the tears. What’s happening to me?

  ‘Don’t cry.’

  ‘I’m not, really.’ But we both know it’s so not true.

  She walks back, sits on the edge of the bed and tries to lean her head on my shoulder, but she’s so much shorter than me that it almost ends up on my waist. ‘So you saw a ghost.’

  ‘Yes. And she’s pissed off about something. She made me go down to the river and see her.’

  ‘The river? Why?’

  ‘Well ghosts haunt places that have some sort of significance to them,’ I say, hoping Ruby will make the leap.

  ‘Oh, Lil, the river – she drowned. Didn’t she? She’s not just missing.’

  I nod, so relieved it’s not just me thinking this. ‘That’s why I feel fingerprints and water marks on my body. She’s touching me. She’s dripping.’

  Ruby looks horrified. ‘She drowned that night and no one ever thought to look?’

  ‘And I have to find her body. That’s what she’s come back for.’

  ‘I think you should go to the police. Tell them you think she drowned.’

  ‘But what evidence have I got?’

  ‘Tell them it’s a hunch.’

  ‘Like they’re going to believe that.’

  ‘Make them.’

  ‘Do you believe me?’

  She nods, her eyes wide.

  So she did drown. Like I could have. Should have.

  She slides down onto the floor and drags her suitcase out from under her bed. It gets stuck and she belts it twice until it comes loose. Flinging open the lid, she starts piling crap into it. Whatever’s around her on the floor: clothes, shoes, books. Random stuff.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m coming.’

  ‘To Gideon?’

  ‘That was the plan anyway, wasn’t it? Till you went loopy and decided you’d punish me.’

  ‘I wasn’t punishing you. I just thought you’d rather hang with Tom for the weekend.’

  ‘Oh please. Does it hurt to be such a martyr?’

  ‘No. I like it. It suits me.’

  She laughs at me then and it’s almost back to the way it was before I left.

  ‘Do you really want to come and find a ghost with me?’

  ‘Can’t think of anything I’d rather do.’ She grabs the leather jacket her dad used to wear and zips herself in, then swings round with her hands out, pretending, I think, to hold a gun. ‘There. Scary enough?’

  ‘Is that supposed to be a gun?’

  ‘Might look like my hand, but it’s quite effective.’

  ‘I’ve got to tell you something.’

  ‘Now what? Too much information today.’

  ‘Danny kissed me.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He did. At the river.’

  ‘When?’

  I think about lying and telling her it was yesterday, but she’ll just find out and then I’ll be in real trouble. ‘Couple of days ago. I know, I should have told you.’

  ‘Was it a boyfriend kind of kiss?’

  I nod.

  ‘What aren’t you telling me?’

  ‘I don’t know. It all went a bit wrong. I kept asking questions about Tilly and he freaked out. I’m worried that he only kissed me because I look like her.’

  ‘Yeah, right, that makes sense.’

  ‘Well, it does. Why else would he kiss me?’

  ‘Oh, poor little Lil. No one wants to kiss her unless she looks like a dead girl.’

  ‘He doesn’t think she’s dead. No one does, except me, you and her mum.’

  She cocks her head as she takes in what I’ve just said and I realise I’ve gone too far, because she’ll work it out. She knows me so well.

  ‘You didn’t go and see her mum, did you?’

  ‘Look, we should go. Dad’ll be waiting.’

  ‘You did. Terrific. That’s a great thing to do. How did she take it when you told her that her daughter was dead?’

  ‘Oh you know –’

  ‘No. I don’t.’

  ‘She cried, but she agreed with me. She thinks she’s dead too.’

  ‘Terrific. Well, then, of course she is. Who needs evidence when you’ve got Lily Frost unpacking the facts?’

  ‘Point taken, it was dumb I know. I felt bad. I wouldn’t have done it if you’d been with me, so really it’s your fault that I’m alone and doing rash stupid things.’

  R
uby fishes around in her pocket and pulls out her phone. She holds it up like she’s a model displaying all the features. ‘This is a phone. It rings people. Even 196 kays away. And then when they answer, you can ask their advice before doing stupid things like visiting someone’s mother who you don’t even know.’

  Just as the sermon is almost finished, her phone actually rings and we both laugh as she tosses it into the air in fright.

  ‘It’s Tom.’

  ‘Well, answer it.’

  ‘Not in front of you.’

  ‘Yes in front of me.’

  ‘No. I’ll call him later.’

  ‘Ruby – you’re making me feel bad.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m just not ready to talk to him in front of you.’

  Sighing, I stand up, zip her suitcase shut, drag it out of the room and slam the door behind me so she can talk to her boyfriend in private.

  Before we leave, Dad checks that our mums don’t mind Ruby coming to Gideon for the weekend. They don’t mind at all. But mine does mind that the estate agent is suggesting they revise their asking price for the house. Apparently, despite the queue of people looking through it, there wasn’t as much genuine interest as they’d first hoped. Maybe nobody will want our house? Maybe we’ll move back. I’m keeping that thought to myself, though, because I know Dad’s pretty keen for the house to get a good price when it goes to auction in a few weeks.

  Rather than get stuck at the house talking to Mum or Max, Ruby asks Dad if he can drop us in town. She tells him she wants to check out my school, and that we’ll be back later.

  We wait until he’s driven off and then walk straight to the Gideon police station. Something happens as you enter a police station. You start to remember every bad thing you’ve ever done and display various tics and habits as you try to resist telling them about all the times you didn’t wear a bike helmet or the day you stole a chocolate bar from the supermarket when you were six. As we walk up to the counter, Ruby’s phone starts beeping and I shoot her a look.

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to turn them off in a police station? Can’t they interfere with equipment?’ I try to whisper as quietly as possible, but unfortunately the man behind the desk hears me, and smiles.