Afterlight

by Lim, Rebecca

  So that was to be the modus operandi. No visible bruising. I’d just be unable to sit, stand or eat for a while.

  There were to be no miracles from me today; that was clear. Claudia administered a painful nipple cripple while I was down and that was the signal for everyone to pile on, kicking me in the ribs, the guts, the chest, the pelvis.

  ‘She’s got a lower pain threshold,’ I heard someone snort, ‘than even Linda Jelly.’ I think I blacked out in record time.

  And before I knew it, I’d woken in a puddle of my own mucus to the sight of Jordan Haig looking down on me. As I stared at him through a fog of hot tears, it occurred to me that maybe I’d died and what I was seeing was the last crazed imaginings of my almost lifeless brain. But then he crouched down and touched me, and I flinched. Instantly, pain began to sing again through my body.

  The three stooges were long gone. It was just him and me among the gym mats and it was like my deepest nightmare had come to pass. Jordan Haig, the most beautiful guy this side of Floyd Parker, here in the gymnasium storeroom. Alone, too, as if guided by satellite, a strange look on his face. What was he doing here?

  ‘You, uh, okay?’

  He sounded uncomfortable, almost awkward. He helped me to sit up as I wiped my face on the back of my sleeve, and I numbly registered that, for five seconds at least, we’d been holding hands. Now if that wasn’t miraculous, then nothing was.

  I was too beat up to speak, and for a moment I could have been Linda Jelly: ashamed to be seen this way, but so abjectly grateful at the same time. When I was finally on my feet, Jordan backed away with his hands up in a curious gesture of surrender. It was like something you’d see partway through an old Saturday afternoon Western, where the guy under the white flag approaches the enemy, delivers his message, then retreats, hoping he won’t be shot in the back. I’d never seen Jordan so uneasy, almost like he was afraid of me, and it made a tiny bit of my bashed-in brain take notice.

  He waited for me to stumble out behind him then shut the storeroom door behind us. ‘We’re nothing,’ he muttered, not looking me in the eye. ‘I don’t know how much you can do, or what you want, but it goes no further, okay?’

  Before I could even start to frame an answer to any of that, he walked off with his head down and his hands in his pockets.

  He sure knows what to say to a girl, I thought, the floor ducking and weaving under my feet.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ snapped Mrs McKendry at me as I huddled in the back row, nursing a balled-up, bloody tissue. It was the third period of the day and I’d already suffered stoically through Biology, my eyes on the back of Jordan Haig’s head as he gave an intelligent, off-the-cuff summary of what an onion epidermis actually did. He’d put his words straight into practice, his eyes skimming straight past mine as we’d all taken our seats.

  We were truly nothing. That hurt almost more than my ribs did.

  I was trying to put it all together—how had he come to be there?—but none of the pieces fit. They weren’t even from the same puzzle. And now Mrs McKendry was trying to get me to solve a probability question before a live audience—who almost certainly knew what Claudia and her goons had done to me. It was humiliating. I couldn’t hold my head up properly and my nose had started to bleed. Stress sometimes brings on nosebleeds with me, which just added to my general, dazzling allure.

  ‘We all know what you’ve been up to, Sophie,’ Mrs McKendry added hatefully, ‘you busy little Samaritan. But that doesn’t excuse you from telling me what proportion of smarties in that cone full of smarties is likely to be blue.’ She drew a ring around the complicated looking diagram of a cone (r = 100 cm) that she’d drawn up on the whiteboard.

  Blue smarties? At a freakin’ time like this?

  A feeling rose up in me that was pretty close to white-hot, exterminate-anything-in-my-path rage. It was a weird sensation: I was almost high with anger. My hands were shaking as I gathered up my books. She could take that cone and its load of flipping smarties of many colours, I told myself, and—

  Knowing I’d pay for it later in a million different horrible ways, I just left the room. Even surprised myself. Held my head up as far as my neck would let me and staggered out the door.

  To my amazement, no one tried to stop me, though it was a sea of open mouths, wall-to-wall. Biddy had told me that there was still a rumour going around after Monday’s phenomenon-in-the-toilets that I might have somehow developed super powers. The Hatherlea thing had only intensified the speculation. So even Mrs McKendry let me pass without a word.

  Jordan Haig and I came face-to-face in the deserted second floor corridor where all the Year 12s had their lockers. What he was doing there, I did not know, but we had to stop meeting like this. It was bad for my heart. I took a breath that hurt right down to my toes.

  He did a double take at the exact same moment, shooting me a look of such pure loathing that I almost recoiled.

  How did I deserve that?

  He snarled, ‘I can see her, you know. And I know what she’s trying to do.’

  The words set off fresh shocks in my system.

  ‘You tell her to keep away from me.’

  That’s when I realised Eve was standing right behind me looking at him looking at me. And she was smiling.

  Shit, he could see her. She’d suddenly chosen to reappear right here, right now, and he could see her?

  ‘You can see her?’ I gasped, forgetting that Jordan and I were nothing and shouldn’t even be speaking.

  Why was Eve smiling?

  It didn’t make her look any more…human. If anything, the look on her face was almost greedy. Whatever it was, it wasn’t an expression of joy, nothing as simple as that.

  Jordan’s look was utterly disparaging. ‘Of course I can see her.’ He grabbed his pack and skateboard and slammed his locker door. ‘You never let them in, or this is what happens.’

  ‘You mean, all this time…’ I scrambled for words, for understanding.

  ‘Whatever she wants, tell her I’m not interested,’ Jordan shot back, averting his gaze. He pressed his fingers into the skin of his left arm fiercely, from shoulder to wrist, before hitching his pack higher.

  Why was he so agitated? And what was he talking about? What would Eve want with him when she had me? Suddenly, I had so many questions I couldn’t get them out fast enough. But Jordan was already walking away.

  ‘Wait, wait!’ I shouted at his back. ‘You tell her. She doesn’t speak to me. She doesn’t even smile at me. She just makes me do things. Why? Why?’

  Jordan just hunched his shoulders and kept walking, which is when the haunting of Jordan Haig officially began.

  I watched, open-mouthed, as lockers erupted as he passed, their contents exploding outwards in step with Jordan’s departure but somehow never hitting him. It was like he moved in a protective bubble or force-field as he wedged his skateboard under one armpit and pressed and pressed on his arms; the left first, then the right. Exercise books, rulers, runners, folders, phones, diaries—all seemed to change course before they could touch him.

  The incredible noise caused classroom doors up and down the corridor to shoot open in time for everyone to ge
t a load of their personal belongings raining down from the sky. With me just standing there like a stunned mullet, at the far end.

  Of course, by then, Jordan was gone and there was nothing I could say that anyone would believe except, maybe, Abracadabra?

  The point where the principal sent me home—after telling me not to darken the doors of the school for a week—was the point where The Star Hotel officially came under siege.

  Just after the first evening news bulletin, a whole lot of rubber-neckers who never usually went near a pub—you could spot people like that a mile off—came in to see me pour drinks at the bar like I could turn beer into solid gold. As the hours wore on, regulars couldn’t achieve the corner of a bar stool, let alone a table. Gran was even forced to put two hired gorillas on the door and institute a red velvet rope to keep the hopefuls in line. A red velvet rope. Like my life had suddenly turned into the hottest VIP nightclub in town, because they’d all come to see me.

  I winced as the TV over the bar proclaimed me The Saviour of Sancerre Street and flashed up a street view of The Star. ‘Talk is,’ a female reporter said brightly from right outside, ‘a busload of pilgrims from Far North Queensland is planning to drop by the pub after seeing the Pope conduct a public mass at the racecourse next month. They’re bringing sick babies and cancer sufferers. Hoping Sophie “Storkie” Teague will “lay on the hands” and see if anything happens. Back to you, Garry.’

  ‘Imagine,’ Gran slung at me dryly as we pulled beers back-to-back, barely able to keep up with the orders, ‘the Pope and you, on a double bill.’

  ‘I’d come and watch if that happened,’ Dirty Neil said, licking his lips as I passed just out of his reach with an inward shudder. ‘Make a day of it.’

  Gran gave him the stink eye as she swiped his empty glass off the counter. ‘The idea! She couldn’t heal a cold sore if she tried.’ She addressed the wall of faces pressed up closest to the bar. ‘The Council’s even called me about permit issues and taking out extra insurance if we decide to go ahead with a—what did they call it?— public blessing. And did I tell you how much I hate the paparazzi? They’ve stuffed the neighbourhood up good and proper. You can’t drive anywhere without a bedsheet over your head with holes cut out in it for your eyes.’

  As people laughed, someone yelled out, ‘Love!’ trying to climb up over the countertop, ‘Give us a selfie?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Lay on the hands? I’d love a laying on of the hands.’

  ‘Got no tits or bum to speak of, does she?’

  Panicked, I backed away as people kept calling out and filming me with their cameras right out in front of my face. But there was nowhere to go behind the bar and I yelled, ‘Gran?’

  I could hear Linda Jelly unloading on live TV about the endemic bully culture at Ivy Street High. The reporter cut next to Claudia P., who said primly on camera through shiny pink lips that Sophie Teague was a known Satan worshipper. Mrs McKendry added eagerly that I was easily the worst student she’d ever taught in her twenty-three years of maths teaching. ‘And to make matters worse, she’s extremely insolent.’

  Gran was saying, ‘…And I’ve had a gutful of people trying to sneak in claiming they’re delivery boys or C-list Aussie soap stars! We’ve even had reporters going through our rubbish for evidence that Soph’s “special”.’

  ‘Gran?’

  ‘…And I’ve told every celebrity manager that’s called to bugger off in five different ways. Said I won’t start living off my only grandchild like a maggot until I’m at least eighty and demented…’

  ‘GRAN?’ I bawled, my voice loud and shaky. And, I swear, the entire room stopped dead.

  Gran turned, mid-sentence, took one look at my face and said, ‘Right, this is not a zoo and she’s not an exhibit for everyone’s delectation.’ She flapped the end of her black apron at me. ‘You, go upstairs. You lot, if you’re not drinking—the door’s over there.’

  The raucous laughter of strangers followed me up the stairs. The one bright point of my night was that no one seemed to know about Jordan’s involvement, mainly because he didn’t appear to be talking to anyone about anything. And I was glad about that, because the way I was feeling, I didn’t really want to find out his opinion of me over free-to-air.

  The hoopla about me was even bigger than the city shooting that had set everything in motion and brought Eve into my life in the first place. That story had been huge—Imagine that happening, here! In this town! The headlines had screamed for days: Ice! Vodka shooters! Bikers! Strippers! Roid Rage!

  But my story was bigger, because it was an excuse for every wacko psychic spoon-bending medium to come out of the woodwork with their take on things. Somehow, they were linking me to the Kennedy assassinations, recent sightings of alien spacecraft in the Northern Territory and a serial killer that had been plaguing Western Australia for decades. It was wild.

  The sceptics were having a field day, too. Everyone suddenly had an opinion on Storkie Teague. The best was when some ex-Department of Defence genius said over the radio talkback, which Cook insisted on having on in the kitchen, that they should hook me up to a stealth bomber and have me end the War on Terror single-handedly.

  The irony of it was that what Eve had done to my life had pushed her own story right out of the press, and there was no one I could tell that to.

  Eve had been lying low since that afternoon’s fireworks at school but at 1.27am she appeared in my bedroom. Gran had just gone to bed for the night, the place was dark, and only two of the major networks still had a news van parked outside. It was as good a time as any to talk, if that’s what you could call it.

  I had to try to remember to keep my voice down. ‘You go away,’ I hissed, ticking off on my fingers. ‘The kid, the old guy and the cat woman: third time’s supposed to be a charm, according to the Book of Joss. I’ve done enough. All this attention is the exact opposite of what I am about.’ My reputation had taken a real hammering at Ivy Street since the locker Armageddon had occurred. After I’d regained the safety of my bedroom, Biddy Cole had called me to relay breathlessly that the Christian Students Group—that holds prayer meetings every Tuesday lunchtime—was putting together a petition to have me expelled for being a practising witch. She usually only called me when there was no one else left to spread gossip to. It had an extra dimension of weirdness to have it be about me.

  Eve listened to me rant, stony-faced, then did something she’s never done before. She turned her back on me, mid-sentence, and walked straight through my bedroom door.

  Despite everything, I was impressed.

  I sat and stared at the door after that for ages. She didn’t reappear. Okay, I thought, that’s it then. And I thought it was. I actually breathed out. So she’d come to say Goodbye. Job done.

  But something still made me get up and open the door. I got the shock of my life when I saw her standing at the end of the upstairs hallway, gleaming. She’d been waiting for me.

  She’d never moved much in my presence before now. Maybe she was getting stronger. I liked to think of her as more passive-aggressive than direct action, but here she was, practically jiggling on the spot.

  While I continued to stand there, paralysed, she began to wink in and out with an
almost urgent rhythm. As I watched, she reappeared on the lower landing, just beside the jukebox where the stairs turned and went down into the corridor near the public washrooms. Then she flickered back into sight at the end of the hallway, doing that twice more until I realised she was asking me to follow her. Every hair on my body must have risen in horror. It was dark outside.

  Eve flickered back into sight on the jukebox landing then reappeared at the end of the hall. Flick then back. Flick then back, the movements growing so fast she was almost a blur. I inhaled shakily, suddenly getting it. She was pleading with me the only way she knew how. How often had I been voiceless myself? How often had I needed someone just to stop and take notice and ask me what it was that I really wanted?

  For a fleeting second, I also grasped the message Eve had been trying to convey to Claudia P. in the upper girls’ toilets. Eve was my mother. She was me. Eve’s story could be my own: Girl goes missing, nobody gives. It wasn’t really about what Eve wanted me to do. It was about me working out what had happened to her to make her this way. Light bulb moment. Nobody could do the job but me, dark or no dark, because nobody was looking for her now; I’d made sure of that.

  ‘Wait! Wait!’ I called out softly, grabbing a hoodie, jamming on my socks and runners and sticking a flashlight into the pocket of my trackies because I don’t glow or see in the dark the way Eve can.

  7

  Sensibly, Eve did her next disappearing trick right through the back door of The Star, which leads to a narrow, cobbled laneway that runs up the back of the pub and the six rundown, double-storey Victorian terrace houses next door. We were out of Sancerre Lane and turning out of Sancerre Street before any of the overweight newsmen in the parked media vans would have had any idea we were gone.