Only Daughter

by Anna Snoekstra

  Nothing had changed in the lounge room either. Couches remained an awkward distance apart and the wooden doors closed over the television so her parents could pretend they didn’t have one. Satisfied, she went into the kitchen. Whatever it had been, it was definitely gone now.

  Paul and Andrew sat next to each other on the round kitchen table, a box of Coco Pops between them and their bowls filled with brown milk. They were laughing like mad, still in their shorty pyjamas with their dark red hair sticking up at weird angles. Bec felt a sudden stab of love for them. She longed to ruffle up their hair, but she knew they would find it patronizing.

  “Ready?” Paul asked.

  “Yep,” said Andrew.

  They picked up the bowls of chocolate milk.

  “One…two…three!”

  They both began chugging down the milk from their bowls; throats working, brown drops falling onto the table.

  “Done!” screamed Andrew, dropping his bowl down and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

  “Oh, shit!” Paul yelled, the word sounding forced from his mouth. They looked at Bec for a moment to see if she’d get him in trouble for using it, then couldn’t hold in their laughter.

  “You guys are disgusting!” she said, but she was smiling, too. The horror of last night was starting to wear off.

  “You look like Hitler!” she said to Paul, who still had a brown milk moustache on his top lip.

  “Goot a morgan!” he said, making Andrew burst into giggles again. She shook her head and poured out her own sugar-free Muesli.

  “What are you doing today, Becky?” asked Andrew.

  “I’m going to go meet Lizzie in the city.”

  “Can we come?” asked Paul straightaway. Two sets of identical pale blue eyes fixed on her. She knew they must be really bored. They’d been on summer holidays for two months now and they weren’t allowed to go any farther than the local shops by themselves. Her mom was so overprotective, she thought, as though their suburb was the only safe place in the world. It was Canberra, for God’s sake. She didn’t know why they just didn’t go out anyway. She wouldn’t tell on them, that was for sure, but she didn’t want to suggest it. Somehow that felt wrong.

  “Please?” Paul said.

  She felt bad, but she really needed to talk to Lizzie about what had happened last night, and she couldn’t do that with her little brothers running around everywhere. Plus, there was another thing she had to do with Lizzie that would be impossible with them around.

  “Sorry, guys,” she said. “Next time.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Well, I’m at work tomorrow but how about Sunday?”

  “Okay,” said Andrew. But she could tell they were both upset; the smiles were gone. Bec hated upsetting her brothers. It did something to her heart that nothing else could.

  “We can go to the pool if you want?”

  “And you won’t tell us off if we bomb?”

  “Nope. Cross my heart,” she said, miming a cross over her chest. They looked at each other and then turned to her, beaming.

  “Awesome,” said Paul. She patted them both on the head, which made them groan but she couldn’t help it, and went upstairs to get dressed.

  Lizzie was waiting for her on a bench in Garema Place, a few feet away from the Silver Cushion. Canberra was filled with weird sculptures, but this one was Bec’s favourite for some reason. It looked like a giant half-full wine bag propped on some black steps. In summer the sun reflected off its metallic silver surface so it hurt to look at it and definitely hurt to touch it. Bec plopped down on the bench next to Liz.

  “Why are you all the way over here?” she asked.

  “Emos,” she said, and Bec looked over. Four teenagers with striped black-and-red socks, bad eyeliner and floppy hair sat around the Silver Cushion.

  “I worry it’s contagious,” Lizzie said, shuddering. Bec could tell she meant it, too; there was nothing Lizzie hated more than bad clothes. That’s why they worked so well as best friends; they were like each other’s perfect accessory. Today they both had on summer dresses and brown sandals; they didn’t need to call each other. They were just effortlessly coordinated. Not just in clothes, but everything. It was as if they were made of the same stuff, as if they had the same heart.

  If she hadn’t already sent the message, she wouldn’t have told Lizzie about last night. The image of them sitting there was perfect: two carefree, pretty teenagers ready for anything the endless summer threw at them. The shadow in her room didn’t fit with that.

  “So what happened?” asked Lizzie, and the perfect image flickered and died.

  “Talk and walk?”

  “Could it have been your brothers just trying to freak you out?” asked Lizzie, after Bec had briefly explained what had happened.

  “No, no way. They would have been wetting themselves laughing if they managed to scare me that much. Plus, it didn’t feel, you know, human.”

  “So you think it’s, what, like a poltergeist?”

  “I think, like a specter. Not a ghost or spirit, but something evil and solid that’s not meant to be there.”

  “Wow,” said Lizzie, not quite looking at her, “how horrible.”

  She was worried Lizzie might laugh and call her crazy, but she seemed just as genuinely shocked as Bec.

  “It was horrible.”

  “Do you think it will happen again? Maybe you should stay at mine tonight, dude?”

  “Maybe. Ugh, I don’t even want to think about it anymore.”

  “I know something that would take your mind off it.” Bec recognized the glint in Lizzie’s eye.

  “I thought you’d never ask!”

  They were mucking around as they ran up the last few steps of the escalator. The white facade of the department store shone in front of them. They stopped laughing abruptly as they walked into the store.

  The most important thing when shoplifting is to be as quietly confident as possible. Bec had learned that in the early days. The moment you start looking shifty or laughing too loudly, a security guard is shadowing you and that’s your chance blown for the day.

  The second most important thing is to pick something with a lining. Bec had a look through the racks in the teenager section. Trying to find a label her mother would know was worth a lot of money. Scanlan & Theodore, perfect. She was getting so good at this it was almost unconscious. She looped the straps from the dress behind onto the hanger in front. It now looked as though there was one dress on the hanger, where in fact there were two. The maximum for a change room was six. So she quickly picked five other bulky dresses. The thin silky fabric was barely visible amongst the thick knits and ruffles of the other dresses. The harassed-looking girl at the changing rooms counted her hangers without really looking, gave her a red piece of plastic with the number six on it and ushered her through.

  Bec pulled the silky fabric over her head and looked at herself in the mirror. She would have taken it either way, but it was nice when it actually suited her. This one was a teal colour, which looked pretty against her pale skin, and the soft folds hung nicely from her figure. She’d have to find some excuse to wear it in front of Luke. She slipped it off again and took the little pair of scissors out of her handbag, cutting the lining neatly around the plastic anti-theft tag attached. When it came off cleanly, she slipped it into the pocket of one of the other skirts and rolled up the dress and put it in her handbag. She’d come in with six hangers and she came out with the same.

  “Sorry, they just didn’t look right,” she said to the shop assistant, who obviously couldn’t care less.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked Lizzie, who was waiting for her.

  “Nah. Let’s go.”

  * * *

  The air outside felt even hotter after the air conditioning inside the department store. It was windy, too, rubbish and dead leaves slapping against their bare ankles as they walked. The adrenaline abruptly left Bec’s body and exhaustion took its place.

/>   “What did you get?” she asked Lizzie.

  “Two Marc’s dresses. I’ll show you later. I was just going to get one, but I knew that girl wouldn’t even notice if I came out with nothing but hangers. What about you?”

  “Scanlan & Theodore. Just one, but it was meant to be like three hundred.”

  “Nice!”

  Bec was beginning to sweat. She could taste the salt collecting on her top lip. She rubbed her hand over the back of her neck; it was slick with oily perspiration, disgusting.

  “Should we go to Gus’s?” asked Lizzie.

  Gus’s was always cool and dark inside, with an all-day breakfast menu.

  “Sounds good.”

  Even if she had to spend a bit of money on food, it was worth it not to have to go home.

  She stopped walking. The money. How could she not have thought of it before? She’d been sure that whatever it was that had been in her room wasn’t human. But what if it had been? What if it was the most obvious explanation: a burglar?

  “I think I might just go home, actually. I feel really tired suddenly.”

  Lizzie stopped and looked at her with genuine worry.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” Bec said, although she didn’t really feel it.

  Lizzie pulled her into a quick, tight hug. It was too hot for anything longer.

  “Call me if you change your mind about stayin’ at mine, okay?”

  “All right, thanks,” she said.

  Bec sat on the bus, her panic growing. It was taking forever, stopping every few blocks to let someone on. They might as well not have bothered with air conditioning; every time the doors swung open the hot wind blew in. Riding the wind was the faint but sharp smell of something burning; the bushfires. Bec wrinkled her nose. She’d been worried when she first saw an article about it in The Canberra Times. A black-and-white photograph of a raging fire on page four. She usually didn’t read the paper, but she’d read this article. No one seemed to think it was a big deal, or maybe they were just distracted by everything else that was going on. Right next to the article was a full-page advertisement: “If You See Something, Say Something,” run in large bold letters. She knew all about that. If she’d called the number underneath she’d have a one-in-ten chance of talking to her mom. It was the new anti-terrorist campaign that seemed to be everywhere right now. Not just in the paper but on billboards and on television. To make it worse, her mom would come home from work with endless dumb long-winded stories of people spying on their neighbours. Bec had no idea about politics and stuff like that. Still, it seemed strange to her that people were more worried about their neighbour’s new car than a fire so close you could actually smell it.

  Bec didn’t even thank the driver as she got off the bus. She charged up the street to her house. When she was halfway she started to run, not caring about ruining her hair and sweating through her makeup. The scorching-hot air blew hard against her face, stinging her eyes, but she didn’t care. Nothing was more important than knowing if the money was still there. She kept running until she was on her doorstep, pulling out her keys, slamming the door behind her.

  “It was just a joke!” she heard Andrew whine from the kitchen.

  “It’s not funny.” She hesitated on the foot of the stairs. Her dad sounded really angry.

  “Don’t be too hard on them.” Her mother’s voice was quiet. “They’re just kids. They don’t understand.”

  “You’re so weak,” he said quietly.

  She didn’t want to hear this; she ran up the stairs two at a time.

  “Bec?” she heard her mom call from downstairs. She ignored her, flinging open the door to her room and grabbing her talking Cabbage Patch doll from on top of the chest of drawers. Hiking up the dress, she pulled open the Velcro patch at the back, where the battery pack was meant to fit inside. Instead there was the yellow and orange of twenty- and fifty-dollar notes. Thank God. It was her pay for the whole of last year. Almost six thousand dollars pressed tightly inside the belly of her toy. She heard the slow, steady steps of her mom on the stairs. She carefully put the doll back into place and pulled the dress out of her handbag, holding it up in front of herself and looking in the mirror.

  “Are you all right? Why are you running around for?” her mom asked, eyeing the dress.

  “I wanted to try it on again,” she said, smiling. “What’s going on, anyway?”

  Her mother looked at her hands.

  “Paul and Andrew have been sneaking into the neighbours’ house, apparently. Max said that he caught them under his bed whispering.”

  “Whispering?”

  “They were pretending to be the voices in his head.” Her mother sighed. “They’re just too young to understand. They think it’s a joke. They say it’s okay because he’s crazy.”

  “Well, Max is crazy, isn’t he?” Bec asked, still looking at the reflected dress. She wanted to point out that if her mom let the boys out a bit more, then they probably wouldn’t have done it.

  “No, he’s sick. He’s schizophrenic.”

  Bec was pretty sure that schizophrenic meant crazy but she didn’t want to talk about it anymore. Her mom’s eyes focused on the dress.

  “Oh, Bec, that looks really expensive.”

  “It’s Scanlan & Theodore and you don’t want to know how much it cost,” Bec said, raising her eyebrows.

  Her mother folded her arms.

  “You work so much and then blow your paychecks as soon as they come in. You could save up for something really nice.”

  “This is really nice!” Bec said, feigning offense, but inside she felt smug. This was getting too easy.

  “Well, I guess it’s your money. But don’t go running around the place. You’ll get heatstroke,” her mom said, walking out of the room and closing the door behind her with a soft click.

  Bec felt guilty for a second as she looked at herself in the mirror, the stolen dress hanging down in front of her, her hair frizzy and her face shiny. But then she caught sight of the reflection of the Cabbage Patch doll and all she could feel was triumph.

  5

  2014

  For a moment I think I’m back home. I cross my fingers under the blanket and hope my stepmom is at her early prenatal Pilates class, so I can have breakfast with Dad without having to listen to her yap and whine like a pampered poodle. I open my eyes and the room seems to physically tilt around me. The outdated teenage posters, the photographs on the wall, the Cabbage Patch doll looming from the bedside table. The last week comes flooding back, running from Perth, Sydney, the hospital yesterday. I try to swallow a lump of anxiety. Becoming a whole different person is going to be hard.

  I take a mental tally. I had the parents fooled completely but I’d have to tread very carefully with Andopolis. He didn’t seem to be as much of a dope as I originally thought, but I could still have him wrapped around my little finger if he felt as guilty as it seemed about failing Rebecca. It was the twins who had me worried. They were warm, wrapping me in a bear hug when I’d interrupted their dinner, but I sensed some hesitation in both of them. I’ve never played the part of big sister before, and I don’t really know how it goes. They were both attractive and successful: one is a lawyer and the other in med school. I also had real trouble telling them apart. If I was a twin I’d do whatever I could to look as different as I could. That doesn’t seem to be the case with Paul and Andrew. They’re both clean-shaven, with closely cropped ginger hair and perfectly fitting T-shirts. It would be best if they left soon.

  I push myself out of bed and open Rebecca’s closet. The musky smell isn’t so strong anymore, or perhaps I’m just getting used to it. I flick through her clothes slowly, sizing up each item. Surprisingly she actually has a few good brands in here. Parting the clothes, I notice a pink quilt and a few stuffed toys stuffed in the back. I almost laugh. She hadn’t wanted to seem like a kid anymore, but she hadn’t wanted to throw them out either. For an instant, I can imagine her
as a real person rather than a picture on a missing persons sign.

  I decide against the designer brands and pull out a light cotton dress. Something about the drop waist and pale fabric screams innocence. I’m seeing Andopolis today and I want to reinforce the image he has of me as much as possible. The bruise on my face was fading to a gross yellow colour. I couldn’t rely on it for much longer; I needed to dress the part, too.

  Slipping the dress over my head, I feel something hard in the pocket. It’s a folded-up piece of paper, Exorcism Spell at the top in bold letters. Magic for the Modern Witch is written in the banner in Gothic lettering. I can’t imagine Bec had been into pagan stuff. Her room looked so preppy. Then again, teenagers like to keep secrets. I fold it back up and toss it into the closet with other things she was hiding. If she’d managed to conceal it all this time I wasn’t going to expose her.

  When I was sixteen, I hid joints in the seams of my curtains. I’d been in my hippie stage then. I’d met a group of older kids, with dreadlocks and tie-dyed T-shirts, busking near the railway station. For a full month I had them convinced I lived in a commune near Fremantle where no one was allowed to wear clothes. That was before I realized the art of subtle lies. Somehow one of them found out who my dad was. They called him an “oil tycoon” and didn’t appreciate it when I laughed. Hippies always talk about love and kindness, but I don’t know if I’ve ever met a group of people so snarky. I squeeze the seams of Bec’s blinds. Nothing.