Darkwater (3 page)

Miss Ingleton stilled me with a hand on my shoulder. ‘As far as I know he's not in trouble.' She looked at me. ‘I'll give you a sick note,' she eventually said. ‘Apparently your mother is at home, so go and hand it in at the front office and then you can go.'

I could have kissed her.

I waited outside while she wrote the note. From inside, I could hear muttering, all of them wondering what was happening. Cassie, who sat near the window, leant out to speak to me, but I ignored her. She pulled her head back in as soon as Miss Ingleton came to the door to give me the blue slip of paper for the front office.

‘Thank you,' I told her, and then I ran across the oval, the white-hot sun blinding now, to give the note to Mrs Lachlan, barely waiting for her response, before I ran again to the bike racks, handlebars gleaming too hot to touch, the smell of burning grease as the chain slipped around into gear, and I pedalled home as fast as I could.

The house was empty when I got there. I knew it as soon as I leant my bike against the fence and saw that Dee's car wasn't parked in the driveway, and Joe's bike wasn't tossed on the gravel where he always left it; it was nowhere in sight. Under the shade of the verandah, I searched for the spare key in the weeds that grew in the ceramic pots lined up near the door. (Dee quit gardening when she quit cooking.) When I eventually found it, my fingers were caked in dirt.

I let myself into the cool of the hall, calling out Joe's name and then Dee's, but there was no answer, and the quiet made me anxious in a way I hadn't felt before. I had come home to a deserted house more than once, but the news of Amanda's death made everything feel strange.

The kitchen was as we left it, our plates stacked haphazardly next to the sink, a trail of ants inking a broken black line from the benchtop to the open window. The margarine had melted into an oily yellow puddle and the milk in the bottle had already thickened in the heat. The radio on top of the fridge was on faintly, playing one of my favourite David Bowie songs. Normally I would have turned it up, but I wanted to be able to hear any sound, to make sure that there really was no one here.

Upstairs, Joe's room was empty, his bed unmade and his clothes strewn across the floor. From his window you could see down to the river curling its way along the peninsula, and on the opposite side, the olive green scrub growing thick between the outcrops of sandstone. Perched high on the top was the private boys' school, like a castle; it was positioned to look down on everything. Tom wanted to send Joe there, but Joe refused to go and Dee backed him. ‘He wants to be with his friends,' she said, and Tom gave way without a fight. Neither he nor Dee went to a private school, and Dee said Tom would never have considered it if he hadn't made a lot of money from his business. It was like the sunken lounge, she complained, no more than a desire to spend; the end result completely unnecessary.

Sammy, our dog, was asleep on Dee and Tom's bed. She knew she wasn't allowed there but she slunk up the stairs as soon as the last person left the house and leapt up, scratching a small hollow for herself in the pillows. She never woke when Dee came home, not until it was too late. Opening the door to the bedroom, Dee would shout at her (once she even threw her shoes and bag at her), and Sammy would jump down, tail between her legs, and scurry down the stairs. But seeing it was only me, she rolled lazily onto her back, paws in the air, waiting for me to scratch her.

‘You should just keep your door shut,' I told Dee whenever she said she'd had enough, Sammy was going back to the pound.

‘Why should I have to do anything?' she asked me. ‘She's the one who should be changing her behaviour.'

There was never any point arguing with Dee.

On the floor next to her bed was the book she was reading, spine bent back to mark her page. Her glasses lay on top of it, smudged, the lens sticky-taped into the frame. There was some semblance of order on Tom's side of the bed (his books were stacked neatly on his bedside table, his glasses were in their case), but the effort seemed futile in the face of the rest of the chaos.

I headed downstairs, wishing I'd stayed at school. I didn't want to be on my own. I flicked on the television and then flicked it off again. I swung in the hanging cane chair Tom bought when he sank the lounge room, and then I leapt out, almost hitting my knees against the sharp edges of the built-in seats. I couldn't keep still.

Shutting the front door behind me, I went out again, riding my bike through the gate and into the empty midday heat.

We live in the middle of a narrow street that leads down to the top of the waterfront reserve. Jacarandas line either side, the tips of their branches almost touching overhead. Behind sandstone walls you can see glimpses of the houses. The Scotts are directly opposite. They're both in their seventies and occasionally ask me to ride up to the chemist to pick up a prescription. Dee insists that I help them out, but I don't really mind. Mrs Scott always makes me a warm milky tea and gives me a biscuit she's baked when I return. I sit in her kitchen and talk to her about my favourite authors. She was an editor in a publishing house, and sometimes lends me books, hardbacks with yellowed paper – stories that are old-fashioned, and I pretend to have enjoyed them when I give them back. I thought for a moment about going there now, wanting company and perhaps even to talk to her about what had happened.

I eventually decided to ride to the waterfront. Normally I would have assumed Joe would be there, but today I wasn't so sure. I was nervous about going there. He would have felt the same. Yet I made myself head down the hill, partly to find him but also because I wanted to see where it had happened, perhaps in the hope that this would make it what it had always been – a place where we hung.

At the bottom of our street is the Parsons' house, right next to the steep stone stairs cutting through the reserve. Thick ivy grows over the wall that borders their garden. Behind it you can see the shutters askew on their hinges, the iron roof of the verandah leaning down at one end, the guttering hanging loose.

Bradley Parsons is sixteen years old and must weigh about sixteen stone. His eyes squint and he always comes in too close when he tries to talk. ‘What you up to?' he asks, and we back away. Sometimes he just leans over the top of the wall, calling out to anyone who passes by and occasionally picking his nose.

Lyndon, who could be a cruel bastard, called Bradley a disgusting freak of nature. Once he blew a long green stream of snot out of his nose and into his hand, holding it out for Bradley to eat. When Bradley shook his head, Lyndon gripped him in a headlock and smeared the snot across his cheek. I didn't see this, but Joe did. He told Dee, trying to explain that Lyndon had days like this, days when he was so angry that none of them could talk to him.

She said it was no excuse. ‘No matter how hard he's had it, he shouldn't do something as shameful as that.'

As I stood at the top of the stairs leading down to the waterfront, I could hear the slap of the current against the sandstone boulders. The river was swelling as the tide turned in the heat of the afternoon, lapping over the rocky outcrops cutting jagged lines into the curve of the banks. There was a sound like a stone being thrown into the deep grey of the water, the splash cutting through the stillness. Someone was down there. I hoped it was Joe.

I dropped my bike at the top of the path. Each step was uneven, but I knew them so well I had no need to hold onto the railing – besides, the flaking paint always left at least one needle-sharp splinter in the soft flesh of your palm.

At the bottom of the steps the grass grows long and thick down to the muddy edge of the water. At low tide, small crabs scurry down into the ooze trying to find some shelter from the fierce sun. I stood still for a moment, listening. To my right, the river bent slightly, the bank narrowing to a strip of sandstone and the crusted shells that cut through the soles of your feet. If you picked your way along the edge and around the slight bend, there was a cave, just high enough for you to sit, hidden from view. Sonia, Cassie and I used to hang there in first year with Ricky and Jez, two boys in our year. We took it in turns to kiss, giving each other commentary on technique. The thought embarrassed me now.

To the left, the reserve stretches to an outcrop of rock that is rarely covered by the tide. At the shore are other caves, higher and narrower; they are more like overhangs of sandstone, the rock coloured in rainbow strips of ochre and yellow and orange. In one there are Aboriginal paintings, small figures of kangaroos and men, scrawled over with graffiti – who loved who scribbled in charcoal. This was where the older kids came, lighting fires, sneaking cigarettes, drinking and smoking dope. For years we had spied on them, Joe included, but now he was one of the gang that met down here after school, hanging until the sun slipped behind the bend, leaving the bush deep, dark and dense: black shadows and shapes that still had the capacity to appear menacing despite us all knowing this country so well.

As I walked along the edge of the reserve, being careful not to make any sound or step out far enough to be visible from the caves, I came close enough to hear Joe and Kate, and then the others, Cherry, Lyndon and Stevie all talking.

At first there were only mutterings, but then, as I stayed still and silent, watching and listening carefully, I heard their words more clearly.

One of them was crying. I presumed it was Kate. Stevie was comforting her. Lyndon asked someone to give him a match and then he walked out onto the rock. He stood tall and thin in his long tight jeans, an old T-shirt and thongs, smoking and pacing, agitated. I moved back, sitting at the edge of the scrub and hoping he wouldn't see me. Lyndon scared me. There was something hard and tense in him, a cruelty that made others do as he said for fear of reprisal. Sonia had told me she thought he was sexy and I had seriously questioned her sanity for the second time in our friendship (the first being the time she found God during her brief stint with the local Christian fellowship).

‘He's a bully,' I said.

She reminded me about the time he had stopped Brent Davis from humiliating a new kid. Brent was in his last year. Lyndon was only fourteen. Brent took the kid's pants down and left him naked and crying on the oval. Lyndon had gone to his rescue but he had also gone berserk, ripping the pants out of Brent's hands and giving them back to the boy. In the fight that followed, Lyndon's nose was broken, the blood streaming down his face as he continued to struggle, despite three teachers holding him back.

Lyndon lived with a brother who was much older. Their place was on the other side of the overpass to us, where red-brick flats were built up along the main road. Joe once told me that Lyndon's dad was in jail, and he made me swear never to tell anyone. I wanted to know what he'd done. Joe thought it was armed robbery, but he wasn't really sure. Once when he was much younger he had spent the night there, only to call Dee and Tom at midnight. Lyndon's brother was drunk and angry, and Joe was scared. Tom brought them both home. The next morning Lyndon insisted on going back to the flat to see his brother before school. He wanted to check that everything was okay. Tom went with him. Later, he told Dee that the brother had been very sorry, but he had still felt bad leaving Lyndon on his own. ‘He's just a little kid,' he said. ‘He needs someone to look after him.'

Lyndon stood there now, and he flicked his cigarette out into the water, before turning back to the others.

‘Jesus.' His voice was harsh and he must have been talking to Kate because the crying stopped. He had his arms folded across his chest and his back to the others.

Kate's reply was high and strained. ‘I was just asking.'

There was muttering from behind her, and then Joe spoke clearly.

‘She asked all of us. Not just you.'

Lyndon didn't turn around.

Cherry came out on the rock then. She was part of their gang but she wasn't. No one really claimed her as a friend, although in the last few weeks Amanda had begun to hang with her more often. Her parents were wealthy and lived only two doors up from Amanda's, also in a house with a garden that opened up onto the waterfront reserve. Dee called Cherry's father ‘a slimy arsehole with a foul temper'. Len Atkinson owned one of the development companies trying to build housing at Greenwood Bush. He'd once visited us, bringing a bottle of very expensive wine as an ‘offer of peace'. Dee refused to take it. She told him she had no animosity towards him personally but she disagreed with what his company was doing and was not going to change her mind. She told Tom that he became nasty then. He called her a foolish housewife and warned her, and her friends, to back off.

Cherry always had more money than the others, even more than Amanda, and she spent it at the local milk bar and tuckshop, buying whatever anybody wanted. She also snuck out bottles of wine and cigarettes from her house, taking them to parties and giving them away in the hope of being liked.

Her long hair fell across her face and she scratched at a mossie bite on her arm. ‘Do you reckon the police know what happened?'

Lyndon snapped at her. ‘How would I know?'

Joe told him he didn't have to be such an aggro dickhead. As he stepped out of the cave, I knew I had to start thinking about turning around and heading back across the reserve before he made a move for home and found me spying on him and his friends.

‘The police don't know how she died.' Joe looked at Cherry. ‘That's why they wanted to talk to us.'

Lyndon shook his head. ‘Wise up. Just 'cos they say they don't know doesn't mean shit.' He looked out to the rocks. ‘I'm not talking to them unless I've got a lawyer.'

‘Why?' Kate came out of the cave. She stood on the rocks next to Joe, her gaze turned directly to Lyndon. Behind her the tide was creeping up over the boulders, lapping at the edge of the oyster shells, the water now deep enough to drown in. In the afternoon light, it sparkled and glistened, the surface covered in a thousand flecks of dancing diamonds.

I stood up, ready to creep back, and then I heard Kate's voice, clear and sharp.

‘It's not like we've got anything to hide.'

I glanced behind me and she was standing there, directly opposite Lyndon, looking straight into his face.

He didn't move. His hands were on his hips and he glared at her, bending slightly so that he could bring his face close to hers. ‘Say it.'

She stepped away, almost colliding with Joe.

‘I only said she'd been strange. There was something she wasn't telling me.' Kate had stayed still, determined not to be cowed in the face of his anger. ‘I was asking if anyone knew. That's all.'

Stevie was on the ledge now, his arm on Lyndon's. He was talking to him, his voice too low for me to hear the actual words, but he appeared to be trying to calm him down.