Preloved
Authors: Shirley Marr
Tags: #Teen & Young Adult, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Paranormal & Urban
Contents
Amy has enough to deal with for one lifetime.
A superstitious Chinese mother. A best friend whose
mood changes as dramatically as her hair colour.
A reputation for being strange. The last thing she
needs is to be haunted by someone only she can see.
Logan is a ghost from the Eighties.
He could be dangerous.
He’s certainly annoying.
He might also be Amy’s dream boy.
Chapter 1
Whenever my mum decided to give me advice, it often sounded like this:
“Amy, don’t bring an open umbrella into the house, because a ghost might be hiding under it.”
“Amy, don’t touch the sleep on a cat’s eyes and then touch your own eyes, because you will see ghosts.”
“Amy, never tweeze the hairs off the tops of your toes, or you will see ghosts.”
If only I had listened to Mum.
Only that morning, I had been thinking that all those superstitions might have worked when I was five years old, but I was sixteen now. If she was trying to prevent me from hanging out with boys, going to parties with boys or even being within a two-metre vicinity of boys, then sorry, I wasn’t about to freak out and hide under my bed.
I was old enough to know better. To know that it was stuff like this that had psychologically scarred me for life.
Today she had a new one that I’d never heard before.
“If twins are born and one is a girl and the other a boy, then one needs to be adopted out or else one will die.”
“Way to be dramatic, Mum,” I replied.
“Let me finish my story, Amy. You know your twin cousins Audrey and Alfred? Uncle Andrew had Uncle Adrian become Audrey’s godfather and had Audrey spiritually bound to him with an invisible red string. That’s a perfectly acceptable modern-day solution.”
I scrunched up my nose. “If the string is invisible, how can you tell that it’s red?” I questioned. “Where does this stuff even come from? The secret Big Book of Chinese Superstition that all Chinese mothers refer to?”
Mum pursed her lips and gave me this haughty look of offence. She started vigorously dusting the stuffed owl on the shelf.
“Your granny, your
ah ma
, told me these things, and I am sure your big-big
ah ma
told her in turn.”
“I love it,” murmured Rebecca from the other side of the counter. “I love your culture, Amy. It is just too cool. I wish my mum told me stuff like that.”
Mum threw her hands up dramatically. “
Thank you
! See Amy, why don’t I have a daughter like your nice friend here?”
Rebecca shrugged.
“Mum! You’re doing it again. You’re doing the Chinese mother
thing
. The emotional blackmail
thing
.”
I grabbed the duster from her and threw it out the back.
“And stop dusting Ollie like that, or he’ll end up naked like a raw chicken and no one will want to buy him.”
That’s if anyone was creepy enough to buy a dead owl with yellow glass eyes anyway.
Mum pushed her glasses back up on her nose and fiddled with the price tag.
“I really hope no one buys Ollie. Sometimes when the shop gets quiet, well … he’s kinda like my little friend.”
Mum turned her pencil around and rubbed the price out. I knew she was serious about it. Since she’d acquired Ollie at a flea market, he’d gone from $49 to $99. I figured soon he’d be so expensive that Mum would achieve her goal of keeping Ollie forever. And go bankrupt in the process. I could just imagine the two of us out on the street with nothing but that old featherbag keeping us warm.
“I better go. Don’t want to be late for school.”
“See you tonight then,” replied Mum.
We paused awkwardly, our shoulders almost touching. Chinese mother and daughter combos don’t do hugs. That’s what I told myself, anyway. It was scandalous enough when Mum walked out on Dad. The Asian community had a field day. The after party of gossip on that one still occasionally stalked me in the fruit and veggie aisle of the supermarket.
I grabbed my school bag, came out from behind the counter and nudged Rebecca towards the door.
“I’ll try to come home early so I can help you in the shop, Mum.”
“Bye, Mrs Lee. I hope you get lots of customers today,” Rebecca called out.
“Remember, girls, if you walk past a cemetery and see a picture on a tombstone, don’t fall in love with that person, or they’ll come for you.”
I could’ve sworn I saw Mum wink at Rebecca. I rolled my eyes and flipped the sign hanging on the front door to read “Open”. If I hadn’t, the shop would remain “Closed” for the whole day and Mum would wonder why no one came in.
“Pfft. As if we even pass within a billion kilometres of a graveyard on the way to school. Our lives aren’t that exciting,” I said to Rebecca.
I unwrapped the fresh flowers left on the front mat and arranged it in the basket of the vintage bicycle that Mum kept out the front. I wasn’t even sure the bike even worked; it’s only ever served as a glorified vase. Like most of the things in Mum’s shop, Buy Gones, it was old or unwanted or broken or all of the above.
And pre-owned.
Or as Mum preferred to call it, preloved.
I walked with Rebecca through the depressing, still-empty suburban shopping square, as fast as possible away from Buy Gones.
“I wish my mum was cool like yours.” Rebecca rolled her incredibly beautiful green eyes.
“You really want a mum who tells you that she didn’t dare look at monkeys when she was pregnant just in case her baby was born with a monkey’s face?”
Rebecca smiled. I could tell she thought it was funny, but she was too cool to laugh out loud.
“It’s your heritage, your birthright. I wish I had something that … deep.”
“Please don’t say that. The wind might change. And you really don’t want that. Not today.”
I realised that I hadn’t even had a good look at Rebecca’s outfit. I made her stop and turn towards me. I smiled.
“You’re going as Kylie Minogue? Australia’s Pop Princess? Seriously, Rebecca? I thought you were cool and punk and alternative.”
Rebecca twirled around for me.
“Well, it is ironic fashion day and I’m doing just that. Being ironic.”
Our school, Middlemoore High, had resorted to dire fundraising tactics to pay for the Year 12 Ball. Since school had started this year, they’d been holding middle-of-the-week fancy dress days for a gold coin donation.
In its defence though, it has been a lot of fun. Some of the themes we’ve had so far have been Superheroes and Villains, Private School (as we’re a public school, that’s been the most fun and ironic) and Come As Your Favourite Book Character.
Today was Eighties Theme, and I had to admit I was a little excited.
I had asked Mum for advice.
“Mum, I know you know heaps about ancient stuff.”
“Amy! The Eighties weren’t that long ago.”
“It was thirty years ago. That’s, like, almost twice my age. That means I could have lived twice over.”
“You know, Amy, when they say single parenting is hard, I think they’re referring to stuff like this,” Mum had said.
Right now, I admired Rebecca as she curtsied in front of me, the brightest thing in the drab shopping square. She was dressed as Kylie Minogue from the cover of her eponymous 1988 debut album. The one where she’s wearing a hat, except it’s just the brim of a hat and her hair is coming out the top.
You’re probably wondering how I know all this. Secretly, I wished I had been a teenager in the Eighties. Everything looked like it was so much more fun: the fashion, the music, everything. I often felt like I was cruelly born into the wrong generation.
Rebecca had somehow managed to curl her mass of wild hair to get the volume. And she was wearing an off-the-shoulder black spandex dress. The only thing about her that didn’t look Kylie Minogue-esque was the colour of her hair.
It was purple.
Rebecca changed her hair colour all the time. It was Fantasy Fuchsia before. She says that next week it might be Tangerine Dream or Too-Cool-For-School Blue.
“You look so awesome!” I admired. “It must be so hard to be awesome all the time.”
“I’m not awesome.” Rebecca sighed. “It’s not my fault all the boys like me and all the girls hate me for no reason.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. Teenage girls are just rampant with rabid mean girl hormones,” I replied, tucking into my breakfast of a metre-long raspberry liquorice strap. “Give them a few more years and they’ll all give up on trying to have lives and become nice housewives and office workers. And the boys like you, ’cos why wouldn’t they? Look at you; you’re a fanboy’s dream.”
She seriously was. Rebecca not only had the scene hair, she also wore stuff like knee-high boots, tartan skirts, tutus and Fifties-inspired bombshell dresses. And she read stuff like
The Bell Jar
and
The Edible Woman
. I read
Girlfriend
fiction and
Alex Rider
. And, secretly,
Twilight
.
It suddenly struck me that I was Rebecca’s only female friend.
“Oh my God, Amy, you’re dressed as Princess Buttercup. How cute.”
Indeed I was. From my favourite Eighties movie
The Princess Bride
.
I didn’t care if I was Rebecca’s only female friend. There was nothing wrong with her. Other girls were just jealous. I was pleased that I had a friend who had so much pop-culture brains and not some airhead who instead would say, “OMG, Amy, like, what on earth are you supposed to be today? Some sort of goth?”
Having a mum who was into antiques and vintage stuff had its uses. She surprised me last week by finding, during one of her sourcing trips, a long-sleeved tomato-red gown that looked almost identical to Princess Buttercup’s red riding dress. She helped me fashion a belt from parts of old gold necklaces. Now, wearing a pair of old riding gloves from a deceased estate and a long corn-blond wig, I was all set.
I sighed. What I remembered most about
The Princess Bride
was having the chickenpox when I was eight. Disregarding the itching, the pain and the disturbing pinkness of calamine lotion, I remembered the joy of being away from school for weeks.
Staying at home, tucked in bed, I would watch the movies Mum liked when she was young.
The Princess Bride
.
Labyrinth
.
The NeverEnding Story
. And not on downloads or DVDs, but on
video cassettes
. Yup, the retro days. The VCR sat next to the laser disc player that Mum would occasionally sing karaoke on.