Preloved (12 page)

“Show-off,” I said. I bit my bottom lip to keep from smiling. I was kinda proud of him becoming an empowered ghost, not just a sad shadow no one could see. I knew what it felt like to be the latter.

The machine whirled into life and the light hit the screen opposite. Logan pressed a button and a photo clicked into place.

Standing awkwardly with braces and a curly mullet was a boy in a white tux. He was caught mid-shot deciding whether to put his hand around the waist of his date, a girl with almost identical hair and an electric-purple dress that looked as if it was made out of Violet Crumble wrappers.

“That’s my mate Corey and his date, Shazza,” said Logan. “Don’t they make a rad couple?”

I had to bite down even harder on my lip. I perched myself on the table next to the projector as Logan flipped through the slides and I became hypnotised by a daze of puff sleeves, taffeta nightmares, permed hair (girls
and
boys) and white dinner jackets with pink bow ties.

Ick. So much shoulder-touching and waist-groping and
coupledom
. I couldn’t stand it. Every time I saw a young couple in public I wanted to run through their hand-holding and break it up. I wanted to say to them that everything looks good when it’s all going right, but what about when the ugly cracks start to appear?

I’m sorry, but the statistics are clear. One in three marriages result in divorce. That’s reality. That’s my parents’ marriage.

I screwed my thoughts up and threw them away so Logan couldn’t read them.

“Logan – remind me what we’re doing again, apart from reliving your glory days?”

“Helping your friend Nancy Drew look for clues. Like this one.”

“Oh my God, that’s Rebecca.”

“Stacey.”

I got up off the table and I walked right up to the image. But all I did was cast a big ugly shadow so I reluctantly stepped to the side.

She looked beautiful with her blond hair and short purple dress with the oversized rosette at the waist, which somehow managed to look quirky and different rather than outdated and try-hard.

It was definitely Rebecca. We were best friends in the whole world so I should know. And Rebecca was wearing a tiara on her big hair and a sash across her body that declared she was Belle of the Ball.

I looked at the matching sash on Logan that made him the Beau. My heart had what felt like a mild seizure and I involuntarily took a step back.

“Oi. What do you think of the top spunk on the left?”

“Are you wearing a shoestring tie? What are you, a Texan?”

Logan grinned back at me.

“Hey, it’s the height of formal fashion. I was the best-dressed guy there.”

“You mean it
was
the height of fashion. Don’t make me cringe.” By that I really meant that he looked cute in a retro way and I didn’t think his black suit and white shirt, with the red carnation at the pocket, looked bad at all.

“Chill out, Miss Matey. I bet if I asked you to the ball, you’d spaz out.”

I turned red. I wiped both my hot cheeks, pretending they had something on them.

As a matter of fact, no one had asked me to the upcoming ball. That was
good
. Me and Rebecca had decided we weren’t going to go anyway. Well, more like Rebecca had decided it wasn’t “something she would do”, but regardless I couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to share their coming-of-age memories in the back seat of a limo with me. We were going to stay in and watch craptastic movies instead. That sounded good to me.

“I’m not going to spaz out, okay?” I said.

“Good then,” replied Nancy who was standing at the door. “In fact, it’s better than good!”

I had forgotten all about Nancy.

Nancy went to inspect the working projector. I quickly slipped my hand over the forward button so it looked like I knew what I was doing. It wasn’t until my hand started going numb with pins and needles that I looked down and noticed I had put it through Logan’s hand. I pulled my hand back.

“I admit it. I underestimated you. No offence or anything, but you don’t seem particularly to excel at anything and based on past experience, everything you do seems to come out wrong. Amy, what are you doing?”

I stopped trying to blow hot air onto my hand. “Nothing.”

“Anyway, I went to the library and – hang on, isn’t that …?”

Nancy walked up to the screen and scrutinised the image of Stacey. Then she doubled back and put the book she was carrying down on the other side of the desk, walking right through Logan at the same time.

Logan stepped back and went to stand in the corner.

“Brrr! Now I understand, Amy. There’s an absolutely freezing draught in here. I wonder where it’s coming from?”

Nancy looked around the room briefly, then went back to flipping through the book. It had “
Middlemoore SHS Yearbook 1988
” printed on the cover and some strange artwork that featured an android hooked up to various machines. I presumed this was some student’s “interesting” impression of the future.

“That boy is the one from your locket.” Nancy pointed at the projector screen. “And look at the girl – she’s wearing the locket.”

It felt kinda weird that I was wearing the locket. Like I was some creepy copycat who badly wanted something she couldn’t get, so all she could do was pretend.

“Look at this.” Nancy held up the colour spread in the middle of the yearbook and turned it towards me. It was a collage of all the ball photos I had seen, with the one of Logan and Rebecca–Stacey in the middle.

“Sweethearts Stacey Gibson and Logan Feldman – Middlemoore SHS’s own Romeo and Juliet!” read Nancy.

Logan Feldman
. A little piece of my heart jumped at knowing his last name. Which was silly, since I wasn’t a primary school kid who desperately needed both our full names for a love calculator test.

“Romeo and Juliet? Ugh. Did the ‘journalist’ of this piece even do English? Don’t they know that Romeo and Juliet had a tragic ending? Who wrote this stupid thing?”

Nancy flipped irritably at the pages.

“Oh my God.”

Nancy’s face suddenly went as white as a sheet. If I didn’t know any better I’d swear she had just seen a ghost.

I craned my neck to see.

“Look at this,” Nancy whispered.

She had flipped to the back of the book, where blank pages were left for students to sign messages. I picked my way through the scrawls.

SG + LF I can’t believe you are both gone
.

Logan and Stace, you will be missed
.

Stacey and Logan, we hope you will be found again
.

I could feel prickling all over my skin like ice, even though Logan was nowhere near me. He was standing at the other end of the room, a sad quiet shadow.

“I’m sorry,” I mouthed to him. I knew that he was a ghost, that he had to have died, but I’d wanted to pretend he was my own lovable imaginary creature, neither living nor dead. Like a unicorn. A Care Bear. A perfect boy. Seeing the proof was a reality shock.

“For a moment,” said Nancy. “I thought that this Stacey looked just like your friend Rebecca.”

“Do … do you believe in reincarnation?” I asked Nancy. I tried to swallow the lump in my throat.

Nancy bit the inside of her mouth. “Look, because I obviously come from a smarter and more modern generation, the answer should be no. But sometimes I want it to be true. I do. Even when my mum tells me I shouldn’t be such a pain in the arse or else I’ll be reborn as a cow.”

“Your mum says that?”

I was surprised that Nancy’s mum told her stuff just like my mum. But not as surprised as I was that Nancy’s mum told her she was a pain in the arse. I had always thought Nancy was every mother’s dream daughter.

“Amy?” Logan was kneeling at my side. “Can you ask your friend to help us? I’ll owe you for life. Please. I’m begging you.”

He looked pale. Even for a ghost.

But he said “us”. He didn’t say “me” or “you”, he said “us”. We were a team.

I breathed out heavily and a sigh came out with it.

“Nancy?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you please help me find out more about what happened to these two students?” I asked and then I added, “I’ll owe you for life.”

A large but sad smile spread across Nancy’s face. And I thought for the first time how nice Nancy looked, because it was the first time I’d seen her smile.

“You know the implications, right? If I say yes, it means that we’ll meet again in the next lifetime because you’ll need to pay me back.”

“Not if I pay you back in this lifetime,” I said. I really liked Nancy then. “But it’d be nice to know that I’d see you again in another life. Nice to know I’d meet someone I knew.”

We both went quiet and shy.

“I think that’s why people cling to the idea of reincarnation,” said Nancy, finally. “The idea that if you stuff up in this lifetime, you can redo it all again. Or if a love story doesn’t quite turn out the way you want in this life, you can hope for another chance in the next. A second chance.”

Nancy looked down at her hands, and it looked like she was thinking about herself.

I thought about Mum’s vintage shop. How she believed if she found something broken and lovingly and put it back together, that someone would come along and love it again.

I turned towards Logan. Was he here because he was getting another chance with the girl he once loved? And I had agreed to help him.

I could say no. I didn’t owe him anything, but I knew that I would say yes.

I knew that he only had to ask and without even hearing the question, I would say yes.

“Help me become whole again, Amy,” said Logan, gently in my ear.

I smiled at Logan encouragingly and mouthed, “I’ll help you. I promise.”

He smiled back at me. He looked so beautiful that fireworks should have gone off in my heart and flamed into the sky, but instead, it felt like something in me died and fell to ash.

“Meet me at the State Library tomorrow at 10 am. We’ll raid the newspaper archive.” Nancy rubbed her hands.

Tomorrow? As in Saturday?

As in Nancy wanted me to hang out with her
on the weekend
?

“I know,” stated Nancy, as if she could read my mind. “It’s strictly business.”

“Why hello there, fair ladies. TGIF!”

Michael appeared at the door and stood there casually, with his schoolbag over his shoulder and a textbook tucked under his arm. Dressed in a cream-coloured bodysuit with a blue grid pattern running all over it.

“Bloody oath,” commented Logan. “If he spends all his free time making stuff like this, no wonder he can’t get a date for the ball.”

“If I can so politely ask, why are you wearing that stupid skin-tight outfit when it’s forty degrees outside and you clearly don’t have the figure for it?” snapped Nancy.

I exchanged a sympathetic look with Michael. Obviously Nancy had never seen
TRON
.

“Are you looking for Rebecca?” I automatically became defensive. “’Cos she’s not here.”

“Actually, I was looking for you.”

My eyes widened. Was he trying to pull another one on me? After the ambushings, attempted extortions and proverbial ponytail pullings, I wasn’t up for any more shenanigans.

“I’m going to an Eighties movie marathon.” Michael cleared his throat. “And I thought about you. No
Princess Bride
, sorry, but they’re showing
TRON
,
The Dark Crystal
,
The NeverEnding Story
and
The NeverEnding Story II
.”

What? Hang on. Was Michael Limawan casually asking me out on a date?

“So?” asked Michael.

I remembered the conversation I had overheard between him and Nancy. Was Michael only asking me ’cos I was Asian too, or because he really liked me?

Both were equally disturbing. Anyway, casual dates led to serious dates and then marriage and then marriage breakdowns and then …

“They made a sequel to
The NeverEnding Story
?” Logan exclaimed. “That I gotta see.”

“No, you don’t!” I found myself blurting out. “It came out in 1990. Two years after you died. And it is crap! Pure, diabolical crap!”

I stormed off.

I left both Michael and Nancy behind with their mouths gaping. I knew they were only trying to be nice, so what did I do? Completely freak out and run away. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to crawl into myself, where it was safe.

“Miss Matey.” I could feel Logan on my heels.

“To hell with that!” I said. “Don’t call me that. I said I’m helping you, but it doesn’t mean we have to be buddy-buddy – got it?”

I wasn’t going to make my parents’ mistakes. I
wasn’t
,
wasn’t
,
wasn’t
.

What was I even thinking? I’d mixed up all my thoughts. I was so confused.

“Hang on. Don’t have a blue,” said Logan. He tried to grab my hand, but I pulled myself away. “No wonder you’ve worked yourself into something chronic and everyone is worried about you. You make it so hard for yourself.”

“Leave me alone,” I whined. But I stood very still as Logan looked at me with his very blue and very worried eyes, while I fumed on the outside and turned to liquid inside.