Preloved (17 page)

I stood at the door of a house on the abnormally quiet Blueberry Street.

It was so close to my place. And I felt so close to the truth.

My hands trembled as I knocked.

“Yes?” A woman with a short bob stood behind the thick security screen.

“Hi. I – I was the one who rang you before. Saying I have information. I found something while researching for, um, a school project.”

“You’re Ivy Lee’s daughter, aren’t you?”

I nodded. I leaned in towards the screen, hoping that I would recognise this woman, hoping that it would mean we had a connection.

“I haven’t seen you since you were a little girl. Your mum doesn’t really associate much with anyone any more – not that we do much either.”

I felt for her. I did. I knew what it was like to run away from the whispers while just trying to buy a loaf of bread.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Um, Valerie,” I said, and winced.

“I’m Grace. Come in. Let me fetch my mother.”

I left my thongs on the doormat. It wasn’t a neglected home on the inside, but there was just something about it, some sort of sadness that seemed to pervade the air and make everything hang heavily. Like none of the people could really move on. It was difficult not to drag my feet against the tiles inside this house.

I followed her up the hallway, but I stopped as I passed the arch of the dining room. On the mantle, flanked by a pair of Temple Lions, were a row of framed photographs.

I held my breath and slipped quietly into the room.

No one had dusted the shelf for a while. I picked up the photo closest to me, which looked like a high school photo with a daggy fake-sky background. A teenage girl stared back at me. Pink hoops in her ears, braces on her teeth, smiling for the camera under the weight of her curly poodle perm.

“That is my sister, Amy,” said Grace from behind me.

For a moment I thought she was referring to me, but she was talking about the girl in the photo.

I wiped the dust from the glass with my fingers.

The girl looked nothing like me.

“I’ve made a mistake,” I managed to splutter, and I hurriedly dropped the photo back onto the mantle.

“I’m sorry. I don’t have any information for you. I was thinking about the wrong person. I have to go.”

I almost bowled Grace over in my hurry to leave. Once again, I found myself running, but this time I knew that I wasn’t running away from a monster or a wicked spirit. Not when I had myself to fear.

Chapter 11

I sat on a seat by myself in the bus. I had hoped to catch one of those newer ones that have air-conditioning and nice plush seats, but after fifteen minutes of waiting, only this clunker rocked up. I didn’t want to skip it, on the off-chance nothing else came along and a serial killer picked me up.

Ugh. Shut up, Amy. No wonder everyone thinks you’re a drama queen.

I watched as the grey scenery slipped by. By habit, my hand went to my throat. It didn’t matter. Mum had heaps of lockets in her store. I’m sure if I carefully looked over all of them I could find one I liked, then hint at the fact that my birthday was coming up. It would be something beautiful and expensive, vintage, and made of real gold or sterling silver. Not just a cheap fake thing with a plastic rainbow.

I reached into my bag and pulled out my MP3 player.

“You know, for someone who likes The Smiths, bloody oath you have some stinkers on there.”

I turned my head.

“Hi again, Miss Matey,” said Logan.

“Hi, product-of-my-psychological-break,” I said cheerily. “You know, Logan, I think there’s a reason we have the same taste in music. If I had it my way, I know that I’d want at least an eighty per cent overlap in bands. And no Panic! At The Disco.”

Logan was sitting in the empty spot next to me, his arms draped lazily over the seat in front.

“So,” I said. I swallowed. “Did I make you up to help or destroy me?”

“Maybe both,” replied Logan, looking me in the eye. “Facing the truth is never easy, Amy, but you need to reach a breaking point in order to make it to the other side.”

“So why aren’t you with Rebecca?” I said, as if everything was still perfectly normal.

“She’s changed. Or should I say Rebecca is
different
from Stacey. I guess we get a chance to become a different person each time, and maybe that’s a good thing.”

I vaguely remembered something Mum said to me about choices and lifetimes.

“I threw away the locket. Why are you still here?”

“Because I’m not attached to the locket; I’m attached to you.”

I smiled weakly at him. I looked down at my MP3 player and scrolled aimlessly through the songs.

“Back in my day,” said Logan, “music had two sides. The first side was the one that contained all the hits, all the popular tracks. Then you had the B-side, which was where the musicians could be creative, even experimental. Life had a nice symmetry, back then.”

“Now life is just one continuous, endless loop,” I said. I could have been talking about myself. “Without much order. You can skip things if you’re impatient. Or you can totally disregard order and shuffle things to suit yourself. It’s all so … meaningless.”

The words felt bittersweet on my lips.

“It’s not that bad, Miss Matey,” said Logan. “I see you still make playlists. They’re like mixtapes. There’s order and meaning in that.”

“What’s a mixtape?”

“It’s when you record a bunch of songs, selecting them with someone in mind and making sure you put the songs in an order that, well, tells a story.”

That sounded nice.

“Would you make
me
a mixtape?” I asked.

Despite being a ghost, he could still blush.

He grinned back at me.

“Listen carefully, Amy. You will realise that the one I made for you is playing right now, and has been playing from the start.”

Mum was outside the store, wheeling the vintage pushbike in for the night.

“Amy! What did you do? You’re completely white.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Did you kick over some joss sticks? Pee on a sacred tree? I shouldn’t let you wander around by yourself at night – who knows what demon you might pick up.”

She stopped just as she was supposed to put her arms around me.

“Here,” said Mum. She started plucking flower heads from the bouquet in the basket. “Put your hands out.”

“What is this for?” I asked as Mum continued combing through, looking for ones of different shapes and colours.

“I want you to take a seven flower cleansing bath.”

“I smell pretty good,” I said, sniffing my armpit.

“Don’t be smart.” Mum added the last flower to my pile. “You have some sort of negative energy stuck to you; I can sense it. Go upstairs – now!”

“Okay, if you insist,” I replied. Mum shooed me through the door and my eyes swept past the window display.

The white dress on the mannequin stood next to its friend the gold dress. Mum had teamed it up with a pair of black velvet Eighties pumps, a long string of pearls and short black lace gloves. It looked great. I was sure that Logan would call it something like “neat-o”.

Something in me yearned for that dress. I wished someone would just buy it and put me out of my misery.

Our bathroom was too small to hold a bathtub, so instead of soaking in bubbles with flowers floating all around me, I sat in the shower with an ice-cream container filled with the shredded petals and a mixture of tap and rosewater – my
ah ma
’s recipe.

I splashed some of it onto my face and let the hot water of the shower run down my back.

“Have you washed me away yet?” Logan’s voice came from outside the bathroom door.

I rubbed out a strip of the steam on the shower screen with my finger and peered through it. “Hang on a moment.” I took the ice-cream container and dumped it over my head. Gaahh! It was freezing!

“I’ve done it. Have you been vanquished?” I called out.

“Yup!” came the reply.

“No, Amy, I’m right here,” said Mum as she tapped on the door.

I combed the petals out of my hair, turned off the water and threw on my underwear and a bathrobe.

“Remember not to clean up the flowers, Amy,” called Mum. “They’ve soaked up the negative energy. I’ll pick them up later with the long barbecue tongs.”

I opened the door and smiled at Mum. Then, when she wasn’t watching, I saluted to Logan.

I went to my room and sat down on the bed. What a day. If someone out there wanted a new angle on a paranormal romance, come talk to Amy Lee.

Mum came to sit on the bed next to me.

“Mum, I think I understand what ghosts are now,” I said.

“I don’t think you do,” said Mum. “I’m scared, Amy. I’m scared for you and I’m scared for myself.”

I’d never see her as nervous as this, even though generally she was a pretty paranoid person.

“There’s still something following you around, isn’t there?”

I nodded, my eyes falling on Logan, standing in my doorway with his hands in his pockets.

“Do you want to know the truth about your Uncle Phillip?”

“Uncle Phillip jumped from the top of a construction site,” I said glumly. “Was he pushed by a ghost? Did someone see it? I didn’t think normal people could see ghosts.”

“Your Uncle Phillip was like you. Sarcastic and a rationalist.”

I glanced at Mum and back down on the floor again.

“But during the last few days of his life, he started to go downhill mentally. Your aunt told me that he started to see things – in particular a woman.

“We call them fox spirits, Amy.
Hor-li kui
. Remember the bedtime stories I used to tell you? They appear as attractive women or men, but nothing good comes out of them. They only appear to fool and trap you.”

I remembered all right. I remembered the time I crawled under my bed and slept there the entire night. I was totally freaked out because Mum had told me about creatures that came out of the dark, transformed into humans, ate your heart and then ran back into the woods.

“I’m not being forced to do anything I don’t want to do,” I replied.

“How do you know?” Mum asked.

I didn’t.

“Can you honestly say that you wouldn’t do anything he asked you to?”

I glanced up at Logan and then at Mum.

No.

I was in love with him. I was in love with a dream or a memory or an idea. Or a horribly painful but utterly beautiful combination of all three.

“How is that different from liking real boys?” I asked.

“You’re dealing with a ghost,” said Mum. “You don’t know what he’s capable of. I’d say that was very different.”

“Then get rid of him,” I said. The water from my hair, dripping down my forehead and onto my face, felt like tears.

“I wish I could. But I can’t. It’s something you have to make the decision to do yourself. And I know that you’re not ready. I know you will come to me when you are. Right now, all I can do is protect you.”

Mum reached into her blouse pocket. She took out a small red velvet holder, shaped like a tiny square envelope. From it she unfolded a frail yellow piece of paper, inked in black script and stamped in red.

Protection paper. What I called a “fish” as a young girl, because the word in Hokkien Chinese for that and the protection paper were the same.

I watched as Mum lit the corner of it with the barbecue lighter she’d brought up. As the paper flamed upwards, she dropped it into my bedside mug and placed the porcelain lid on top.

I sat with Mum, shaking just a little, before she passed the mug into my hands. I stared at the water in it. The black paper ashes had sunk to the bottom and for some reason it was oily on the surface.

Diligently, I took a sip.

I imagined the pieces of ash swimming in my belly.

“I trust you know what to do,” said Mum. “But I can’t lie and say that I’m not still scared.”

I could see Mum looking down at my shoulder, at the spot where my birthmark would be underneath my robe.

“Thanks, Mum.”

I put the mug back on my bedside table and I lay down on my bed. I could feel myself seeping into the pillow.

“See you in the morning, Amy.”

I lay there for a while, tracing the dragon pattern on the mug, lit by the fairy lights on my headboard, until Logan came over and lay down next to me.

“I’m not a fox. Although I’d like to be Michael J. Fox,” said Logan.

“Are you planning to hurt me?” I asked him in the dark.

Somewhere in a secret alcove of my mind, under the stairs of my imagination, there was a box filled with death wishes that I wanted to open.

“I want you to know that it’s also hurting me. In case you’re interested.” He was facing the wall as I faced the other direction.

“Logan, you’re not real. According to Wikipedia, mental illness can lead to hallucination with the emergence of a fantasy figure. Culminating in a pantheistic experience. I don’t know what that that last part means, but it probably refers to what I’m going through right now.”

I turned around. Logan turned towards me and propped himself up on his elbow. He touched a finger to my forehead and I could feel a pinpoint of cold right there.