Squishy Taylor and the Vase That Wasn't (6 page)

When I skype Mum in the lounge room, everyone wants to talk to her. Alice comes over with a basket of laundry and starts asking about the Greek economy. Of course Mum won’t shut up. Alice stays until every sock is paired. I even help, so she’ll go away faster. Mum doesn’t notice.

Finally, when Alice leaves, Jessie brings Baby over and lets him
bash
the iPad. Mum just laughs at how cute he is.

Then she has to go. ‘Love you, Squishy-sweet,’ she says, blowing me a kiss.

It makes me want to cry when she hangs up.

Geneva feels like it’s on Pluto, rather than just a plane ride away.

I’m still cranky about missing out on
Mum-time
when it gets to goodnights. I hardly notice how quiet Vee is. But I do notice when she takes the torch up to bed.

I ask, ‘What’s that for?’

‘Nothing,’ she mutters. ‘Just so I can see stuff if I need to.’

Dad does his new round of
equal forehead-kisses
, but I duck my head away at the last minute.

‘What’s up,
Squisho?
’

‘Nothing,’ I mutter, just like Vee muttered to me. I want him reach in and give me a proper cuddle. But he just leaves.

I can’t sleep because I’m cranky about sharing my mum and dad. I think about Mum laughing with Jessie about Baby. I squeeze my eyes closed. I try to think about the vase mystery instead, but it’s not fun.
It’s just scary.
I roll over and pull my blankets tighter.

I wake up to a light
darting
around the room. It takes me a moment to realise it’s Vee with the torch. What’s she doing?

She flicks it off after a minute and I lie in the dark.

The bunk ladder starts
creaking
and our bedroom door eases open. Vee is
sneaking
out.

I’m thinking about following her when she comes back in. Dad, stumbling and sleepy, is with her. He stands by our bed, saying, ‘It’s four in the morning, sweetie. There are no ghosts. Just go back to sleep.’

He’s using his special Dad-voice.
My
Dad-voice. It makes me remember all the things I was mad about when I fell asleep.

After he leaves, I can’t hold it in anymore.

‘He’s not your dad, you know,’ I say.

‘
Wha-at?
’ Vee asks.

‘You think you can have my dad? Well, you can’t, he’s mine.’

Jessie rolls over in the bunk underneath mine. ‘What are you guys talking about?’ she says sleepily.

Vee says, ‘I just had a bad dream.’

She sounds like a
whingey
little kid. Which is annoying.

‘All I’m saying is, he’s my dad, not yours,’ I say.

‘Squishy!’ Jessie says. ‘Don’t be so selfish. She’s just freaked out –’

‘Me? Selfish? You’re the selfish one! You stole all my
Mum-time
tonight and didn’t even
think
about what you were doing.’

‘
Whoa!
Squishy, it’s the middle of the night and you’re being a weirdo,’ Jessie says.

I don’t say anything.

Then I say, ‘I’m not talking to you guys.’ Just in case they don’t understand the silence.

I realise Vee is crying. Sometimes I’m so much more mature than she is.

‘Vee?’ Jessie says. ‘What’s up?’

Vee takes a
sobby
little breath. ‘It’s the ghost. I can’t sleep because of it.’

‘There is no ghost,’ Jessie says.

‘But we
saw
it,’ Vee insists.

‘We saw a
video
,’ Jessie says. ‘It could have been anything.’

Vee keeps crying. Even though it’s annoying, I can’t help feeling a bit sorry for her. I’m so angry and
twitchy
, my bones are
itching
to do
something
.

‘Maybe we
should
try to scare off the ghost,’ I say, because there’s something
scary-exciting
about the idea.

Jessie is silent.

‘Jessie?’ Vee asks.

‘OK, fine,’ Jessie says. ‘There’s no ghost. But we can do it if you really want.’

‘Can we do it now?’ Vee asks. ‘I can’t sleep.’

‘All right,’ Jessie says. ‘Where?’

I know exactly where.

‘We have to make sure we clear out the
whole building
,’ I say. ‘That means we have to go up on the roof.’

We tiptoe around the dark kitchen with the torch, looking for good things to take. Jessie finds a bobby pin and Vee gets our oldest recipe book, the brown one with gold writing on the front.

‘This one’s just like the big book in the movie,’ she whispers.

I pull open the spice drawer, because there was turmeric and holy basil at my grandmother’s funeral. I know funerals are different from
ceremonies
to scare away ghosts, but they’re both for saying goodbye to dead people. I want to take candles and the lighter, even though we’re not usually allowed, but Jessie makes me put them back.
She’s so bossy.

Jessie slides everything into a green bag, and then spots the iPad. She grabs it too and I take the key off the hook by the door.

We tiptoe out into the dimly lit corridor, and down to the bright stairwell. We run up to the ladder.

I climb the gate easily and Vee follows. Jessie reaches up to pass the bag to me. She starts climbing, but stops with one leg over the top.

‘I’m stuck,’ she says. She’s clutching on, and doesn’t want to lift her second leg over the top.

‘Come on,’ Vee says. ‘Just hold tight and lift your foot over.’

Jessie’s knuckles are white. She’s almost lying along the top of the gate and the foot near me keeps trying to find a new spot. She looks like she doesn’t trust herself to put it down.

I remember how scared I was looking down from our balcony, how
shaky
and
slippery
my hands felt.

‘You’re OK,’ I say. I step up under her. ‘Tread on me.’

I guide her foot and hold it steady on my shoulder.

‘Uh,’ she says. ‘Is that OK?’

She’s kind of heavy, and her foot is
mashing
my ear.

‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘Just a bit squishy.’

Jessie half-laughs, half grunts, then she’s over the top and climbing down the other side. Her foot
catches my curls
and yanks at them.

‘Ow!’

‘Sorry!’

We stand, breathless, by the
Rooftop Access
sign.

‘You better be able to pick that lock,’ Jessie says.

But, just like I thought, the lock is the same as the one on our balcony. All it takes is just the right
jiggle
, and I’m done. Awesome. I push the door and it swings open.

We’re out on the roof. It’s wide with a wall all around the edge. The main thing I notice is the city, out beyond the wall. It’s huge and sparkling all around.

‘
Eeee!
’ squeals Vee, running out across the clear space and spinning in a circle.

It’s stopped raining and the air is cold and clear. I can hear the sound of cars below, but so far away.

Behind us, the door we came out of looks like the entry to a little shed.

It’s the perfect place.

Vee
scatters
a circle with the basil and places the recipe book perfectly in the middle. I mark our foreheads with turmeric,
swiping up
with my finger like they did at my grandma’s funeral.

Jessie hunches over the iPad.

‘What are you doing?’ I ask, leaning over her shoulder.

‘Getting the footage of the ghost,’ she says. ‘Hang on … it’s pretty low on battery … but … here we go.’

The ghost is still there, standing tall and still on the screen. We all stare at it as it fades to white and disappears into an empty corridor.

Then Jessie touches the screen. ‘I’ll put it on loop,’ she says. We watch,
mesmerised
, as the ghost appears and disappears. Jessie places it beside the recipe book in the middle of the circle.

‘Hands on the book,’ Vee says, as we sit cross-legged around it. We place our fingers on the cover.

Vee looks up and says, ‘Now we need to chant.’

‘Chant what?’ Jessie asks, looking a bit embarrassed.

I think about the
Om Namah Shivaya
chant my grandmother used to do, but that doesn’t seem right.

‘What about,
go away ghost
?’ Vee asks.

But I shake my head. ‘We don’t just want it to go away,’ I say. ‘We want justice. We want to return the vase to the temple.’

Then Jessie gets inspired. She’s the one who knows good words. ‘Ghost be gone and justice will follow.’

Vee grins and I say, ‘Perfect.’

So we all chant together:

‘Ghost be gone and justice will follow.

‘Ghost be gone and justice will follow.

‘Ghost be gone and justice will follow.’

We sway around the recipe book with the screen light shining up on our faces. Jessie is looking down at the iPad, and Vee and I are looking out into the darkness. My voice sounds different and special when it’s exactly in time with the others. The night feels
enormous
, spreading out from the roof. Our voices get louder and louder until it feels like something big will happen. The wind blows our hair, smelling of dried basil. We slowly stop chanting.