India Simmons isn't sure. But a ghost wants to kiss her.
India's just moved to Australia, but it's not the Australia of velvety sands and crystal blue seas. This is a crumbling brick suburb, a long drive away from a grotty city beach. Mum's wrapped in love with her new partner, school's a nightmare and the only person that's nice to her is Leon, the boy next door. Pity he's dead. And the thing about dead people is that, however nice they are, sooner or later they need a live person to do something for them.
Leon's no exception. He wants India to protect his little sister, Amanda, from their abusive stepfather, Brad. Unfortunately for India, Brad is also a paramedic and local hero, and she finds herself destroying budding friendships, antagonising new neighbours and increasing the distance between her and her mother, all to help Leon. Things get even more out of control when Leon combines a broken mobile phone, an anti-aging cream and an aboriginal myth to transport her to a time where she's the ghost, Leon is alive - and Brad is trying to kill him.
And that kiss?
Man, is it cold.
Read the first chapter below!
Chapter 1
I would never be happy here. Never, never, never.
I ripped open the door, but that was just the screen door, so then I had to rip open the actual front door. Once I'd made it into the hallway I had to slam the screen door first, which didn't slam well because it had one of those poxy self-closing hinges that closes at about zero miles an hour. Slamming the real door rocked the house, though, as did my rucksack crashing on to the wooden floorboards.
The look on Mum's face as I streaked past the kitchen on my way to the garden made it worth the effort. Steve's voice wafted out of the kitchen window: 'Give her a minute. A first day at a new school is always hard.'
He had no idea.
The scabbed, hairy resentful beast of resentment that had been living inside of me for the past few years wanted to throw itself down on the grass and scream like a thwarted toddler, but Australian grass is so dried out and spiky it's liable to poke your eye out. Instead, I peeled the sticker that said 'I'm India and I'm new!' off my sack of a school dress, flung it on the grass and ground it into the dirt with my foot. Grind, grind, grind. Slowly, deliberately, mercilessly. From the branches of the tree above me a fat grey bird with a long beak screeched in mockery.
Why even bother to give me a name badge? Everybody at school had called me Pommie anyway.
'This is India,' Mrs Marini had said. 'She's just moved to Sydney from London. Let's give her a big Elouera High welcome!' Stony silence. Mrs Marini had coughed and sent me to sit in the front row next to a girl called Caitlyn Lee. Caitlyn had long, shiny black hair drawn back into a neat French pleat, and she didn't say a word to me all day other than 'Kill the chat, Pommie bitch'.
Kill the badge.
I span around on my heel, pasting the badge deeper into the dirt. Round and round and round. Faster and faster and faster. My hairclip slipped loose and locks of hair flew around my face, flicking into my eyes. I must have looked insane, but the little girl on the other side of the fence didn't say anything.
The little girl. I'd pulverised the sticker into near-oblivion before I noticed her. I stood still. Only, I was so dizzy from my spinning that standing still actually meant lurching from side to side, then groping helplessly for the fence between us and hanging on to it tightly so I didn't fall or throw up.
It took me a moment to realise she was real. The setting sun was shining through her fine blonde curls from behind, with this freakish orange and red light that made it look like her head was in flames. The dizziness and the lurching didn't help; they added motion to the whole picture and it took a while for the writhing flames to settle down into what they were. Curls. On a little girl who looked about six and was staring at me through pale blue ice-chip eyes like I was insane.
She had just caught me killing a sticker. She had a point. But, even so.
'It's rude to stare, you know,' I said.
She didn't say anything, but she kept staring.
'Do you live next door?'
Nothing.
'What's your name?'
She must have had one, but she didn't share it.
'Amanda! Come inside!' A man's voice. The girl glanced back at the house, a grimy single-story red brick place like ours, with chipped concrete steps leading up to the back door. Their garden was as dull as ours, all crackly, dried-out grass, apart from the far end where a gone-wild, jungly collection of overgrown bushes thrust dark-leaved branches at the sky. Thriving despite the drought they kept banging on about on the news.
'Is that your dad?'
She shook her head. She moved her lips but no sound came out. 'If you talk a little louder I might hear you.'
'Get in here! NOW!' Not-dad's voice roared across the garden like thunder on a clear day.
Amanda turned and walked toward the house. The screen door screeched and banged and she was gone.
Shame. Amanda was the friendliest person I had met in Australia so far.
#
Mum made curried chicken for tea, because it was my favourite. She said she couldn't find the curry powder she'd used in London, even at the shop over the road with the rusty corrugated iron awning that sold so many bizarre things - did we know they had chicken feet and could that be hygienic? I didn't want to know about chicken feet and I didn't want to know about the long list of things Mum had used to try and make her own curry powder. It didn't taste the same and even curried chicken couldn't hide that I wasn't talking to her. Or to Steve. Least of all to Steve.
I left my plate on the table and Mum in mid-sentence to slope off to my room. My stagnant room with its flock wallpaper, creaky bed, pre-IKEA desk and a fish tank with a couple of crusty goldfish swimming around a plastic plant and a fake diver's helmet. Steve gave me the fish when we arrived because I 'needed a pet'. I'm not sure on which planet fish count as pets. Planet Steve.
I liked the fish, though. I kept the tank on the broad windowsill and the water glinted in the early morning sun as I dragged myself out of sleep to face yet another Day In Hell. The filter hummed me to sleep and when I showed the fish the pot of fish food they would look at me with goggle eyes and flip their flippers as if beckoning me closer. People say fish only have two-second memories, but my fish were clearly Fish Mensa material, because they darted eagerly to the top of the tank when they saw the pot, even if it had been more than a day since I'd remembered to feed them. I called them Lara and Amber after my friends in London. Lara was long and thin like the real Lara and Amber...well, the fish needed a name and I liked being able to say her name again in a normal way, even though it took an effort.
My computer squatted on the desk, eyeballing me with its blank screen. Steve had promised me he'd get it set up so I could e-mail Lara and the others, but even he, IT genius that he was, couldn't persuade Telstra to connect our phone line any faster. Which meant no phone, no email, no Facebook, no MySpace, no Twitter. No nothing. No world.
We'd been here for two weeks with only Steve's mobile working and I couldn't phone the UK on it, because it was a company phone. Steve had said on the weekend I could use it anyway, but Mum said that would risk his job and that would be crazy after we'd come all this way. The scabby beast of resentment snarled inside me when she said that.
My mobile was dead. Waiting at the gate at Heathrow, I'd sat on one of those carpeted plastic seats, talking to Lara for about an hour, running down the minutes that would be useless in Australia. Mum twitched with impatience in the seat next to me, crossing and uncrossing her legs and looking at her watch, while Steve hovered over us, picking up and putting down the hand luggage like a clockwork toy. I twisted around on the seat so I couldn't see them, until the flight attendant made the final boarding call and Mum seized the phone out of my hand and pressed disconnect. I seized it back, threw it on the ground and stamped on it. 'Just to make sure it's really disconnected,' I said and stalked down the ramp to the plane without looking back. Now the phone, rescued by Mum, who couldn't stand litter, had a crack on the screen and rattled when I shook it. It snuggled up with my ski jacket, thick jumpers and assorted woolly things in a cardboard box on the top of my wardrobe that Mum had packed up on the first day and labelled: 'Things India Won't Need in Australia'. Mum liked labels.
I lay on the bed, on my old Barbie bedcover. It was faded and the stitching coming loose, but I kept on using it, because Dad had chosen it for me at Marks & Spencers and I had to hold on to everything he gave me, because he'd never give me anything else. I looked at the photo of Dad I'd stuck to the wall. There was one in a frame on the desk too, but I liked to have one nearby to kiss every night before I went to sleep. Five years today. Mum hadn't said anything. I couldn't believe she'd forgotten.
Instead of crying, which would have been like giving in to the scabby beast, I gnawed the inside of my mouth until it bled then tortured Lara and Amber by waving the pot of food above the tank to make them dart about. I hadn't bothered closing the curtains and darkness pressed on the other side of the window, broken only by a single light. Not a lamp from a window, but a disembodied blob, like a torch, shining from the direction of the overgrown end of the garden next door. The light flickered as the breeze whisked tree branches and leaves across it. It must be Amanda. What was she doing playing outside at this time? I'd go and see if I could squeeze some words out of her. It had to be more fun than listening to Mum and Steve say 'I'm sure school will be fine tomorrow'. Like they had any idea.
I climbed out through the window. Easier than explaining to Mum and Steve why I wanted to go out to the garden at nine o' clock at night. Heaving up the lower pane felt familiar, like back in London, creeping out my bedroom window after the thing with Amber, when Mum wouldn't let me go out at night any more. What was different here was the screen on the other side of the window, a sheet of metal-framed mesh designed to keep insects out, and India in. I had to push it so hard I broke one of the acrylic nails I'd had put on before I left. The metal frame screeched against the windowsill as it gave way, like a witness alerting Mum to her wayward daughter. I slid the window back down and lay innocently on my bed with a crappy Australian magazine full of stories about nobodies until I was sure Mum wasn't going to crash my escape party.
Climbing out was easy; a quick leg over the window and down on to the ground below. The grass crunched under my feet, more like walking across crumpled tin foil than a lawn. The breeze brushed cool air across my cheeks and hands.
'Amanda! Hey Amanda!' I hissed over the fence. Nothing. I wondered if she could talk. I peered down the garden towards the wild bit. The torchlight was definitely coming from there. I thought I could see something moving. I could hear rustling. Branches? I peered harder. No, that was a flash of white. Or blonde. Her hair?
'Amanda!' Nothing. What was she up to?
Well, if she wouldn't go to me, I'd go to her. The patchy fingers of light from the flickering torch gave me enough light to climb the fence, which wasn't hard as it only came up to my waist. I crunched across the stubby grass to the end of the garden where the real wilderness started: a tangle of towering spiky palms, interspersed with rubbery-leaved bushes and trees with skeletal branches from which huge spider webs dangled like twisted puppet strings.
The webs gleamed with dribbles of evening dew in the yellow torchlight, making them easy to avoid, thankfully. As I crept into the boundaries of the jungle, I stumbled on something; a rock, a root perhaps, and stopped for a moment. Crickets screamed in the shadows and the dank smell of decaying compost filled my lungs. Filtered by the trees the breeze felt warmer against my skin. I moved slowly forwards, poking my feet out one at a time, feeling the ground and taking tiny steps to make sure I didn't fall over. This was kind of a spooky garden. Something scurried away from my probing toes with a rapid, rustling rush. Hooked branches caught at my hair. The screaming crickets faded under the sound of my own breathing. What the hell did I think I was I doing? I should be at my desk, catching up with strange Australian schoolwork and six-year-olds should be on a sofa, glued to a bright and jingly show on TV, not hanging out in a jungle with a torch.
Except it wasn't a torch. The light shone higher than eye level, and as I crept closer, something dark and solid loomed out of the trees. The light seemed to be shining from the middle of it. The shape reminded me of one of those old VW camper vans. What was that doing at the end of Amanda's garden? Was this some weird Australian idea of a playhouse? I crept closer. It was a camper van. Cool. Maybe. Kind of a miniature house. The light glowed through the half open sliding door. I sneaked up the side of the van, towards the door, peering in. A flash of blonde hair. Amanda.
I stuck my head around the door: 'Boo!'
A thump and a cry echoed through the van: 'Holy shit!'
Unfolding himself from the floor, rubbing his head as if he'd just knocked it against the tiny table folded down from the wall on the far side of the van, was a boy; about the same age as me. His face was sickly pale, like boiled egg whites, and his eyes were fixed on me.
'Hi,' I said. 'Sorry. Thought you were Amanda.'
The boy looked behind him, looked down at me, standing just below the doorway. He opened his mouth and closed it, a bit like my fish.
'I'm India. I live next door,' I said.
The boy shook his head, like a dog shaking water off its fur, and then he just stared at me. Maybe he was in shock. It's not every day a strange girl climbs the garden fence and invades your playhouse. He kept staring. I was beginning to wonder if he was Amanda's brother. The staring thing could be genetic.
'We just moved in. Me and mum...and my stepdad.'
More staring. Rewind. Take it gently. The natives are idiots.
He did have nice eyes, though. For an imbecile. Ice-chip blue; clear and wide.
'Do you live here?' Oh, smooth, India. Now who's the imbecile. Of course he lived here. He looked like Amanda. More than the staring thing. The curly blond hair, long and shaggy in his case, and the ice-chip eyes.
The boy looked behind him again, like he expected to see somebody. Like somebody had just tapped him on the shoulder or whispered in his ear, but there was nobody there.
'Not in the van, in the house, I mean,' I went on, trying to make sense of my stupidity. He looked down at me again and swallowed, then spread out his arms. I stood on tiptoe and poked my head through the door. There wasn't much to see. To the left rose the grey-lined rears of the driver and passenger seats, beyond which I glimpsed a spidery steering wheel. To the right was the living area, doll-house tiny, with a two-ring stove, a pot-sized sink and cabinets finished in 70s-style fake wood. A narrow bench seat upholstered in orange stripes with a cracked brown plastic trim sat to the right of the little table and behind that was a kind of platform bed, just a mattress really, in the same orange striped fabric as the seat. The whole place was scattered with evidence of boy life. A crumpled sleeping bag sprawled across the bed; a kettle sat on the two-ring gas stove; books and papers hid most of the table. The van even smelt of boy, musty and bad-socky.
He lived here. Here. 'You live in the van? Why don't you live in the house?'
The boy puffed air into his cheeks and let it out again with a hiss. 'I live in the van, because...my stepdad...said it would make a man of me.' His voice was soft and crackly, as if he hadn't used it for a while.
Stepdad. That explained Amanda's shake of the head. She had been communicating, and the man really was a not-dad. I liked that better than stepdad. Not- dad. Yes, that would clarify Steve's position nicely.
There was more staring going on. I was supposed to reply. And it was a surprise. Living in a van. 'You're kidding. Not Amanda? I suppose he doesn't need to make a man of her.'
'Did you see her? Is she OK?'
I was fed up with him staring down at me from his vantage point in the van. Where were his manners? Not that I had many at the moment either. That didn't mean other people shouldn't. 'Aren't you going to ask me in?'
'Sorry. Come on up.'
I clambered up the high step into the van, gripping the side of the door to steady myself. I leant on the back of the passenger seat, staying near the door where the air smelt of plants and warm night, rather than boy.
'What about Amanda?' he demanded.
'She wouldn't talk to me. Don't you get to see her?'
'Not...much. Give me a moment. I just...fell over, remember.' He slumped down on the little bench seat and rubbed his hand through the back of his hair. Nice hair. Surfy, like it was full of dried salt. He was Australian, of course, so maybe he really did surf. He was rubbing his head like he was trying to rub through the salt, the hair and the skin to something underneath.
'Are you OK?'
'My head...' He stopped rubbing and looked up at me like he was going to say something, but then change his mind and bowed his head again. 'Just my head.'
'Perhaps you need some panadol. Do you have a first aid kit?' He kind of snorted at the table. 'First aid kit? There isn't even a toilet in this thing.'
'Oh. Where do you...?'
'There's a shower and a toilet in the laundry. Mum lets me go in there when my stepdad's not home.'
'And when he is home?'
'Don't walk under the lemon tree.'
Steve was looking like not-dad of the year. Still, at least the boy was talking now. I liked his voice, husky, with that little crackle in it. I liked his silences; when he stared at me like he was trying to figure something out. But I wanted to keep him talking. He'd said more to me than anybody else since I got here, and so far, none of it insulting.
'Where do you go to school?'
'I don't...where do you go?'
'I'm in Year 10 at Elouera High. What do you mean you don't?'
'I don't go to Elouera. What happened to your dad?'
The words came out in a rush. 'He died. Five years ago today.' The scabby beast twisted inside me. 'I think Mum's forgotten.'
'I'm sorry,' he said. 'That he's dead and that your Mum forgot.' He was looking at me now. Not staring, just looking. I liked his ice chip eyes. Ice chip makes them sound cold, but they weren't. They were calm and still. His mouth was wide and straight. I wondered what he would look like if he smiled.
Now I was staring. Stop it, India. 'What happened to your dad?'
He looked down and scuffed the cracked beige lino on the floor of the van with the toe of his shoe. 'He went out and never came back.'
'Sorry.' He didn't say anything. I didn't know what else to say. In the silence I heard another voice. Mum, calling my name. I straightened up and he looked up suddenly.
'Don't go!' His voice was urgent. 'I need...'
'Mum's calling me.'
'Come back, then,' he said. 'Please. Soon.'
His urgency was strange. It hadn't exactly been the most bonding conversation I'd ever had. On the other hand it was a conversation, which put him ahead of anybody else at the moment. And he did have those ice chip eyes.
'Maybe.' There was nothing like a little mystery. Although I had a feeling somehow that he might be better at that than I was, with all the silences and the staring. Still, I didn't say anything else, or even look at him. I ducked straight out of the van and ploughed back through the bushes, which seemed easier than it had going the other way, and over the fence to find Mum, pacing towards me.
'What were you doing over there?'
'I met the boy next door.'
Oooh, a boy. I expected her to rip into me, but she wasn't even listening. 'You were so quiet; I went to your room to see what you were doing and you were gone. I didn't know what to do. I sent Steve one way up the road, and I went up the other, but we'd only got to the end of the road before Steve fell over a tree root and his nose started to bleed so we had to come back, and then I remembered you'd been out here earlier so he's in there with ice on his nose and I came out here...' She ran out of breath.
'Mum, I'm fifteen. You don't need to follow me everywhere.' And I'd rather Steve didn't follow me anywhere.
'I couldn't stop thinking about Amber.'
'Don't. This is Sydney, not London.'
'Just tell me when you go out, OK? Do me that favour. Even when you pop over to the neighbours. It's not like we know them or anything.'
'They seem OK. There's a little girl and her brother. Mum, he lives in a van in the garden...'
My words dissolved unheard on the evening air as she rushed up the steps to sort out Steve's nosebleed before he dribbled to death.
The scabby beast roared inside me. I didn't want her to follow me. But I wanted her to listen to me.
That was when I realised I didn't even know the boy's name.