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Chapter One
Apparently
my older sister Mallory was perfect. That’s not how I remember her, but it’s
what my mother tells me when I’m doing something wrong. My sister certainly looks perfect in all the photos mum has
plastered her bedroom with; photos that sit next to trophies for netball and
gymnastics, photos that hang next to certificates of merit for academic
achievement, and principals’ awards for community service. But she was just my
sister. A sister who fought over the TV remote with me and complained if I took
up more than my fair share of the couch. A sister who told me my friends were
rude and smelly and called me names. But I guess it doesn’t matter whether she
was perfect or not. It’s impossible to be as good as someone who’s just a
memory.
“What are you
doing Ryan?” Mum asked, glancing over to where I sat at the kitchen table.
I covered my
work with my arm. “Nothing,” I said.
“Is that
homework?” she pestered. “That better be homework. Mrs Penman wasn’t very happy
with your homework last term.”
“She’s just one
teacher. I have lots of teachers … and Mrs Penman doesn’t like me.”
“So what did you
do to make her not like you?” Mum said, standing at the kitchen bench, squeezing
the last home-made muffin into an old ice cream container.
“Nothing. She
just doesn’t like me,” I repeated.
“You must have
done something, Ryan.’ I could feel her looking over my shoulder. “So is this
for her?”
“She’s my
science teacher, Mum. This is for English.”
“Ok. Well, make
sure you do your science homework.”
I didn’t bother
saying I didn’t have any.
“I’m off to a
meeting,” she went on, sitting a knife and a small tub of cream cheese on top
of the muffins in her basket. “It’s time to organise the Candle-light Rally for
Missing Children again. Gosh, they come around quickly. I need you to look
after Gemma.”
“I told Alex I’d
be down to see him at the skate park with my bike as soon as I did my homework.
You said nothing about going out.”
Mum pointed a
wad of paper napkins at me. “Don’t be smart with me. There’s no one else to sit
with Gemma and I can’t take her to the meeting. It’s too hard for some of the
other parents. Too soon.”
Jeez. Mallory
wasn’t here any more but she was still wrecking my life. I wanted to hate her
but I couldn’t. It’s hard to hate someone when something bad has happened to
them. I wondered if she’d felt this hacked off about babysitting me.
“Can Alex come
here?” I don’t know why I asked.
“No. Next thing
you know he’ll be texting his mates and there’ll be twenty of them round here. Or
a hundred …”
I didn’t bother
saying Alex didn’t have a mobile phone at the moment. I’d already told her
enough times but she chose not to remember or blocked it out or something. She
was good at blocking stuff out. I guess it helped her cope with what had
happened to Mallory. I’d see Alex at school tomorrow. In science class.
“I’ll lock the
back door on my way out,” Mum said briskly, brandishing her over-full, jangling
key ring like a jailer.
Mallory was nearly fifteen when she
disappeared on the way home from netball practice, I wrote as I heard the
lock click and the back door slam. I’m
older then my big sister will ever be.
I didn’t make
Gemma go to bed until an hour after her usual bedtime. Gemma’s okay for a
little sister. None of this is her fault. She is a bit of a cry baby, but she’s
a girl. Its kind of what they do. She hadn’t moaned at all when I’d asked her
to clear the table and wipe while I washed. So I just said nothing while she
watched an extra hour of television. I guess you’d call it a silent protest. It’s
not like Mum would find out or anything, but the program was a bit grown up and
full of swearing. Gemma’s always been on about watching it so I knew she
wouldn’t dob me in. I didn’t even bother to make sure she did her homework. That
was Mum’s job.
After I’d said
good night to my sister I wandered aimlessly around the house. I wasn’t going
to do any of the chores Mum would have made me do if she was here. I had a few
more days to finish my English assignment and there wasn’t any other homework
because the new term of school had only started a couple of days before. TV was
rubbish and I didn’t want to ring Alex. He’d be hacked off I never turned up,
although he had to be used to it by now. He’d met my mum enough times.
I found myself
standing outside Mallory’s bedroom. The last door on the upstairs hallway. I’d
seen those forensic crime shows on television. I know what dead people look
like. In the beginning I’d imagined Mallory, pale, lying in long grass, her
eyes closed. Just her face because I didn’t want to see beyond it. But I
couldn’t do it any more. Mum kept telling me she was still alive somewhere. And
one day she’d come home and we’d be a happy family again but that was one big
fat stupid lie. Mum could tell it to herself but I’d stopped believing it ages
ago.
Don’t get me
wrong. I wanted Mallory to come back for so long. I waited and waited and
waited and the police kept coming back with developments and new ideas and then
questions and then, eventually, they stopped coming. I cried bucket-loads of
tears – I was a lot younger back then - with Mum and Dad and Gemma, and by
myself in my bedroom, and then they just dried up because they weren’t going to
bring her back. For a while I hated everything and everyone because what had we
done wrong, why was everyone else’s life going along okay and this shit thing
had happened to us? And I hated and cursed the person who had taken my sister
and wrecked our family and made it break apart into five lonely pieces.
And sometimes I
blamed Mallory.
In the end it
was Gemma who kind of saved me from becoming a pathetic crying hermit because they
were forgetting about us and we had to stick together. Poor Gemma.
I felt a little
guilty standing outside Mallory’s room now. It’s not like she’d chosen to be
abducted and murdered. For ages I blamed her for all the bad things that
happened after she’d gone. And then I did my best to shut her out of my head, except
when it suited me to blame her for something else. Like having to babysit Gemma
tonight. Even if she was here, she’d be seventeen, nearly eighteen. She’d
probably be going out with a boyfriend. Probably some jock like Mike Crenshaw
who played rugby for the senior first-fifteen at my school. Or maybe someone
older to piss Mum off. Or she’d be hanging out with her girlfriends and I’d
still be minding Gemma although Mum wouldn’t be at the meeting to organise the
Candlelight Rally for Missing children. I couldn’t imagine what else she might
be doing if Mallory was still around. There wasn’t anything else.
I
felt for the light switch and flicked it on. For a second I thought she’d
probably be annoying me like crazy if she was here. She’d find a way. And
suddenly I desperately wanted to be annoyed. And this flood of sadness swept
over me like a wave and threatened to suck me down. As if casting off from the
safety of the shore in a leaky boat, I let go of the door frame and drifted
into Mallory’s bedroom.
I didn’t know
why I was in here. I gave up on the idea long ago that I could find some clue
in here myself, something that everyone one else had missed with their fine-toothed
combs and their specialist equipment but I couldn’t help feeling a small stab
of hope. Then I remembered it all happened three years ago and any clue would
just lead me to a pile of bones or a faded empty netball uniform.
When she first
disappeared the police spent hours in here, looking through her clothes,
flicking through her books as if she'd left a secret coded message in lemon ink
in a pocket or between the pages of a favourite book as a clue to what had
happened; like she was someone in a
Nancy Drew mystery. But she didn’t keep a diary and there was nothing in her
room to show what she’d been thinking those last few days before she was gone. There
were posters on her bedroom walls of people famous three years ago, but they
had nothing to say now. She’d kept a whole lot of stuff in her school bag. She
never let anyone else look inside it but she had it with her when she
disappeared. They searched for her mobile phone but it was missing too. They
monitored it for weeks but there were no calls or texts. Mum had convinced Dad
to get a mobile phone for Mallory, saying it would help keep her safe. But a
phone can’t protect you if someone has bad intentions. Mobile phones don’t know
kung fu and can’t dial for help on their own. And they can’t tell you where
they are when the battery’s dead. Just like a person.
A frilly pink duvet lay smooth over her bed
with a couple of soft toys propped up on the pillow. The one on the far side
was Mr E, her first teddy that I always wished was mine, but I didn’t recognize
the other one. It looked brand new; as if no one had ever held it or dragged it
through the mud or wiped their nose on it like had happened to Mr E. I punched
the new one off the bed. Mallory would have hated it.
Like I’d seen a
hundred times before, there was Mallory’s hairbrush, and her earrings and heart
necklaces and other jewellery and a bunch of face junk on the top of her
drawers. Mum had tidied her girly magazines into a pile but you could see
strands of paper sticking out where she’d cut out her favourite hot guy to pin
on the cork board above her bed. A chill ran over me as I thought that these
things were all that was left of her. Her celebrity crushes in May the year she
disappeared and the big plastic rainbow heart that Tyler had given her in year seven, that she
wore on a cheap rusty chain. Forever stopped at fourteen, just a roomful of
stuff that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else but us. Like when you take
your hand out of a bucket of water and the water falls back into place like you
were never there.
I heard the car
door slam outside and footsteps climbing the wooden back porch stairs to the
house. The key rattling in the lock. I sprinted for the door, quietly let
myself into the hallway and along to my room at the other end. It wasn’t worth
the trouble I’d be in if Mum found me mucking around in Mallory’s room.
