‘Pass me that,’ she said, pointing to the Discman.
I picked it up and handed it to her. There were black smudges under her eyes and she smelled like overripe fruit that had started to go squishy.
‘I don’t know what you said to Tilly yesterday,’ Helena said, ‘but she was crying her eyes out all night. I don’t want you telling her any more lies about anything, alright?’
‘We didn’t mean it,’ I said, before Wally could get a word in.
Helena opened the Discman lid. The CD was still spinning. ‘Just don’t go putting any nonsense into her head.’
Tilly came through the flyscreen wearing thongs, a towel draped around her neck. ‘Ready,’ she said.
‘Don’t leave your shit out here,’ Helena said, holding up the Discman. ‘You know how much I paid for this? Break it and you’re not getting a new one.’
‘I was coming back for it,’ Tilly said. ‘Jeez.’
When we got to the paddock gate, Wally pulled up the barbed-wire fence beside it and slid through the gap. He held the rusted wire wide for me and I followed him through. Wally let it fling back into place and walked into the paddock.
Tilly stood still. ‘Can’t I just go through the gate?’ she said.
‘It’s broken,’ Wally said, which was a lie.
Tilly threw her towel over the fence. I pulled up the barbed wire to let her through.
‘I can do it,’ she said, hooked her fingers next to where my fist held the wire up.
We walked in a line, Wally in the lead, along the path that wound through the hills leading to the dam and, past that, the knackery. Sometimes when Wally and me trailed through the golden stalks, the stiff pads of grass bursting from the dirt, I’d try not to think about the cows and pigs, the old racehorses dead and strung, waiting to be mushed into dog food or tallow or fertiliser. Once, when we got as close to the knackery as we ever had, I swore I could smell the tang of blood still crusted to the cracks in the concrete.
I was glad we were in a line; it meant we didn’t have to talk and it wouldn’t be weird and too quiet, like yesterday when I couldn’t think of anything special to say. The yellow stalks came up to my shoulders and the sky was so glary I had to shade my eyes with my hand. I could hear Tilly behind me: her panting, her thongs slapping beneath her feet.
‘It wasn’t a lie, just so you know,’ Wally said. ‘The yellow house really is haunted. I see ghosts all the time, don’t I, Cub?’
I shrugged. ‘I’ve never seen any.’ I knew I’d pay later for not taking his side, but I didn’t care.
When we passed the knobbly tree near the middle of the paddock Tilly called out from behind me. ‘Gross,’ she said. ‘Look at all this poo.’ I turned around. She’d stopped, was pulling her ankle onto her knee.
‘You should’ve worn proper shoes,’ Wally said.
‘Where are all the cows?’ Tilly asked. ‘And the horses?’
‘There aren’t any.’
‘Where’d all this poo come from then?’
‘I dunno.’
It was flaky, and crumbled off Tilly’s sole. ‘It might be old,’ I said.
‘I thought farms were supposed to have animals.’
‘It’s not a farm,’ said Wally. ‘We’re not farmers. Do we look like farmers?’
‘Looks like a farm to me.’
‘Well, it’s not.’
‘Okay then,’ Tilly said. ‘Don’t have a cry about it.’
We walked in silence for a minute. Wally picked up a stick and used it like a cane. ‘Hope you don’t get bitten by a snake,’ he said.
‘Are there snakes?’ asked Tilly.
‘Just in the morning, usually,’ I said.
‘Once,’ Wally said, ‘Cub and me were fetching planks of wood from the shed because Cassie was going to build us a cubbyhouse, and when I picked up a piece of wood from the pile, there was this great big brown snake underneath it, which is the second most venomous snake in the world. Cassie came at it with a shovel and sliced its head right off. Its guts were everywhere.’
‘Its insides looked like raw mince,’ I said. ‘Wally dared me to have a nibble.’
‘That’s gross,’ Tilly said. ‘I hate snakes.’
‘Me too,’ I said, even though they were my favourite animal. ‘I hate snakes too.’
When we got to the dam we lay our towels on the red dirt. It was only half full, even though it had rained. Mozzies buzzed on the surface and the water was the colour of Milo. While we swam, I kept my eye on Wally, waiting for him to dunk Tilly under, pretend to drown her, or say something about the ghosts again. But he didn’t say anything, and we swam and swam until our scalps started to burn and Wally decided he was bored of swimming and wanted to go back home to get his dollar. Even then I couldn’t stop grinning from how nice it was just to be floating around in someone else’s orbit for a little while, how nice it was to be put in a brand-new mood just by being in the same place as someone you think is magic.
When we got back to the gate I asked Tilly if she wanted to come over. I had to build up all my courage to say it, but before Tilly could answer Wally grabbed my arm and said we had important stuff to do inside.
‘She’s nice,’ I said to Wally as he pulled me towards the house. I looked over my shoulder to wave goodbye to Tilly, but she’d turned back towards the yellow house, was almost at the verandah. ‘Why don’t you like her?’
‘She’s a girl.’
‘I’m a girl.’
‘Well, I don’t like you either.’
When we got inside I raced to have a bath first. I left it full for Wally, and when I went into our room he ducked out past me, a grin stretched on his mouth. He sprinted to the bathroom and slammed the door. I could tell by the look on his face that he’d done something to my stuff. I peeled back my sheets, looked in the toes of all my shoes. I couldn’t see anything different, anything yuck, but I knew it was waiting for me to find.
2.
I BIKED INTO TOWN WITH Cassie the next day. For the few months before Christmas holidays started, Cassie had been getting up early on the weekends and disappearing before anyone else was awake, bike and backpack gone. He never told us where he was going and didn’t come back until dinnertime. Once, when Wally and I rode into town for lollies, we saw him standing outside the bakery chewing on a bread roll and reading the signs taped to the inside of the window. He had a line of blood dripping from his nose, staining the bread like jam. When he saw us he skulked across to the other side of the road, even though his bike was chained up by the postbox. That night, when I asked him why he’d ignored us, why he was bleeding, he lied right to my face, said he hadn’t even been in town that day.
Since the start of the Christmas holidays he’d been disappearing as well. He never let me tag along, but I begged and begged and finally he said I could come if I shut up about it.
On the ride over I told Cassie about Tilly, how we’d gone to the dam the day before, and how Wally had been mostly nice to her, even though he thought she was a bit stupid.
‘You can be friends with whoever you want,’ Cassie said. ‘Not just who Wally lets you be friends with.’
‘I know that,’ I said.
We pulled into Daley Street and stopped on the footpath in front of a small timber house, bluish-white, like teeth. ‘This is it,’ Cassie said.
‘How do you know it’s this one?’ I asked.
‘We drove past one day,’ Cassie said. ‘Ages ago.’
We were outside Mum’s old house. It was close to Main Street, in a cluster of other streets where the houses sat snug before the properties started spreading into the hills. Cassie said the For Sale sign had been taken down months ago but no one had moved in yet, that he’d been coming by every few days to check.