Cassie said he’d help me with my reading on Thursday afternoon. I’d been begging him all week, and finally he said he’d do it if I stopped being a pain. After school I got my books and pencils ready and waited at the kitchen table. But he didn’t come home, not for dinner and not for ages after that. I did my reading myself, and then lay in bed, waiting for the sound of Cassie’s boots to creak up the back steps. I wasn’t going to get up and say hello to him. I wasn’t going to talk to him for all of Friday even if he said sorry.
But when the headlights finally lit up the outside, Cassie didn’t come up the stairs. Instead the paddock gate groaned open and, a minute later, the car engine spluttered and then growled. I got out of bed, tiptoed to the verandah. Cassie had turned the headlights off, but I could see his car creeping through the open gate and into the paddock like a monster. It bumped over the uneven ground until I couldn’t see it anymore, and the sound of the engine faded into the night sky sounds and everything was quiet again.
I’d thought Cassie was done with doing weird stuff. That he and Ian went a bit stupid again over the holidays, but that they’d got sick of acting like puzzles. I waited on the verandah for him to come back from whatever dumb thing he was doing out there, and eventually his car appeared from deep in the grass. He hadn’t been gone long, and he drove through the gate, parked next to the clothesline and turned off the engine. My eyes had got used to the dark, and I saw him get out of the car, look into the back seat, cupping his hands around his eyes like binoculars. He went to the boot and opened it. He didn’t take anything out or put anything in, just held it open for a second before clunking it shut.
When he came up the stairs I didn’t think he could see me. I was crouched in a dark corner where the roof made a nothing space. But when he got to the door he whipped around even though I’d been quiet as dust.
‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ he said.
‘What were you doing out there?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Just go inside.’
‘You forgot about me.’
He pressed his palm into his eye. He looked annoyed even though I was the one who should be annoyed. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘Great,’ I said, standing up. ‘You even forgot that you forgot about me.’
He looked at me for a second and then opened the door, left me out there by myself. The light from the bathroom leaked on to the verandah. The tap turned on and I could see his shadow behind the window. When I went inside a floorboard creaked under my foot and Cassie opened the bathroom door. He’d taken all his clothes off but he didn’t seem to care, didn’t seem embarrassed. I felt my face go red and I hoped he couldn’t see it in the dark.
‘Go to bed, Cub,’ he said.
‘What do you think I’m doing?’ I could see past him into the bathroom. His shoe was resting on the side of the bath and he had a wet washer in his hand. There was a weird smell coming from the bathroom, like the smell of the school toilets early in the morning before lessons have started. I peered around him. ‘What are you doing in there?’ I said.
Cassie took a step forward and grabbed my arm. ‘Go to bed,’ he said again. His fingers dug into my skin, and he pulled me to my bedroom. When I tried to worm out of his grip he grabbed hold of the back of my hair and held it tightly. He shoved me into my room and closed the door.
I climbed into bed. My scalp stung. I looked up, at the glow-in-the-dark stickers scattered on the ceiling. I remembered when I’d taken them from Cassie’s walls. Wally let me climb onto his shoulders to peel them off, and climb on again when I’d glued them to our ceiling because they’d lost their sticky. They weren’t glowing now, though.
At school the next day I couldn’t stop thinking about Cassie, about the paddock. He’d probably gone to the knackery again. At lunchtime, when we were in the library, I told Wally I was going to the toilet, but instead I unchained my bike from the racks next to the shelter shed. I’d never skipped school before, but by the time I realised what I was doing I was already out the gates.
When I got home I dumped my bike at the edge of the paddock and climbed over the gate before I could chicken out. The sky was stinging blue, the grass yellow. The dirt was churned up from Cassie’s tyres the night before, and I followed the track along the path. After a while I came to a part in the grass where the stalks had been bent and snapped over, making a new, smaller trail. The grass came up to my shoulders, and I stood on my tippy-toes.
There was something in there, a few metres back from the path, something shiny, black. I peeled the grass apart, crouched into the dirt. It was a bag, wedged in the grass—a garbage bag tied into a knot at the top. I picked up a stick and prodded the bag’s middle. It felt soft, like it was full of stuffing. I crouched down, started picking at the tie with my fingernails; if it were Wally he would have ripped it right open but I made sure I was careful. When the knot came loose I saw it was full of clothes, a school uniform. There was a hat made of straw with a ribbon tied around the base, and a starchy shirt with a badge pinned to the collar. A skirt. There was something heavy at the bottom of bag. I put the hat and the shirt on my knees and reached in. It was a shoe—a black school shoe—small, the same size as mine.
I could hear the drone of horseflies, feel the sun like an iron on my head. I stuffed the clothes back into the bag and stood up, took a step back. I whipped out of the grass, didn’t care that it scratched my face and my arms. I followed the track back home, running until I reached the gate. I got on my bike without looking back to the paddock, and rode down the highway with my fists clenched hard around the handles the whole time. The bones in my fingers were stiff as pliers when I finally let go.
I chained up my bike and went to the bubbler, pressed my lips right up to the tap even though Wally had told me not to because at after-school care the feral kids pissed all over it. I splashed water on my ears to make them feel less hot, and then went to the classroom. I tried to slip in without anyone noticing, but as soon as I appeared at the door, Miss Williams’s head snapped towards me and she stopped in the middle of her sentence.
‘And where have you been, Coralie?’ she asked.
Everyone turned around to stare at me.
‘I felt sick,’ I said.
‘What kind of sick?’
‘Vomit sick.’
‘Do you need to go to sick bay?’ She raised her eyebrows behind her glasses. ‘Your mum will have to come pick you up.’
‘I feel better now,’ I said.
‘You don’t look very well.’
‘I’m okay,’ I said. ‘I just feel a bit hot.’
‘Go have a drink.’
‘I already did.’
Miss Williams gave me a funny look. I knew I looked scruffy and she was real smart and could probably tell I was lying. I sat down at my desk and turned to look at Wally. He was staring at me strangely. I turned back around and stared at the front of the room for the rest of the afternoon.