Preloved Read online

  Finally, lunchtime arrived. Life still felt random and meaningless. I grabbed a sandwich and started heading towards the meeting spot. I didn’t have to go far because I bumped into Rebecca in the central quadrangle – heading in the opposite direction.

  You couldn’t tell she had fallen into a toxic wishing fountain that morning. She even smelled fresh, like violets.

  “Have you ever felt like you don’t belong? Like, seriously not belong?” I blurted out.

  “Of course. That’s why I’m an indie kid and not one of those mainstream plastic people. Let’s go. The breakdancing contest is about to start.”

  “What? I didn’t think that was your thing. When has that been your thing?”

  “It’s totally not my thing,” replied Rebecca. “That’s exactly why we should go.” She took me by the arm and hurried me along.

  The ghetto-blaster was doing its job of blasting out some Eighties hip-hop. The same-ghetto blaster belonging to Michael Limawan that I had kicked over.

  At least it proved Mum’s point that things made in the past were more durable.

  Past. The word brushed against me briefly and disappeared, leaving me with a sense of nostalgia and longing for something that never belonged to me.

  I covered my ears and followed Rebecca as she nudged past the crowd that appeared to be made up of off-the-shoulder sweatshirts, headbands and crimped hair.

  “Rebecca! I need to talk to you about the locket,” I shouted over the noise of the music and the sound of everyone clapping in time.

  “What locket? Can we talk about it later? We’re supposed to be watching this.”

  I could see Michael standing by the ghetto-blaster with his arms crossed and Peter Cooper trying – and I should stress, trying – to pull some moves on the ground. Michael saw me and nodded in recognition. Ugh. He probably thought I’d come to return his “favour”.

  When I turned back, Rebecca had gone.

  I realised she had just moved away from the crowd and was standing off to the side by herself. And she had that look on her face. That classic Rebecca face.

  The one that said, “I don’t fit in with the popular kids. I’m on the outside looking in because I’m a loner that no one gets, but if only you knew how I feel on the inside, and the heart of gold I possess, you would know I’m just misunderstood.”

  I could see a group of boys, dressed in matching red retro Adidas tracksuits staring at Rebecca as they waited for their turn. She averted her large eyes away from them shyly and looked at the ground. I wondered if Michael was right and in their heads, they were seeing her through a fuzzy camera lens, while a gentle wind machine played with her purple curls.

  “Rebecca, I want to give you back your locket!”

  Rebecca turned to me with an annoyed look on her face. She cupped her hand over her ear to indicate she couldn’t hear me.

  “Your locket!” I held it up so she could see and I pointed at it. I guess I could have gone over to where she was standing, but I didn’t want to invade her space, now that I realised how calculated her unintended indie-cool was.

  I looked back over to Michael. He grinned back at me with a knowing smile. My hand closed tightly over the locket. I thought about what he had told me about vampires. It was time for me to take a chance on something for the first time in my life. Live large. Improvise.

  “Rebecca, I need your permission to open your locket!”

  “My what?”

  “Just say yes!”

  “Yes? Amy, what do you want?”

  “That will do,” I said, as Rebecca came marching back to me. “Thanks.”

  As the crowd suddenly put their arms in the air and cheered, I was the only one looking down. With fingers that trembled more than I expected them to, I tried the catch.

  It opened.

  “Yes!” I screamed. I put my arm up and punched the air.

  Everyone turned to look at my mistimed cheer. The music had stopped and the next dancer was waiting to come on. Rebecca stared at me with displeasure.

  Maybe it had nothing to do with superstitions. Maybe all the locket needed was just that final push and it was going to open anyway. I was sure it was all to do with addition, subtraction and the Pythagoras theorem or whatever I learned in Maths that day.

  I brought the two open halves closer to my face.

  There was a picture inside. Of a teenage boy.

  Are you satisfied now? I asked myself. I closed the locket and let it drop back down on its chain. There’s probably a middle-aged woman out there who would laugh if she knew you were wearing her old locket with a photo of her high school sweetheart inside.

  “Everything’s fine,” I said to Rebecca. “Let’s watch the next dancer shall we? Look, it’s Olivia Angeles. I hope she puts the boys in their place.”

  I put my hands on my hips and stared ahead.

  Directly opposite me was a boy with folded arms. He was dressed as your regular Eighties teenager, in a bright polo shirt with the collar popped, a blazer and a new wave pork-pie hat. He removed his Wayfarer sunglasses and stared straight at me. Then he smiled.

  I had no idea who he was but I did notice that he had nice blue eyes. His eyes rested on Rebecca and his face lit up.

  Oh … flippin’ … cheeseburger. Why did it always have to be like this?

  I squinted at him as Olivia Angeles did a freeze position with one arm on the ground and the rest of her body in the air. He clapped and cheered along with everyone else.

  “Who is that boy staring at you? Is he new?” I whispered to Rebecca.

  “What boy?” replied Rebecca.

  “Standing between Victor Zhang and Nicholas Swinburne.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I wish Rebecca wouldn’t do her I’m-so-cool-I-don’t-even-notice-boys act, especially when I was asking a serious question.

  “Fine. We’ll talk later,” I said.

  If only I had stared at this boy a little harder, then I would have realised that while everyone else’s clothes were rented or second-hand, his outfit looked brand-new. As if he had actually stepped out of the Eighties. I help my mum repair and restore vintage clothing; I know the real deal.

  If I had only done that, I would also have realised that he looked just like the photo of the boy in the locket.

  Chapter 3

  Every time I turned around or looked at things in my peripheral vision, I saw that new boy there too. I thought I caught his stare in final period, only to look up and see no one there. It was impossible. Our teacher hadn’t introduced anyone new during the start of class.

  When I felt him following me home, I was convinced I had a stalker.

  I wondered whether I should report this to the school counsellor or go straight to the police. The counsellor might suggest that I start coming to see him weekly to try to work out the issues that were really causing my stress, such as the breakup of my parents’ marriage and my failure to integrate properly with the rest of the girls at school.

  Maybe it was just my imagination gone mad because Michael Limawan had seared my brain with stories of zombies and vampires. Maybe I was having an emotional episode over my argument with Rebecca today and was currently in the midst of a paranoid meltdown.

  I started walking faster. There was the flash of a bright polo and that familiar black new wave hat. I hoped he knew I had awesome self-defence skills.

  I stepped off the footpath and onto the concrete flooring of the shopping square. I tried not to be depressed as I watched the shop on the front corner, the one that used to be a little craft stop, reborn as a franchised coffee chain.

  I watched as they unpacked the identical chairs that went in all the stores to go with the identical tables and logos and menus. People like uniformity, Mum would say. People don’t like it when they expect something and get something else. They don’t like disruptions to their usual routine. I walked on past.

  The sign on Buy Gones read “Closed”. Hadn’t I turned it over for M
um that morning? I pushed the door open and was careful to step over the door ledge. Mum told me when I was little that a house god lived there and that I shouldn’t step on his head. It had become second nature for me over time.

  “Mum?” I called out. I dumped my school bag on the courtesy loveseat and rubbed my shoulders. I could do with a nice mug of Milo. “Mum?” I called again. I went behind the counter and removed my shoes at the point where our “home” began. Holding my breath, I squeezed past all the unopened boxes, stacked almost to the ceiling and went upstairs.

  Above the store, we had a tiny little space we called home. With two bedrooms and a little nook that couldn’t quite accommodate the three-seater couch, so it had to be positioned diagonally. The white paint was peeling and the ceiling had a huge, ominous watermark on it. Mum said we would get a complete makeover, like on one of those reality TV shows, once she started making money. One of these days.

  “Oh, there you are. What’s wrong?” I asked.

  “Nothing,” replied Mum from the shabby wing chair. She wiped her eyes. I went to sit awkwardly on the ottoman next to her.

  She blew noisily into a tissue. A large photo book was open on her lap.

  “I still can’t believe that they buried Princess Diana on an island! It’s horrible.” Mum wiped her eyes again and started blubbing. “Ghosts can’t cross water. Can you imagine her – all lonely and by herself on that tiny cold island?”

  Princess Diana is Mum’s idol. Mum even got married in a replica of Diana’s puffball dress with the ginormous sleeves and even more ginormous train. I guess she could relate to the whole loveless marriage thing.

  I patted Mum on the shoulder.

  I knew exactly what she was doing. She would find something she deemed worthwhile to cry about – war, disease, hunger, princesses who got divorced – to disguise the fact that she was secretly crying for herself.

  “Let’s go and feed Mister Fozziebum, shall we?” Mum seemed to brighten immediately as she spoke.

  “We’ve already fed him,” I said, but Mum was already down the stairs. I hurriedly followed her.

  Again I squeezed past the cardboard boxes, which threatened to spill into our tiny kitchenette. One of the kitchen drawers was open and an assortment of can openers, chopsticks and vegetable peelers was scattered on the benchtop. An overhead cupboard door was open. I sighed and tipped everything back into the drawer and carefully pushed it closed. I shut the cupboard door. I went out the back door to find Mum.

  “Mister Fozziebum! Come on, boy. Come and get your dinner!”

  Mum placed the bowl of dried food down. Then she lit the joss sticks and wafted out the flames. She kneeled down at the little herb garden in the courtyard. I kneeled down beside Mum.

  We usually only fed Mister Fozziebum during the Hungry Ghost Festival, a month when all the spirits are supposedly released from the gates of the underworld to visit the living. But I didn’t say anything as I watched Mum push the joss sticks into the ground behind the bowl, between the coriander plants.

  I watched as the tips of the joss sticks burned red and the smoke wafted up in curls. Now that Mister Fozziebum no longer had a physical stomach, he lived on prayers and our love.

  “Remember how the vet used to tell you off, saying that dogs weren’t supposed to be that fat?” I said. “Well, I’m telling you the same thing now. He’s probably the fattest ghost dog around.”

  Mum managed a laugh, then wiped her face again. “I miss him.”

  “I miss him too,” I replied.

  I cupped my fingers to my mouth and I stared at the stone. I chewed at the ends of my fingernails. I felt so sad. I felt like I knew even fewer “people” now that he was gone.

  “You know, sometimes I feel like he’s still here, just that we can’t see him,” said Mum, wistfully. “I get up to go to the toilet in the night sometimes and I swear I step into what feels like one of the ‘surprise puddles’ he used to leave us.”

  We both stared down at the smooth flat stone that marked where he was buried.

  “What do you want to send him for his birthday?”

  “I think he’s got everything he needs already,” I replied, humouring her.

  Last month we burned him a life-size doghouse made of paper. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a proper incinerator, so we kinda improvised with the old Weber and a coal fire.

  The bad news was that we almost burned down the courtyard, but the good news was that we managed to burn every shred of the paper doghouse, which, according to Mum, meant Mister Fozziebum had a brand new kennel in the afterlife.

  “What I want is for Mister Fozziebum to be reincarnated to a better life,” said Mum. “If he’s a born a dog again, then I hope he goes to a good family. If he’s paid his due and comes back as a human, then I hope we get to meet him someday.”

  “Do you really believe in that?” I asked Mum. “After all, you’re supposed to be part of the new generation. Why do you still choose to practise all of this?”

  “I guess,” replied Mum, exhaling deeply, “I choose to keep hope alive. The hope that maybe we will see Mister Fozziebum again one day. It makes the pain easier, doesn’t it?”

  I nodded.

  I’d followed Mum to the shelters to look at all the sad dogs waiting there. All of them preloved and damaged in their own way. All of them perfect for us, but Mum would never choose one. I knew that she was searching for him.

  In the corner of my eye, I swear I saw the brim of that black hat.

  “Did you see that?”

  “See what?” replied Mum.

  “Just then, I thought I saw someone looking over the fence. Now they’re gone.”

  “There was no one there,” said Mum. “Now, no more ghost talk. I don’t want you to spend the whole night freaking out.”

  As I followed Mum back into the house, I took one last glance around the courtyard, trying to see if there was anything moving or caught between the lemon trees. Nothing.

  “Can you tell me something about this?”

  I laid the locket and chain down in front of Mum. She was seated behind our foldaway two-person dining table.

  “I’m sorry, but you’re going to be disappointed if you are hoping I will say you have unearthed treasure.”

  Is it haunted? Is it cursed? Is it magical? I wanted to ask.

  “Where did you get this from?”

  “I found it.”

  Mum frowned. “You should never keep stuff you find. It might have black magic on it.”

  “That’s just an old Chinese saying,” I scoffed. “It’s to force little children to be honest and hand in any lost property they find.”

  Did I sound a little unsure?

  Mum got out her loupe, the little foldable magnifier she kept in her blouse pocket from habit and held the necklace up to her face. I watched as she inspected the chain first. I opened the fridge to see if there was anything in there to cook for dinner. There wasn’t. Same with the freezer.

  “The good news is that the chain is real. Sterling silver. Twist rope. Sixty centimetres. Very nice.”

  I started opening the cupboards one at a time.

  Didn’t we have any food in this house? Why did we have a full bag of dog food?

  “The pendant, on the other hand, is just costume jewellery.” Mum folded her loupe up and tucked it back away. “From the styling and the wear, I’d say it’s definitely from the Eighties, not a modern imitation. See the wear on the back? Maybe if you tied a lace bow on it and threaded it with another pendant, you could justify selling it on Etsy for a ridiculous price.”

  “Thanks,” I said, holding my hand out for the locket. I was scared she was going to open it up. For some reason I didn’t want her to see the photo inside. “Are we out of food? Do you want me to run down to the deli for supplies?”

  “Oh. Forgot to say. We’re out of cash. And the credit card is maxed out. I know, I know – I shouldn’t have spent it all bidding on jewellery at that deceased estate auction.
Amy! Don’t look at me like that, I swear I can sell it for twice the price and, when I do, we’ll dine out. Okay, maybe not that posh Japanese place, but not Sizzler either.”

  I sighed and pulled the box of Weet-Bix out of the pantry. Thank God there was milk.

  Mum tried to smile encouragingly at me. “Do you often wish you went with your dad instead?”

  “No, of course not,” I replied in a serious voice.

  “At least you wouldn’t be having cereal for dinner.”

  “I seriously don’t mind. It’s kinda romantic. Like we’re both starving artists or something.”

  Mum smiled again and looked down at the papers in front of her.

  “What’s that?” It was my turn to ask the questions.

  “It’s just …” Mum put her hand on her forehead and massaged it. “I’m still trying to get Dad to give us our share from the divorce. Gosh. I wish I understood what all this legal mumbo jumbo meant.”

  I guess that’s what was upsetting Mum. I didn’t know the right comforting words to say, so I said nothing, and we ate our dinner in silence.

  The weird stuff happened after dinner.

  I’d done some homework and had a shower. I sat in front of my dresser and combed out the tangles from the ends of my long hair.

  The Japanese water perm last summer had been a mistake. From now on I was going to be happy with my straight black hair. Leave the colouring and the chemical treatments and the fancy haircuts to Rebecca.

  Not that anybody looked at me anyway.

  I was glad to be alone in my tiny little room. I didn’t care that three of my walls had torn floral wallpaper and the third was bare concrete. It was… home. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

  My reflection in the mirror frowned back at me. For some strange reason I had put the locket on again, even though I knew I had to take it off before I went to bed.