Preloved Page 6

  “What was that thing you were saying about not being caught talking to nothing?”

  “I don’t care! And if it makes you happy – yes! We are the bloody Breakfast Club – the nerds are over there, I’m obviously the social outcast, your girlfriend in there is the princess and you’re – you’re the rebel-without-a-freaking-cause to lead girls on. Why didn’t you tell me you had a girlfriend?”

  And with that I stormed off, past the table of gawping nerds, and went to sit in the girls toilets for two hours. It was going to be the longest two hours of my life.

  Chapter 5

  I leaned against the metal trough in the girls toilets. Why didn’t this school have proper porcelain sinks? Were we not civilised enough to use sinks?

  I opened the locket, looked at the photo of Logan and then shut it. How stupid was I? It was like I’d been locked up in an ivory tower for sixteen years and he was the first boy to try to climb up my hair. I was as bad as all the girls who put posters of pop stars on their bedroom walls and then screamed so loud at the concerts that they fainted.

  I shoved the locket down my school shirt.

  “Amy? Can you open the door for me?”

  “No.”

  “You know I can’t open it.”

  “Why don’t you figure out how to get in yourself?”

  A disembodied hand appeared through the badly graffitied red paint – followed by the rest of Logan’s body as he fell through the door.

  “Woah!” I shouted and jumped back.

  “Woah!” he exclaimed. “Awesome.”

  “You just said awesome,” I said in surprise.

  “Yeah. Duh. Why wouldn’t I? That was awesome. You try passing through a solid surface sometime.”

  “I thought we invented awesome. I didn’t know it was so old.”

  “Nope. The Eighties invented awesome. Space Invaders, Rubik’s cubes, Alf. You know Alf right? ‘I kill me!’ You get it? It’s like ‘you kill me’, but his jokes are so funny he kills himself.”

  “Primitive computer games, primitive toys and a TV show about a talking puppet from space. Life must have been easy.”

  “No.” Logan looked at me seriously. “We had drugs, eating disorders and teen suicide too. Or did you think they were just invented last year?”

  I looked down at my hands. Logan sat on the edge of the trough. He hovered a few millimetres above the metal surface.

  “I came in to see why you overreacted out there. Or do you think you’re the only teenager ever to have problems?”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, still looking at my hands. I don’t know why I’m overreacting. I don’t know why you having a girlfriend affects me. I don’t know why I see things normal people don’t. I don’t know why I’m a weirdo. I wanted to say all these things and more, but I couldn’t.

  I wondered if he was still able to read my mind, so I did what a typical teenager would do; I shut down my emotions, refused to say what really mattered and changed the subject.

  “You know Logan, I wonder why you can pass through a door and yet you can sit on things and not fall through the floor when you walk.”

  “I don’t really know either.” Logan shrugged. He crossed his legs. “Maybe it’s all just perception and self-will. If I stop believing I’m a human who has to follow basic rules, it’ll probably all fall apart for me.”

  We were both quiet for a few seconds.

  “But you’re not a human; that’s the problem. I think you need to go home. Or to the other side, or to wherever dead people need to go.”

  Logan looked down at my hand, which was grasping the edge of the metal tightly.

  He wasn’t going to do what I thought he was going to do, was he?

  Logan lowered his finger towards the top of my hand.

  I pulled away, but unfortunately not in time.

  “Oh! How cold are you?”

  It felt like my hand had just passed through the air inside a freezer. I breathed on it to warm it back up.

  “That’s the thing, Amy. You keep referring to me as a ghost. What if I’m not?”

  “Um, no one else apart from me can see you, you can pass through solid objects and I’m pretty sure I released your spirit from the locket when I opened it. Logan, I’m sorry to have to say it, but you’re a ghost.”

  “What if I’m a hologram message, like in Star Wars, sent from the past into the future?” Logan jumped off the edge of the trough and started pacing the bathroom floor. “That would explain everything!”

  “Logan,” I said, wrinkling my forehead, “we have Skype, but we don’t live in some weird science fiction galaxy, okay? Look, I know who can help you.”

  “You’re not planning to bust a move are you?”

  “Yes. I am planning to ‘bust a move.’ Now excuse me,” I said sternly, sounding like Mum. I walked around Logan to get to the door. I still didn’t have the nerve to walk through him. It would be cold. And it would also be rude, wouldn’t it?

  I stepped back out into the library. I heard “Woah, psyched out,” behind me as Logan passed out through the door.

  “Seeya boys,” I said in the most confident voice I could muster, as I walked quickly past the naughty table.

  This same confidence didn’t apply with Mrs Marshall. I waited until she turned her back to me and went to the pile of new books that had to be laminated. Then I sneaked towards the door.

  “What are you doing this weekend?” asked Logan as he casually strolled after me. “Once I’m home, I reckon I’m going to take Stacey on a date this Saturday to the rollerskating rink.”

  “None of your business,” I replied loudly.

  “I think it is, Miss Amy Lee,” replied Mrs Marshall as she turned to me with a shocked expression. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  To have a cigarette? To get a snack from the vending machine? To, as the olds like to say, catch a breath of fresh air?

  I stared at Mrs Marshall, my hand on the big metal door, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights.

  I could handle this like an adult. I was just going to coolly and calmly walk out.

  And I did this by hiking my schoolbag up on my shoulder, throwing the door open and making a bolt for it. I raced across the quadrangle, past the canteen, past the oval and didn’t stop until I reached the footpath.

  “Amy, Amy, Amy,” said Logan, suddenly appearing by me. “Like Frankie Goes to Hollywood would say – relax.”

  “But I can’t,” I whimpered. I held my hands in front of me and realised that they were shaking.

  “I’m just messin’ about. They also had sarcasm in 1988, in case you didn’t know.” Logan grinned. “So, where’re we busting off to?”

  “I’m taking you to my mum,” I said. “And she’s going to help me ghostbuster you back where you came from.”

  “What makes you think your mum is going to believe you?” said Logan, a confident smile spreading across his face that I didn’t find attractive at all. Or so said my brain to my girl hormones.

  “My mum is different from other mums, okay?” I replied.

  And didn’t I know it.

  “Mum, I’m being haunted by a really horrible ghost and I need your help,” I said.

  Mum was sitting on our couch watching Ghost Whisperer on the tiny telly. It was her favourite show. I’m sure it had some part in her choosing to open a vintage shop, just like Melinda in the show.

  “Hold on a sec,” replied Mum. She blew loudly into a tissue. “I’m watching the episodes where Jim dies and he’s not ready to cross over because he’s still in love with Melinda so he goes into the body of a man who dies in an accident, who wakes up without Jim’s memories and Melinda has to convince him and everyone that he actually is Jim. Oh gosh, I love this show.”

  I shrugged and Logan shrugged back at me. What was I doing? I wasn’t supposed to be bonding with him. I was supposed to be getting rid of him – for both our sakes.

  Mum clicked pause and shifted around on the couch to face me.
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  “I got a call from your school. Apparently, you’ve been acting well, a little erratic. They said you tried to steal something from Florence Kwong and then you were ranting to yourself in the library and then you ran away from detention. Amy, are you trying to get attention and reach out to me? ’Cos you can talk to me, you know?”

  “I know!” I said, exasperated. “Did you hear what I just said? It’s because I’m being haunted by a ghost.”

  Mum stood up. She slowly came towards me from behind the couch. “Is this true?”

  It’s time like these that I appreciate having a kooky Chinese mum who believes me when I say I’m being haunted instead of dragging me to a psychiatrist.

  “Yes. Why else would I be acting so wack?”

  Wack? Argh. He was even infecting my language.

  “Tell me, Amy, is the spirit a woman in a red dress?” Mum had this look on her face that was practically begging me to say no.

  “Um. No.”

  “Oh, thank goodness!” exclaimed Mum. “It’s not a vengeful ghost. Your ah ma taught me that if someone was murdered, they used to dress the deceased in red so they could come back as a ghost to wreak vengeance. How do you think this ghost became attached to you?”

  I looked down at my shirt where the locket lay tucked inside.

  “I, er, walked through a cemetery. And I jumped over a grave. And I accidentally kicked over part of the tombstone. And I didn’t pray and say sorry.”

  I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t bring myself to tell the truth. It was as if it was a special secret I wanted to keep all to myself.

  Mum gasped. “Amy! I thought I brought you up better than that.”

  “Sorry, Mum,” I said, as if this conversation was completely normal.

  “Okay. Tell me, is the ghost absolutely hideous?”

  I looked at Logan. Good-looking, blue-eyed Logan. He had a don’t-you-dare look on his face.

  “Yes.”

  I watched in delight as Logan made a face.

  “Does it have a huge belly and an impossibly thin neck with a head balanced on top?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Logan made two fists with his hands and stared at the wall. Then he slowly pushed himself through the wall and seemed surprised when he could pass through.

  Hang on.

  “Lo–I mean the hideous ghost has gone into my bedroom!” I shouted.

  “Probably looking for food,” replied Mum, nodding. “I’m afraid that you’re being followed by a ‘hungry ghost.’ They’re eternally hungry, but unsatisfied because although they have huge stomachs, they can’t actually eat anything because of their thin necks. We’ll have to go see Master Wu.”

  I’m so scared of Master Wu. I think he must be a hundred years old now. He’s been old the whole time I’ve known him. I remember when he told me and Nancy Pants off when we were five for playing with the hell money. Yes, I knew that it was supposed to be respectfully offered to the dead. We were trying to play checkout chicks, but he didn’t seem to appreciate that.

  “I’m going to have to explain all this to Nancy’s mum,” said Mum, grabbing her purse out of her room. “She’s still friendly enough to ring me and tell me Florence Kwong’s mum is gossiping about you – and therefore about my parenting skills – behind my back.”

  Huh, like mother like daughter, I guess.

  “Mum,” I said, stopping her before she dashed down the stairs. “Do you often wish, like … you had a different daughter? More like, y’know – Florence Kwong.”

  Logan rematerialised out of the wall and swanned over to look at us.

  “No,” said Mum, looking genuinely surprised. “I honestly think you’re a really great daughter. Plus there’s genetics. And I was the one who raised you. So I’ve only got myself to blame and I’m not in the habit of that.”

  Mum smiled at me. The corners of her eyes creased behind her glasses, revealing that she wasn’t young any more, even though she still looked so slim and well dressed and full of energy. I wanted to throw my arms around her then, if only we were into that sort of thing.

  “Oh c’mon! Just be normal and hug, why don’t you. You don’t need a hideous-looking-eternally-unsatisfied-ghost to tell you that,” said Logan, loudly.

  I ignored him.

  “Let’s go,” said Mum, heading down the stairs. “Master Wu is semiretired, but if I explain it’s a crisis, he will help.”

  “Spewin’,” said Logan as he stood in Master Wu’s hall entrance.

  Yup. It was all very Chinese. Huge, menacing ancestral-worshipping altar facing the front door, huge pile of thongs in the corner, strategically placed Taoist symbol on the wall.

  Master Wu, dressed in his elaborate yellow cloak with his black Taoist hat on his head, walked around me with a serious expression on his face. I winced and hoped he believed me. I also hoped he didn’t pick up on all my lies ’cos I was scared it would all cancel itself out.

  He seemed to come to a pleased conclusion after a while, and talked in hushed tones with Mum.

  “I’m so sorry,” I whispered to Logan. “I want you to go where you need to. It’s all for the best.”

  “I don’t want to go towards the light or wherever you think my home is,” replied Logan. “I want to go home. As in my house. My parents. My bedroom. The one that I used to wake up in every morning until I woke up to this.”

  “I don’t claim to know what happened to you.” I tried to sound calm and logical, but I just felt like another lame school counsellor. “But you have to move on. You have to go and find God, or get reincarnated, or become part of the astral energy and move onto a higher pane of consciousness. Whatever belief structure rocks your boat.”

  “Amy, I want you to help me – but not like this.”

  Master Wu motioned for us to follow him down the hall. He was a man of few words. A typical traditional Chinese man, in other words. Like my father.

  “Try not to stare at all the other people who’ve come to consult him,” whispered Mum as we shuffled down the hall. “They’re here to ask about sick relatives, or unhappy spirits on the other side, or how they can win Lotto.”

  We sat down on the plastic chairs next to nervous-looking people who were clutching fortune-telling sticks or reading old gossip magazines. The TV made lots of explosive noises as a generic cop show played. I felt slightly sick, like I was waiting for bad news at a doctor’s surgery.

  I watched Logan leaning up against the wall, looking unhappy. I guessed he had feelings too. Which was really strange, as he didn’t have a physical body. Or, presumably, a physical brain or heart.

  Mum started counting money from her purse and shoving notes into a red packet.

  “I want to pay for this private consultation, the paper house and the figurine thingy, plus a donation to Master Wu’s temple.” Mum showed me the contents of the red packet. “Do you think this is enough?”

  “Paper house and figurine thingy?”

  “Master Wu thinks the spirit attached to you–”

  Yes! Master Wu believed me.

  “–has somehow become trapped in this world, so he’s trying to break it out and set it free.”

  “Uh-huh. Trying to bust a move,” I said thoughtfully.

  I started playing with the locket again.

  “Amy! Hello, Amy! Have you been listening to me? I said it’s our turn.”

  I followed Mum, with sickness growing in my stomach.

  In the dining room, Master Wu had set up a paper house on the table.

  “Are you ready?” asked Mum, concern on her face.

  “Yup.” I stood confidently, with my arms by my side.

  I looked at Logan, who had just slouched in and raised his eyebrows at the set-up.

  Master Wu started chanting some incantations really loudly and waving his arms around.

  “He’s asking for the release of the spirit,” whispered Mum.

  I was actually feeling quite terrified. “It’s like magic, like Harry Potter,” I started
blabbing nervously to Logan, who had come to stand beside me. “Oh, you don’t know what Harry Potter is.”

  I watched as Master Wu folded back the little door on the paper house and reached his hand in.

  “He’s freeing the spirit by bringing it out of the place it’s currently trapped,” said Mum, the running commentary.

  I don’t know what I was hoping for. A happy ending of some sort. An easy solution where everything reverted to how it used to be. But of course that’s not real life. Real life involves pain and goodbyes.

  I turned towards Logan to ask if he was feeling more “free”.

  “Shit,” I said instead.

  Logan was fading. Literally. The edges of him – his fingers and the tips of his campus shoes – were already gone. He lifted his hands up to his face and stared at his disappearing hands.

  I had expected finally to feel relieved. I didn’t expect to feel like utter crap.

  “What did you think was going to happen, Amy?” Logan asked me. Even his voice was fading away.

  I turned back to look at Master Wu. He must be reaching inside to pull out the figurine thingy. And once he did …

  “Please Amy,” said Logan. “Don’t let it end this way. You think life is like a movie, don’t you? Do you think your movie ends like this?”

  I looked desperately at him and then back at Master Wu. Even if that was true, I wasn’t the leading lady in it. The camera wasn’t on me. It would be on Rebecca and whichever boy who happened to be smiling at her right now. I should just let this end.

  “Amy.” Logan was pleading now. His legs were almost gone and he had collapsed onto the floor. “I swear there must be a reason why only you can see me. You asked me yourself if we had a connection. That could be true. Do the right thing and find out what it is.”

  If I could only hold out for a few more seconds. Then this would all be finished with. It’d be fine. I was forcing him to move on for his own good. Then I could return to my normal dreary life.

  I looked at Logan for the last time. His eyes, normally pale, were now almost white.

  A thin, drawn-out noise pervaded the room. It took me a while to realise where the noise was coming from. It was coming from my throat. I was whining. Like a puppy.