this, he does not say. He taps the pool with the handle end of the 7-iron and circular ripples spread out into the pool from the central point of impact and our reflection – the two of us brothers – is fractured thirteen or fourteen times over.
August scribbles in the air. You and me and you and me and you and me and you and me and . . .
‘I don’t understand,’ I say.
He taps the pool again and points to the ripples.
‘I think I’m losing my mind, Gus,’ I say. ‘I think I’m going crazy. I need to sleep. I feel like I’m walking in a dream and this is the end bit that feels really real, the bit just before I wake up.’
He nods.
‘Am I going crazy, Gus?’
‘You’re not crazy, Eli,’ August says. ‘But you are special. Didn’t you ever have that feeling you were special?’
‘I’m not special,’ I say. ‘I think I’m just tired.’
We both stare into the moon pool.
‘So you’re going to talk to people now?’
August shrugs.
‘I’m still thinking about that,’ he says. ‘Maybe I could just talk to you?’
‘Everybody’s gotta start somewhere.’
‘You know what I realised in all that time with my mouth shut?’
‘What?’
‘Most things people say don’t need to be said,’ he says.
He taps the moon pool.
‘I’ve been thinking about all the things Lyle said to me,’ August says. ‘He said so many things, and I reckon all those things put together wouldn’t say as much as he said when he’d wrap his arm around my shoulder.’
‘What did Lyle tell you across the table?’
‘He told me where the drugs were,’ he says.
‘Where are the drugs?’ I ask.
‘I’m not telling you,’ he says.
‘Why not?’
‘Because he also told me to protect you,’ he says.
‘Why?’
‘Lyle knew you were special too, Eli.’
I tell him about my adventure. I tell him about my quest. I tell him how I met Caitlyn Spies. I tell him how beautiful she is. How everything about her feels right. ‘I feel like I know her,’ I say. ‘But that’s impossible, right?’
August nods.
‘How did you know her name that day?’ I ask. ‘That day you were sitting on the fence at home and you were writing her name over and over and over? Was that one of the big things? One of those things you know but can’t say because it’s safer that way.’
August shrugs.
‘I just saw her name in the paper,’ he says.
I tell him everything about her face. About her walk. About the way she speaks.
I tell him everything. About my escape from the hospital, my encounter with Batman, going back to Darra, returning to the secret room and the message from the man on the phone about Mum.
My story is interrupted by a deep howling sound coming from the living room of number 5 Lancelot Street.
‘What the fuck is that?’
‘That’s Dad,’ August says.
‘Is he dying in there or something?’
‘He’s singing,’ August says.
‘Sounds like he’s talking to a whale.’
‘He’s singing to Mum,’ August says.
‘Mum?’
‘He does it every second night,’ August says. ‘He spends the first four cups of goon cursing her, calling her every name under the sun. Then he spends the next four cups singing to her.’
This strange howling wobbles and wails out through the large front sliding window built into the orange brick house. There are no words in the howling, just sorrow, a deranged vocal warbling, slobbering and woozy and guttural, like an opera singer hitting a crescendo with a mouth full of marbles.
Blue and grey flashes of television light bounce off the living room walls visible through the front window.
I scan the house for a moment.
All the houses in the street are Housing Commission houses and all these Housing Commission houses in the street are built the same: low-set three-bedroom shoeboxes with a two-step access to a porch off the left side and a concrete ramp running to the back door. My father hasn’t mowed the lawn at the front of number 5 Lancelot Street. My father hasn’t mowed the lawn at the back of the house either. But he must mow the front lawn more than the back because the front lawn grass reaches my kneecaps but the back lawn grass would reach my nose.
‘This place is a shithole,’ I say.
August nods.
‘We gotta go see her, Gus,’ I say. ‘We gotta go see Mum. She just needs to see us and she’ll be all right.’
I nod to the living room window.
‘He’ll take us to see her,’ I say.
August tips his head to the side, a look of