I say, and I’m on the way to the front door when she calls to me.
‘But take a picture of Lola on stage. Text it to me,’ she says and bites the apple. ‘Show me proof of this life.’
Too smart for her own good is how Gran describes Rose: too adventurous, too honest, too unconventional, too loud. These are the qualities I love about Rose. Until now, when they’re working against me. I’ll have to go to the club, but first I drive around to old places, putting off the inevitable for a while longer.
Everything seems the same: the streets, the shops, the houses. I pass Gracetown High, where Mum taught Science and I went to school. Cal went to a private school across town that had a good music program because he played the piano.
I park outside our old place on Matthews Street, a three-bedroom Californian bungalow, painted cream. Whoever lives there now has kept our chairs out the front and the plants, but there are different bikes leaning on the side, and different cars in the driveway.
The back of the house was glass when we lived there. I remember Cal and me sitting in the lounge room one night when a summer storm started. Cal and I both loved storms. We loved the accumulation of charge in the air, electricity building in the clouds above and on the earth’s surface, moving towards each other.
Cal was interested in science, and he was good at it, but he didn’t love it, not the way that I did. He liked science because of all the possibilities, but he believed in other things like time travel and the supernatural. I remember once we had this argument about whether ghosts existed. Cal thought they did. I thought they didn’t. Mum explained to us why, according to the second law of thermodynamics, they couldn’t exist. ‘Humans are a highly ordered system and once we’re disordered beyond repair, we don’t reorder.’
Cal chose to believe in them anyway. I sided with science.
But after the funeral, after everyone had left the church, I stayed, waiting for Cal’s ghost. I still didn’t believe in them but I had this crazy idea that because he did, they might be possible. ‘See, Rach. I’m here,’ I imagined him saying, as he held up his arm to show the sunlight shining through. Ghosts are nothing but dust and imagination, though, and eventually the funeral director told me I had to leave. There was another funeral starting soon.
I think about Rose’s ultimatum. Stay here or go home. Cal’s everywhere, but at least in the city I won’t think about those waves that took him.
The dreams of the silver fish make me sad, but they’re not the worst ones I have. The worst are where I’m tangled in the water, screaming his name, hauling him onto sand, desperate to give him my breath.
I check the address of Laundry, and start the car.
Pride and Prejudice and Zombies
by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith
Letters left between pages 44 and 45
8 December – 16 December 2012
Okay, Pytheas, I’ll write back, but only because I feel sorry for you. What kind of guy likes freaks?
I’ll tell you about me, but first I have some questions. Who is Pytheas? Have we spoken before? Why do I never see you putting letters into the book? I’ve been watching very closely.
George
Dear George
Are you always this suspicious? I don’t mind, but I wonder if you trust anyone. You’re always on your own at school. I asked to sit at your table in the cafeteria once. You looked at me, said sure, and then got up and walked away. Not exactly welcoming.
So, Pytheas – I’m glad you asked. He lived in 300 BC, and he was the first person (at least on record) to write about the Midnight Sun. He’s the first known scientific visitor to the Arctic, and he was the first person to record that the moon causes the tides.
You never see me putting letters in the book because I’m incredibly stealthy.
Pytheas
P.S. I saw that you marked the United States on the map – I’d like to go there too. My sister and I would like to dive off the coast of California some day.
Okay, Pytheas: things about me.
I like the bookshop. I read a lot. Some favourites are Hugh Howey, Kurt Vonnegut, Ursula K. Le Guin, Margaret Atwood, John Green, Tolstoy (just read Anna Karenina), J.K. Rowling, Philip Pullman, Melina Marchetta, Charlotte Bront? and Donna Tartt. Lately (you know this)