Inbetween Days (27 page)

‘No?' I pulled away and folded into myself. I dragged hot tears away with my fists. ‘Really?'

I wanted to take his hand and tell him I understood. But I was fumbling around in the dark, half-stunned and blinking, being held accountable for mistakes I'd made before I knew any better; my body said one thing while my heart yearned for something more, and the whole time the answers were somewhere in between, just out of reach.

‘No?' I sneered. ‘Then what the hell did we come here for?' I reached up and switched off the speaker. There was nothing but silence as the credits rolled.

Jeremiah pressed his lips together. He got out of the car, slammed the door and pulled up his jeans.

I waited, curled into the seat, as he shut everything down. I closed my eyes, but the ghostly silhouette of the screen and the shape of Jeremiah were still there.

As he drove me home, I practised lines in my head that might get us talking again, might tell the truth or something like it, but nothing would come out.

Thom and Trudy's cracks were beginning to show. She niggled at him over nothing and Thom stayed over less often. Mads spent more time in her room to avoid the tension, but I made sure I hung around. I reclaimed my end of the couch and commandeered the remote; I ate whatever I wanted and left dirty plates lying around. Trudy couldn't attack me without running the risk of a very public counterattack, and so she picked on Thom. I used Trudy's lies as currency. Trudy skirted me as if I was a bomb that might detonate without warning.

If I let things play out, Trudy would sabotage herself: she'd deliberately pick the unstable block rather than allow anybody else to knock over her tower. I knew, because we were both becoming experts in self-sabotage. But this was the waiting game, and I was already a master.

On cue, Trudy hissed, ‘Why don't you ever put your shoes away?' She kicked Thom's boots across the lounge-room floor. She picked up a glass I'd left on the table and took it into the kitchen.

‘Sorry,' Thom said, and got up. He started putting on his boots.

Trudy came back in. ‘Where are you going?'

I felt sorry for Thom. Trudy's weapons were loaded for me, but she had to fire at an innocent.

‘I've got to go and check on this bloke up in the forest,' he said. ‘I'll head home after that. I'll call you tonight.'

My stomach dipped. ‘What bloke?' I asked too quickly. So Thom had seen him, too.

At my tone, Trudy raised her eyebrows.

‘Camper,' he answered. ‘He's a bit odd but it's probably nothing to worry about. It looks like he's been there for a while. I've encouraged him to move along. It's just habit. I always check on anniversaries.'

‘What anniversary?' Trudy and I said together.

Thom frowned. ‘You know—the young lad. The last one, a year ago. He was…'

‘Don't say his name.' Trudy put her fingers in her ears. ‘That's like inviting them inside.'

I was lightheaded, even though I was sitting down. There had to be a connection. I knew
something
was about to happen and I wouldn't be able to stop it.

It didn't seem that long ago, but a lot can happen in one year. Trudy had come back home but I felt like we were further apart now than when I'd imagined whole oceans between us. Ma and Dad had disconnected. I'd loved and lost: lost Luke, lost Trudy, lost Ma, lost Astrid, lost my job. And Jeremiah. I reached down and found Gypsy's warm body squeezed under the table next to the couch.

Losing Gypsy.

Losing my mind.

Losing hope.

And if it was exactly one year today, I sensed Pope would be leaving, one way or the other.

Losing Pope.

Thom's car came down at a sedate speed an hour later. I took my chin off my hands.
Everything was okay
. If it wasn't, surely he would have been speeding. Or was it too late to matter?

I let twenty minutes pass, then started walking. My heartbeat was skipping all over the place and I was out of breath. Halfway there, it started raining; I was dripping by the time I reached the forest sign.

‘I hoped I would see you today,' Pope called before I came into view.

The air smelled fresh and sweet but my relief was sweeter. I hadn't made a sound; the earth was spongy and silent underfoot.

‘How can you tell when I'm here?'

He was packing up his tent. ‘The insects. You have to listen. The sound changes—it's as if they're playing elevator music. The real music starts when they think there's nobody around. Like people, really.' His stubble had grown into a full beard. His eyes were still sunken and sad. ‘Hungry?' He held up a bag of barbecue chips in one hand, a squashed iced bun in the other. ‘One person can't eat all of this.' He gestured to a pile of canned food and wilting vegetables in plastic bags.

‘Hey,' I said warily. ‘I feed you, remember?'

He threw the bun at me.

I caught it, opened the bag and broke off a piece. ‘I suppose you know the ranger knows you're here.'

‘I do.' He stuffed the tent into its bag, dirt, leaves and all. ‘We met weeks ago.'

‘He didn't say anything about you until today.'

‘I asked him not to. Same as I asked you. The last thing I needed was all of you people conspiring to bring the mad man down from the mountain.'

I frowned. ‘You people?'

‘What, you thought you were the only one?' He winked.

‘I'm sorry—I don't understand.'

Pope wiggled a tent peg from the ground and shook off the dirt. ‘Others came. Merrilyn from the bakery. Alby. Thomas. They brought food, like you. They tried to get me talking, like you. I guess you'd know most of them living in a place like this.' He dropped the peg at his feet and wiped his hands. ‘I've only had the odd day alone since the day after I got here. You were the first, though.' He reached over and plucked a leaf from my hair. ‘I'm the best-kept secret that everybody knew and nobody told.'

I sat down and crossed my legs. I wasn't the only one separating the people in my life. It was a great strategy for keeping secrets, but it didn't make for much of a safety net to catch you on your way down.

‘I'm surprised and not surprised all at the same time,' I admitted.

Pope reached into one of his pockets and pulled out Alby's spare set of laundromat keys. ‘Here.' He dropped them into my lap. ‘I won't need them anymore. So, anyway, I'm leaving.'

‘Oh.'

‘I thought you'd be pleased.'

‘I am,' I said, scowling, and he smiled. ‘What happened? What changed?' As I asked the question, I looked up. The bottle was gone. Fragments of glass were scattered under a nearby tree. ‘You opened it?'

‘I needed to read it—I was always going to read it on this day, and I was always planning to leave today if I survived knowing what was inside.'

I screwed up my nose. ‘But I thought you wrote it. I thought it was yours.' I was so confused.

‘It was my brother's…Joel.' He stumbled over the word. ‘The car was his but I drove it back here. It was his bottle and his note. He had just turned eighteen.' He sat down next to me.

‘Joel,' I said slowly. Using the tent peg, I wrote the letters in the dirt. ‘I'm so sorry.'

Pope watched, and retraced them with his finger when I'd finished. ‘Me, too. I don't know why I felt I had to come here. I needed to do something until the world was the right way up again. Does that sound crazy?'

‘No,' I said. ‘I count.'

He rubbed his dirty hand over his face. ‘So many times I let the phone ring out when he called. And if he didn't call, I told myself everything must be okay.' His breath sighed through his fingers. ‘It's like what you said about not being able to acknowledge your goldfish—that was me. It wasn't my problem if I didn't pick up the phone. And then he was gone and we've all been asking,
why, why
, but none of us really wanted to know the answers. It's hard to know how much is my fault and how much I couldn't have changed if I tried.'

I swiped at tears before they could spill over. ‘What does the note say?'

Pope was dry-eyed but his expression was haunted. ‘It says,
I'm sorry
and
I love you
and
God, help me
—all the things we never say until it's too late. Imagine if we said out loud all the things we might write down and stuff into a bottle? I wish I'd picked up the phone. I wish he'd waited.'

I struggled to find the right words. Whatever I said, it would be wrong. My life seemed so short and untarnished right now. ‘Waiting is hard when no one comes.'

He nodded. ‘That's the truth.'

‘So that's it, then. You have closure.'

Pope shook his head. ‘Closure. That's a term people use when they have reasons and answers. I don't have any of those things. What I have is sixty days in a forest and about a million mosquito bites. I have the kindness of strangers.' He touched my hand. ‘Being here gave me something to do while I obsessed about not being able to change anything.' He scratched at a bite on his arm. ‘So no, I wouldn't call that closure. I call it distraction.'

I sniffed. ‘I hope you're going to be okay. I hope your family will heal. I hope I don't see you here again.'

‘I don't want your hope, Jack. Hope is something small and weak, trapped in here.' He tapped his chest. ‘Hope is faith without wings. Find faith, instead—it'll carry you further. Hope is nothing if you squeeze too tight and don't let go. It lets you down, every time.'

He hugged me awkwardly. I sat on the damp forest floor, letting the rain seep into my pants, watching him pack up the rest of his campsite.

‘I hope I see you again,' I said softly.
I still hope.

Without turning around he replied, ‘We'll find each other again. We're the lucky ones. We're the kind of people who go looking.' He stared up at the pieces of sky above. ‘Blue skies, Miss Jacklin. Blue skies.'

I didn't expect to feel so empty when Pope left. Like the night he arrived, I heard tyres sliding on the dirt road to Nula, but I didn't see him go.

I loved too easily. Did I feel love for Pope? It felt as if I did. Anything beyond like felt like love to me; there was nothing in between. But as I left him behind, the emotion had already started to fray, like the bonds made at school camp over midnight pranks and spinning bottles. I'd outgrown my childish love for Trudy and in its place was something stiff and scratchy that needed to be worn in all over again. Astrid: a bright button, something to hold up to the light every now and then with a shrug and a smile. Ma and me—our love seemed like it would keep stretching and fading until it wore so thin, it tore away; Luke would always feel like someone I'd borrowed but had no right to keep. And Jeremiah—my emotions made no sense, a loop with no end. Life would be easier if I could care less. Love would be easier if it was one size fits all.

The sound of tyres on gravel faded. I moved a bead on the abacus to the right-hand side. I wasn't only putting lines through the days, I had started crossing off people, too. I moved a bead for Trudy, Ma and Astrid, and left one poised in the centre for Jeremiah. He hadn't called and I couldn't tell if I was wound up because he might call, or because he might not.

Pope's words rang true. Distraction worked best when your heart hurt so much you couldn't be alone with it. Was that what Jeremiah was to me? A
distraction
?

I ate half a tub of Mobius's World Famous Homemade Ice Cream and made myself more queasy. Trudy and Mads were asleep. Gypsy had sneaked up onto the couch with me and was slowly squeezing me off and onto the floor. Outside, the trees tapped on the windows and I could hear it, the bug music, the way they played when nobody was around.

I felt the change in beat when a car rattled up and idled in the driveway.

Gypsy pricked her ears and growled.

I rolled off the couch and went to the window, but the car was hidden behind the rainwater tank. A door slammed. Heavy steps on the back verandah. My skin prickled. Nothing good happened at a quarter to midnight.

Gypsy pressed herself against my legs and let out a vicious bark.

I slid the door open a crack. ‘Who's there?' I called, but I could tell who it was by the shape of him, standing in the shadows, shuffling from foot to foot. Gypsy pushed her nose into the gap. ‘Stay,' I said. I pressed my hand onto her head and she backed up.

‘It's me,' Jeremiah said. He stepped forward and the sensor light came on.

‘You scared me.' I smelled beer. ‘You've been drinking.'

He had his arms wrapped around his waist as if he was trying to hold himself together. ‘I didn't drive. Roly's waiting out front. I'm sorry, I know it's late. I just needed to talk.'

‘Everyone's asleep. I'll come out.' I slipped on a jacket and slid the door closed as quietly as I could.

‘I was going to call but…' Jeremiah trailed off. He was a mess: his face was haggard, eyes bleary, pieces of hair sticking up like he'd been running his hands through it.

‘I know. I should have called you, too, but stuff has been happening and…' I meant that I shouldn't have waited so long to tell him we were over, but he brightened.

‘I'm sorry,' he said and dropped his arms to his sides. He moved towards me.

‘God, what are you sorry for?' I took a sideways step. I didn't want him to touch me. If he touched me, I might unravel. I'd screw things up all over again. ‘You didn't do anything wrong. This is my fault. I just can't seem to say what I really mean. Ever.'

‘You can tell me now,' he said.

‘It…must have been hard for you to come here.'

Jeremiah smiled. ‘Bravest thing I ever did. Say it, Jack. You're shaking. You're breath-holding and slow-blinking. It's pointless. Eventually you'll have to open your eyes and breathe out. Look at me. Just say it.'