Still Life with Strings (30 page)

“Sparrow,” I whisper.

“What?”

“Her name was Sparrow,”
I finish, just before I turn on my heel and walk out the door.

***

I catch a bus back to
my house, and it’s still early when I get there. I hurry up the stairs to my
room and pull out my costume. After the morning I shared with Shane, I need to
become someone else for a while. Putting the white paint on my face, I feel
like I’m erasing it all. Erasing my confusion that we were somehow in each
other’s lives years before we ever actually met.

He wrote an entire
album about me, an album I’ve been listening to on “repeat” for nights on end.
As I put on my wings, I consider opening up my window and flying away, like Mary
Poppins with her umbrella. I leave the house in full costume, walking down the
street, receiving the usual curious glances from people who don’t know me or my
story.

They know nothing about
Jade Lennon. The girl whose twin got killed by a sick psychopath. Let her dress
up like fucking Santa Claus if it makes her happy.

I reach my regular spot
and set up as usual. As I stand on my box, I feel better because I don’t have
to be me. I can focus only on my breathing, focus on it so hard that no
thoughts enter my head. Not a single one. I can listen only to the sounds of
footsteps on the path, forever passing me by, and no thoughts enter my head.
Not a single one.

There’s no violin music
this time. No sweet melodies to transport me into a scene that exists only in
my own mind. I look across the street, and he’s standing there alone, outside
the very same shop from the first night we met. He doesn’t have his violin.
He’s frowning at me, studying me so intensely he looks like he might burst a
blood vessel.

I never move. Not once.

After a long time of me
not moving, Shane buttons up his coat because it’s getting cold, and walks
away. I stand there for many more hours, until the day darkens to evening. When
I step off my box, I feel like I might need a chiropractor, because not moving
has given me a pain that runs down my spine.

I walk home.

A few teenage boys and
girls shout some obscenities at me. You tend to garner negative attention when
you’re wearing something as bizarre as I am. I stop in front of them, twirling
in a massive circle and bowing down while raising my middle finger in a silent
“fuck you.” I continue on my way. Opening my front door, I hear talking coming
from the living room and immediately recognise Shane’s voice.

What’s he doing here?

I walk into the room to
find him sitting across from Pete on the couch. He has his violin and Pete’s
got the laptop I managed to scrape together the money to buy him last Christmas
open, some sort of application running on the screen that looks like a virtual
recording studio.

“Hey,” I say, glancing
between the two of them, my voice more air than sound. “What’s going on?”

Pete raises an eyebrow.
“Shane’s giving me music lessons, remember?”

“Oh, right,” I mutter,
and then look to Shane.

His expression is
indecipherable. A long moment of silence passes between us, a dozen questions
hanging in the air. Finally I clear my throat and ask him softly, “Would you
like to stay for dinner?”

Some sort of tension
leaves his body as a breath escapes him. “Yeah, I’d love to.”

“Uh, Jade you’re
getting that white crap all over the door,” Pete interrupts.

I glance to the side to
find I’ve got my hand pressed against the wooden frame, white makeup smeared
all over it. I drop my hand and take another step into the room.

“How’s everything
going? Have you seen Damo around at all?” I ask my brother.

Pete lets out a snort
as he types furiously on his laptop. “He’s shitting himself over Alec. He came
to me after school, telling me to let my brother know he doesn’t want any
trouble.”

I sigh in relief.
“That’s good. Is school okay?”

“It’s all right. A few
of the teachers practically tore me a new one over all my absences, but I can
handle it.”

I smile. I want to
reach over and ruffle his hair, but I can’t because I’m still in my costume.
The wings are so big they hardly fit inside our tiny living room. I quickly
duck out and go upstairs to change, using a makeup wipe to get the face paint
off. I throw on some comfy yoga pants and a baggy jumper before going back
downstairs to the kitchen. I find a note on the counter from Alec telling me
that he fed and walked Specky this morning, but that he’s got a date with Avery
tonight, so he won’t be home until late.

I look over the
ingredients in the fridge and decide I’ve got everything I need to throw together
a chicken curry with rice. About twenty minutes later, as I’m standing by the
cooker stirring the sauce, the door opens and somebody comes inside.

Two arms wrap around my
waist, and a chin rests on my shoulder. “Smells good,” Shane says, voice low.
“You okay, Bluebird?”

I nod, not saying
anything. He holds me there for a few seconds longer and then goes to sit down.
The food is just about ready, so I start dishing it onto plates. Pete comes in
and grabs his, bringing it into the living room to eat, leaving me and Shane
alone. April is out with her friends, so there aren’t going to be any
interruptions. I’m still in turmoil over whether or not I should tell him that
I’m the girl he wrote all those songs for. Will he be freaked out, or think
it’s romantic?

We eat quietly, and I
thank him for starting those music lessons with Pete. He shrugs it off, telling
me he enjoyed spending time with my brother. He says that Pete taught him
almost as much as he taught Pete. Shane was pretty much in the dark about all the
new technological stuff that’s out there.

When we’re finished
eating, we wash up together, and I ask him if he wants to hang out in my room
for a while. I don’t have sex in mind. I plan on telling him the truth. All
about the strange coincidence I suddenly became aware of this morning.

In my room, I turn some
relaxing music on low and then sit down on the bed. Shane slips off his shoes
and does the same.

“Why did you freak out
and rush off earlier?” he asks after a long while.

I turn to him, hugging
a pillow to my chest as he lounges back against the headboard. “It was the
story you told me, about the missing girl and her sister.”

He leans forward,
curious. “That freaked you out? Why?”

I bite on my lip,
clasping my hands together to keep them from shaking, and meet his gaze.
“Because the missing girl was my twin. I’m the sister, the one you saw on the
news.”

Shane’s eyes flicker
back and forth between mine numerous times, a dozen emotions crossing his
features. He moves closer to me then, taking my shaking hands into his still
ones. “Wow,” he breathes.

“Yeah,” I say. “First
you have that painting of me, long before you ever knew who I was, and now it
seems you’ve actually written an album for me. It’s downright spooky.”

Not to mention it makes
my heart to do a backflip and then try to turn itself inside out.

Shane seems to be more
focused on my history than anything else. The need to know my story is
practically humming from him. “What happened to her?” he whispers. “I mean, did
you ever find out?”

I stare at my
wallpaper, at my golden sparrows, my mind wandering to a dark place. “Yeah, we
found out. I knew all along who it was, but the police never released the
information to the press until after her body was found. They were afraid it
would compromise the investigation.” I stop for a second, then tell him, “I was
there when she was taken.”

Shane inhales sharply
and stares at me empathetically. “You don’t have to talk about this if you
don’t want to.”

I let out a small
breath. “Well, it seems I’m in a storytelling mood, so you might as well sit
back and listen. I never talk about her. And I mean never. I pay tribute to her
in so many ways every day — she’s constantly present in my world, but I find it
hard to actually speak about her. Her name was Sparrow. We weren’t identical,
but we had the same colouring and looked a lot alike.”

“Sparrow? Is that why
you got those tattoos?” he asks, eyes going to my arm.

I nod. “And my
wallpaper. I’m always drawing those damn birds, too. I can’t get them out of my
head sometimes. They’re a symbol of her. She was an artist just like my mother,
the good twin. I was the moody one, always trying to change my appearance so
that people would see us as two different people rather than one. That’s why I
had the purple hair and the makeup. Sparrow never deviated from her natural
blonde roots. She was so pretty. It brought her attention from people and was
probably why her abductor took an interest. They always go for the pretty,
innocent types, right?”

Shane just stares at me
silently, empathy streaming from his every pore.

“Anyway, we were
walking home from school one day, and it started to rain. We were getting
soaked and began running, holding our bags over our heads to keep from getting
wet. Then a car pulled up by the side of the road. It was our geography
teacher, Mr Francis. He offered us both a ride home, but I’d always had a bad
feeling about him, so I said no. Sparrow, being as trusting as she was, wanted
to accept the offer, but I told her not to and began dragging her away. We got
into a fight because she didn’t want to walk the rest of the way home in the
rain. We shouted at each other. In the end I gave up and let her get in the
car. I should never have let her get in the car.”

“Fuck,” Shane swears
under his breath. “You couldn’t have known.”

I take a deep breath
and continue, “I walked the rest of the way home, expecting Sparrow to be there
already, but she wasn’t. I didn’t get too worried at first because she’d often
have dinner at her friend’s house down the street, so I thought that was where
she’d gone. Mum was out doing groceries, and she had Pete and April with her.
The evening progressed and everybody started to arrive home, but still there
was no sign of Sparrow.

“Mum and I sat up half
the night calling her friends, calling everyone we knew and asking if they’d
seen her. We didn’t get a wink of sleep, and finally in the morning we called
the police. It took about a day before they began searching for her properly. I
told them she’d gotten into Mr Francis’ car, so they went to his house to ask
him questions. He told them he’d given her a lift because it was raining but
that he’d left her off at her street and driven home to his wife and kids. His
wife gave him an alibi, but she must have been lying. The police could find no
evidence, no CCTV footage of him taking her, no proof at all. So it was the
word of some Goth teenager over that of an upstanding citizen, a local
schoolteacher who’d never had any trouble with the law.

“About a week passed,
and still there was no sign of her, no leads. I was so angry I felt like going
to his house and threatening him until he confessed. Instead I went to school
early one morning and thrashed his classroom, scrawling the word ‘paedophile’
across the blackboard. I got a week’s suspension, but Mum was too busy worrying
about Sparrow to be mad at me. She believed me about Mr Francis, and I think
she might have even been a tiny bit proud of what I’d done. Two months passed
by. I rallied all the students together to boycott his classes, and in the end
he resigned, stating he couldn’t work under such conditions, said he was being
demonised. What a joke.

“It was almost three
months exactly that she’d been missing when a couple walking their dog near the
mountains found a suspicious-looking patch of freshly dug-up earth in an
under-populated area. They called the police. The police came, and that was the
day they found Sparrow buried three feet below the ground. I knew she was dead
all along. I could feel it, like a part of me had been ripped out of my chest.
Two days later, Mr Francis shot himself in the head. A week after that, the
results came back from the tests they’d run on Sparrow’s remains. She’d been
raped and then strangled to death. Mr Francis’ DNA was all over her. I wanted
to die, thinking of the suffering she must have gone through, all because I
couldn’t stop her from getting in that car.”

I pause for breath,
wiping at the tears leaking down my face. Shane wraps his arms around me,
pulling me into him.

“Jesus,” he whispers.

“I was so full of
guilt. The only thing that could numb it was alcohol, and that’s where my
drinking started.”

“You were so fucking
young. No one should have to go through what you did,” Shane says, his mouth on
my hair, his nose breathing me in.

I stare at my wallpaper
for a long time, then draw away from him, going to my wardrobe and pulling out
the sketch pad sitting at the bottom of it. Bringing it back over to the bed, I
sit down beside him again, placing it on his lap. He hesitates a moment, then
opens it up.

“Sparrow wanted to be
an illustrator when she grew up. She was always drawing these little sketches,
creating characters,” I tell him as he flicks through the pages.

“She was talented,”
says Shane as he stops on a page, his mouth falling open.