The Year My Life Broke (4 page)

‘If you what?'

And suddenly it all came out. Stuff I sort of didn't even realise about myself. A flash went off in my brain, like someone had taken a photo of what was in there and the photo was getting printed through my mouth. Slightly weird really.

‘It's just . . . sport. That's all anyone knows about me. They think I'm a sport meathead. It's like I'm this prize horse or something. You know how some people are with their cars, they polish them up and take them to shows, I've got this uncle, Uncle Will, he's got a ute, an FPV F6, a Falcon, same as the highway cops use, anyway he takes it to ute musters and wins all these awards and people stand around saying how great the ute is but you know what? Uncle Will never uses the car for anything ordinary, he just keeps it for the musters. And that's like people are with me and sport. They look at me when I'm playing cricket and tell me I'm great or whatever but I don't know what would happen if I wasn't out there performing. Who would I be then? Would people like me? Would I have friends? Well, so far, the way things are going at Tarrawagga, I'd say they'd treat me like a total reject.'

I said the last part with a bit of feeling, as I was pretty worked up by all the lousy stuff that had been happening, but then as I sat there and Harriet just looked at me I added, ‘I really do like sport, you know, I actually love it, but sometimes I wonder if that's all I am, a sports machine.'

‘Yeah, maybe it's like being a policeman's daughter, you know, the other kids treat me like I'm a bit weird. Especially if their dad or their mum's been in trouble. I never know whether kids just look at me and see “cop's daughter” or what. I'm always careful who I hang out with, who I play with and what I say. Got burnt a few times in Prep.' She laughed.

‘Your dad let you come over here though, no fuss.'

‘Yeah, but that's because of the security check on your mum and dad.'

It took me a moment to register what she'd said, then I got the full impact. ‘The WHAT?' I stood up. ‘They did a police check on us?'

She went a bit red. ‘I don't think I was supposed to say that. See what I mean? Any time you open your mouth you can step on a mine and blow your leg off.'

‘What do you mean, they did a police check on us? Who did? Your dad? Your uncle? The CIA?'

‘There was a reason.'

‘What reason?'

She looked me straight in the eye.

‘I can't tell you that.' She glanced towards the fence. ‘I think I better go now. It must be nearly six o'clock.'

As she headed for the fence I called out, ‘Hey, no telling anyone I can play cricket, OK?'

She called back over her shoulder, ‘Don't worry, your secret's safe with me.'

‘Really?' I wanted to say. I could only hope she'd keep my secret better than she'd kept the one about the police check.

I went back inside and lay on my bed, thinking about the security check. I knew what it would be though. There was only one possibility. That bloody Antelope. It had wrecked our lives. For the millionth time I wished my parents never had anything to do with it. Now it seemed like the cops were watching us, and this girl already knew my life story.

Of course Antelope hadn't just wrecked our lives: it had messed up a few thousand other people's as well.

We got the last four Pipertown wickets for 50 – they had one player away, but so did we. I bowled a few overs without getting a wicket, but I did take a catch at mid-off. So, they led by 74, which meant the game would be a draw unless they knocked us over quickly for the outright. And we started real well. A run-out off the first ball. Cypress had some good players but the openers weren't crash hot and their running was terrible. Sometimes they looked like they were playing ‘What's the Time, Mr Wolf?'

It didn't improve much from there and I went in at 6 for 54, about the same as the week before, except that Wally had dropped me in the order after my spectacular duck. This time I was determined to concentrate on every ball. I remembered how Don Bradman had batted: ‘Never hit the ball in the air.' That eliminated the chance of getting caught and getting caught is the way most batsmen get out.

So I just defended and defended and defended, getting my right elbow high in the air and playing the old forward defensive for ball after ball. I got sledged a fair bit by the Pipertown kids but at least the one who'd made the smart comment from square leg last week didn't have so much to say. Then I nearly got trapped LBW. I played outside the line of a ball from a girl who bowled medium pace but this time got more swing than I expected. I thought I'd managed to just graze it with the bat but you couldn't have expected the umpire to hear that, or notice any deflection. I stood there staring at him in that hypnotised way that I know never looks good but it's hard not to do it. Seemed like about three minutes before he shook his head and said, ‘Just a fraction high, I reckon.'

I was glad they didn't have DRS. But it made me realise that I couldn't keep blocking till stumps. The bowlers were too good and the cordon of fielders was getting closer. I had to play a bigger range of shots. And the very next ball was too tempting to ignore: nicely pitched up, just outside off stump, exactly where I like them. I did a bit of a shuffle, unlike in the first innings where I hadn't moved my feet at all, and suddenly the close-in fielders were ducking for cover and the ball was across the boundary and into the trees. My first six since before Christmas.

I didn't go crazy and try to hit every ball out of the ground but I did get a lot of confidence from that shot, and I pulled the last ball of the over to square leg for four. I could feel my form coming back like blood through my veins. I hit five off the next over and then four, eight, nine . . . I wasn't keeping track of the score but after a while I knew I must have been close to fifty, and sure enough, there was a lot of clapping from under the trees halfway through the next over when I ran a single, and the umpire said, ‘Well played.'

By then though we'd lost two more wickets and with only ten players that meant we were down to our last batsman, a girl called Penny. I had no idea of the score or the time but I thought we should get as big a cushion as possible, so I went for it. Pipertown were getting tired, so it wasn't that difficult. I hit anything I could and tried to keep the strike, and we made it through about five more overs before Penny got bowled. Just clipped her leg-stump, and that was the end of the innings. We headed back to Wally and the deckchairs, where I found that I was 99 not out. Like they say, cricket's a funny game: zero one week and 99 the next.

We'd made 199, to my surprise, which meant that we were 125 in front, so we were well and truly safe from losing outright. Wally was rapt, even though we'd lost on the first innings. I was pleased too. Deep down I'm not that confident and every time I fail at cricket or anything else I think, ‘Maybe this is the end, maybe I'll never get it back.'

Funny, every time I do well, I don't think, ‘Maybe this is the end of all failures and from now on I'll be a shining star.' I guess that's what Mr Barnes means by ‘self-talk', which he often goes on about in class.

I went home feeling good but things were pretty dead back there. Dad was at work again. He'd got a job with a bloke called Will, who had a Jim's Mowing franchise. Dad never used to work weekends but that was another thing that had changed since Antelope crashed. Mum was over at Gran's; Callan was at a friend's and Pippa was at a friend's too, but about five minutes after I texted Mum that I was home Pippa came through the door.

‘Geez, what took you so long?' she said.

‘I thought you were at a friend's.'

‘Samantha? Don't ever insult me by calling her a friend. As soon as Mum texted me that you were home I couldn't get out of there fast enough.'

I remembered then that Mum had said something about my looking after Pippa once I was through with cricket. I didn't want to listen to her bitching about her friends though. It was her favourite hobby. Mum often said Pippa was nine, going on nineteen. Now she slumped onto the sofa and turned on the TV, going straight to some show for six-year-olds. So was she six or nine or nineteen? It was too confusing.

I wandered into the back garden, leaving her to watch her dumb cartoon. Callan and I had started building a tree house a couple of weeks earlier so I got three more planks up into the branches, with a bit of pushing and pulling and balancing. But I couldn't be bothered doing any more. I climbed up and sat there watching these thousands of ants racing along the trunk. It was like an ant freeway. I don't know what they were doing, as I couldn't see them carrying any food, but they seemed like ants on a mission.

After a while I sat back against a branch and looked down the line of other people's yards. Not in the direction of Harriet and her dad and uncle – you couldn't see much that way because of the trees and bushes in our place – but the other way, past the house with the closed eyes. At least in this part of town the yards were different, even if most of them were boring. The one three places down had a bunch of old cars that the guy was repairing, but he was taking so long that the weeds had grown higher than the cars. Another place had chooks, and another one further along had pens for their dogs – blue heelers, they looked like.

My eyes wandered back to the place next door, the silent, empty house. As I gazed at the middle window, a tiny flicker caught my eye. I guess it's like a cricket oval with a seagull on it. You notice the seagull a lot more than you notice the 15,000 square metres of grass. Already I was so used to this house being still that I would have noticed a mosquito landing on a window sill. I focused on the movement. For quite a while there was nothing more, and I started thinking, ‘OK, I must have imagined it.'

These side windows were like the front ones; blinds down, eyes closed. I kept staring at the middle one until my eyes watered, then I made to look away. As I did, the blind moved slightly sideways and I saw one jigsaw piece from a face. Not much more than an eye looking out, looking around. Anything else was covered by the blind, which was now twisted and warped a bit by whoever was behind it.

I had the impression that the eye hadn't seen me. I froze to the tree so that I wouldn't attract attention. I felt scared, like I was seeing something I wasn't meant to be seeing.

But after a couple of moments the blind fell back into place and the house was still once more. I didn't feel frozen now. A kind of tingling started spreading through my body. Maybe it just meant that my blood was circulating again. It took a few minutes before I could get out of the tree. I climbed down awkwardly and ran into the house. Pippa was still watching the cartoon channel, like nothing had happened. I don't think she'd even moved. I nearly said, ‘Did you see anything just now? Did you feel anything?' but it was pretty obvious she hadn't and didn't, and I thought I'd better not scare her. She's kind of easily scared, even though she pretends to be so tough. She hates moths, for example. I think she believes that thousands of killer moths are out there, waiting to suck her blood or inject their vicious venom into her veins, or both.

Anyway, I went and shut the front door and the back door, locking them, then I sat on the couch and watched cartoons with Pippa, but every ad break I got up and had a little look through the windows, just to make sure there were no zombies or serial killers or ghosts or killer moths prowling around. I was pretty pleased when Mum got home from Gran's.

That night at dinner I said to Mum and Dad as casually as I could, ‘What's the story with the place next door?' pointing with my fork to show that this time I wasn't talking about where Harriet lived.

I thought they would have said stuff like, ‘What are you talking about? There's no story. What do you mean, story?' but to my surprise they didn't. Dad stopped pouring tomato sauce on his sausages, Mum stopped eating, and they stared at me. Dad said quietly, ‘Why do you ask?'

I said ‘Is it haunted or something?', but with a little laugh, to show that I didn't really believe in haunted houses. But the expressions on their faces made me nervous. Up till then I'd thought that being scared by the eye was just me being stupid. You know how they say some kids have overactive imaginations. I didn't think the adults would take my question seriously. But they looked like they might take it
seriously
seriously. Suddenly I remembered how my dad had turned right instead of left when he'd gone out the back door that time. I put down my fork.

‘Well, is anyone living there or what?'

‘Well, have you seen anyone living there?' Dad asked, real casual-like.

‘Not exactly seen,' I said. ‘But what I seen today, I mean saw, was an eye.'

‘Oooh,' Pippa said. ‘How do you mean an eye? Like, just lying on the ground?' She sat there with her knife and fork sticking up in the air, staring at me.

‘No, 'course not. Looking out a window.'

‘Was it attached to a body?' Callan asked.

‘Er . . . or . . . ar . . .' Pippa said, or something like that. She didn't seem to like the idea of random body parts floating around the neighbourhood.

‘I don't know. All I could see was the eye. Peeping out from behind a blind.'

Mum and Dad looked at each other. ‘Look,' Dad said. ‘It's a bit tricky. All I can say is that if you kids see anyone in that place you have to stay quiet, OK? You mustn't talk about it, especially at school. And if anyone asks you questions about the house, come and tell me or Mum straight away.'

He'd gone really grim! I thought, ‘Maybe I had the wrong place all along – maybe that's the Mafia house.' But then I thought, ‘Would the Mafia have their headquarters so close to where two cops live?'

I asked: ‘What if you or Mum aren't home?'

‘Well, go into Lenny and Luke's place, next door on the other side, and tell them. Don't waste any time though. Make sure you tell them straight away.'

‘You're scaring me,' Pippa whined.

Mum looked at Dad. ‘Wish we'd never moved here,' she said.

Dad shrugged. ‘What choice did we have? Anyway, what's the risk? Like your father said, driving to work every day's a lot more dangerous than living here.'

I couldn't believe how full-on this was getting. Seemed like the house with closed eyes was spooky beyond my wildest dreams. That night, lying in bed trying to sleep, having my own room didn't seem such a great idea after all.