I dream that I'm chasing a faceless woman who I somehow know to be my mother.
We're on an underwater train, and I can hear the persistent tumble of the tide above us. The woman is running from carriage to carriage. I try to run faster, but there's resistance – it feels as if I'm running through the water that surrounds the train on all sides. Then the woman reaches a wooden bench in the centre of a carriage and slowly turns around. I yearn to see her face.
'I have dreams about you,' she says, and I realise with a start that her face is familiar. It's Milo's face. 'Kai.'
'Kai!'
I sit up on our air mattress in an unfathomable darkness, heart pounding as my eyes adjust. A sliver of light from the almost-closed bathroom door cuts across the room.
'Kai, come quickly!'
It's Isla's voice. The remains of cold disquiet from my dream are replaced with a fear that is sudden, piercing. A shot to the heart. 'What's happened?' I ask, stepping over to the bathroom and starting to push the door open.
'Don't come in,' she says panickedly. There's a rapid, slightly shaky exhale as I pull the door back towards me. I imagine her with her palms against her cheeks, how she's responded to fear since we were small. 'I'm...there's so much blood.'
'Oh.' I know what it is now, but my sister doesn't. I have to help her. 'You're having your first period,' I explain gently, pressing the side of my face against the door so she can hear me better. 'It's normal. Every female will experience this.'
There's a silence layered with a few more trembling breaths. 'My tummy really hurts. And Kai...I'm scared.'
Another shot to the heart. In the story of our lives, Isla's the brave heroine who dives headlong into danger – it can't work any other way. 'I'm here,' I say. 'Deep breaths. In...out. Do it with me, in...out.'
She laughs feebly while sucking in air through her nose. 'You sound like the guy from the meditation podcasts we listened to in Year Three.'
'Open your mind.' I try to imitate the sophisticated accent from beneath a hazy fog of memories. 'Let ze thoughts flow past, like in ze rivers of Antarctica.'
Isla gives a short burst of laughter from behind the door. The arrows of fear and uncertainty start to ease their pressure from my chest. 'Rivers of Antarctica?'
'The best in the world.' I hold still and listen to her breathing. It's slower and steadier, without the little wavering gasps she was making a minute ago. 'Wait here for a sec, okay? I'll get some stuff for you.'
I step over a few unpacked boxes we have lying on the ground and fumble for the light switch to the kitchen before remembering that we don't have one in this new house in Fernsworth. Instead, there's a huge window next to the counter that now, in the early hours of the morning, opens floor-to-ceiling onto the inky blackness of the outside world. On the horizon, tiny pinpricks of distant light amidst the fog and a bulbous full moon. I hold my breath for a second looking at it because I realise it connects everyone. Me, my mother, Milo.
When I make my way back to the bathroom a few minutes later, I knock. 'Isla?'
'Yes.' Her voice still sounds a little strained, but I can tell her initial panic has thawed. The door creaks open to leave a gap, and she accepts the bundle of things I pass through it. 'Thanks...why the hot towel?'
'For the cramps, I think it might help a little. And hopefully the tissues work for now. I tried to find some paper towels and we don't have any, but as soon as the shops open we can –'
'Kai?'
'Yeah.'
'Thank you.' There's a sluicing of running water. Somewhere outside, a soft magpie's carol heralds the dawn.
'What for?' I ask over the sound of the tap. I reach a hand into the space between the door and the doorframe. 'I can take care of your old clothes. If you've washed them.'
'Just... being here for me,' my sister says. I cringe internally a little, remembering the last time I heard someone say those words. She sighs. It's long and drawn out and sounds as if there are years of pent-up emotion behind it yearning to be released into the void. 'I know Dad's staying over at the hotel tonight because of the conference. But it's not only tonight, you know? It's the other times, all added up together.'
I stay silent for a long moment, tracing the shiny metal of the doorknob as Isla hands me her wrung-out clothes. My reflection looks tired even through the warping. 'I know,' I say finally. 'But you were right when you said what you did at Remy's place yesterday.'
'That they don't know us?'
'No.' My voice comes out softer than I'd expected it to be. I clear my throat and force down my uncertainty. 'That Dad tries his best. He does.'
'If you really believe that... I will too.' The door swings slowly open. Isla and I are left looking at each other. She shifts a little on her feet, and all of a sudden I feel an unexplainable rush of affection for my sister, this small and fiercely lovable human who has no one else in the world to protect her except me.
'Come on.' I take her arm gently and guide her to the air mattress. Through the shuttered blinds, the faintest hint of bluish light is starting to surface. 'We can still get a couple hours' sleep before school.'
'I don't think I can sleep,' she murmurs, but still lies down beside me. I feel the mattress shift as she turns over onto her back. 'Kai?'
'Yes?'
'Sometimes I have this melody stuck in my head. I only catch fragments of it, but...' She pauses for a moment, and I watch her unblinking eyes fixated on the ceiling as if searching for a distant moment in the past. 'When I do, I can hear her voice.'
I don't need to ask if Isla means our mother's voice, because I know she does. 'How does it go?'
She hums a few low, long notes as I listen carefully. It's a tune that I recognise, but didn't know I'd stopped remembering. It transports me hauntingly to a time somewhere close to the rails of forgetting – flashes of a warm red blanket, a soothing hand, a duck-shaped hair clip. I have to let go of the breath I'm holding because suddenly it's hard to reconcile the past with the present.
Isla stops humming. 'That's all I know,' she says. 'Will you – do you remember it?' Even though I can't see her eyes, I sense that her face radiates quiet hope in the dark.
I strain my memory as far as it will go, something I haven't done in a long time. I try to picture my mother's face, how she tucked us in when I was six or seven and Isla was a bumbling toddler tired from her day at preschool. What was the meaning behind that melody? What were the words?
'No,' I say finally after the silence has stretched to its limit and still my mind draws a blank. 'I wish I did.'
'That's okay.' She turns her head to face me and reaches to tug at my earlobe like our dad says she did when she was a newborn. 'Don't worry about it.'
I smile, but Isla's glow of quiet hope has faded to a mute disappointment and I can't shake the feeling that I've let her down, that I should remember. It's the swooping feeling of finding a hole in the ground right by your feet and realising that you've walked by them all along. Why can't I remember?
'Do you... ' I begin, but then register her closed eyes, the stillness of her face, the slow rise and drop of her chest. 'Oh.'
No matter what my sister says, she'll always possess the ability to fall asleep in the space between one breath and the next. Her mind seems to be free of the echoes and spiralling thoughts of the night. Every night for seven years. I pull the blanket a little higher up over her shoulders and stroke her forehead with the back of my hand.
As an afterthought, I take out my phone and scroll to the number Remy gave me earlier today.
Hey Remy, this is Kai. I was wondering, are you free to walk with us to school today?
~~🍂~~
'This project is called... drumroll please... Projection!' Mrs Rossi, our Visual Arts teacher, spreads her hands theatrically. I imagine that she's a conductor, directing the non-existent shadow of applause into every corner of the classroom.
There are a few half-hearted murmurs, and Remy nudges me a little from her spot at the desk beside me. 'Poor Mrs R,' she whispers. 'It's mostly the science stream kids here, cause everyone has to take art in Term Two. But you'd think they'd at least try to look a little lively?'
I nod in her direction, but my eyes are fixed on Mrs Rossi and her expressive, articulate hands. They make shapes as she speaks – first a bird with fluttery wings, then a flowing wave of water. Passion amidst the lethargy of the air.
'...Your task,' she's saying, 'should you accept it, is to find a piece of existing art that speaks to you. It could be a... painting hanging on your wall at home, or one at the gallery. A mural you see on the street, even.'
Our teacher's hands spread wide in front of her as she keeps speaking, an expanse of art reaching from her imagination to her fingertips, and I think of our mural, in Klento. A colourful Melbourne tram disappearing into a surrealist infinite tunnel. Milo's tanned arm leaning across mine to shade the tops of clouds in a clear blue sky, his toothy side smile as we reach for the same piece of chalk. I haven't stopped thinking about him. Will we ever talk again?
'I can take you to the local art gallery down on Kirkfield Street later,' Remy murmurs to me over Mrs Rossi's voice. I give a little start, but she doesn't seem to notice. Her eyes are focused on the contraption of delicate balance in front of her – a compass, roll of tape and two pencils poised on top of a glue stick. 'There's tons of cool stuff there.'
'Oh, I'd... like that. Thanks.'
Remy smiles at me, twirling a third pencil in her hand. 'I know the curator. She's, well, a little eccentric to say the least. But she really knows her stuff.'
I nod as she tries to balance the pencil on top of her glue stick. It holds for a second, then rolls and clatters loudly onto the desk. I blink and in that split second she's picked it back up without a glance towards me or anyone else.
'I said I wanted you to write about the art you find,' Mrs Rossi is saying. 'But I think I should word it better. I want you to write the art.' She pauses meaningfully. 'Don't analyse. Interpret. Tell us a story.'
Tell us a story. The story we shaped brick by brick on the stone wall at the Cone under sun and rain and green red orange no leaves. I look across at Remy to see if that line meant anything to her, but she's still concentrating on balancing her stationery.
'... only then can you really connect with the artist. See things from their perspective.'
Inexplicably, a surge of longing pushes and ebbs at my chest as I keep watching Remy. I realise that I don't really know her, this human with the puffy hair and the accidental eavesdropping tendencies and the ability to invite someone over to her place in the first two hours of meeting them. We're not close. I'm just a tourist.
Remy's eyes flick towards me as if she's about to say something, but before she can, a voice comes from the back of the classroom. 'Mrs Rossi?'
Our teacher stops from where she was changing slides on the PowerPoint, her hands frozen in articulation. Even as they stay still, something inside them yearns to be free. 'Yes?'
I turn to see who's spoken. His posture catches my gaze first – back indecipherably straight, but arms relaxed. Dark chin-length hair frames his eyes. 'If art is about interpretation,' he begins, clearing his throat like he's not used to speaking in class, 'how can we truly know that we're seeing it from the same perspective as the artist?'
Mrs Rossi frowns. 'How do you mean?'
'Everything we see is filtered by our own experiences, our own beliefs. What I mean is,' he pauses, and his eyes reflect the depth of something beneath them, 'what if we can't ever connect with the artist? What if we will just never understand them?'
There are whispers and muffled sniggers ricocheting around the classroom now. He's so gay, I hear. Nah, someone else whispers. Emo. The emo retard. The words make blood rush in my ears.
Mrs Rossi holds up a hand for silence. 'It's a very perceptive question,' she muses, hands sliding a little, palms facing upwards, as if on an invisible table in front of her. 'And what I have to say is, maybe it doesn't matter. Maybe... art is made to be ambiguous.'
'Hey, Kai –' Remy says, but she's interrupted by the three peals of the bell. They're clear and loud and reminiscent of a bubbling stream. Or light shining through the tops of the maple trees at the Cone in an afternoon that I so badly want to forget, but I will not forget.
'Off you go,' Mrs Rossi calls over the clatter of everyone around us packing up their bags, waving us off. 'And don't hang around. I have gnocchi to eat.'
When I stand up, I close my eyes and reopen them, but Milo is still everywhere I look – flashes of his face, his voice, that relentless feeling of losing something treasured and familiar. Inhale. Exhale. Rivers of Antarctica. 'Did you have something to say?' I ask Remy.
'Nothing,' she says nonchalantly, but with a grin in her voice. 'Just to show you.'
She motions to the now precariously leaning tower of stationery on her desk. 'It looks like a mess from the side, but...' She leans over so she's looking down on it from the top, and I do the same. 'See?'
It's the outline of a smiling face; a circle of assorted pen caps and a mouth made from binder clips. The top of her compass makes a button nose. 'Nice. I do see.'
'Ambiguous, isn't it?'
~~🍂~~
My phone is getting warm in my hand from how hard I'm clutching it behind my back, feeling the ghost vibrations from a call that my once best friend will probably never return. Warmer than this autumn sun in Fernsworth, suburb of nowhere in Perth.
'How're you feeling?' I ask Isla from where she's sitting opposite me, legs tucked underneath her. We're gathered with Remy in the shade of a jacaranda for break – she says her friend Hazel had to meet someone.
'I'm fine. You don't need to keep asking,' she says, but she smiles affectionately at me as she stage-whispers to Remy, 'He's a worrier. It's sort of a chronic problem, but you get used to it.'
Remy winks back at her. 'You liked my stories all right?'
'Definitely,' Isla nods, eyes wide. 'I still want to know, though. That one about the white shorts and the neighbour's fancy garden party – is it really true?'
Remy grins and pulls her finger over her lips like a zip. 'Teller's licence to silence.'
I assume they're talking about the girls' conversation they had on the walk to school. I overheard snatches of it from what was a few metres behind them, but felt like a universe away. It doesn't hurt, exactly. I just feel this gaping disconnect, like my sister and Remy sharing something without me is a stone rippling the pond of our sibling connection. Stupid and probably selfish, but that's what it's like.
Isla tears open the wrapping of her choc chip muesli bar and halves it, holding one out to me. 'You want some?'
'Nah, I'm good,' I say, and lie down on the grass, using my laptop bag as a pillow. The solidity under my back is comforting even as the morning dew starts to seep into my shirt.
My sister shrugs and hands the muesli to Remy instead. I tune out as they start to chat, focusing on the distant sound of birdsong, the prickle of my forearms on the grass, the continual warmth of my phone. I think about the stones that are already at the bottom of our pond, the ones that have been there for so long they're part of it. Would Isla have gone to Sofia for this if we'd still been in Klento? What would I have gone to Milo for? Everything. Probably.
It's still happening – every time I look at Remy, there's this sharp piercing of longing, like I'm waking from a dream where I had something I'll never know. I think I miss Milo. I think I miss feeling that someone really gets me, but I can't project ten years of conversations and memories and friendship onto a stranger.
'Hey, Isla.' Their conversation abruptly falls to a stop as we watch a girl who looks about my sister's age run up to our tree, long dark plait bouncing on her back. She grins at Isla and gestures to the vast field to our left. 'Want to join our game? We're just starting and we need another person to even out the teams.'
'Course, Nat.' My sister grins, stands up, fist-bumps the girl. 'I love soccer.' She waves at Remy and me before they run off, and I watch the receding back of her school shirt as it catches the shadows and then the light.
'So,' Remy begins a few seconds later, 'do you... oh, hang on.' There's a short buzz from her phone in her pocket, and she shields it from the sun with her hand as she brings it up to read.
It lasts for a split second, a moment which could have passed in the space between the open and closed eye of a blink, but I still see it – the shadow that crosses her face. Dark and fleeting. Then the smile is back.
'Just Hazel,' she says breezily, stretching her hands behind her head. 'Wanted to meet up at the new bubble tea place after school.'
Remy's a good actor, but I saw the shadow. I pluck a piece of grass from the ground in front of me and start twisting it between my fingers. 'Wasn't she meeting someone now?'
'Must have... thought of it while she was there,' she falters, avoiding my eyes. 'Anyway, we've been wanting to try the new place for ages.'
I focus on the blade of grass in front of me, slowly ripping it down the middle. 'Then why did you have that expression on your face when you looked at your phone?'
'I – what expression?'
'It looked like,' I say carefully, 'you were seeing something you wanted to wish away.' A shadow. A shot to the heart. Are you being cyberbullied? I don't say. I ask it with my eyes.
Remy doesn't speak or look at me, but picks up the halves of the grass blade I just dropped and fidgets with them. I want to ask her what's wrong directly, but I'm worried I've already overstepped the fragile boundary of our new friendship. It's like wading in the soaked sand, far away from both land and ocean, the same as far as the eye can see.
Finally she exhales and turns back to me with a slight smile. 'It's nothing. Really.'
I nod. I let it go.