The ponytail fell to the floor. ‘Night, Cassie,’ Dad said.
Cassie picked up the ponytail, got to his feet and went through the flyscreen. As he walked past the bathroom I slipped off the toilet tank. The plastic creaked. Cassie stopped in the doorway. He turned and faced me, holding the ponytail to his chest. His hair hung around his face and he looked like a little boy, but then his face twisted up and he lunged into the bathroom. He grabbed my arms and pulled me up from the ground.
‘Get out,’ he said, shoving me into the hallway.
I thought he was going to slam the door, but right before he did he seemed to change his mind, closing it very quietly instead.
‘Where’s your hair?’ Wally said the next morning.
‘I cut it,’ said Cassie, tucking his hair behind his ears. It was neater than how Dad had done it. Cassie must have tidied it up in front of the mirror.
‘Well, good,’ Wally said. ‘You looked like a girl.’
‘Is that why Dad cut it off?’ I asked. ‘Because boys are supposed to have short hair and girls are supposed to have long hair?’
‘Then why do you have short hair?’ Wally said to me. ‘Is it ’cause you’re a boy?’
‘Shut up, Wally,’ I said.
When Wally went to get dressed I asked Cassie again why he let Dad chop his hair off. Dad never got mad at Mum for giving me a boy haircut, so I knew it wasn’t just that Dad wanted us all to look normal.
‘I asked him to,’ Cassie said.
‘You did not.’
‘Stop being so nosy.’
‘Can I have it?’ I said. ‘Wally said that you can sell human hair to make wigs. You can get heaps of money for it. Hundreds even.’
Cassie didn’t answer. He put on his beanie and went outside, got on his bike and rode away.
When Cassie got home that afternoon he went straight into his room. I was lying in the lounge room doing my homework, and after a second Cassie stormed out, kicked the pen out of my hand and the book across the room, missed my face by centimetres.
‘Where is it?’ he hissed.
‘What?’ I replied.
He grabbed me by the wrist. ‘Ow,’ I said, trying to dig my nails into the backs of his hands.
‘Where is it?’ he said again. His teeth near my face looked slimy up close. He tackled me to the ground and sat on my stomach, pressed my wrists to the carpet, up around my shoulders. I tried to wriggle but I could only move my legs so I bashed them into the carpet until I could feel bruises swell on my heels. I thought I was going to piss myself. Cassie hawked up his spit and dangled a long gob of it over my face.
I didn’t know what he was talking about, went back in my brain to see if I’d taken something I shouldn’t have. Nothing. ‘I don’t have it. I don’t have anything,’ I said, squirming my head closer to the carpet to get away from the dangle of spit. ‘Get off.’
The spit was right above my eyes. I closed them tight, knew what was coming, but a second later I heard a sucking sound and Cassie rolled off me. I opened my eyes. Cassie was hunched on the carpet, but then he stood up and charged into my and Wally’s room. I followed him, stood in the doorway as he opened drawers, scattering socks and undies onto the ground. I was scared he was going to go for me again, but I couldn’t look away. He opened the cupboards and riffled through my things. He stripped my sheets and quilt off my mattress, looked under my bed and then under Wally’s. He pulled out Wally’s special box and tipped it upside down so that all his things spread across the ground: his collection of one-cent pieces, a few knick-knacks he’d pinched from kids at school, wallets and purses, the picture of Helena and Tilly.
The ponytail. It had flung across the room and was against the wall, like a clumpy dead animal. Cassie snatched the hair and pushed past me. I followed him to the verandah. Ian was waiting by the clothesline and when Cassie crossed the yard they both hopped on their bikes and rode towards the paddock gate. Dust swirled under their tyres and I could smell the churned dirt from where I stood. They opened the gate, wheeled their bikes into the paddock, and then set off into the paddock on foot.
I thought I knew why Cassie was so upset. I’d have given anything to have long, lovely hair, and if someone took it away from me I’d be furious too. But I’d never seen Cassie like that before. As I watched Ian and Cassie disappear into the grass I wondered what was out in the paddock, in the knackery, that made them want to go out there nearly every day.
I went back to our room, remade my bed and stuffed everything back into their drawers. I sat on the carpet and gathered all Wally’s things back in his box, placed it under his bed, lined it up so that it was in the exact same spot as before. I didn’t want anyone to know Cassie was being weird. Didn’t want anyone to know that something strange was happening to his brain.
The next morning I woke early and put on my joggers and a jumper. Wally was still asleep so I crept from our room. I passed Cassie’s door and tapped it open. He was asleep on his mattress, his sheets perfectly tucked. Outside, the sun was only just rising, and the air was so foggy I couldn’t see the mountains in the distance that were usually dark blue and smooth as glass. I crossed the yard and set out into the paddock. The grass was frosty, and slippery beneath the soles of my joggers; the cold and the smell of eucalyptus was so strong it stung my nose as though the air was made of vapour rub.
I followed the path of pale, flattened grass until I reached the dam, and when the track disappeared I trod carefully and whipped through the grass with my hands, ripping up snatches with my fists. The knackery was at the bottom of the hill. It was the size of a small house, painted pale pink like the colour of marshmallows, and as I got close to it I started to get that sick feeling in my stomach. The mist had started to clear, the sun becoming buttery, but still I couldn’t help turning around to see if anyone was following me, though I knew I was all alone.
I walked through the wooden sheds, so eaten away I could see straight through to their insides, like ribs. Their sheet-metal roofs were rusty and dented, and they were filled with crumbling bricks and scraps of aluminium, prickly pear and a spidery rash of lantana that twisted through the junk left to rust in the rain. I stood at the front of the knackery and looked up. It had no windows, and the pink paint was cracked and streaked with rain stains and runny bird poo. The air felt rotten, like the drained blood had seeped into the earth and was steaming upwards like a pudding. I’d never got this close before and, now that I knew what else it had been used for, I felt a gushing in my guts I tried to ignore.
The padlock had been cut open and was dangling from the catch. I pulled on the doors and stepped inside. The air was still, and colder than outside. I blinked, waited a few seconds to get used to the dark. The room looked bigger from the inside, shadowy and dank. It was different to what I expected; I thought it would be full of awful contraptions, but it was bare, blank. On the wall were hooks, but no tools, and there were a few empty crates stacked against the walls. Swinging from the rafters were heavy-looking pulleys, and the cement floor had a drainage system that flowed into a big pit in the middle of the room. But mostly there was just a lot of space. A lot of nothing.