A week after Dad kicked Cassie out I was filling up a bottle in the sink when Wally snuck up behind me, asked me where I was going.
‘Nowhere,’ I said.
‘You’re lying. You’ve been sneaking off somewhere.’
‘I’m going for a walk.’
‘A walk where?’
‘Just a walk,’ I said. ‘Now leave me alone.’
‘Not till you tell me where you’re going.’
I ignored him and put the bottle in my backpack. He reached for it and tried to yank it from my hand. The strap ripped and everything scattered on the floor, all my school stuff and the leftover party pies from last night’s dinner. A half-bar of soap skidded across the floor and went under the table.
‘What’d you do that for, you stupid idiot?’ I said, and went to whack him on the side of the head. He tried to duck, but slipped on a soggy pie and fell forward into the table. The side of his head hit the corner, and when he stood up straight he had a gash, swelling pink. He touched his hand to his head, and then looked at the blood smeared on his fingers.
‘You dumb slag,’ he said, blood trickling into his eyebrow.
‘It was an accident,’ I said.
‘You fat, dumb slag.’ He spat the words out, stared at me hard in the face like he meant it. Like he really thought I was a fat slag.
‘I didn’t mean to.’
Wally wiped his fingers on a tea towel, sniffed them and wiped them again. ‘You’re lucky that didn’t get me on the temple,’ he said. ‘If that got me on the temple I’d be dead.’
I picked up the party pies that weren’t squished, put them in my bag and headed out to the paddock. I didn’t have time to worry about Wally; Cassie was waiting for me. Wally followed me outside, watched from the verandah as I went through the gate, a bag of frozen peas pressed to his skull even though he hadn’t even hit his head that hard and there was hardly any blood at all. I didn’t care if he dobbed on me. I decided to stay out in the paddock with Cassie forever. There was room in the knackery, and I could sneak back home and fetch my things when Dad and Wally weren’t home. We could live there together, and Wally would think I’d wandered off and died and then he’d be sorry.
When I got to the top of the hill I couldn’t see Cassie coming up to meet me like usual. He wasn’t waiting in the grass in the shade of the gums either. I walked slowly down the hill, hoping he’d appear from around the side of the knackery so I wouldn’t have to get any closer. Back at the house, staying at the knackery had seemed like a good idea, but when I got close to it I started to feel my insides curling together.
At the bottom of the hill I stopped, called Cassie’s name. No answer. He was probably asleep. I pounded on the wall, hoping he’d wake up so I wouldn’t have to go inside and get him.
‘Cassie!’ I shouted. ‘I’m here!’
I went to the door, waited another minute for him to come out. I called again, fiddled with the latch before closing my eyes and pushing the door open.
‘Cassie?’
I could smell something metal, the smell of dirty skin. I opened my eyes but there was no Cassie, no sign of him. The only thing left was the mattress, a torn sheet and a mangy pillow streaked the colour of rust. The broken bottles were gone; all the weird things Cassie and Ian had collected, gone. There was a stain on the wall—blood, a pulpy smear of it. It looked like jam, but when I touched my finger to it, it was hard as dry sap.
I stepped outside, shut the door and closed the latch. I headed back to the house. A few steps up the hill I started to feel floppy and my backpack became heavy, wrenching my shoulders from my sockets. I felt a stab of anger at Cassie, at Ian. At Dad for making Cassie leave and at Mum for not caring enough to do anything about it. I crouched down and took the pies out of my backpack. I turned around and threw them at the knackery, one by one. They hit the wall with dull thuds, like punches. The pastry shells slid and fell to the ground. Where the pies had split, the mince slimed out of the pastry, oily brown drips on the pink walls. It gave me a good feeling to see that food muck spewed on the walls, to ruin something. I imagined an army of ants festering over the sparkling piles of jellied mince, rats licking the greasy shells clean. Cassie was gone and I felt something inside me lift.
PART TWO
9.
AFTER A FEW DAYS IT was as though Cassie had never existed. No one spoke about him; no one seemed to wonder where he’d gone, and after not even a week Wally tried to claim Cassie’s room as his own. He started hauling Cassie’s things into the hallway. The junk made a maze on the carpet: soft cardboard boxes, Cassie’s trackies and winter fleeces, his school uniform a crumpled body.
‘You can’t just move into someone’s room,’ I said, picking up one of Cassie’s school shirts, the tie still attached.
‘It’s not like he’s here to use it,’ said Wally. ‘Why should he get his own room when he doesn’t even live here?’
‘He still lives here,’ I said.
‘Well, I’m sick of sharing a room with you,’ Wally said, dumping a jumble of shoes onto the carpet. ‘You smell like fish.’
Wally shuffled in and out of Cassie’s room, emptying drawers onto the floor. I tried to get in his way but he’d just shove me off, so I stared at him harder, until my eyeballs felt like lumps in my head. I sniffed my arm, but I just smelled like skin. I didn’t even like fish.
When Mum came out of her room her face was puffy. She had a cold and the skin around her nose was dry and pink. Since the night Dad found out about Cassie and Ian and the knackery, Mum had turned into a zombie. She hardly spoke to Dad, and Dad skulked around the house in near silence too. The knuckles on his left hand were scabbed lamb chop brown but I knew not to ask.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Mum shouted, yanking Wally’s arm. ‘You think he’d appreciate you messing up all his things, hey?’
Wally looked as though he didn’t know what he was getting in trouble for, making his brain work hard to try to figure it out.
‘Hey?’ Mum repeated, shaking his arm, trying to rattle something out of it. Usually Dad was the one who got mad at us. I’d never heard her shout like that before. ‘You deaf or something?’
Mum let go of Wally’s wrist, fixed her nightie, which had slipped down off her shoulder. She went into the bathroom without shutting the door. I followed her, was drawn to the sound of her voice, which I hadn’t heard for what seemed like ages, something warm pulling me forward.
She sat down on the toilet. The plastic seat squeaked and her undies gathered around her ankles like cuffs. She blew her nose with a square of toilet paper, dropped it into the toilet between her legs.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. I felt stung, and for just a moment, everything depended on Mum not getting infected by whatever it was that seemed to be suckling her skin, her brain.
She looked up at me, her eyes dark.
‘Please cheer up,’ I said. ‘Cassie will be back soon.’
I had another urge to go to her, curl up on the ground at her feet. But Mum opened her mouth, leaned the back of her head against the wall. ‘You children,’ she said, pointing her finger at me, ‘have caused me nothing but pain.’
And just like that the magnets reversed. I made my face go blank, backed out of the bathroom.