Three Strikes Read online

  Which I did, I guess. Lily made me go back for it. It was on the track, a couple of metres back. I could see it in the red beam of the brake lights, its blank pages fallen open, still flicking. And I picked it up and stood there, my back to the vehicle, looking out at the dark. It was thick and heavy and endless, the blackest thing I’d ever seen, darker than the mountain behind our house back home. But it wasn’t solid or still. This dark was boiling with creatures, filled with blinking eyes that caught the glint of the car’s lights. What would happen if I stepped beyond the red beam? How quickly could that darkness eat me up?

  Is that how I might escape?

  Then … I’d never come back to Dieter, or what’s left of Mum, or to the mountain behind our house. I’d become someone new. I’d change my name from Kasha to Kate. I could do it.

  But something stopped me from running – the dank, muddy smell, again, maybe? Where was the sea, or the sweet tropical flowers? Maybe I should’ve realised then that this place wasn’t how it’d looked from the leaflet. Wasn’t anything like it.

  So I went back to the car and climbed in beside Sam. Lily even turned around in the passenger seat and gave me a lecture about throwing this. I didn’t say anything. What was the point? It was my choice, being here. They’d told us before we left: whatever happens, remember you’ve decided this. So I just put this notebook in my pack – at the very bottom of my pack – leant my head against Sam and shut my eyes.

  Then I forgot about it.

  Finding it today – the first time I’ve really looked at any of the stuff they gave us at the start – well, it makes me think. It – almost – makes me want to understand.

  And it’s something to occupy my fingers.

  I wrote that it started with Sam, and it did I guess. But it really started with me saying yes and going with him that night. Maybe I’ll live my whole life wishing I’d said the opposite, or wishing I’d never met Sam. At least, wishing I’d never liked him. Not like that.

  I feel bad for writing that. But going with Sam that night killed Mum. Isn’t that the real truth?

  I’d known Sam almost four years by then – 1,451 days, including a leap year. Which I guess is a long time when you’re 5,415 days old. We’d lived opposite him and his mum and his brother since Mum and I moved there from the city; after Dieter decided he needed to get away from Mum’s craziness and go off with a woman half his age, which seemed just as crazy as Mum’s craziness to me.

  And, I know … cliché, right?

  Sam’s room was opposite mine, only the small street separating us. I could see him always: getting out of the shower with a towel round his waist; getting changed for school. I saw him on his computer for hours.

  He might have seen me do the same. Might have seen me dancing to music when times were better with Mum. My silent disco. My own crazy.

  We had a kind of Morse code, Sam and me:

  Three double arm waves = come out to the cubby in my garden.

  Thumbs up = OK.

  Arms crossed in an x = no.

  There were other signs too. Maybe I could fill these pages with pictures of them all. Maybe I could make up some more – signs that we could use out here. Might be easier than talking.

  I liked Sam from the start. No point lying about that.

  Turns out Sam’s family had been in the city too and his mum was also separated from her husband. At the beginning, while she and my mum talked at each other in the street, Sam and I would escape into the cubby house in my garden. We’d draw on the walls, play hangmanon them. Sometimes, when we didn’t see each other for a few days, we’d write notes and leave them folded up tiny in the cracks between the wooden planks for the other one to discover later.

  Sam and I could do that here too, leave notes – we could fit whole novels in the cracks in these walls. These cracks are big enough to contain someone’s life story. They certainly contain spiders. I’ve seen them at night, crawling out from the darkness like they’re feeling their way into new skins. I don’t mind them that much, they’re company, and they haven’t jumped on me yet. The light brown one who lives above the door I’ve called Lily. With her skinny legs and arms, the real Lily looks like a spider too, only she’s a small deadly one: the kind who’d eat her mate just after she’s had sex with him. Spiders do that, don’t they, some of them? They get what they want then destroy after. Maybe that’s what it’s all about: wanting things, destroying them after. Maybe life’s just a never-ending cycle of wanting and destruction. When you think of it like that, why does anyone bother?

  Now I’m imagining Lily sleeping with George. She’s so little, and he’s so big; I don’t know how they’d fit. Maybe they do it like animals do, quickly or doggy-style. Maybe they don’t do it at all. Maybe I’m wrong in thinking they’re a couple. I bet Lily looks weird with no clothes on though, like a sapling, or an alien. George would look alright. He’s had his top off round camp; he’s tanned as leather, and he’s got way more muscles than Sam. Everyone was looking, even the guys. But I guess if you’re round here all the time – chopping wood, making things – that’s just what happens.

  There’s no fat in nature.

  I think Mum said that once. And she was skinny as a straw at the end, paler than milk.

  I’ve just gone into the cabin I slept in last night; the cabin Sam and I slept in. It feels hotter in here than outside, and smells like mouse shit and mothballs. There’s something shuffling somewhere, in a corner. But it’s more private than out there with everyone looking over every few minutes. I can’t handle that. It’s like they’re waiting for me to walk over and show them what I’m writing. I know Sam wants that. I’d rather burn this journal in a hippy ceremony than show them anything. The only person who can see this is Lily, and even then I won’t let her read it. Not unless she makes me. I just want her to see that I’ve done it – written the words and talked about this stuff – then we can move on to the next task.

  When she comes back.

  If she comes back.

  I’m lying on a thin camp bed. There’s a spring sticking up into my stomach, and I can almost see the mattress crawling beneath me, but I’m getting used to that now. The bedbugs aren’t as bad as they were. I think they’ve even stopped biting me. They’ve realised what I’ve known all along – I’m sour inside, no sweetness left. And this mattress is better than the one I had in the other cabin. At least it’s not ripped or stained. At least it doesn’t look like someone died on it.

  I won’t tell Sam, but I’m glad we did this: moved everyone around last night, changed where we all slept. Annie hated sleeping with me as I much as I hated sleeping with her, so it worked out in that sense. Sam and I took this cabin, the one the boys have been in, with the three small beds and the rotten cupboard that none of us want to open in case there’s something horrible inside. Nyall and Annie pushed the four beds together in the other cabin to make a huge, gappy double bed. Pete chose the main cabin – the cane couch near the dining table to be precise – on the other side of the clearing. He said he didn’t mind sleeping by himself, said it was better than with snorers. Not that he would say if he did mind. He likes to pretend he’s the toughest: the one who can deal with anything. Sometimes I wonder how he wound up here, his reasons. He’s more ‘lone wolf’ than ‘Tribe member’. Maybe more like me.

  It was darker, last night, without the fire torches around. I almost said yes when Sam asked me to sleep in his bed with him.

  ‘There’s enough room,’ he said. ‘Not as lonely. Not as cold.’

  I almost saw his smile through the near dark. I certainly felt it. I felt his eyes too, searching for me.

  ‘But it’s boiling,’ I said. ‘Not cold!’

  It was hotter than a furnace in here last night: a black, dark hole of an oven. My skin cooked in the sheets. But that wasn’t the only reason I said no.

  ‘But Annie and Ny…’ he began.

  ‘They’re different. They’re more than just friends.’

  That s
hut him up. I could sense him sulking after that. I know he wants us to have Ny and Annie’s easy relationship of kisses and cuddles. Wants the sex too.

  I’m surprised, though, that he still tries so hard. It’s been months since I touched him. And the only time I do is when he hugs me first, or tries to. Sometimes he’ll try to tease me about the girls who want him at school.

  ‘Half the girls in our year would kill for this,’ he says, flicking up his shirt so I can see his flat, brown stomach.

  He’s joking, course. I know that by the way he only grins with half his mouth and how his eyes sparkle. But he knows I hate it. What he doesn’t know is that later, at night, when I think about that stomach again, I want to hurt myself. I want to make myself forget it. Forget him.

  He’s kissed other girls. I’ve seen it. He’s probably done other things with them too. Loads of the girls in our year, and some of the ones above, probably would kill to be in a bed with him, even if it did have bedbugs and was in the middle of a stinky rainforest.

  Not this girl. Not now. Sometimes I think Sam hates that most of all.

  Last night, he turned about in his bed for ages, sighing like a little kid who wasn’t allowed to play with his toys … wanting me to say something about why I would sleep in the same room, but not the same bed.

  ‘C’mon, Kash,’ he murmured.

  But I was quieter than a dead person. It was ages before he went quiet, too.

  I listened to the rustle and scratch of tiny claws on the roof; the smash of leaves as creatures jumped through trees; the screeching and howling of the night. It’s never quiet outside the cabins, not even at night. Especially not then.

  When Sam’s breathing got deeper and slower, I lay on my back and focused on the cracks in the wall. I could see the starlit sky through some of them, the swaying of branches through others, and through some I saw nothing but dark.

  There was a crack opening up inside me too, bigger than any in these wooden walls. In that crack whole worlds could disappear, memories and thoughts and people all could fall over its edge.

  I flinched when legs scuttled over my cheek: a gecko, pale and softer than the sheets, with feet smaller than fingernails. It crawled over my mattress and down to the floor. I turned over and watched it disappear, then I stretched down and felt where it went, ran my fingers over a smooth-edged crack in the boards. I wanted to follow it, disappear into the darkness the other side. Maybe there, with dust on my skin and feet smaller than fingernails, I’d find Mum. I could cuddle up to her like I used to as a little girl, and there’d be no need to say anything at all.

  I’d told Mum a few of us were going to the cinema, that night. It wasn’t worth telling her I was going with Sam. Lately, she’d got funny even about Sam; said I was too young to be hanging around with him so much.

  But even when I said I was going out with girls, not boys – not Sam at all – she didn’t like it. ‘I’ll go to the cinema with you,’ she said, trying to smile. ‘If you really want to go.’

  ‘It’s not that, Mum,’ I said.

  But she didn’t get it. She never did. She just got worse at being left alone, got worse at me doing stuff without her.

  ‘Tell me then,’ she tried again. ‘Tell me how the cinema is better than being on the mountain and looking for the black cat? Maybe we can start a new art project?’

  But what could I say? That anything was better than being cold and wet and bored on the mountain? That everything was better when I didn’t have to worry about her? These were reasons Mum wouldn’t understand, might get angry about. So I lied.

  ‘We want to watch a girly film,’ I said. ‘You know, talk about girl stuff.’

  Mum didn’t like that either. She pursed her lips into a straight line. ‘But I can do that, Kasha,’ she said, all sing-song and innocent sounding. ‘What girl stuff?’

  That threw me. She never asked about things like this. My knowledge of periods and bras and sex had come from my friends, not her. But she was serious. I saw that in her eyes. I laughed and threw my hands in the air, trying to brush off her question.

  ‘Just stuff,’ I said, keeping my tone light. ‘You wouldn’t want to know about it.’

  Mum could never be brushed off, not when she really wanted something. I should have known that by then.

  ‘You mean, like boys?’ she said softly, firmly.

  I laughed again, couldn’t help it. The sound came out all breathy. I thought about Sam, waiting across the road for me.

  ‘Not really boys,’ I said, thinking too much about Sam to answer Mum properly. Stupid mistake.

  ‘Not really?’ she said, eyebrows raised. As she watched me, she crossed her hands across her chest.

  It made me so mad, the way she could stand there in the middle of the kitchen and expect to own it all: me, my time, the people I saw.

  ‘I’m almost sixteen,’ I said quietly. ‘Everyone else…’

  I stopped myself. The look on Mum’s face made me wish I hadn’t spoken at all. She strode towards me and put her hands on my shoulders, heavy as rocks.

  ‘You’re a baby,’ she whispered. ‘My baby. You’re too young for boys. Boys only ever make things worse.’

  I turned my face from her sour breath, looked out at the garden and the darkness of the woods beyond. Not every boy is like Dieter – that’s what I wanted to scream – not every boy leaves.

  In the moonlight, the cubby house was glittering. I knew it was just the dew, but in the spots where the moon touched it, the wood had diamonds threaded through. I focused on the cracking paint around the windows, the door slightly off its hinges. I was almost twelve when we moved in, too old for cubby houses, but Mum had been thrilled about it.

  ‘A perfect little place for Kasha to play,’ she’d told the agent.

  Perhaps I should have realised then that she wasn’t right in the head. That Dieter’s leaving had made something leave inside her, too.

  Mum moved to stand next to me, also looking out of the window. She made a little whimpering sound as she cleared her throat.

  ‘You know what boys want,’ she said. ‘One thing, Kasha, only one thing. Then they leave you for the next one.’

  I kept looking at the garden, keeping my face blank. Sam didn’t want that one thing. Sam was better than that.

  She took a deep breath, as she did when she was trying to keep calm. She was waiting for me to talk, but I wouldn’t. I thought about Sam. Was he looking across at our house? Was he thinking about that one thing? I didn’t believe it. Sam was other things too. He was also about fixing cars and being in the rugby team and being shyly good at science. There was more to him than Mum thought.

  ‘You’re too young for all that,’ she said. ‘Only a couple of years ago you were playing in that cubby.’

  I rolled my eyes, but carefully, in a way Mum couldn’t see. The last time I’d been in the cubby I went to do my homework in peace, away from her. I’d drawn faces on the walls, practising shading for Art. I’d written KF 4 SW in one corner. My stomach tightened. Had Mum seen those letters? Maybe that was the reason for all this fuss.

  ‘I’ve told Sam he’s not to talk to you.’

  ‘What?’ I turned to her and stared at the serious, sensible expression she was trying to give me. ‘Why would you do that?’

  Her eyebrows rose. ‘I told you,’ she said, calmly. ‘You’re too young for boys. Even Sam wants…’

  ‘Sam just wants to be my friend,’ I said, louder than I meant to.

  Mum smiled this really horrible, knowing smile, like she was the one who knew everything about this stuff and I was just an idiot. But Mum hadn’t had sex with anyone for years; not since Dieter, and even then probably not very often.

  ‘Sam wants what all fifteen-year-old boys want,’ she said, still acting like the teen-sexpert she wasn’t.

  My hands went into fists and I wanted to hurt her. Wanted to push my fists into her smug, sensible expression. Wanted to push her off the mountain she loved so much. Wanted t
he cat to get her. I turned away. I don’t think I’d ever been so mad, so close to not caring whether I was sending her over the edge. I think I actually wanted her to flip.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not going to bend on this. No boys. Not until you’re an adult. No Sam either. I’ll make you promise if I have to.’

  ‘But he’s my friend,’ I hissed. ‘My best friend.’

  ‘He’s still a boy.’ Mum glared, hating that I was challenging her. She was completely serious, unbendable as iron. She waited for me to agree.

  Every fibre in my body wanted to shout at her, but I knew what would happen if I did. The more I pushed, the more Mum resisted: Mum was always right, I’d learnt that enough times. The more I argued anything, the more she stood firm. Plus, if I kept fighting, she wouldn’t even let me leave the house. Not that night, anyway.

  And it had to be that night. I’d promised Sam.

  I wanted it to be that night.

  If it wasn’t that night, it might never happen.

  So I changed tack. ‘Fine, no boys,’ I said dismissively. ‘Not until I’m eighteen.’

  It sounded ridiculous to me, but Mum bought it. I guess she just wanted so much to believe it.

  ‘Good,’ she said. She was happy now, happy enough even to give me a small smile. As a kid, Mum’s smiles had felt like gifts. Right then, this one felt like something slimy. She took my hands, her mood already completely changed, and squeezed them gently before letting them go. She was so much like a child herself!

  She grabbed a coil of rope from the top of the fridge. ‘Let’s go to the mountain instead! I’ve got a new trap we can try out – we can make it the next project.’