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  Sometimes, when the four of us were together, the girl from The Woods would pop into my head, but mostly I didn’t think about her. I know that might sound selfish or harsh, but there was so much going on and I had other things to think about. And those rare times that I did think about her I felt guilty that my life was going on while hers had ended. No one likes to feel guilty.

  Meanwhile, Poppy’s mum was kept busy on the case, though she never told Poppy what was going on. Poppy tried talking to me about the girl a couple of times, but I shut her down. I guess that was her way of processing things, going over every little detail, but it made me uncomfortable and it usually involved talk of her Power, which just annoyed me.

  So there we were, waiting for the boys to meet us at the cinema, when Poppy started up her ramble about that day in The Woods and how obviously her Power had been tuned into the situation, when I snapped.

  ‘We’re not in Year 7 any more, Poppy. I mean, if your Power can’t actually help anyone, like that girl, then what’s the point?’

  I felt bad as soon as the words left my mouth. Fighting with Poppy was like fighting a fluffy kitten, all soft and playful and vulnerable. And even while I was thinking that, I couldn’t stop the words from pouring out of my mouth.

  ‘Poppy, it was fun when we were younger, but enough now,’ I said. ‘The tooth fairy isn’t real. Nursery rhymes are for babies. Spookiness and ghosts are for little kids.’

  Poppy peered into my face as if searching for something then she slowly shook her head.

  ‘What happened to you, Sarah?’ said Poppy. ‘Are you breaking our promise? Are you turning into just another boring adult?’

  Then the boys arrived and she clung to Nico and gave him an extra-long kiss, which left me feeling awkward and excluded. The excitement about sitting next to Finn in the darkness of the cinema was stamped out. I just wanted to go home.

  OF COURSE I apologised. Afterwards. But I meant what I said, we both knew that, so the distance between Poppy and me remained.

  And I didn’t know how to cross it.

  10

  POPPY

  She went to the baker

  to buy him some bread

  but when she came back

  the poor dog was dead

  LAST NIGHT I got up to let Hootie in. Hootie’s my dog. He scratches on the side door most nights and most nights I ignore him for a while. But in the end he wins and I have to open the door even though I know he’s not there. How could he be? Hootie died last September. It wasn’t anything radical, just old age. He’d been around ever since I could remember. He was supposed to be Mum’s dog, but Hootie always followed me around like my guardian angel. If he’d been allowed to come to school with me he would have.

  Hootie used to sleep under my bed, even though it was strictly forbidden. Rules of the house. Carl’s rules. So every night Mum would put Hootie out and every night Hootie would scratch at the side door and I’d let him in. Some nights I wouldn’t even remember doing it.

  I haven’t told anyone at school about the door scratching. About the whines and snuffling under my bed late at night. Sometimes, if it’s not too late, I go online and check who’s still awake. Sarah’s not usually powered up, unless she’s cramming for a test. My boyfriend, Nico, is always online which makes me doubt that he ever sleeps, but I don’t tell him about Hootie because I know what he’d do. Send me an eye roll emoticon or change the subject like I was a little kid who had just had a nightmare. I tried telling him once about the things I see, but he just hummed some spooky music until I hit him and told him to shut up. And then he laughed and held me tight and gave me an extra long kiss until I forgot all about Hootie and thought only about him.

  I haven’t told Sarah about Hootie because I know it would just annoy her. Sarah used to think my Power was fun, and we’d have a great time talking about the other kids at school and their auras. About the things I could find out about them just by holding their hand or something that belonged to them. But lately she just shuts up when I try to talk about it, so I don’t go there. Last week she told me to grow up. That it was time I forgot about the Power ‘game’. As if I had a choice. I know she’s feeling the pressure of Year 12, so I didn’t get mad at her. Ever since the day in The Woods, though, things have been a little different between us.

  There are plenty of people I call friends, but most think my Power is weird. That’s what I call it. My Power. It’s the thing that makes me different from other people. It’s not a great thing to have. It’s not like I can predict the lottery numbers or whether it’s going to rain on the night of the Formal. It’s more boring, like I know when the phone is going to ring just before it does. Or I’ll be thinking of someone who I haven’t seen for ages when suddenly I turn the corner and there they are.

  Sometimes I’ll see things, out the corner of my eye, like a shadow moving quickly out of sight. I used to try and catch them in full view, but the shadows didn’t want to be seen and I gave up trying. I’m not sure what the shadows are. Spirits with a message from the next world? Demons? People from another time? They’re not sad, like the ghost of Catherine who haunted her true love, Heathcliff. If they were I would feel it. I don’t think they’re angry. More like, they’re waiting for a sign from me before they show themselves.

  Sometimes I’ll feel uneasy. Like I’ve drunk a coffee with slightly-off milk. Or eaten a sushi roll that’s been sitting all day in the display cabinet. Then something bad will happen — like a tsunami in Asia or a landslide in a country that I’ve never heard of before — and the bad feeling goes away.

  I’ve been feeling uneasy since that day in The Woods. I’ve tried to ignore it — it’s not like I have nothing else to think about. This year is full-on and I’m trying not to stress about it too much. I wasn’t going to do anything extra at school, but somehow I found myself on the committee for the Year 12 Formal. Sarah insisted. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this life is that it’s useless to resist Sarah once she has made up her mind. As if she doesn’t have enough to do, Sarah decided to organise the Year 12 Formal and the next thing I knew I was on the committee with her, talking about which venue and what music and which table napkin colours — the silver or the gold?

  Sarah is my best friend. She is so full of energy and bouncing goodness that sometimes it feels like being swept up in a tidal wave. Sarah is into everything. Schoolwork? Easy. Her parents definitely want her to be a doctor. She says she is going to be a doctor, but I look at Sarah and see a film director or one of those people that get to work at the United Nations or maybe even a politician. She’s on just about every committee at school and is passionate about saving the planet. If you’ve ever been annoyed in a shopping mall by a short, dark-haired girl handing out pamphlets or getting you to sign a petition, it’s probably Sarah.

  Something big’s going to happen. I can feel it. It’s like the feeling in a room just before the light switch is flicked on and everyone yells ‘surprise’. There’s a buzziness about my body, like little atoms are shooting off me in excitement. Maybe this is just what it feels like to be in Year 12. Maybe it’s about stepping into the unknown.

  Year 12. It’s hard to believe we’re here. It’s like I’ve been waiting forever to get to this point and now that it’s here, well, it’s a little scary. There’s already a countdown to the number of days left until exams. Words like ‘pressure’ and ‘knuckle down’ and ‘do your best’ whine about us like annoying mosquitoes.

  Thank you.

  Yes.

  We get it.

  I’m going to have a gap year next year whether Carl likes it or not. My plan is to work a little then travel. I’ve told Mum already and I know she’s worried. But, hey, legally I’m already an adult and there’s not much either of them can do about stopping me.

  I think I’ll end up working in childcare or preschool. Or maybe in a mission overseas, for a while, in a poor country. When I mentioned this to Carl last week we had to have a family conference, so
I could listen to his special wisdom. Mum and I sat at the dining table and Carl chose to stand, something he’d learned from one of his How to Be Successful in Business self-help books. This made him the power player, the person in charge of the situation. Or so he thought.

  ‘Charity begins at home, love,’ he said, with a nod as if that explained everything.

  ‘Pardon?’ I asked.

  My mum gave me the frown and head shake, even though I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  ‘How much will you get paid for that sort of job? What sort of salary will you be on?’ he asked.

  I shrugged. ‘Not much, I suppose.’

  Carl spread his arms wide, as if unfolding the truth for me. ‘Look around,’ he said. ‘This is a big home. A comfortable home. You’ve got your own room. Food in the fridge. How do you think that happens, love? Do you think it comes for free?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure my dad paid for this house—’

  ‘Poppy!’ said Mum.

  ‘Sorry, Mum and Dad paid for this house.’

  Carl’s arms dropped like I’d taken the wind out of his sails. Amazingly, it didn’t stop him.

  ‘All I’m saying is you need to get yourself sorted first. Get some money behind you. Get a house. A steady job. You can’t go wrong getting into real estate—’

  ‘No. Thanks Carl, but I’ve got it worked out. I want to work with kids. And I want to work overseas.’

  End of family conference.

  I LOVE LITTLE kids. Love the shining brightness of their auras. And they tend not to hide how they’re feeling. It’s really easy to get to know them.

  Not that you can know a person, ever. Not really. What I mean is, you can know bits of a person, the bits they want you to see, but you can never know the three-hundred-and-sixty-five degreeness of them. They might let you see their scared-of-the-dark face, but what about their jealous-because-you-did-better-than-them-at-the-psych-exam face?

  What I’m saying is, we all hide things from people. Maybe even more from the people we love ’cause, hey, who cares about hiding your real self from strangers? And maybe hiding some things is good.

  The problem is, there are some things people can’t hide from me. I’m not bragging or anything, but there’s this thing I have that just makes me know stuff. Bad stuff. Good stuff. Stuff about people. Well, most people. Sometimes it’s like I can see their auras, like real colour pulsing out of their bodies. When I was a little kid I thought everyone could see the colours. I tried to tell Mum about it once. I told her about the knowing, about my ‘seeing’ things that other people couldn’t, about the auras that I sometimes caught a glimpse of.

  She took me to an optometrist.

  My mother is a very practical person. She’s in the police force. Tan aura, although everything to her is black and white. Am I studying? Yes or no? ‘Yes, I’m thinking about studying,’ or ‘Yes, I am talking to my friends online about a question in my revision notes,’ is a no to her. Have I taken out the recycle bin or did I borrow her mascara or did I dent the car while I was having a driving lesson are all yes or no answers to her. But life isn’t like that. The world is full of shades of grey — and green and blue and purple, depending on whose aura I’m looking at.

  Did you or did you not find a body in The Woods and fail to alert the police about it? Yes or no?

  She can never find out about what we’d done. She just wouldn’t understand.

  It’s not like I can see auras all the time. It’s usually when a person is really happy or sad or angry that I notice the colours.

  It’s how I first noticed my boyfriend, Nico.

  Nico was just another face in the crowd, another jock on the footy field, until one day, during summer holidays, when I took a short cut across Batesford Park. I was late. I’d met up with Sarah in the city after her summer school session and we’d wasted our time on a stupid movie that even I thought was pointless. Then Sarah decided she definitely needed to visit Maddison’s boutique, just in case they’d decided to have a sale, even though their idea of a sale is our idea of a splurge. So I spent way too long in the city, then I remembered I’d promised Mum that I’d be home in time to mind my little sister, Leah, so that Mum and Carl could go out to an early dinner.

  My sisters Kayla and Leah are both younger than me and Carl is their dad, not mine. Carl is boring. He works in real estate and has a standout car and perfect white teeth, although some of them haven’t always been his. The first time I met him, I could tell he was anxious. A thin line of red aura was a feeble light around his body. People with red auras live in the physical reality. They are straight down the line, living in the moment people, and I knew he wouldn’t understand about my Power. The good thing about Carl is that he makes my mum happy. For that I can forgive him almost anything. Almost. The thing I hate most about Carl is when he tries to be my dad. I mean, even though I don’t see him much, I already have a dad.

  Carl, I regret to announce that position is filled.

  Thanks for your application.

  Better luck next time, Bucko.

  Mum had forbidden me to use Batesford Park as a shortcut. Of course, Carl backed her all the way, another family conference. Carl standing, Mum and I and the girls sitting at the dining table.

  ‘Batesford Park is off limits,’ he began. ‘In fact, I don’t know why they don’t revamp the whole thing. Cut down The Woods, and open it up a bit. Make it safer for the whole community. I mean what are we paying taxes for if the government can’t keep us safe?’

  I knew Carl was thinking real estate rather than social concern. I could just see the dollar signs shining in his pupils. Also, he talked about his taxes a lot, although I know for a fact that he had an accountant to make sure he paid the least amount of tax possible.

  Before Carl could get a chance to launch into an hour-long blah blah fest about what was wrong with this community today, his mobile phone barked like a dog and he had to leave to take the call. The rest of us broke open a family block of chocolate and discussed Leah’s history assignment. All in all, one of our better family conferences.

  SO I WAS late. And I was cutting through Batesford Park, which can shorten my trip from The Mall by at least fifteen minutes, staying clear of The Woods of course, when a football landed at my feet. I stopped to pick it up and watched as Jacob Nicolson ran towards me. At least, I thought it was Jacob. I knew him from school, but it was a little hard to tell because his orange aura was pulsing off him like a neon sign and it was quite distracting.

  I usually stay away from orange auras. They are the thrill seekers of the aura spectrum — addicted to physical danger — which has never sat well with my own personality aura, which is yellow.

  But then he smiled, a warm, dazzling smile that was a little bit forward and a little bit shy all at the same time, and he held out his hand to me. So I placed my hand in his, ready to follow him wherever he led me. He squeezed my hand just the tiniest bit — afterwards I would wonder if I had imagined it — then he laughed and pointed to the ball.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. I handed him the football and he left, but I knew, even then, that we were meant to be together.

  I didn’t tell anyone, not even Sarah, because technically I was still going out with Kiel Montgomery at the time and had been for the previous four months. But I filed it away as something to think about. And that’s all I could do. I couldn’t stop thinking about Nico and his beautiful smile and the warmth from his hand as it held on to mine.

  I dumped Kiel soon after. I know other girls would think that dumping mid summer break would not be a good idea. Kiel had a car and he was handy when I wanted to go out at night, but it just seemed wrong to be making out with Kiel while all I could think about was Nico.

  And then there was that awful day at The Woods. Even while I was in shock about what was going on, a small part of me was checking Nico out. I could feel the warmth coming off him, pulsing in waves towards me, and I wanted him to hold my hand again. The urge to touch him was so stro
ng that I had to move away from him.

  Life is full of rules. A lot of them are written down, and if you break them you can end up in big trouble. The other rules, the unwritten ones, sometimes don’t make sense to me. That day I wanted to tell Nico what I was feeling. But of course I didn’t. I mean, the timing was all wrong. There was definitely a bigger agenda going on there, but still…

  I don’t know why it’s wrong to tell people how you really feel, what you really think. We waste so much time not saying what we mean and saying other things that don’t really matter. So I waited to tell him what I thought. And I did tell him, eventually.

  No one talks about the girl from The Woods. Not Sarah or Nico or Finn. I don’t really talk to Virginia, but I’m sure she wouldn’t talk about that day either if she had the chance. It’s like The Woods girl never existed. Sometimes I think it’s just something that happened in one of my bad dreams. Then I’ll go online and check out the news reports about her and the Facebook tribute page just to convince myself that it was real. If I ever doubt it, I just have to look at Nico and see the black spot that sits on his heart to know that he thinks about her, too.

  Who killed her? That’s what I want to know. Who killed her and why? Was it her boyfriend? Was it her best friend? Was it a random stranger that liked the look of her hair?

  She had a name — Marley. She had a name and family and friends who miss her. She was a girl just like me. I still can’t believe we left her in The Woods. You wouldn’t even do that to a dog.

  I MISS MY DOG Hootie. I used to tell him everything. Late at night he would scratch at the door and I’d let him in. Sometimes he’d even get on my bed, and I would stroke his smooth black head and long silky ears and he’d listen while I’d waffle on. He never judged me or told me to grow up. He never pretended to listen while he was really wondering what I could do for him.