“It’s okay. You can trust me.”

Just do it, I tell myself again.

“I don’t want to scare you but I’m coming down,” he says, and I block out his voice because it is so familiar and the familiarity makes my heart beat fast and I know I have to get out. Just do it, I tell myself. Slowly I watch him crouch and then there is his hand on the sheet ready to pull it up, ready to grab me out of that space and do whatever he wants to do, whatever he may have done to Hannah. The rage inside of me at the idea of it makes me scream and I shove the legs of the stretcher to the side. I hear the impact of steel on his head and a grunt of surprise and next minute I bolt, crawling to the trapdoor, down the ladder, down the stairs, out the front door, and racing for my life, my hands flailing as if I am trying to grab as much air as possible to pull me forward, like freestyle swimming on land. When I feel as if I’ve run as much as I can without being winded, I take a detour off the track and huddle under one of the oaks and I stay there. Just breathing. Softly.

I realise, after a moment or two, that I am not alone. Slowly I look up, beyond the tree trunk, higher than the branches, to the very top. There, in broad daylight, is the boy in my dream staring down at me. It’s like he has climbed out of that nocturnal world that I refuse to visit anymore and has decided to track me down. The sun blinds me as I look up, trying to cover my eyes, but then I hear a sound and I realise that he has brought the sobbing creature from the tree.

I feel hunted, with no place to hide. No solace, no belonging. Just an empty need to keep moving away from whatever or whoever it is that’s after me.

As usual, what awaits me when I get home is dependency. Ten questions before I can even get to the bottom of the stairs. About maths equations and parent pick-ups and permission to go to town and laundry crap. Then there is the nightly job of looking through every item of clothing and through the cupboard of our latest resident arsonist, checking to see if she has attended her weekly counselling session and having her sign a contract stating that she won’t burn us in our beds that night.

Once I’ve been assured of that I go to the kitchen to see if those on duty have prepared dinner. There are about sixty kids in the House usually, but with the year twelves gone we’re down to fifty until next year’s year sevens arrive. For dinner, mostly, we have spaghetti bolognese or risotto, and jelly for dessert, so hampers sent by parents are quite popular, as are the recipients.

On most days the roster works perfectly and on other days it is a total disaster. By six that night I haven’t even reached the stairs to my room and when word comes that our House co-ordinator is coming around to check our rooms, the juniors especially are in a frenzy.

Later, I pass the phone stand and give it a glance before I begin walking up the stairs and I see two words on the notepad that stop me dead in my tracks.

“Who wrote this?” I manage to say, breathlessly.

No answer because I don’t think they’ve heard me.

“Who wrote this?” Still nothing. “Who fucking wrote this note?”

Silence. But a different kind. The year nines, tens, and elevens appear on the second and third landings, their faces shocked. The juniors come out of study, standing in the corridor watching me.

“I…I did.” Chloe P. stands there, Jessa next to her, an arm on her shoulder like some kind of angel of mercy.

“When did she ring?”

“I don’t…I could hardly hear…”

I walk over and grab her by the arm. “What did she say?” I’m shaking her. “I told you to call me if she rang. Doesn’t anyone listen to me around here?”

I don’t realise until she’s crying that my fingernails are pinching into her and Jessa is gently trying to dislodge me. She’s crying as well, as are half the year sevens. The rest of my House are looking at me like I’m some kind of demented monster. I leave them standing there and start to walk upstairs, my hands shaking, clutching the note, wanting it to have more than the words HANNAH CALLED on it. I want a number or a message. I want anything.

Raffaela comes down the stairs towards me. “You look terrible. What’s happening?”

I want to slow down the pace of my heart but I can’t. The more I hear her speak, the harder it beats.

“Everyone’s…” she begins.

“What? Everyone’s what? Disappointed? Thinks I’ve lost it? Thinks someone else should be doing this?”

She stares at me for a moment, a cold angry look on her face. A look I’ve never seen before. “You know your problem?” she asks quietly. “It’s that you’re never interested in what anyone else is feeling. What I was trying to say before you rudely, as usual, interrupted me, is that all of us are worried about you, not about this situation, and we think you should just try to get some sleep and let us take over but you don’t care because the difference between you and us is that you fly with…with…I-Don’t-Give-a-Shit Airline and we fly with a friendlier one.”

It draws a crowd. I think Raffaela raising her voice tends to do that. It’s mostly seniors and year tens, but I know that the juniors are listening from downstairs. The past leaders of my House would be rolling in their graves if they knew about the shouting and mayhem that has taken place in this House since they left.

“You’re right,” I say, walking up the rest of the stairs. “I don’t give a shit.”

In my room I lie on my bed, sick to the stomach, and I want to cry because my mind is working too much. All I know is that there is something not right. It’s in my dreams, it’s inside my heart, and without Hannah here, it’s an all-consuming feeling of doom. Like something’s coming and it’s something bad. I try to feed the cat but he scratches me until my arms are red raw, and I let him because I want to feel something other than this emotional crap. Sometimes we sit, the dying cat and I, staring at each other like in a Mexican stand-off and more than anything I want to ask him what he has seen. What was the last thing Hannah said to him? But he stares at me; even in his sickly old age he is feral with fury, his hair matted beyond the point of no return. I try again and even though he seems as if he’s going to drop dead at any moment, he scratches until I feel tears in my eyes, my bloody hands trembling with despair.

Chapter 11

It is dark, surreally dark, and I’m hanging upside down from the tree. My legs are hooked over a branch and my arms stretched as far as they can go. From upside-down I see the silhouette of the boy, but this time he is on the ground.

“If I fall, will you catch me?” I call out to him.

He doesn’t answer and begins to walk away. I feel myself slip. One leg first, the position so painful that I am perspiring like hell.

“Hey!” I call out again. “Will you catch me?”

He turns around. “Catch yourself, Taylor.”

I can no longer hold on. My scream hurts my own ears. The ground comes quickly and I hit it with a sickening thud.

I avoid the House front. I notice that most of the students have started eating dinner in their rooms. Probably to avoid me. The common area is empty and silent. News has already hit the streets that I’m losing control of my House and Richard is all ready to take the reins.

I begin to develop a pattern. During the day I hide outside Hannah’s house. The peace I feel here is overwhelming. Monkey Puzzle trees and rose bushes are scattered all around and the result is a mix of scents and colour and sounds of birds flying low and nature in such perfect harmony that it seems wrong that the very person who created it is nowhere to be found.

There’s a point just outside Hannah’s house where the river makes a sand bar. I sit there often and one day I see Jonah Griggs standing on the bank on the other side, against a gum tree. I don’t know what to feel. For a moment it seems like the most natural thing in the world for him to be there, for one of us to call out a hey rather than ignore or accuse each other. The distance between us is no more than twenty metres and neither of us move for what seems like hours. There is a question in his eyes; I can see. That and something more. I can hear the ducks in the distance but no one stirs, except for the finches, which have no idea about the territory wars and boundaries. They leave my side and make their way over to his, as if to say, “Don’t involve us in this; we’re just enjoying the view.”