‘I’m not hungry.’ I sat at the kitchen table with a cup of tea, too strung out to eat because, during my sleepless night, I’d decided I needed to go back to the waterhole. I needed to know once and for all if what had happened to me up there was just some kind of psychotic vision or not. It wasn’t just a whim but more of a compulsion, like a murderer who feels forced to revisit the scene of the crime. Now that my head was a little better I thought I could manage the walk without making myself sick. I didn’t know what I’d see, whether she’d be there again, or what I’d do if I did see her, but I had to go.
‘What are you going to do today?’
‘Um, not sure.’ Lie.
‘You could give the kitchen a clean.’
I nodded. ‘Yeah. Alright.’ I didn’t want to make waves. I just wanted him to hurry up and go. Most of all I did not want to talk about what had happened the previous day in the spare room. I guess I could be thankful that Kevin was the kind of man who didn’t talk about stuff and we were both happy to pretend I’d never been snooping around and dressing up in my dead mother’s skirt like some sort of pathetic loser.
After Kevin drove off to work, I grabbed my backpack and towel, then began my trek through the forest. Mervie tried to follow but I ordered him back with a stern ‘Go home!’
As I emerged from the rainforest and followed the path, wisps of anxiety threaded through me. I wasn’t sure what I was going to see. Then, about thirty metres downstream from the waterhole I caught a glimpse of someone. I stopped and peered below to get a better look. It was Matt, sitting on edge of the creek, crouched over his sketchpad. My heart lifted, his name on my lips, but then Zara’s words ‘bad news’ echoed in my thoughts. I questioned whether that even mattered. Hadn’t he been nice to talk to? Hadn’t he been kind and given me a lift home? So what if he got kicked out of school for drugs?
But as much as I wanted to talk to him, Matthew Bright wasn’t the reason I was there. I just needed to focus. I turned and continued up the path, my mind on the task.
I had begun to have ideas about making Mum appear using my thoughts. It was stupid and irrational, but I was starting to think that maybe I had some sort of special power that allowed me to stay in contact with her. I had seen something the other day, enough to make me fall off a rock and hit my head. These ideas whirled through me with a strange thrill, but the old realistic and cynical me would have laughed in the face of that nonsense. I decided to suppress old me. Like Matt, I wanted to keep an open mind.
Despite the suffocating humidity of the pre-wet season, there were no signs of any tourists or locals wanting to cool off, at least not at this part of the creek. I stood there for a moment listening to my own rapid breathing and in the distance a pair of whipbirds called across the forest. With any luck the birds and I would not be disturbed.
I climbed down the steep path to the waterhole and stood on the smooth rock at the side of the gorge. The sun blazed down, bouncing heat into my face. The clear, green water looked so cool and inviting I felt like wading in, clothes and all. But I was not there to swim.
I wiped sweat from my upper lip and moved closer to the edge of the rock, looking across to where I’d first seen Mum. The image of her standing across the water in her white muslin dress was still vivid in my mind, and my heart fluttered at the thought of seeing her again.
I had even devised a test. If I could make out her reflection in the water when she appeared, then maybe that meant what I was seeing was real and not a hallucination. I needed to know if it was my brain telling my eyes what to see or if it was the other way around.
I closed my eyes for a second and tried to recall the moment before I fell. Bringing back that feeling would surely allow me to summon her with my thoughts. The exact spot where she had stood, across the water, on a shelf of grey rock, was seared into my memory.
I opened my eyes.
Nothing but trees and boulders and water, and the buzz of cicadas.
Extending my arm toward the water, fingers outstretched, like she had done to me, I bowed my head once more and tried to remember her face and the way her hair fell over her shoulders. I lifted my head and scanned the water’s edge.
The smooth rock gleamed in the sun, the forest stood patiently behind, but there was no mother.
‘Come on, Mum,’ I whispered. ‘Where are you?’
I stared hard and tried to think mystical thoughts. But it was too late; a cloud of disappointment had descended on me, followed swiftly by welling anger. I was there. I was ready. Where was she?
My arm dropped. ‘For God’s sake, Mum. I’m here. What is it you want from me anyway?’
Who was I kidding? The place was deserted. I was alone. Cynical me was laughing in my ear. You bloody idiot. Did you really expect her ghost to appear on demand like you were one of those TV psychics? You probably didn’t see anything in the first place. It was all just a figment of your twisted brain.
My brow stiffened as hard tears of frustration built behind my eyes.
For God’s sake, pull yourself together, Sunny.
Groaning, I pressed at the corners of my
