I had a sudden urge to burn it, or wash it, to scrub the blood out and hang it on the line pristine and clean, but I couldn’t do any of those things. Instead, I went to the kitchen and searched the drawers for something to wrap it in. Eventually I found a roll of brown paper. Keeping an eye out for Kevin, I placed the shirt on the paper and wrapped it, like a grim present. I couldn’t find any sticky tape, so I tied the parcel with string and placed it back in the laundry cupboard, right in the corner with the cobwebs and the dead cockroaches. Then I thought twice about it and took it out again. What if Kevin went looking for it and found the parcel? Better that I hid it somewhere else, where he couldn’t find it.
I took it into the spare room and hid it in the back of the wardrobe behind Mum’s clothes. Kevin would never think to look there.
I knew I had to do something. The shirt was the key to finding Dylan. I had to tell someone. If Kevin had murdered that boy, it was my duty to report it. I went to my room and picked up my phone. What number do you ring when you want to dob someone in? I stood for a moment thinking about what I was about to do. What would Mum do if she found it? She wouldn’t protect someone who had killed a kid, I knew that much.
I went to my bedside drawer and found the policeman’s card I had thrown in there. I looked down at the name.
Senior Detective Mark Dodds
I typed in the numbers. The beeps were piercing as though they carried through the house, across the yard and out into the mountains beyond. As I lowered my finger to press the last number, I heard the creak of someone’s weight on the floorboards. Kevin was inside the house.
I ended the call and threw the phone onto the bedcovers. It didn’t matter. I had already set my plan in motion. I was meeting Matt at the waterhole soon and I was going to be on the bus leaving for Dawson that night. Soon, everything would change for the better.
I knew there was a chance that my father wouldn’t want me. He hadn’t replied to my email and each minute that went by without a response seemed to reinforce that. But I had no choice. Either way, I was leaving Kelly’s Crossing that night and, if I had my way, I wouldn’t be back.
Matt was already at the waterhole when I arrived. It was late morning and the sun was high and white in the sky. I sat down next to him on the rock. The sun sliced through a gap in the canopy, lighting up the water like a silver ribbon.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I said.
He smiled. ‘You don’t have to thank me.’
I looked around. ‘This is the place where Mum sat when she did her painting.’
‘It’s beautiful,’ he said.
‘She thought so too.’
He turned to me. ‘And you?’
‘I think it’s got secrets.’
He nodded. ‘I guess it has.’
We both watched the water sliding between the rocks and surging into the translucent green waterhole below us. The grey boulders glared up from beneath the rippling surface.
‘How’s Kevin this morning?’ he asked.
‘I don’t know. Alright, I s’pose.’
‘And, how are you?’
Icy fear darted through my chest as I thought about what I was about to say. I wasn’t sure if I could do it. I figured the only way to approach it was blurt it out as quickly as possible.
‘I’m going to leave Kelly’s Crossing,’ I said.
He twisted to face me. ‘What? Why?’
‘I’ve booked a ticket on the bus. It leaves at eight. Tonight.’
‘What are you talking about, Sunny? I don’t understand any of this.’
I looked into his dark eyes. ‘Things are getting too …’
‘Too what? Sunny, will you please tell me what’s going on? I can’t play these games anymore.’
‘This isn’t a game to me.’
‘I’m sorry, but you have to talk to me.’
‘I know. I will. It’s just hard.’
He stared at me, waiting. I cleared my throat.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, grabbing my hand. ‘You can trust me. I promise.’
I braced myself. ‘I know what happened to Dylan.’
‘Dylan?’
‘Yes. He’s dead. And I think Kevin had something to do with it.’
‘But those are just rumours. There’s no proof he’s even dead.’
‘I found Dylan’s shirt in our house,’ I said.
‘What?’
‘It had blood on it.’
Matt withdrew his hand from mine and ran it across his head. ‘Sunny …’
‘Listen,’ I grabbed his wrist, ‘I think maybe Kevin did something and then hid the shirt.’
‘Sunny, I’m not sure. This doesn’t make sense. I mean, how do you know the shirt is even Dylan’s?’
The same dread I’d felt when I first saw the shirt descended on me. ‘It’s his. It has his initials on it. And it’s covered in blood.’
‘But there’s no body.’
‘But I know he’s dead.’
‘What? How do you know that?’
‘I know it because … I’ve seen things.’
He stared at me for a second and then stood up. ‘Seen what? What do you mean? Like a body?’
‘In a way.’ I jumped up to face him. ‘I had a dream about him and he was under the water, and he was dead. It was so, so …’
He narrowed his eyes.
‘There’s more,’ I continued. ‘That day I saw you and we went upstream to the falls and you wanted to know why I acted so weird.’ I paused. ‘Well, I saw Dylan, under the water. His … his face was there, okay? It was there, and then …’ Pins and needles prickled up my spine at the memory.
‘You saw a body in the water?’
‘No, you’re not listening. It was just his face, all grey and just, well, he looked dead. But then it went away.’
Matt rubbed his fingertips against his forehead.
