I hate funerals. Perhaps they are meant to be some final farewell, but it occurs to me as pointless to say good-bye to one who is dead and therefore cannot hear you. I never liked funerals, for the way they defined how pointless the ways and traditions of humanity are. But never before have I hated them as I hated the funeral for Hailee. The way they lied to her dead ears, told her too late of her potential. And she did have potential. Potential no on else in this dreary, grey suburb had. Potential to get out.
Hailee was a fairy, with her sharp, tilted smile and her insatiable, but carefully hidden curiosity. She never simply walked – she danced, her feet brushing the ground in a complicated series of steps. Her arms would be outstretched, like some glamorous tightrope walker, and she would move to a song only she could hear. She climbed and she tumbled. There were no such things as obstacles to her. Hailee existed in her own world, perceived the ordinary differently to us. Everything that interested normal people bored her. She found wonder in tiny, unnoticeable things. This was why she always fascinated me.
Or to be more accurate, she fascinated me because I fascinated her. She was never interested in people; she handled them all with a cold indifference. But I was of interest to her. Because I wasn’t and never would be a part of her real life.
-
The first time I met her was when she had climbed into bedroom, playing a game of Hide and Seek. She had told me with her usual tilted smile that as long as I kept the window open, it wasn’t against the rules. Her cunning, laughing eyes studied my pale face curiously, noting only casually the bruises on my arms and my swollen nose. I had hoped she had simply assumed I got into a fight. A lot of the boys in the neighbourhood fought – actually, all of them did. It was true that I had never actually gotten out of the house since moving in a week earlier, but it was possible. But she had dismissed the accusing marks, instead settling as comfortably as a cat on my desk, swinging her legs like a child. She had tilted her head so that her mouth ran even, and her eyes stretched wide. I would learn later that she would only do this when she was studying something of particular curiosity. Had I know that then, I probably would have taken a strong dislike and wariness to the girl. Instead I had simply found myself captivated by the size of her eyes.
On her way out, perched on the window sill like a bird, her head tilted in that strange fashion once more, she had invited me to play Hide and Seek with them. I don’t think either of us had taken the invitation seriously.
-
Nale Fiami owned a pellet gun. He had gotten it off his Cousin Richie who lived at the coast as a Christmas present. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have concerned me, except that he had shot out two of my bedroom windows out while cackling madly, and said he was going to climb in through the broken glass and shoot one up my arse. For being a loner weirdo. As far as I understood neighbourhood rules, I either had to go out there and fight him – win or lose, at least I stood my ground – or sit inside like a coward and mark myself as free bullying territory. I was opting for the latter, hoping my uncle would get pissed off and go out to deal with Nale himself. But he was out cold from the night before. I was willing to accept a life of torment. It wasn’t a new experience for me. But Hailee did what I was too much of a coward to do. She punched Nale Fiami in the gut and told him to rack off.
-
Perched at my windowsill like a bird, I thought back once more to that first time I met Hailee. Only she didn’t have the black eye where Nale punched her back. She had a lot of bruises now too, and her wrist was sprained. She said it didn’t matter though, because she got Nale one in the jaw so hard he couldn’t speak for at least a week. And she said week of not having to listen to Nale was more than enough reward for fighting someone else’s fight.
Normal people would have given me a scowl, or maybe a bitter glare. But Hailee smiled her tilted smile, which I found I liked more and more, and gave a half shrug. Then she had called me a pathetic wimp and kicked me in the gut. By the time I had gaspingly managed to get my wind back, she had disappeared out the window, leaving only a snickering laugh.
-
It was two weeks before I saw Hailee again. I had been kicked out to get my uncle a six pack of beer. Whatever was cheap, he didn’t care. In Mentworth, the legal drinking age was just a suggestion, so the fact that I was only thirteen wouldn’t bother the liquor store attendant. Nale saw me, and was still angry about the beating he got from Hailee I guess. He and his gang came after me. They could only really be called that – his gang. Nale didn’t have friends, he hated everyone and everyone was scared of him. But he had a gang, which was the closest he ever got to mates.
I heard somewhere that a scared kid can run faster than an athletic one. Nale looked athletic, but he smoked. Everyone in this neighbourhood did, I think. And I was scared shitless. But I was always weedy and s**t at sports, so we were kind of an even match. Nale and his gang outnumbered me though.
They caught me near the gas station. They only really needed one to hold me I was so out of breath. But one kid was assigned to each arm, and Nale started to beat my face in while the other kids watched and cheered. He hit hard, always in the face. I was bleeding everywhere after the first couple of punches, by the sixth I couldn’t hear right. But the cheering was faltering. The kids looked scared. I was scared. Nale’s face was twisted, an ugly madness burned in his eyes. He was going to kill me if he could, and I think even the other kids knew it. Most of them had fled, but a few stuck around, looking worried and wondering if they should call for some help.
There was a shout – really faint. Or maybe it was just me. I fell, and Nale came down on my, hitting my gut with his fists, his elbows, his knees… anything that he could use. I think I may have spat. I was choking on my own blood. I was scared, but the fear was ebbing away to a strange sort of hysterical hilarity of the situation. I don’t know what was so funny, everything just seemed ridiculous.
Then Nale was gone. Lifted off me by divine intervention. This occurs to me now as a really ******** stupid thought. Rather than God, the face of the gas station cashier peered down at me worriedly, saying something. I think he was trying to reassure me, saying the ambulance was on its way. I may have laughed, but the sound was choked by the blood. I was past pain. Only an even worse numbness now haunted my body. A small, calloused hand slipped into mine, and Hailee’s tanned, freckled face smiled into mine. Something was in her eyes. It might have been concern, but the more I think about it, the more I think it was amusement.
And I don’t think I mind.
-
I should have been dead, the doctors explained. A lot of broken bones, a lot of internal bleeding. I was going to be permanently deaf in one ear. But I was alive, thank goodness for that.
I would have preferred to be dead, I felt. I always felt like that. It wasn’t that I felt hopeless, depressed, or really anything like that. I don’t know, I just didn’t see the point of my continued existence. I wasn’t making anyone’s life any better. Most of the time I made someone’s life worse. I think Hailee saw that in me, which was why she kept holding onto my hand. She smiled, the expression a little cold and her eyes impatient with me, but she didn’t stop holding my hand. That was all that really mattered.
-
The sky is too blue and clear today. Isn’t there supposed to be rain on funerals? Not a cloud tarnished the sky though. The sun was too hot for black, and you could see the people who actually came in the dark tone were uncomfortable. Where ever I look, I see faded jeans and comfortable shirts. Not exactly funereal. I managed to pull an old black shirt from the bottom of my drawers, but very few others have made an effort. Not even her father had bothered. Actually, I’m surprised he even showed up.
But he did. All of Mentworth did, in fact. It’s not like the suburb is close, but there is a sort of clan-like feel to living there. People you’ve never met come to your funeral, just because you lived in the same neighbourhood. Was that good or bad? One giant family that doesn’t care until you’re dead.
A woman I don’t know lays a single lily on the fresh earth, crying uncontrollably. Probably stole it from another grave. She says something generic, the same sort of thing you hear at any funeral. She had such a love for life, such promise, et cetera. I want to scream at her. I want to pick up that stolen lily and shove it down her lie-spitting throat.
You didn’t know Hailee. She hated her life. She hated this piece-of-s**t place. Hated you, if you’d ever even met her.
Instead I watch her finish her words between dying sobs, and feeling a non-existent icy rain against my skin.
-
This was when Hailee took any real interest in me. Sitting in the rain by a creek, poking a dead frog with a stick. What is it about dead animals that calls for stick-poking? Even the quietest, wimpiest boy is drawn to pick up a long, preferably pointed piece of wood and start jabbing at the corpse. Depending when you find it, it could be stiff and dry, or still limp. The limp ones were better, really. Like those science experiments on television, when they send the currents into the brain and make the legs twitch. You can poke the flaccid limbs around, poke it at the right place in the joint and pretend the resulting movement is some last vestiges of life.
“Leave it alone.” Hailee called from across the river. Despite the pelting rain, she wore only a singlet and a short skirt. Hand-me-downs and op-shop rags. Hailee didn’t wear shop clothes. She couldn’t really, they wouldn’t suit her. She settled her second-hand clothes over her like a second skin, carelessly pulling at a loose thread or playing at a hole.
I didn’t argue with her. If I did, or if I ignored her, I think perhaps all that had gone on before would have meant nothing. I think perhaps we wouldn’t be friends. As it were, I dropped the stick, wobbling into a stand from my squat. Hailee smiled, wading across the creek. The current was made strong in the torrent of rain, and when she wobbled halfway over, where it was deepest, even she looked fleetingly worried. But otherwise she handled the crossing with the slightest of determination and forced apathy, blinking sprays and droplets from her long lashes.
She stumbled as she reached my bank, falling laughingly into my arms. I wasn’t expecting her weight. Maybe it was all the water in her hair or clothes, or maybe I was imagining her to be as light as the little bird she always reminded me of. In any case, I fell beneath her, and her laughter just grew louder. I whimpered, my body still sore, but she never stopped laughing.
Hailee threw herself into her laughter. Her legs curled up against her body, her head rolled back and her hands gripped her chest as she gasped for air. Her body shook and trembled, and tears rolled down her cheeks so much it was impossible to tell where the salty tears stopped and the raindrops against her skin began.
“Dumb a**.” She hiccupped, grinning, her eyes widened impossibly. Again, I was captivated by her huge, engulfing stare. Against my will, I smiled. She howled with her laughter at my uncertain, rusted expression. When had I last smiled? A chuckle rolled up from beneath me, finding the strange sound of her mirth almost as amusing as she found my smile. And then I laughed, unable to control myself. Wet and soaking in the rain.
-
The next day was just as wet, but far too hot. The humid air made it hard for me to breathe. I was on the floor of my bedroom, wrapped in a sheet soaked in cold water. Hailee, like a bird, perched on the tree outside, tapping impatiently at the glass. Reluctantly I wrestled myself from my cocoon just enough to slip free an arm in order to open the window. I did not take off the sheet, embarrassed. Wearing only my jocks and old and fresh bruises, I didn’t want her to get a good look at me.
“Took you long enough.” Hailee snapped irritably, but she was smiling. She ducked down onto the floor, leaning against my bed. I moved to shut the window, wanting to keep the cool air in, but she shook her head sharply. With her tilted smile she reminded me that it wasn’t against the rules to hide in houses as long as I kept the window open.
I turned off the air conditioner, a rare luxury in this substandard neighbourhood, and opened up all the windows to let in any stray breeze that might be wafting around lazily. It didn’t take long for the heavy, humid air to invade my bedroom.
A few minutes of silence, punctuated only by my short request for her to close her eyes as I got dressed. Sitting down beside her, boiling in my jeans and long-sleeved shirt, but terrified of baring my skin to her curious eyes, it was Hailee who finally forgot the Hide of Hide and Seek.
“What do you think?” She asked me wryly, her sharp brown eyes dark with hidden motive. I blinked in surprise, unable to think of a better show of my confusion. In clarification, she added, “Mentworth?”
I didn’t know what to say really. It was a s**t hole, and we both knew it. But you weren’t supposed to say that to its occupants. They were patriotic over their s**t hole. She widened her smile playfully, laughing with careless lightness.
“Piece of s**t, right?” She asked, raising her head to study my ceiling, decorated with dart holes and mould. She asked another question, and another, and I gave the shortest answers I could. She asked things about my family. About my dead parents and dead grandparents, about my old town and old school. Sometimes she didn’t even wait for me to think up a simple answer, and just made something up for me. Sometimes she disagreed with my shortened answers, thinking up something complex or fantastical. Under her dreaming mind, I was given a different past.
My parents, who had died when my house burnt down, were now killed out robbing a bank somewhere in Europe. Possibly France. They were mastermind criminals, but they had been betrayed by an old colleague. I had grown up travelling the world with them, spending other days in a private, expensive military academy. My life was extravagant, my past filled with tragedy and adventure. Hailee cared little for my real past, but became attracted to the character she had built me up to be.
I asked a little of her own life. I knew she lived alone with her father. She had had an older sister, but she had moved out and away from Mentworth. Far away. I didn’t know anything about her mother. Hailee told me with a sharp, almost angry dismissal that her mother had committed suicide. I was struck speechless, and for the next hour allowed her to continue casting up an amazing, false life for me. I had stopped trying to answer her questions with truth, and sometimes added my own, fantastic lies.
After a while, even I forgot the truth.
-
I knew very little of Hailee’s life. I asked a lot of question about her, but she either pretended not to hear, or made up lies. She told me, after that second day of Hide and Seek, that her mother had died being mugged. That she had fallen in front of a train. That she had been pushed in front of a bus as a malicious prank. The more she lied, the more I asked, and the wilder her lies got. Until I stopped asking. Instead I told her what happened, the same way she told me about my life. We built our own existence, but they only remained so long as we had one another. On our own, we were who we had always been, but in the presence of the other, I was the orphan of a pair of infamous criminals, and she was the child of a glamorous Broadway star, who had an affair with Hailee’s father and fled the country in shame after the birth of the child, fearing for her career.
It was an enchanting life, constantly more exciting than reality. If it was actually possible to us, it was not good enough. It had to be beyond reality in order to become a part of out world. Days spent in my room, with her lazing on my windowsill and me lying sprawled over my bed, or spent outside, enacting our adventures in a world that existed only in our head.
The more time we spent with each other, the less time we spent in reality. The other children stayed away from us, still a little scared after the beating I took, perhaps. Nale… I heard he had been arrested, but I doubted it. There were no crimes in Mentworth, just some unfortunate incidents that didn’t remark too much notice from the police.
-
Actually, it was Nale that ended it all.
Hailee and I found him by the creek one day, completely drunk. He poked a dead bird with his pellet gun. The animal was in a horrible state, barely a real corpse. More a mess of mangled bones, blood and feathers. Nale, with his bloodshot eyes and leering sneer, looked up. He was a little surprised to see us in the first second, but the sneer quickly settled back on his ugly face.
I was scared. I panicked. I was ready to bolt, but Hailee stood her ground, her jaws set and her eyes narrowed imperiously at Nale. This just made him even angrier. He fumbled for the gun, and I almost pissed myself. Was he going to shoot us? We were close enough that if he aimed right, he could kill us. I trembled, a frightened gasp choking up my throat. Hailee gripped my hand, maybe to calm me down, maybe to stop me running. I still don’t know. Her face was stony, but her palm was sweating. I had never known her to get scared.
“You gonna try something, Fiami?” She demanded. Nale hesitated, something flickering in his watery blue eyes. I had never heard Hailee call him by his last name. She called most everyone by their last name, including me. But it had always been Nale, or Nale Fiami. Never just ******** you.” He spat. He said it at Hailee, but it hit my bare feet. And the smouldering glare was directed at me as he stumbled away, reeking of piss and booze. I felt sick, but Hailee kept gripping my hand, just like at the hospital. I lifted my chin defiantly, my body shaking in fear. The look Nale gave me in reply was mixed with incredulity and something else. Something deeper than the ordinary hatred he dealt to everyone. Something that washed me with cold, and the first drops of realisation trickled down the back of my brain.
“C’mon, Simmons.” Hailee said to me quickly, dragging me down to the water. And the beginning of a thought disappeared.
-
The closest I ever got to Hailee’s real life came that night. She was banging at my window, and for a terrifying moment I thought it was my uncle, waking in a drunken rage. My head whipped to the door first, and I drew my blankets up. But I realised, with a sense of embarrassed foolishness that the sound came from the window. Squinting into the darkness, I saw Hailee perched on the branch, her face ghost white, her brown eyes bright and wet, and worst of all, her bouncing brown curls lost, her hair cut inches short on her skull. Ugly rang in my mind, and I buried the thought with hidden shame.
-
She didn’t cry. Hailee never cried. But her body shook with the rage and fear, and her face was wet with uncontrollable tears. I asked if her father had done it to her. She said she had done it to herself. She wouldn’t say why though. Once again, the word ugly came to my mind, but with an outside quality to it. Not my own thoughts, but a suggestion. Hailee had cut off her sweet brown curls to become ugly.
I held her all that night, pretending not to hear the odd strangled sob. Not caring about the tears and snot that soaked my shirt. But more thoughts came to my head, more dark realisation dawning. I began to realise why Hailee had befriended me. My position as an outsider and ignorance to her real life. My willingness and help in crafting a fantastic and cruelly unrealistic world for us to escape to.
So I never spoke about that night. It would bring reality to out world. As dangerous as I knew it was to escape deeper and deeper into the fantasy, to block out the real world more and more, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be a part of the real world any more as more truths came to me, and I didn’t want Hailee to be a part of that world. Talking about that night, talking about her hair would only bring the real world closer to our own.
-
Nale, I think, needed a world away from the real one as much as we did. Maybe if he had that, maybe if we had invited him into ours, what happened wouldn’t have happened. Hailee would still be alive.
Nale would still be alive.
He didn’t get a funeral. He didn’t even get a proper cremation. Not one in the funeral homes, not even a warrior’s one, where they burn the body in a bonfire. He got a grave, at least. Most of my flowers went to Hailee’s grave, for the funeral. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say any of the lies you say at funerals. People might have thought I was cold, or maybe in shock. I didn’t care.
But I gave Nale some of my flowers, and I took some of the flowers off Hailee’s grave. I don’t think either of them would have minded sharing. I think, perhaps, it’s only right.
-
Nale beat me in private. When I was waiting by the creek for Hailee, or in the school toilets. In the stomach, the legs and the arms. Places I already hid bruises. I didn’t say anything about it. An old thought came back to me, maybe that’s why. He might kill me if I could. Each day he got angrier and angrier. More hate. More loathing. Hailee saw, but didn’t say anything because I didn’t. Or for the same reason we didn’t talk about her hair, or the nights she spent at my house rather than her own. Slipping out before dawn so her dad wouldn’t know.
Nale was too much a part of the reality we were trying to escape. Sometimes Nale would come around when we were at the creek, talking and playing. He would start a fight, but Hailee always broke it up before anything got broken. Sometimes she’d fight him. He didn’t put the same effort into it though. Not when she fought back. He felt for her as darkly as he felt for me. The same endless hatred. I knew it hurt Hailee. She and he had hung around each other a lot before I came. They hated each other, but there had been a mutual sort of respect. Hailee could hold her own in a fight against him, which was more than most boys in the neighbourhood could do.
We found more and more secluded places, to get away from him. Then we found the Shack. It used to be a hunting shack. There were still a lot of tools and blood on the walls, but too much dust and cobwebs to still be in use. Nale didn’t know about it, and we hid from him there. It was an army base. It was a spy headquarters. On our more wild days, it was a castle, or a dragon’s den. We could be truly childlike in our fantasies. For a long time, Nale couldn’t find us. But we should have expected that someday he would. He always did. He hunted us, full of his own private hate.
-
We camped out in the Shack. Wanting to get away from the demons in our own, real worlds. To extend the fantasy. Maybe if things had kept going, we would have become mad and become our fantasies. I’m not sure if it would be good or bad. Better than the reality we had been left to, I guess. We found other things in the Shack, besides the knives. Old bongs, cigarette butts, beer bottles.
The Shack stank of blood, oil and beer. The woodwork smelled of booze, soaked in it. Teenagers had found the shack years ago, and had called it their own. Now it was ours.
-
Nale was drunk. Nale was always drunk these days. His dad didn’t care, so long as it wasn’t his alcohol. He found us. Days ago, I think. Found the Shack when we weren’t there, found evidence of our stay there. Now he was drunk, and so angry. And there we both were.
He was crazy. His eyes were as wide as Hailee’s when she gets to studying something interesting, like a dead butterfly. He had one of the rusty knives that had hung on the wall. I was crying, clutching my bleeding arm. He had snuck up on us in our sleep. Hailee was screaming at him, but he was mad. Everything was coming to me from a distance. My head was spinning, like it had been the night my house burned down, with my parents still in it. I couldn’t stand all the noise, all the blood.
Nale looked startled. I’m pretty sure I was screaming. He ducked as I threw the closest thing to me at him. A can of petrol he had brought with him sailed over his head, splattering Hailee and the Shack. I felt sick as I looked at the petrol, knowing. I couldn’t stop screaming though. Nale overcame his surprise, snarling and leaping at me with the knife. I was too weak and dizzy to fight him off. The knife had cut across my chest. Hailee tackled him, shaking him and yelling. He was crying tears of rage, waving the knife at her face.
The matches fell from his pocket.
-
Like the night my parents died in the fire, I watched the dancing flames with dreamy calm. The blood I had lost had been an unhealthy amount. Hailee screamed at me to run. To get help. Nale held her back, crying. His face was streaked with soot, blackened by the smoke. He didn’t want to let her go. Loose her to me again. She was his, in his head. I was too dizzy to hear her though. Too enchanted by the flames, laughing at the heat. They licked at my skin. Licked at her skin. Nale looked both pleased that he finally had Hailee, and terrified at the current situation. He looked terrified at me.
Hailee screamed and struggled against his grip. She was on fire. She pushed at me, yelled for me to go. I slowly realised what was happening then, looking at the fiery fairy before me with horror. I grabbed her arm, pulling her with the last of my strength. Nale couldn’t hold on any more, and she slipped easily from his sweaty grasp. Hailee stared at him, torn. Her burning arm reaching out hopelessly.
I think that was enough for Nale. That last gesture of care. He smiled, and his eyes closed.
-
The fire engulfed the Shack and Nale’s body. Not even a charred skeleton was left. The two other cans of petrol had exploded, showering the bush with flames. The fire engines had come screaming down the street as the dancing orange flames greedily devoured the bush, heading steadily towards the neighbourhood. They were astonished to find me staggering out of the trees, Hailee limp in my arms. A lot of the skin on her right side had been completely burnt away, but I had doused her in the creek.
They pulled her from me. I wanted to fight them, to keep holding on to her, but the men were stronger. They asked me if there was anyone else out there. Briefly, I thought of Nale’s final, softening smile, and then I shook my head.
No one left to save in any case.
-
The clouds had finally come. On the horizon, as black and pregnant as an oncoming storm. Gazing up at them, cutting a clear line across the blue, I feel relieved. Hailee deserves rain on her funeral. She deserves them more than fake-dead actors in a movie. I planned to stay by her grave until the rain came.
She had been dead before I even reached the creek. Her body was damaged even more than it first looked like. But it was more than that to me. I knew she had given up on living. There was no more fantasy world to escape to. She had cared very little for me, but had clung desperately to the escape my fake identity had offered to her. The closest she had come to caring for an actual person was her mutual respect for Nale.
He had died. Our world had died. And she couldn’t return to the real world forever. She couldn’t return to her father. I couldn’t return to my uncle. I won’t return to my uncle.
I’m going to join Hailee, in a real fantasy world. To the one that can only be reached by this one in one way. Nale found the way. Hailee found the way.
I’m coming, Hailee.
Hailee was a fairy, with her sharp, tilted smile and her insatiable, but carefully hidden curiosity. She never simply walked – she danced, her feet brushing the ground in a complicated series of steps. Her arms would be outstretched, like some glamorous tightrope walker, and she would move to a song only she could hear. She climbed and she tumbled. There were no such things as obstacles to her. Hailee existed in her own world, perceived the ordinary differently to us. Everything that interested normal people bored her. She found wonder in tiny, unnoticeable things. This was why she always fascinated me.
Or to be more accurate, she fascinated me because I fascinated her. She was never interested in people; she handled them all with a cold indifference. But I was of interest to her. Because I wasn’t and never would be a part of her real life.
-
The first time I met her was when she had climbed into bedroom, playing a game of Hide and Seek. She had told me with her usual tilted smile that as long as I kept the window open, it wasn’t against the rules. Her cunning, laughing eyes studied my pale face curiously, noting only casually the bruises on my arms and my swollen nose. I had hoped she had simply assumed I got into a fight. A lot of the boys in the neighbourhood fought – actually, all of them did. It was true that I had never actually gotten out of the house since moving in a week earlier, but it was possible. But she had dismissed the accusing marks, instead settling as comfortably as a cat on my desk, swinging her legs like a child. She had tilted her head so that her mouth ran even, and her eyes stretched wide. I would learn later that she would only do this when she was studying something of particular curiosity. Had I know that then, I probably would have taken a strong dislike and wariness to the girl. Instead I had simply found myself captivated by the size of her eyes.
On her way out, perched on the window sill like a bird, her head tilted in that strange fashion once more, she had invited me to play Hide and Seek with them. I don’t think either of us had taken the invitation seriously.
-
Nale Fiami owned a pellet gun. He had gotten it off his Cousin Richie who lived at the coast as a Christmas present. Ordinarily this wouldn’t have concerned me, except that he had shot out two of my bedroom windows out while cackling madly, and said he was going to climb in through the broken glass and shoot one up my arse. For being a loner weirdo. As far as I understood neighbourhood rules, I either had to go out there and fight him – win or lose, at least I stood my ground – or sit inside like a coward and mark myself as free bullying territory. I was opting for the latter, hoping my uncle would get pissed off and go out to deal with Nale himself. But he was out cold from the night before. I was willing to accept a life of torment. It wasn’t a new experience for me. But Hailee did what I was too much of a coward to do. She punched Nale Fiami in the gut and told him to rack off.
-
Perched at my windowsill like a bird, I thought back once more to that first time I met Hailee. Only she didn’t have the black eye where Nale punched her back. She had a lot of bruises now too, and her wrist was sprained. She said it didn’t matter though, because she got Nale one in the jaw so hard he couldn’t speak for at least a week. And she said week of not having to listen to Nale was more than enough reward for fighting someone else’s fight.
Normal people would have given me a scowl, or maybe a bitter glare. But Hailee smiled her tilted smile, which I found I liked more and more, and gave a half shrug. Then she had called me a pathetic wimp and kicked me in the gut. By the time I had gaspingly managed to get my wind back, she had disappeared out the window, leaving only a snickering laugh.
-
It was two weeks before I saw Hailee again. I had been kicked out to get my uncle a six pack of beer. Whatever was cheap, he didn’t care. In Mentworth, the legal drinking age was just a suggestion, so the fact that I was only thirteen wouldn’t bother the liquor store attendant. Nale saw me, and was still angry about the beating he got from Hailee I guess. He and his gang came after me. They could only really be called that – his gang. Nale didn’t have friends, he hated everyone and everyone was scared of him. But he had a gang, which was the closest he ever got to mates.
I heard somewhere that a scared kid can run faster than an athletic one. Nale looked athletic, but he smoked. Everyone in this neighbourhood did, I think. And I was scared shitless. But I was always weedy and s**t at sports, so we were kind of an even match. Nale and his gang outnumbered me though.
They caught me near the gas station. They only really needed one to hold me I was so out of breath. But one kid was assigned to each arm, and Nale started to beat my face in while the other kids watched and cheered. He hit hard, always in the face. I was bleeding everywhere after the first couple of punches, by the sixth I couldn’t hear right. But the cheering was faltering. The kids looked scared. I was scared. Nale’s face was twisted, an ugly madness burned in his eyes. He was going to kill me if he could, and I think even the other kids knew it. Most of them had fled, but a few stuck around, looking worried and wondering if they should call for some help.
There was a shout – really faint. Or maybe it was just me. I fell, and Nale came down on my, hitting my gut with his fists, his elbows, his knees… anything that he could use. I think I may have spat. I was choking on my own blood. I was scared, but the fear was ebbing away to a strange sort of hysterical hilarity of the situation. I don’t know what was so funny, everything just seemed ridiculous.
Then Nale was gone. Lifted off me by divine intervention. This occurs to me now as a really ******** stupid thought. Rather than God, the face of the gas station cashier peered down at me worriedly, saying something. I think he was trying to reassure me, saying the ambulance was on its way. I may have laughed, but the sound was choked by the blood. I was past pain. Only an even worse numbness now haunted my body. A small, calloused hand slipped into mine, and Hailee’s tanned, freckled face smiled into mine. Something was in her eyes. It might have been concern, but the more I think about it, the more I think it was amusement.
And I don’t think I mind.
-
I should have been dead, the doctors explained. A lot of broken bones, a lot of internal bleeding. I was going to be permanently deaf in one ear. But I was alive, thank goodness for that.
I would have preferred to be dead, I felt. I always felt like that. It wasn’t that I felt hopeless, depressed, or really anything like that. I don’t know, I just didn’t see the point of my continued existence. I wasn’t making anyone’s life any better. Most of the time I made someone’s life worse. I think Hailee saw that in me, which was why she kept holding onto my hand. She smiled, the expression a little cold and her eyes impatient with me, but she didn’t stop holding my hand. That was all that really mattered.
-
The sky is too blue and clear today. Isn’t there supposed to be rain on funerals? Not a cloud tarnished the sky though. The sun was too hot for black, and you could see the people who actually came in the dark tone were uncomfortable. Where ever I look, I see faded jeans and comfortable shirts. Not exactly funereal. I managed to pull an old black shirt from the bottom of my drawers, but very few others have made an effort. Not even her father had bothered. Actually, I’m surprised he even showed up.
But he did. All of Mentworth did, in fact. It’s not like the suburb is close, but there is a sort of clan-like feel to living there. People you’ve never met come to your funeral, just because you lived in the same neighbourhood. Was that good or bad? One giant family that doesn’t care until you’re dead.
A woman I don’t know lays a single lily on the fresh earth, crying uncontrollably. Probably stole it from another grave. She says something generic, the same sort of thing you hear at any funeral. She had such a love for life, such promise, et cetera. I want to scream at her. I want to pick up that stolen lily and shove it down her lie-spitting throat.
You didn’t know Hailee. She hated her life. She hated this piece-of-s**t place. Hated you, if you’d ever even met her.
Instead I watch her finish her words between dying sobs, and feeling a non-existent icy rain against my skin.
-
This was when Hailee took any real interest in me. Sitting in the rain by a creek, poking a dead frog with a stick. What is it about dead animals that calls for stick-poking? Even the quietest, wimpiest boy is drawn to pick up a long, preferably pointed piece of wood and start jabbing at the corpse. Depending when you find it, it could be stiff and dry, or still limp. The limp ones were better, really. Like those science experiments on television, when they send the currents into the brain and make the legs twitch. You can poke the flaccid limbs around, poke it at the right place in the joint and pretend the resulting movement is some last vestiges of life.
“Leave it alone.” Hailee called from across the river. Despite the pelting rain, she wore only a singlet and a short skirt. Hand-me-downs and op-shop rags. Hailee didn’t wear shop clothes. She couldn’t really, they wouldn’t suit her. She settled her second-hand clothes over her like a second skin, carelessly pulling at a loose thread or playing at a hole.
I didn’t argue with her. If I did, or if I ignored her, I think perhaps all that had gone on before would have meant nothing. I think perhaps we wouldn’t be friends. As it were, I dropped the stick, wobbling into a stand from my squat. Hailee smiled, wading across the creek. The current was made strong in the torrent of rain, and when she wobbled halfway over, where it was deepest, even she looked fleetingly worried. But otherwise she handled the crossing with the slightest of determination and forced apathy, blinking sprays and droplets from her long lashes.
She stumbled as she reached my bank, falling laughingly into my arms. I wasn’t expecting her weight. Maybe it was all the water in her hair or clothes, or maybe I was imagining her to be as light as the little bird she always reminded me of. In any case, I fell beneath her, and her laughter just grew louder. I whimpered, my body still sore, but she never stopped laughing.
Hailee threw herself into her laughter. Her legs curled up against her body, her head rolled back and her hands gripped her chest as she gasped for air. Her body shook and trembled, and tears rolled down her cheeks so much it was impossible to tell where the salty tears stopped and the raindrops against her skin began.
“Dumb a**.” She hiccupped, grinning, her eyes widened impossibly. Again, I was captivated by her huge, engulfing stare. Against my will, I smiled. She howled with her laughter at my uncertain, rusted expression. When had I last smiled? A chuckle rolled up from beneath me, finding the strange sound of her mirth almost as amusing as she found my smile. And then I laughed, unable to control myself. Wet and soaking in the rain.
-
The next day was just as wet, but far too hot. The humid air made it hard for me to breathe. I was on the floor of my bedroom, wrapped in a sheet soaked in cold water. Hailee, like a bird, perched on the tree outside, tapping impatiently at the glass. Reluctantly I wrestled myself from my cocoon just enough to slip free an arm in order to open the window. I did not take off the sheet, embarrassed. Wearing only my jocks and old and fresh bruises, I didn’t want her to get a good look at me.
“Took you long enough.” Hailee snapped irritably, but she was smiling. She ducked down onto the floor, leaning against my bed. I moved to shut the window, wanting to keep the cool air in, but she shook her head sharply. With her tilted smile she reminded me that it wasn’t against the rules to hide in houses as long as I kept the window open.
I turned off the air conditioner, a rare luxury in this substandard neighbourhood, and opened up all the windows to let in any stray breeze that might be wafting around lazily. It didn’t take long for the heavy, humid air to invade my bedroom.
A few minutes of silence, punctuated only by my short request for her to close her eyes as I got dressed. Sitting down beside her, boiling in my jeans and long-sleeved shirt, but terrified of baring my skin to her curious eyes, it was Hailee who finally forgot the Hide of Hide and Seek.
“What do you think?” She asked me wryly, her sharp brown eyes dark with hidden motive. I blinked in surprise, unable to think of a better show of my confusion. In clarification, she added, “Mentworth?”
I didn’t know what to say really. It was a s**t hole, and we both knew it. But you weren’t supposed to say that to its occupants. They were patriotic over their s**t hole. She widened her smile playfully, laughing with careless lightness.
“Piece of s**t, right?” She asked, raising her head to study my ceiling, decorated with dart holes and mould. She asked another question, and another, and I gave the shortest answers I could. She asked things about my family. About my dead parents and dead grandparents, about my old town and old school. Sometimes she didn’t even wait for me to think up a simple answer, and just made something up for me. Sometimes she disagreed with my shortened answers, thinking up something complex or fantastical. Under her dreaming mind, I was given a different past.
My parents, who had died when my house burnt down, were now killed out robbing a bank somewhere in Europe. Possibly France. They were mastermind criminals, but they had been betrayed by an old colleague. I had grown up travelling the world with them, spending other days in a private, expensive military academy. My life was extravagant, my past filled with tragedy and adventure. Hailee cared little for my real past, but became attracted to the character she had built me up to be.
I asked a little of her own life. I knew she lived alone with her father. She had had an older sister, but she had moved out and away from Mentworth. Far away. I didn’t know anything about her mother. Hailee told me with a sharp, almost angry dismissal that her mother had committed suicide. I was struck speechless, and for the next hour allowed her to continue casting up an amazing, false life for me. I had stopped trying to answer her questions with truth, and sometimes added my own, fantastic lies.
After a while, even I forgot the truth.
-
I knew very little of Hailee’s life. I asked a lot of question about her, but she either pretended not to hear, or made up lies. She told me, after that second day of Hide and Seek, that her mother had died being mugged. That she had fallen in front of a train. That she had been pushed in front of a bus as a malicious prank. The more she lied, the more I asked, and the wilder her lies got. Until I stopped asking. Instead I told her what happened, the same way she told me about my life. We built our own existence, but they only remained so long as we had one another. On our own, we were who we had always been, but in the presence of the other, I was the orphan of a pair of infamous criminals, and she was the child of a glamorous Broadway star, who had an affair with Hailee’s father and fled the country in shame after the birth of the child, fearing for her career.
It was an enchanting life, constantly more exciting than reality. If it was actually possible to us, it was not good enough. It had to be beyond reality in order to become a part of out world. Days spent in my room, with her lazing on my windowsill and me lying sprawled over my bed, or spent outside, enacting our adventures in a world that existed only in our head.
The more time we spent with each other, the less time we spent in reality. The other children stayed away from us, still a little scared after the beating I took, perhaps. Nale… I heard he had been arrested, but I doubted it. There were no crimes in Mentworth, just some unfortunate incidents that didn’t remark too much notice from the police.
-
Actually, it was Nale that ended it all.
Hailee and I found him by the creek one day, completely drunk. He poked a dead bird with his pellet gun. The animal was in a horrible state, barely a real corpse. More a mess of mangled bones, blood and feathers. Nale, with his bloodshot eyes and leering sneer, looked up. He was a little surprised to see us in the first second, but the sneer quickly settled back on his ugly face.
I was scared. I panicked. I was ready to bolt, but Hailee stood her ground, her jaws set and her eyes narrowed imperiously at Nale. This just made him even angrier. He fumbled for the gun, and I almost pissed myself. Was he going to shoot us? We were close enough that if he aimed right, he could kill us. I trembled, a frightened gasp choking up my throat. Hailee gripped my hand, maybe to calm me down, maybe to stop me running. I still don’t know. Her face was stony, but her palm was sweating. I had never known her to get scared.
“You gonna try something, Fiami?” She demanded. Nale hesitated, something flickering in his watery blue eyes. I had never heard Hailee call him by his last name. She called most everyone by their last name, including me. But it had always been Nale, or Nale Fiami. Never just ******** you.” He spat. He said it at Hailee, but it hit my bare feet. And the smouldering glare was directed at me as he stumbled away, reeking of piss and booze. I felt sick, but Hailee kept gripping my hand, just like at the hospital. I lifted my chin defiantly, my body shaking in fear. The look Nale gave me in reply was mixed with incredulity and something else. Something deeper than the ordinary hatred he dealt to everyone. Something that washed me with cold, and the first drops of realisation trickled down the back of my brain.
“C’mon, Simmons.” Hailee said to me quickly, dragging me down to the water. And the beginning of a thought disappeared.
-
The closest I ever got to Hailee’s real life came that night. She was banging at my window, and for a terrifying moment I thought it was my uncle, waking in a drunken rage. My head whipped to the door first, and I drew my blankets up. But I realised, with a sense of embarrassed foolishness that the sound came from the window. Squinting into the darkness, I saw Hailee perched on the branch, her face ghost white, her brown eyes bright and wet, and worst of all, her bouncing brown curls lost, her hair cut inches short on her skull. Ugly rang in my mind, and I buried the thought with hidden shame.
-
She didn’t cry. Hailee never cried. But her body shook with the rage and fear, and her face was wet with uncontrollable tears. I asked if her father had done it to her. She said she had done it to herself. She wouldn’t say why though. Once again, the word ugly came to my mind, but with an outside quality to it. Not my own thoughts, but a suggestion. Hailee had cut off her sweet brown curls to become ugly.
I held her all that night, pretending not to hear the odd strangled sob. Not caring about the tears and snot that soaked my shirt. But more thoughts came to my head, more dark realisation dawning. I began to realise why Hailee had befriended me. My position as an outsider and ignorance to her real life. My willingness and help in crafting a fantastic and cruelly unrealistic world for us to escape to.
So I never spoke about that night. It would bring reality to out world. As dangerous as I knew it was to escape deeper and deeper into the fantasy, to block out the real world more and more, I didn’t care. I didn’t want to be a part of the real world any more as more truths came to me, and I didn’t want Hailee to be a part of that world. Talking about that night, talking about her hair would only bring the real world closer to our own.
-
Nale, I think, needed a world away from the real one as much as we did. Maybe if he had that, maybe if we had invited him into ours, what happened wouldn’t have happened. Hailee would still be alive.
Nale would still be alive.
He didn’t get a funeral. He didn’t even get a proper cremation. Not one in the funeral homes, not even a warrior’s one, where they burn the body in a bonfire. He got a grave, at least. Most of my flowers went to Hailee’s grave, for the funeral. I didn’t say anything. I didn’t say any of the lies you say at funerals. People might have thought I was cold, or maybe in shock. I didn’t care.
But I gave Nale some of my flowers, and I took some of the flowers off Hailee’s grave. I don’t think either of them would have minded sharing. I think, perhaps, it’s only right.
-
Nale beat me in private. When I was waiting by the creek for Hailee, or in the school toilets. In the stomach, the legs and the arms. Places I already hid bruises. I didn’t say anything about it. An old thought came back to me, maybe that’s why. He might kill me if I could. Each day he got angrier and angrier. More hate. More loathing. Hailee saw, but didn’t say anything because I didn’t. Or for the same reason we didn’t talk about her hair, or the nights she spent at my house rather than her own. Slipping out before dawn so her dad wouldn’t know.
Nale was too much a part of the reality we were trying to escape. Sometimes Nale would come around when we were at the creek, talking and playing. He would start a fight, but Hailee always broke it up before anything got broken. Sometimes she’d fight him. He didn’t put the same effort into it though. Not when she fought back. He felt for her as darkly as he felt for me. The same endless hatred. I knew it hurt Hailee. She and he had hung around each other a lot before I came. They hated each other, but there had been a mutual sort of respect. Hailee could hold her own in a fight against him, which was more than most boys in the neighbourhood could do.
We found more and more secluded places, to get away from him. Then we found the Shack. It used to be a hunting shack. There were still a lot of tools and blood on the walls, but too much dust and cobwebs to still be in use. Nale didn’t know about it, and we hid from him there. It was an army base. It was a spy headquarters. On our more wild days, it was a castle, or a dragon’s den. We could be truly childlike in our fantasies. For a long time, Nale couldn’t find us. But we should have expected that someday he would. He always did. He hunted us, full of his own private hate.
-
We camped out in the Shack. Wanting to get away from the demons in our own, real worlds. To extend the fantasy. Maybe if things had kept going, we would have become mad and become our fantasies. I’m not sure if it would be good or bad. Better than the reality we had been left to, I guess. We found other things in the Shack, besides the knives. Old bongs, cigarette butts, beer bottles.
The Shack stank of blood, oil and beer. The woodwork smelled of booze, soaked in it. Teenagers had found the shack years ago, and had called it their own. Now it was ours.
-
Nale was drunk. Nale was always drunk these days. His dad didn’t care, so long as it wasn’t his alcohol. He found us. Days ago, I think. Found the Shack when we weren’t there, found evidence of our stay there. Now he was drunk, and so angry. And there we both were.
He was crazy. His eyes were as wide as Hailee’s when she gets to studying something interesting, like a dead butterfly. He had one of the rusty knives that had hung on the wall. I was crying, clutching my bleeding arm. He had snuck up on us in our sleep. Hailee was screaming at him, but he was mad. Everything was coming to me from a distance. My head was spinning, like it had been the night my house burned down, with my parents still in it. I couldn’t stand all the noise, all the blood.
Nale looked startled. I’m pretty sure I was screaming. He ducked as I threw the closest thing to me at him. A can of petrol he had brought with him sailed over his head, splattering Hailee and the Shack. I felt sick as I looked at the petrol, knowing. I couldn’t stop screaming though. Nale overcame his surprise, snarling and leaping at me with the knife. I was too weak and dizzy to fight him off. The knife had cut across my chest. Hailee tackled him, shaking him and yelling. He was crying tears of rage, waving the knife at her face.
The matches fell from his pocket.
-
Like the night my parents died in the fire, I watched the dancing flames with dreamy calm. The blood I had lost had been an unhealthy amount. Hailee screamed at me to run. To get help. Nale held her back, crying. His face was streaked with soot, blackened by the smoke. He didn’t want to let her go. Loose her to me again. She was his, in his head. I was too dizzy to hear her though. Too enchanted by the flames, laughing at the heat. They licked at my skin. Licked at her skin. Nale looked both pleased that he finally had Hailee, and terrified at the current situation. He looked terrified at me.
Hailee screamed and struggled against his grip. She was on fire. She pushed at me, yelled for me to go. I slowly realised what was happening then, looking at the fiery fairy before me with horror. I grabbed her arm, pulling her with the last of my strength. Nale couldn’t hold on any more, and she slipped easily from his sweaty grasp. Hailee stared at him, torn. Her burning arm reaching out hopelessly.
I think that was enough for Nale. That last gesture of care. He smiled, and his eyes closed.
-
The fire engulfed the Shack and Nale’s body. Not even a charred skeleton was left. The two other cans of petrol had exploded, showering the bush with flames. The fire engines had come screaming down the street as the dancing orange flames greedily devoured the bush, heading steadily towards the neighbourhood. They were astonished to find me staggering out of the trees, Hailee limp in my arms. A lot of the skin on her right side had been completely burnt away, but I had doused her in the creek.
They pulled her from me. I wanted to fight them, to keep holding on to her, but the men were stronger. They asked me if there was anyone else out there. Briefly, I thought of Nale’s final, softening smile, and then I shook my head.
No one left to save in any case.
-
The clouds had finally come. On the horizon, as black and pregnant as an oncoming storm. Gazing up at them, cutting a clear line across the blue, I feel relieved. Hailee deserves rain on her funeral. She deserves them more than fake-dead actors in a movie. I planned to stay by her grave until the rain came.
She had been dead before I even reached the creek. Her body was damaged even more than it first looked like. But it was more than that to me. I knew she had given up on living. There was no more fantasy world to escape to. She had cared very little for me, but had clung desperately to the escape my fake identity had offered to her. The closest she had come to caring for an actual person was her mutual respect for Nale.
He had died. Our world had died. And she couldn’t return to the real world forever. She couldn’t return to her father. I couldn’t return to my uncle. I won’t return to my uncle.
I’m going to join Hailee, in a real fantasy world. To the one that can only be reached by this one in one way. Nale found the way. Hailee found the way.
I’m coming, Hailee.
