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“She turned up one day? Just like that?”
“Uh-huh. I just thought she was so beautiful. She said, ‘Let me look at you,’ and then she cried and held me and said that if she had known about me, she would have come much sooner.”
“Fu
“Maybe she’s like in that TV show where those angels moonlight as people and they come down to help others. You know. Like in Touched by an Angel.”
“I don’t think she’s an angel, Jessa. She swears worse than Santangelo and Griggs.” I turn and lean on my elbow, facing her. “So what did she say when she showed up?”
“That she was a friend of my dad’s, but I don’t really believe that. I couldn’t imagine Ha
“I’ve never known my father,” I tell her.
“My aunt said mine was a crazy man and that he lost his marbles years ago, but I don’t think he was, you know. I think he was just really sad.”
“Maybe because your mum died.”
“I don’t know but when he came to visit, he’d tell me the best stories about growing up around here. When Ha
She looks at me intently. “She used to talk about you. She’d tell me that when I came to the school, I would have you and that she’d be the luckiest person in the world because she’d have both of us. I used to think she was your mum.”
“I have a mother and she’s not Ha
“But don’t you ever wish she was? I do.”
I don’t answer. I just wish Ha
“You know what?” Jessa says after a moment, yawning. “I reckon that Brigadier knows where she is.”
My pulse does this thumping thing that happens every time I think of him.
“Why do you say that? Has he ever hassled you? Tell me!”
She frowns and I don’t know whether it’s because she remembers something or because of my aggression. “He looks at me all the time.”
“Does it freak you out?” I ask, not wanting to put more fear in her head.
“No, but Chloe P. reckons he could be the serial killer.”
“Oh, please,” I say, even though I once thought the same.
“She reckons whoever it is lives between Sydney and Truscott.”
“Which covers seven hundred kilometres, narrowing our suspects down to about one million people.”
“And the kidnappings have always taken place between September and the end of the year and would probably be committed by someone who drives those seven hundred kilometres. The Brigadier would get to cover at least five hundred of them. He goes back and forth from Sydney to here all the time. Well, this year he has, anyway. Last year he wasn’t around, or the year before, and there were no kidnappings.”
“How do you know?”
“That he wasn’t around last year? Because Teresa, one of the hostages, is going around with one of the Cadets and he told her and she told me.”
“Can you point out to Teresa that the Cadets are our enemy and she’s not allowed to ‘go around’ with one of them?”
“But you pashed Jonah Griggs and he’s the leader of the enemy.”
I stare at her in amazement with absolutely no comeback.
“We saw you at the party on Saturday night,” she says, gri
“Who’s we?”
“Mary and Sarah and Elisha and Tilly Santangelo and their cousins and some of their friends from school. How can you breathe when his tongue—”
“Go to sleep,” I say, turning over again.
I wanted to say that I didn’t need to breathe on my own when Jonah Griggs was kissing me, but seeing he hasn’t touched me since that night, I can’t even bring myself to think of him. It’s not like he’s ignoring me, because that would be proactive. It’s like I’m just anyone to him. Even when we were squashed in the back seat, our knees glued together and our shoulders touching and my insides full of butterflies, he was speaking over my head the whole time with Santangelo about some ridiculous AFL/Rugby League thing. Somewhere along the way, Jonah Griggs has become a priority in my life and his attitude this week has been crushing.
On the last Saturday of the holidays, Santangelo takes Griggs, Raffy, and me back to the place by the river on the other side of town. He’s convinced that there is some other clue down there to do with the missing boy and if there is one thing I’ve noticed about Santangelo, it’s that he has a touch of obsessive compulsive about him and won’t let an idea go.
“Apparently the Hermit was obsessed with this river,” he tells us. “Why do you think that is?” he persists.
I just shrug but I can tell Raffy and Griggs are trying to come up with something intelligent. When nobody answers he holds out his hands as if to say, “Go on, answer.”
“Santangelo, you’re dying to tell us, so just tell us,” Griggs says, irritated.
“Because I think he knew that kid, Xavier.”
“Webb,” I say, and the three of them look at me. “That’s what they called him.”
“Webb.” He nods. “Well, think of this river. There are so many bends where stuff going down the river gets lodged.”
“Stuff?” I ask. “Wow. Hold back on the jargon.”
“So let’s go in,” Griggs says.
“It’s deep and by the time you get to the bottom and check out what’s down there, you’ll have to come back up again for breath.”
“I’ll go down,” Raffy said. “I’m the fifteen-hundred-metre swimmer and can hold my breath the longest.”
I watch the guys. It’s as if she’s stripped them of their masculinity.
“It’s no big deal. It’s just about better lungs,” she reassures them, turning to face me and rolling her eyes as she takes off her shoes and socks. The guys are not coping and I sit back and hug my knees to watch the show.
“How do you know Griggs isn’t a long-distance swimmer who has fantastic lungs?” Santangelo asks.
“Because he looks like a Rugby player, not a swimmer,” Raffy tells him. “You look like an AFL player, not a swimmer. I look like a swimmer.”
“What about me?” I ask.
The three of them look at me. Being tall has never meant I was labelled as athletic. Just lanky.
“You look like someone who can wipe out the opposition in a chess game,” Raffy says.
“I won the table te
“But you’re not a swimmer,” she says.
“You only beat me in the fifteen-hundred that one time,” Santangelo says.
I can tell this could go on forever and I’m not in the mood. “Look,” I say, “he beat you in the spelling bee. She beat you in the fifteen-hundred metres. Let’s just get this Fab Four adventure over and done with and go home.”
“I think two of us should go in,” Raffy says, taking off her top.
“Look the other way,” Santangelo tells Griggs as she unzips her jeans.
“As if.”
When Raffy is down to her undies and singlet, she dives in with ease. Her head emerges, her teeth chattering. Santangelo begins to strip as well and I certainly don’t look the other way.
As soon as Santangelo and Raffy’s heads go under, Griggs leans over and kisses me. It’s a hungry kind of kiss, like he’s been dying to do it for ages and he can’t get enough but after a while I open my eyes and just stare at him.