hand.
“How come if they live around here nobody ever sees them?” he said.
I wanted to say you have to be patient to see a letter-winged kite. I wanted to say you have to spend a long time looking upward. You have to look up for so long that you might even get a sore neck and sometimes you can only see them at night when they shine by moonlight.
But I couldn't get the words out.
I just shrugged and it was like I had made the whole thing up and
Elanus scriptus
wasn't even a real bird.
We stood near the swing for a long time thinking of what might be a clue and what mightn't be a clue. Behind the swings and the Moreton Bay figs the park changed into pale scrub, white grass, and ashen trees peeling bark. We climbed up to where the fence had been erected around the water tower. We walked around the perimeter. The February sun burned our faces.
“Everyone blames Miranda,” I said so we could think of something else.
Angela's hand went to
The Book of Clues
in her waistband and hovered.
My mother blamed Miranda. In the end she'd hated her. She thought Miranda Bell was the problem, not Beth. My mother had hissed the name Miranda when she said it but mostly she didn't say her name at all. She said she and her and that girl. Miranda had led Beth astray.
“Astray” sounded almost like a country. It would be populated by Astraynians. There would be a queen but probably not a king because it seemed to be mostly girls who went to live there. When Beth was led astray she took hardly anything with her, just her little canvas bag. When she came home she never brought anything except something in her eyes. A secret she kept from us. When she came home she sat on the sofa and looked exactly the way that she alwayshad only the hidden thing made her seem very different.
“We'll need to talk to Miranda,” said Angela.
“God,” I said, “as if that'll help.”
We walked back through the park. We had to be careful near Kylie's house because if she saw us she'd want to come. We went past the opening of Dardanelles Court, where Mrs. Irwin in number 2 was unloading her groceries from her car. Mrs. Irwin had thick black eyebrows and impossibly green eyes. She had dark hairs growing on her top lip almost like a mustache although if we mentioned it Mum put her hand up and made us stop.
Mrs. O'Malley said she didn't know why Mrs. Irwin was so high-and-mighty now as she knew for a fact she was brought up in a tin shed and would've had to wipe her bum with gum leaves when the newspaper ran out. “And now she's gone and home-schooled those poor girls,” said Mrs. O'Malley, “so they'd never get to make a proper friend. Ruined them,” she said.
Mrs. Irwin called me over and asked me did my mother need anything. She said nothing was too big or too small. She sent her three daughters to our house every week to ask exactly the same thing.
Each week they stood at the front screen door and peered past me with their wild green eyes intoour house. They wore long-sleeved dresses that reached the floor and I'd seen the same dresses among Nanna's Butterick patterns from 1974. I would have asked them in but I couldn't, not with Mum lying on the sofa in her yellow Japanese happy coat smoking cigarette after cigarette until a slow whirling cloud hung from the ceiling. Not with Dad swearing in the kitchen because he couldn't find a single clean plate. Or Danielle refusing to hear the simplest of questions while writing sad poems or drawing pages full of girls with melancholy eyes.
“I don't think we need anything,” I said to Mrs. Irwin.
“Are you sure?” she asked, and made a sad clown face and a sighing noise. Later that afternoon I threw some rocks near the opening of Dardanelles Court with the hope that I would accidentally break her car window.
But first Angela and I crossed the creek. We crossed where the silt had been baked dry by the sun and cracked into scales like a snakeskin. Our feet crumbled the scales. We left our
“How come if they live around here nobody ever sees them?” he said.
I wanted to say you have to be patient to see a letter-winged kite. I wanted to say you have to spend a long time looking upward. You have to look up for so long that you might even get a sore neck and sometimes you can only see them at night when they shine by moonlight.
But I couldn't get the words out.
I just shrugged and it was like I had made the whole thing up and
Elanus scriptus
wasn't even a real bird.
We stood near the swing for a long time thinking of what might be a clue and what mightn't be a clue. Behind the swings and the Moreton Bay figs the park changed into pale scrub, white grass, and ashen trees peeling bark. We climbed up to where the fence had been erected around the water tower. We walked around the perimeter. The February sun burned our faces.
“Everyone blames Miranda,” I said so we could think of something else.
Angela's hand went to
The Book of Clues
in her waistband and hovered.
My mother blamed Miranda. In the end she'd hated her. She thought Miranda Bell was the problem, not Beth. My mother had hissed the name Miranda when she said it but mostly she didn't say her name at all. She said she and her and that girl. Miranda had led Beth astray.
“Astray” sounded almost like a country. It would be populated by Astraynians. There would be a queen but probably not a king because it seemed to be mostly girls who went to live there. When Beth was led astray she took hardly anything with her, just her little canvas bag. When she came home she never brought anything except something in her eyes. A secret she kept from us. When she came home she sat on the sofa and looked exactly the way that she alwayshad only the hidden thing made her seem very different.
“We'll need to talk to Miranda,” said Angela.
“God,” I said, “as if that'll help.”
We walked back through the park. We had to be careful near Kylie's house because if she saw us she'd want to come. We went past the opening of Dardanelles Court, where Mrs. Irwin in number 2 was unloading her groceries from her car. Mrs. Irwin had thick black eyebrows and impossibly green eyes. She had dark hairs growing on her top lip almost like a mustache although if we mentioned it Mum put her hand up and made us stop.
Mrs. O'Malley said she didn't know why Mrs. Irwin was so high-and-mighty now as she knew for a fact she was brought up in a tin shed and would've had to wipe her bum with gum leaves when the newspaper ran out. “And now she's gone and home-schooled those poor girls,” said Mrs. O'Malley, “so they'd never get to make a proper friend. Ruined them,” she said.
Mrs. Irwin called me over and asked me did my mother need anything. She said nothing was too big or too small. She sent her three daughters to our house every week to ask exactly the same thing.
Each week they stood at the front screen door and peered past me with their wild green eyes intoour house. They wore long-sleeved dresses that reached the floor and I'd seen the same dresses among Nanna's Butterick patterns from 1974. I would have asked them in but I couldn't, not with Mum lying on the sofa in her yellow Japanese happy coat smoking cigarette after cigarette until a slow whirling cloud hung from the ceiling. Not with Dad swearing in the kitchen because he couldn't find a single clean plate. Or Danielle refusing to hear the simplest of questions while writing sad poems or drawing pages full of girls with melancholy eyes.
“I don't think we need anything,” I said to Mrs. Irwin.
“Are you sure?” she asked, and made a sad clown face and a sighing noise. Later that afternoon I threw some rocks near the opening of Dardanelles Court with the hope that I would accidentally break her car window.
But first Angela and I crossed the creek. We crossed where the silt had been baked dry by the sun and cracked into scales like a snakeskin. Our feet crumbled the scales. We left our
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