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I'm in English the next day, and I've completely forgotten to do the homework. Mrs Thomas is looking far too imposing for a person who's decked out in saffron scarves and dangly amethyst earrings.

‘Pray tell, what was so dreadfully important that you forgot to do your work yesterday?'

What can I say? That I was too busy shouting comebacks at my schoolbag, and talking to a dead boy who haunts an old phone box? I don't reply, and she closes her eyes like she has a migraine.

‘Acting stupid doesn't make you cool, Kirra. It makes you stupid. You know that, don't you?'

Cassie and Lou laugh loudly, but one sharp look from Mrs Thomas silences them.

‘Can you enlighten me as to what's so thoroughly hilarious, girls?'

They stay silent and examine their fingernails. Tara, hoping to win some brownie points from the others, pipes up. ‘The idea that Kirra is cool, miss. Obviously.'

Cassie and Lou suppress smiles while the rest of the class erupts into snickers, until Mrs Thomas whacks her ruler against the desk. The look she gives Tara makes it clear that were it not for our generation's liberal school-discipline policies she would take Tara's ear and twist it tightly between her thumb and her forefinger. Unfortunately, she restrains herself, but her voice is still sharp.

‘I hardly think that someone who wears make-up as badly as you do is the arbiter of cool, Tara Smith.'

This sets the class off twice as hard as before, but this time, Mrs Thomas doesn't call for quiet, and it's a few minutes before everyone settles down again. Even Cassie, Sasha and Lou are laughing at her, and if looks could kill, both Mrs Thomas and I would have rigor mortis setting in by now.

‘Tara, I have far better things to do with my time than to watch you roll your eyes in detention, so as punishment will you so kindly get up . . .'

Tara stands with a smirk on her face.

‘Now go to the bathroom and wash that muck from your face.'

Tara gapes at her in sheer horror. Mrs Thomas merely taps her long red nails on her desk.

‘What part of now don't you understand, Miss Smith?'

With a sob, Tara slams her chair back and races to the door. The teacher shuffles her papers.

‘And Kirra, you'll stay behind after class. Now students, turn to page thirty-three.'

After class I stay seated as everyone shuffles towards the exit. Tara's glaring at me as she files past, her face is blotchy from crying, and a few pimples peer out from her forehead – they look surprised at being allowed to finally see daylight. Willow lingers by my desk and drops a note in my hand before she makes her way out. My heart drops. Is Willow going to start on me too? The only notes I've ever received in my life have been step-by-step outlines on how I was embarrassing everyone. By everyone, I mean Cassie and the others. I slip the note into my pocket and look up to Mrs Thomas, who's holding a sheet of paper in her hand. I open my mouth to talk, but she silences me with a gesture.

‘Let's save us both the indignity of you lying to me, all right? I don't care about excuses.'

I nod. She hands me the piece of paper – it's for a Youth Issues conference at the town hall next week. I stare at her blankly.

‘To make up for having a dog eat your homework, or whatever happened, I'd like you to be our school's representative for this. All the local politicians will be there, and you can bring parents along to watch, if you like.'

If nothing else, Mrs Thomas has a knack for cruel and unusual punishments.

‘. . . I have to give a speech?'

She nods.

‘In public?'

‘Yes, that's generally what happens with speeches, Kirra.'

I just imagine the grief I'm going to get from everyone when they hear about this. I am never going to live this down.

‘Why me? Why don't you choose a debater or someone from the smart group?'

I'm gripping the desk now, desperate. She meets my gaze.

‘Because despite your penchant for being mute, I have a feeling you've got the most to say.'

Just before she exits in a flutter of scarves and flowing skirts, I call out to her.

‘If you tell anyone about this, I won't do it. I don't want this in the school newsletter, or at assembly. I mean it.'

She turns, her gaze firm behind her bright-red glasses. ‘All right, we won't mention it,' and then her features soften, ‘but I do hope that one day you'll realise you're worthy of praise. I really do.'

With that, she leaves. I stare at the space where she was, and I think of how sometimes I hate her so much for making me work harder than anyone else, and for always picking on me, and for making me do this stupid speech, but then at the same time I respect her more than anyone else I know. I sigh, and look down at the note I've taken from my pocket, bracing myself for a barrage of insults. I open it. This is what it says:

Hey doll,

I can be a real brat sometimes, hey? Can you please let me explain at lunchtime?

Also, I wanted to list three things about you, which I know to be true.

1. You are the cleverest cat that ever was. Don't miser the smarts.

2. Your eyes are amazing. If I could wrestle them from your face and stick them in my head, I would. I'm insanely envi- ous of them, which is a problem, because envy is green, and alas, green is a hideous colour on me.

3. You've got such a big heart, I'm not sure how it fits in such a small person. It doesn't seem physically possible. Your chest cavity must be like a Mary Poppins bag.
Truce?

Your bratty friend,

Willow

PS Tara is a jerk!

I read and re-read the letter. In my fourteen years of existence I've never had a girl write nice things about me. I want to cry, and I think of that night with my mother at the school social, and how nice she and Noah were, and how kindness punches you in the heart more than meanness ever can. It's the most powerful weapon there is, and I wonder why people don't use it more often. She likes my eyes? My big, scary, alien eyes? Cassie and everyone have teased me about them ever since primary school – how could anyone ever want to own them? I don't know what to think, but that strange feeling washes over me again, that odd one that feels like friendship.

When I get to our spot, Willow breaks her Chiko Roll in half and hands one half to me.

‘Truce?'

I take it. ‘Truce.'

We munch in a comfortable silence for a bit, then Willow starts. ‘I wasn't stealing, not properly, I mean, I always return them.'

‘So you're a repeat offender then?'

She cracks a smile.

‘Guilty as charged. Lock me up and throw away the key, officer.'

I throw a clover at her.

‘Why don't you just get a library card, you muppet?'

A flash of sadness flickers across Willow's face, but she chases it away almost as quickly as it arrives, and she plasters a nonchalant, half smile in the spot where the sadness was.

‘You need a driver's licence or something official like that with your address on it to get a library card, and alas I don't have a fake ID, to the disappointment of all the nightclubs in town.'

‘I don't want to sound like Captain Obvious, but get your parents to sign you up, like everyone else.'

Lark had signed me up for the library when I was six and he realised that books could be used as a cheap babysitter. Willow sighs loudly and lies down on the grass.

‘Uh huh. So you know that time at the social when I told you your family was as mad as mine?'

I nod. She continues.

‘I lied. Mine is far, far madder.'

I think of Lark, and Desiree, and Mum.

‘That's physically impossible, like licking your elbow, or sneezing with your eyes open. My family have the patent on stark raving bonkers.'

Willow doesn't even throw me a sardonic smile, and instead rips at the grass either side of her. After a few deep breaths she replies.

‘So when I was eight years old, my favourite movie ever was
The Princess Bride
.'

‘Me too.'

She ignores me and continues. ‘So this one day, Mum had rented a copy from the video store, and she put it on for me and my little brother. She made us bowls of ice-cream with sprinkles and chocolate sauce, and told us that she was just popping out to get us a surprise. The surprise was, she never came home. Mum had just had enough, I guess, and that's the last we heard from her. Apparently she's living in Adelaide now.'

I don't know what to say. As much as it upsets me that Lark and my mother have egg fights at the grocery store, I don't know what I'd do if he actually left town.

‘I'm sorry,' I finally whisper.

She arches an eyebrow at me.

‘Tell me about it, it completely ruined
The Princess Bride
for me. Anyway, Dad's been to rehab too many times to count. I had to call the ambulance for him when I was ten and he overdosed. So no, signing me up at the library isn't up there in his top priorities.'

‘What sort of stuff does he do?'

‘All of the above. Mostly alcohol, though – he just dabbled with the rest. It's such an innocent word for it, isn't it? Dabbled.'

We're silent again while her words sink into me. Her face is set in the most serious expression I've ever seen it in. I roll over, wearing my own serious expression.

‘Okay. Fine.'

She stares at me blankly.

‘Your family wins, then. Fine.'

She looks like lots of emotions are battling inside of her, but then a huge laugh erupts from her throat, one that startles a nearby duck, and that sets me off too. We laugh until our stomachs are sore, because what else can you do? It's either that or cry.

That afternoon it rains. It rains the type of rain that is a wall of water, and it sounds like someone's playing bongos on the roof. Lightning splits the sky. I'm sitting in front of the TV, watching Jerry Springer, and it makes me think of how many mad people there are in the world, and whether everyone is mad deep down, they just pretend they're not, and it's the people in asylums or on Jerry Springer who are actually the honest ones. I have a notebook and a chewed-up pen, and I'm trying to think of a topic for the Youth Issues speech. Mrs Thomas said she thinks I have a lot to say, but I don't. Nothing I can put words to, anyway. I could talk about bullying, or alcoholism, but I don't think I could speak about that out loud, it's too real, and it'd be like I was standing up there naked. More than naked. It would be like my skin was all peeled off and I was just standing there with my heart all bloody and thumping in my rib cage for everyone to see. I sigh. Maybe I should just talk about school funding, or the futility of war, like everyone else. I wish for the thousandth time that I'd remembered to do my homework. I sit up straight and stretch my arms out, and I think that maybe I was born with a wishbone instead of a backbone.

I figure the library might give me some ideas for the speech. That's what I love about libraries – they're whole rooms filled with ideas. Every book came from inside someone's head. Every word was once thought of by an actual person. I take Lark's old raincoat from where I've hidden it in the back of my cupboard; it's the only thing left of his in the house and it smells like surf wax and salt water. It smells like
before
. When I shrug it on it's so big on me that it slips over my backpack, the hem of it reaches my ankles and the sleeves flop lifelessly at the point where my arms no longer fill it. I battle the storm and it feels like walking through drapes, the rain's that thick. The bell sings hello to me as I open the library door and peel the sodden oversized coat off me. Mrs Darnell smiles that sweet smile of hers, and it's contagious, I have to return it. I imagine her doing the same to my mum when she was my age and I wonder if my mum smiled back at her like I am now. I can't imagine my mum smiling, not properly. Not a smile that rises up into her eyes.

‘Good weather for ducks,' beams Mrs Darnell. ‘Just like your mum, coming in here rain, hail or shine.'

I hang Lark's coat on the hook on the back of the door.

‘Do you remember
all
the kids who've grown up here?' I ask incredulously. Mrs Darnell takes off her thick glasses and breathes into them so they cloud up for a moment, and the clouds in the glass looks like the clouds of her hair.

‘Only the ones who read, dear. And there's less and less of them each year. More's the pity.' She returns her glasses and smiles at me once more. My hands grip each other as I try to find my words. Maybe she remembers Boogie.

‘Do you remember a kid that went missing in maybe suspicious circumstances about twenty years ago? It was a boy and he was about my age?'

Mrs Darnell shakes her head.

‘I don't think so, dear. Nothing suspicious. But boys are always coming and going, though they're usually across the road, chasing those waves. Not many of them drop by here. Why do you ask?'

I bite my lip and shrug, not looking her in the eye. ‘A school assignment.'

She points over to a door at the back of the room, behind the walls of shelves. ‘Well, duckie, if you want to know about anything that's happened in this town, try the old newspapers, in the archive room at the back of the library. A person can't sneeze in this town without it being written about in the
Daily News
.'

The terror of the speech is almost forgotten, it seems elbowed into the corner by the mystery of Boogie, and the need to know answers. I ignore the books on public speaking and head towards the door at the back of the library, to where the old newspapers are kept. A naked bulb throws sickly yellow light over the stack of old newspapers and the room has a jaundiced air about it. I run my fingers across the edges of a newspaper stack and the pages remind me of onion-skin layers, they way they've curled and yellowed over the years. I wonder what I'll uncover when I've peeled the layers back, but then I realise that I don't even know what I'm looking for. This is a hopeless case; it's like finding a needle in a haystack.

And yet hope is all I've got.

I find the pile from the 1970s and when I open it dust motes spring from the pages. It's strange, reading about my town in a time before I was born. I sometimes forget that whole worlds of experiences happened before I even existed. People were born, they loved, they despaired, and they died – and those moments died too, eventually, even the ones that seemed to be made of underlines and exclamation marks. The only moments that live on are those tiny keyhole glances we're shown from the words that people sometimes left behind.

I'm jolted out of the past by the bell of the front door jangling in surprise. A few seconds later and a kid bolts into the back room where I'm sitting. He's panicked and he's carrying a box of soap flakes under one gangly arm. I don't know him, but I know of him, everyone in this town does. His name is Josh Hohol, he goes to the neighbouring school, he's got a shaved head and mischievous eyes, and he always wears his shorts so low you can see the top of his boxer shorts. He's what your mother would call trouble, if you happened to have a mother who actually concerned herself about these sorts of things.

Josh races in and slams the door behind him, then shakes his shaved head like a mangy dog who's just rolled around in a puddle. The raindrops that only thirty seconds ago soaked him go flying around the room, smudging the print of the delicate newspapers.

‘Stop it, you'll ruin them!' I cry out, trying to protect the papers with my useless small arms. He looks surprised to see someone here, but the surprise only flickers across his face for a moment; he doesn't seem the type of kid to let anything rattle him. Instead he lunges across to my bag, which is just sitting politely on the seat next to me, and he scrambles to shove the soap flakes box inside, jamming it in behind my science book, before zipping the thing back up. With a rangy forearm he flings my bag from the seat and dumps his own bony backside in its place next to me.

‘If anyone asks, I've been here with you the whole time,' he hisses at me. I'm about to ask why when the bell on the library door sings again, and the presence of McGinty opening the archive-room door snatches the question from where it was just sitting on my tongue.

‘G'day, McGinty,' grins Josh, sprawling out across the plastic chair. ‘Catching up on your reading, are you, sir?'

I sink down low on the chair next to him, trying to fold all of my limbs into myself. I can hear the sound of my heartbeat over the rain. McGinty glares over at us and I can't meet his eye, I just stare at his birthmark, the size of a giant eggplant, which claws stubbornly onto half of his face.

‘Don't get smart with me, young Hohol,' growls McGinty. Josh just grins wider.

‘But I am smart, sir, look at me spending my free time here in the library. I'm what you'd call educating myself, sir.'

McGinty looks unimpressed, and I'd swear his birthmark turns a deeper shade of purple.

‘Funny that, because I was just driving down the main street and I saw that someone's dumped washing detergent in the fountain and now the town square's filled up with suds. You wouldn't happen to have been responsible now, would you, young man?'

‘No, sir. I really hope you catch the delinquent who would do such a thing, ay.'

‘Well, that is strange. Because I happened to see you walking very fast from the scene of the crime, and as soon as the police vehicle pulled up next to you, you had an overwhelming desire to read a book for quite possibly the first time in your life.'

Josh fakes an injured expression. ‘I'm hurt you would say such a thing, sir. Hurt. Me and her, we're just doing some reading, and here you are making all sorts of wild accusations.'

McGinty looks even more unimpressed. Mrs Darnell has hobbled over and she watches over the scene, puzzled.

‘Kirra, dear, is this boy helping you out with your assignment? This policeman might be able to answer your questions.' She turns to McGinty. ‘It's very fortunate you've visited, these children are researching a boy from this town who went missing twenty years ago. Suspicious circumstances, apparently. That's just the sort of thing you would know about, isn't it?' she beams.

I sink down lower into my chair. Slowly, McGinty turns his head to appraise us. It's chilling, the way his face doesn't register any reaction.

‘That's an odd topic to be doing an assignment on,' he says. Josh looks sideways at me.

‘Speculative fiction . . .' I babble, looking hard at my fingernails as I speak. ‘That means you have to make a story out of something that might have happened using real facts and your imagination. It's for English . . .'

The seconds tick away, achingly slow. McGinty narrows his eyes at me. Josh, however, takes my lie and runs with it.

‘What she said, sir. This kid went missing and we're gonna say it was murder! Blood! Guts! And maybe we're gonna say that
you
did it!'

Oh God no.

Josh leaps out of his seat and dramatically acts as though McGinty's just murdered him, staggering about the newspaper piles until he collapses onto the linoleum ground in a cacophony of gurgles and death spasms.

Oh God no.

McGinty's expression remains blank. I can't speak. I can't move. I don't think I could scream if I wanted to. Finally Josh breaks character and opens one eye. McGinty locks eyes with him from behind his birthmark.

‘Then you'd better keep your nose clean, hadn't you, mate, or who knows, you might end up in a situation where you find
yourself
missing.'

Josh, the goofing idiot, just grins up at him. ‘Oh I will, sir. My nose is squeaky clean.'

With one last glare at us, McGinty stalks out of the room, Mrs Darnell nattering after him about overdue library books. Josh sits up and runs his fingers through his hair, which has been so badly clippered that his head looks mangy and moth-bitten. He shakes his head like he can't quite believe it and then looks over to me with a lazy grin.

‘Look at you, you're white as anything. Bet you've never done anything wrong in your whole entire life, have you, yellow eyes?' he laughs at me.

‘I killed a dog once,' I blurt out. Josh shoots me a strange look and unfolds himself from the floor.

‘But it was an accident,' I explain. The strange look shifts from his face and he shrugs and slouches towards the door.

‘Okay. Well, thanks for not telling on me. You're all right, for a dog murderer.' He grins at me again, and just before he leaves he calls out over his shoulder, ‘and you can keep the washing detergent, for keeping your nose clean, you know.'

I can hear his whistle as he exits the library.

I don't answer.

All I can think about is how McGinty knows that I'm on to him.

Shit.