Anna Snoekstra - Only Daughter

She looked at herself from the outside for a moment. Lizzie would probably laugh at her, like she was a little kid afraid of ghosts. How lame. She wrote a text instead: There was something in my room. I think my house is haunted. She put the phone back on her bedside table.

Just before she turned the light off she noticed the little silver bell was gone from Hector’s collar. A ghost couldn’t do that.

Perhaps he hadn’t been wearing it before, she told herself, and wrapped herself in a ball under the blanket.

It had taken her a long time to get back to sleep. When she had, her dreams were feverish and violent. She woke up with a start, slick with sweat. Checking her phone, she saw it was quarter past eleven. There were three missed calls from Lizzie and two messages. The first: Ha-ha scary. Then after the missed calls: You okay? Bec texted back: Yep. Still on for the city? I’ll tell you all about it.

Her room looked different in the morning light. Peaceful and entirely her own. Johnny Depp’s and Gwen Stefani’s faces, photographs of her and her friends, Destiny’s Child posing together perfectly. The slats of her closet doors, the shelf of books above her bed; everything was so warmly familiar. Last night’s nightmare seemed exactly that: a nightmare. Not something that could have really happened in her own bedroom. But when she closed her eyes, Bec could see the dark shape again, bending in that unnatural way in the corner. That was a real memory, as clear as mopping the floors at work and walking home from the bus stop.

Her phone buzzed, Lizzie: One hour, Silver Cushion. She pushed herself out of bed and had a look at her shoulder in the mirror. There was a pale grey bruise from where she’d fallen out of bed last night. That bloody cat.

She’d thought the house might look different, somehow. As though some kind of trace would be left behind by the extra presence that had been there last night. But no, everything felt exactly the same as she opened her bedroom door. The cream carpet had the same velvety feel between her toes as she padded down the hallway.

Peering into Paul and Andy’s room, she wanted to laugh. That was definitely the same: clothes and Legos strewn all over the floor, sheets on the two single beds twisted into heaps. She remembered how much of a scene they’d made when her mom suggested it was time one of them move into the spare room. She pulled their door shut. The sweaty old socks were starting to reek. You could smell puberty approaching.

The white wooden banister felt as smooth and warm under her palm as it always did. Her bare feet made squeaking sounds as she walked across the polished floorboards of the bottom level. The sound of giggling came from the kitchen; the boys must be home. She checked her parents’ room; their precisely made double bed alone in the middle of the spotlessly empty space. The spare room next door was filled with plastic tubs of winter clothes. Her mother’s writing desk propped in the corner, still unused. She looked into the laundry. Behind the washing baskets was a door that continued on to their garage. It was slightly open. The garage was the creepiest part of Bec’s house and none of them went in there if they could avoid it. Dark and dank smelling, crammed with piled-up cardboard boxes and a dirty concrete floor. They didn’t even park their car in there anymore. She was sure the place was infested with spiders. The blackness of the room seemed to spill out from the crack in the doorway, the dark of nighttime trying to recapture her and pull her back into the nightmare. She pulled the door shut.

Nothing had changed in the lounge room either. Couches remained an awkward distance apart and the wooden doors closed over the television so her parents could pretend they didn’t have one. Satisfied, she went into the kitchen. Whatever it had been, it was definitely gone now.

Paul and Andrew sat next to each other on the round kitchen table, a box of Coco Pops between them and their bowls filled with brown milk. They were laughing like mad, still in their shorty pyjamas with their dark red hair sticking up at weird angles. Bec felt a sudden stab of love for them. She longed to ruff le up their hair, but she knew they would find it patronizing.

“Ready?” Paul asked.

“Yep,” said Andrew.

They picked up the bowls of chocolate milk.

“One…two…three!”

They both began chugging down the milk from their bowls; throats working, brown drops falling onto the table.

“Done!” screamed Andrew, dropping his bowl down and wiping his mouth with the back of his hand.

“Oh, shit!” Paul yelled, the word sounding forced from his mouth. They looked at Bec for a moment to see if she’d get him in trouble for using it, then couldn’t hold in their laughter.

“You guys are disgusting!” she said, but she was smiling, too. The horror of last night was starting to wear off.

“You look like Hitler!” she said to Paul, who still had a brown milk moustache on his top lip.

“Goot a morgan!” he said, making Andrew burst into giggles again. She shook her head and poured out her own sugar-free Muesli.

“What are you doing today, Becky?” asked Andrew.

“I’m going to go meet Lizzie in the city.”

“Can we come?” asked Paul straightaway. Two sets of identical pale blue eyes fixed on her. She knew they must be really bored. They’d been on summer holidays for two months now and they weren’t allowed to go any farther than the local shops by themselves. Her mom was so overprotective, she thought, as though their suburb was the only safe place in the world. It was Canberra, for God’s sake. She didn’t know why they just didn’t go out anyway. She wouldn’t tell on them, that was for sure, but she didn’t want to suggest it. Somehow that felt wrong.

“Please?” Paul said.

She felt bad, but she really needed to talk to Lizzie about what had happened last night, and she couldn’t do that with her little brothers running around everywhere. Plus, there was another thing she had to do with Lizzie that would be impossible with them around.

“Sorry, guys,” she said. “Next time.”

“Tomorrow?”

“Well, I’m at work tomorrow but how about Sunday?”

“Okay,” said Andrew. But she could tell they were both upset; the smiles were gone. Bec hated upsetting her brothers. It did something to her heart that nothing else could.

“We can go to the pool if you want?”

“And you won’t tell us off if we bomb?”

“Nope. Cross my heart,” she said, miming a cross over her chest. They looked at each other and then turned to her, beaming.

“Awesome,” said Paul. She patted them both on the head, which made them groan but she couldn’t help it, and went upstairs to get dressed.

Lizzie was waiting for her on a bench in Garema Place, a few feet away from the Silver Cushion. Canberra was filled with weird sculptures, but this one was Bec’s favourite for some reason. It looked like a giant half-full wine bag propped on some black steps. In summer the sun ref lected off its metallic silver surface so it hurt to look at it and definitely hurt to touch it. Bec plopped down on the bench next to Liz.

“Why are you all the way over here?” she asked.

“Emos,” she said, and Bec looked over. Four teenagers with striped black-and-red socks, bad eyeliner and floppy hair sat around the Silver Cushion.

“I worry it’s contagious,” Lizzie said, shuddering. Bec could tell she meant it, too; there was nothing Lizzie hated more than bad clothes. That’s why they worked so well as best friends; they were like each other’s perfect accessory. Today they both had on summer dresses and brown sandals; they didn’t need to call each other. They were just effortlessly coordinated. Not just in clothes, but everything. It was as if they were made of the same stuff, as if they had the same heart.