The blind was down and she didn't want to risk opening it and waking up her mum, so she pulled it over her head like a tent.
It was raining outside, so she couldn't see much. Harry's house was just a blurred, spooky shape. She wondered if Harry's ghost was in there, muttering angrily, kicking stuff with the toe of his foot and occasionally turning his head to one side and spitting in disgust, Why did it take you people so long to find my body? Are you stupid or what?
She wasn't glad he was dead but she wasn't sad either. She didn't feel anything. There was just a big nothing feeling in her head about Harry.
She'd told her mum the truth when she'd said there was nothing on her mind. She was trying to make her brain like a blank piece of paper.
The only thing allowed on her piece of paper was school stuff.
Nothing else. Not sad thoughts, not happy thoughts, not scary thoughts. Just facts about Australia's indigenous culture and global warming and fractions.
It was good that she was going to the new school next year. They had a good 'academic record'. So hopefully they would stuff her brain full of more facts so there wouldn't be any room to think about it, to remember what she'd done. Before, she'd felt a bit nervous about starting somewhere new, but now that didn't matter. Remembering her old worries about making friends was like remembering something from when she was only a really little kid, even though the barbeque had only happened back at the end of term two.
Her parents still loved her. She was sure of this. They probably weren't thinking secret angry thoughts.
She remembered her dad the day after, standing in the backyard, swinging that big iron bar over and over like a baseball bat, his face bright red. It had been terrifying. Then he'd come inside and had a shower without saying a single word, and her dad liked to talk. Things had to be serious for her dad not to talk.
But then, after that, slowly, her mum and dad had returned to their normal selves. They loved her too much not to forgive her. They knew she knew the hugeness of what she'd done. There had been no punishment. That's how big this thing was. It wasn't kid stuff. Not like, 'No TV until you tidy your room.' Actually Dakota had never got many punishments, or 'consequences'. Other kids did heaps of little wrong things every single day of their lives. Dakota just saved it all up and did one giant wrong thing.
It was up to her to punish herself.
She had thought about cutting herself. She'd read about cutting in a YA book that the librarian said was too old for her, but she'd got her mum to buy it for her anyway. (Her mum bought her any book she wanted.) Teenagers did it. It was called 'self-harm'. She'd thought she'd try out self-harm, even though she really, really hated blood. When her parents were busy on their computers, she'd gone into their bathroom and found a razor blade and sat on the edge of the bath for ages trying to get up the courage to press it into her skin, but she couldn't do it. She was too weak. Too cowardly. Instead she hit herself as hard as she could on the top of her thighs with closed fists. Later, there were bruises, so that was good. But then she had come up with a better punishment: something that hurt more than cutting. Something that affected her every day and no one even noticed the difference.
It made her feel less guilty but at the same time it made her feel desolate. 'Desolate' was the most perfectly beautiful word for how she felt. Sometimes she repeated it over and over to herself like a song: desolate, desolate, desolate.
She wondered for a moment if Harry had felt desolate and that's why he'd been so angry with everyone. She remembered how that afternoon she'd sat on this window seat, reading, and she'd looked up and seen a light on in a room on the second floor of Harry's house and she'd wondered what Harry was doing up there, and what did he do with all those rooms in that house anyway, when he lived there all alone?
Now Harry was dead and Dakota felt nothing about that, nothing at all.
chapter twenty
The day of the barbeque
'Here they come,' Tiffany called out to Vid in the kitchen as she stood at the front door and watched Dakota walk up the driveway, hand in hand with Clementine's pink tutu-clad daughters who were skipping by her side. As Tiffany watched, the littler one toppled over in that slow-motion toddler way and Dakota tried to carry her. The child was about half Dakota's height, so her legs dragged on the ground and Dakota tilted to one side, staggering under the little girl's weight.
'Dakota is being such a good sister!' said Tiffany as Vid appeared at the front door wearing his striped apron, smelling strongly of garlic and lemon from the prawns he was marinating.
'Don't even think about it,' said Vid.
Fifteen years ago, when he proposed, while Tiffany was still admiring her engagement ring (Tiffany for Tiffany, naturally), Vid had said, 'Before you put it on, we need to talk about children, okay?' With three volatile, angry teenage daughters, Vid had no desire for more children, but Tiffany was a young woman, so of course she would want children, it was only natural, he understood this, so Vid's compromise, in order to close the deal, was this: Just one baby. A one-child policy. Like China. He couldn't take any more than that. His heart and his bank account couldn't handle it. He said he would understand if one baby was not enough, but for him it was not negotiable. Take it or leave it, and by the way, if she walked away, the ring was still hers and he would always love her.
Tiffany took the deal. Babies were the last thing on her mind back then, and she really did not fancy stretch marks.
She had never regretted it, except sometimes, like right now, she felt a kind of twinge. Dakota would have been a loving, responsible older sister,
just like Tiffany's own older sisters had been. It seemed wrong to deny her that, especially as Dakota never demanded anything except more library books.
'Maybe we should renegotiate our deal,' said Tiffany.
'Don't even joke about it,' said Vid. 'I am not laughing. Look at this face.' He pulled a mournful face. 'Serious face. Four weddings will bankrupt me. It will be the death of me. It will be like that movie, you know, Four Weddings and a Funeral. My funeral.' Vid chuckled, delighted with himself. 'Four weddings and my funeral. You get it? Four daughters' weddings and Vid's funeral.'
'I get it, Vid,' said Tiffany, knowing that she'd be hearing this joke for months, possibly years to come.
She watched Erika and Oliver, Clementine and Sam, approach the house behind the children. There was something odd about their formation, there was too much space around them, as if they weren't two couples who knew each other well but four individual guests who hadn't met before this day and had happened to arrive at the same time.
'Hi!' called out Erika, timing it just a bit wrong; she was too far away. Their driveway was very long.
'Hi!' called back Tiffany, walking down the steps to meet them.