The Last Girl Read online

  First published in 2013

  Copyright © Michael Adams, 2013

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or ten per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the

  National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 636 8

  eISBN 978 1 74343 416 1

  Cover and internal design by i2i Design

  Cover and internal artwork, The Wall of Sound, © Marika Järv, 2013

  Cover and internal images (cityscape, girl and flames) by iStockphoto.com

  Set in 11.5/18.5pt pt Minion by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  For Clare and Ava

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1. THE SNAP

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  2. THE GONERS

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  3. THE RAISED

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  TWENTY-FIVE

  TWENTY-SIX

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  TWENTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PROLOGUE

  I always knew I’d see the end of the world.

  Being born under a bad sign could’ve had something to do with that. But I didn’t need an omen to tell me we were headed for oblivion. My screens were so constantly filled with cataclysmic scenarios that it seemed obvious the question wasn’t if but when.

  Not if but when we’d be wiped out by climate change, superflu contagion, solar surge, rogue meteor, nanotech terror, nuclear madmen, alien invasion, robot uprising, zombie outbreak or just the good old wrath of God. Hell—we were so used to contemplating the end of the world as we knew it that we’d even given it an acronym. But the one thing all of our TEOTWAWKIs had in common was that they’d be caused by something outside of us.

  Maybe I should’ve seen what was about to happen. Right up until those last moments I didn’t put the pieces together any better than anyone else. I certainly never thought novelty socks would trigger the apocalypse.

  But for me they were the beginning of the end.

  ONE

  ‘The Content Planet.’ Dad lifted the book from its reindeer gift bag, tilting it this way and that, like there was some angle he wasn’t getting.

  Stephanie—his wife, my stepmother—nodded sagely. ‘I thought you really should read it.’

  Dad had read it. Months ago. On his tablet. I remembered because I’d thought the title referred to a world in a state of peaceful happiness. Dad had scoffed and set ‘silly me’ straight. Not content. Content. Stephanie had been right there at the breakfast table when he’d gone on about meeting the author at some conference. At least I had been listening. Well, half listening.

  ‘I’ve been meaning to get this.’ Dad pretended to read the back cover.

  Stephanie beamed from beside our acrylic tree. Her platinum extensions cascaded from under her Santa hat and her boobs pushed against the fluffy trim of her Mrs Claus frock. The festive outfit wasn’t for Dad’s benefit. The curtains were wide open so anyone passing on Beautopia Point’s promenade would be presented with my stepmother as the sexy centrepiece of our tacky Christmas card. Stephanie was literally window dressing.

  ‘I’ll read it on the flight,’ Dad said. ‘Thanks.’

  The flight. Dad had offered to cancel his business trip. I told him I’d be fine. It wasn’t like him being around would make any difference. Dad tried to hide his relief but I knew he was glad to be let off the hook. I reckoned that mentally he was already in the airport lounge, sipping scotch and rehearsing his sales pitches. But first, there was family business to conclude. So far he’d given me a skate-shop voucher enclosed in a card with wishes for a better New Year and love from Dad.

  Now it was Stephanie’s turn.

  ‘Here you go,’ Dad said, glancing up from his phone and giving her a silver envelope.

  Stephanie sliced it open with a plastic nail and her eyes lit up on whatever figure was inscribed on her BestU gift card. Dad had given her the same present last year but I guessed the numbers needed to improve with age.

  ‘Oh, nice,’ she cooed, planting lipstick on his cheek.

  He conjured a smile. ‘Not that you need it.’

  As much as I was into recycling, it was pretty lame that Dad had used that line last year, too.

  Eyes puffy, hair everywhere, crumpled in my pyjamas: I just wanted to be back in bed. But it was my turn again.

  ‘Here, Danbyn,’ Stephanie said, passing me an identical reindeer gift bag.

  She never called me Dan or Danby. Payback for me never embracing her as Steph back when she thought we’d be horseriding BFFs. What I did call her was Stepfordy and Step-phoney—at least when I dissed her to my friends.

  ‘Thanks, Stephanie.’

  I appraised the gift. A compact disc. Eye In The Sky by Distant Affliction.

  ‘They do neo-covers, they’re post-hipster,’ Stephanie said, echoing something she’d heard somewhere. ‘So, y’know, very cool. I think you should like them.’

  Stephanie didn’t mean she hoped I liked the band. She really meant I should like them. If I agreed with her that they rocked it meant she at thirty-whatever was as cool as sixteen-year-old me. If I told her they sucked it meant she was cooler than me. Stephanie couldn’t lose. But I was pretty good at not letting her win.

  ‘They’re very popular,’ I said evenly. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mind it’s not a download,’ she replied. ‘But the old-school sound from a CD is so much warmer, don’t you think?’

  I grinned at her totally bogus retro aesthetics, just managing to not ROTFLMFAO, as they used to say. Madly cackling on the lounge-room floor would’ve been like nuking myself for her enjoyment. The last thing I needed was any sort of scene. Better to give her this petty victory.

  ‘You know,’ I said, still trying not to laugh. ‘That is so true.’

  Stephanie nodded with satisfaction.

  I wasn’t just keeping the peace for myself but also for Evan, their six-year-old son, my beautiful little half-brother, who was swinging one of his new kiddie golf clubs too close to a spray of marigolds arranged in a vase on a side table.

  ‘Goof!’ he yelped.

  ‘Careful!’ Stephanie said way too harshly.

  While she played the role of dutiful handmaiden to Dad and condescending big sister to me, sometimes she reacted to her own boy like what he suffered wasn’t a condition but a compulsion to annoy her. Evan usually didn’
t notice her anger. That just made her madder.

  ‘Goof!’

  Evan let the club clatter to the floor, plunged his hand into a bucket of golf balls and guffawed as he clacked them around. Stephanie vented an exasperated sigh. Dad glanced up from an app and aped something like amusement.

  ‘Goof!’ I said, grinning at Evan.

  He was a goof all right, nature as golden as his complexion, and his mother’s antipathy and our father’s ambivalence made me love him all the more.

  ‘Goof!’

  ‘Golf!’ Stephanie steamed. ‘Golf! Golf, Evan, for godsake!’

  It was such an overreaction that I wanted to laugh right in Stephanie’s face. What stopped me was I was suddenly right inside her head.

  Goddamnit-Evan-understood-golf-Now-he’s-back-to-the-full-retard!

  This was far beyond her usual transparency. Far beyond my usual bitchy guessing at her every awful motive.

  This was me tuning in to what she was thinking and feeling and remembering. I was with her as she flashed to the afternoon she’d found Evan upstairs staring intently into the 3-D broadcast of a PGA game.

  ‘Golf,’ he’d said, executing the perfect imitation of a pro’s power swing. ‘What a tremendous drive that is.’ Evan was transfixed, copying plays, parroting commentary.

  Such mimicry would come out of nowhere and disappear just as abruptly. But every single time Stephanie couldn’t help thinking savant. Since that afternoon she had daydreamed about chaperoning her little champion to lucrative tournaments. She’d be newly single, still young and courted by rich men. But another desire curled under her lust for fame and power. Someone would see her. Really see her. Love her.

  Now Evan held two golf balls like big fly eyes and her fantasy evaporated. Not-going-to-happen-At-least-Brendan’s-going-soon-No-not-David-I—

  I snapped out of it. Stephanie wasn’t saying anything, hadn’t said anything. But it had been so real in my head.

  Shit.

  Dr Jenny said the Lucidiphil would silence the voices. Keep me stable until I could see the specialist. I’d taken the medication three times yesterday and once this morning as directed. But it was happening again. At least my family didn’t notice my face go white or my eyes go wide. I made a conscious effort to close my mouth.

  My plan had been to call Jacinta this morning, wish her Merry Christmas, apologise for everything and ask her to get the word out that I was okay. I wondered if I could still do that. I felt pretty freakin’ far from okay.

  ‘Here, Brendan,’ Stephanie said, handing over Dad’s last Christmas gift. ‘You should love these.’

  Her voice matched her lips. I wasn’t imagining emotional mind movies for her anymore. Maybe what had just happened was a minor relapse, residual madness, nothing to worry about, resolved now. Dad dragged his gaze from his phone and squished his little reindeer bag.

  ‘A bottle of single malt?’

  A desperate dad joke, even by his standards.

  ‘Socks,’ he said as he lifted the footwear from the gift bag, face screwed up like a soothsayer getting bad entrails.

  ‘No,’ said Stephanie. ‘They’re Soxies!’

  She pointed at the cursive stitching. ‘See, it says So Soxy!, Too Soxy!, and, my favourite, Sox On Legs!’

  Dad tried for a grin but came up with a grimace. ‘You shouldn’t have.’

  I guess those stupid socks were physical manifestations of what ailed the planet and I could’ve seen the apocalypse in them any time I cared to look. Thirty per cent cotton grown from patented corporate seeds and harvested by peasant kids. Seventy per cent polyester spun from the war and corruption of Middle Eastern oilfields. Chemically dyed and machine-woven in some belching factory whose toxic waste gushed into freshwater rivers. Sorted and packed by serf workers deprived of democracy. Pallets piled into containers and trucked to cargo ships that ploughed across dying oceans in clouds of particulate. Process reversed at ports of destination: containers and pallets and boxes and packets broken down so Soxies could fulfil their destiny as stocking filler destined to become landfill.

  You-shouldn’t-have.

  As Dad said it again, I knew the socks didn’t trouble him politically, socially or environmentally. They troubled him economically. Not as items of global trade but of personal trade. His and Stephanie’s relationship was a series of transactions based around sex, status and stuff—and she wasn’t keeping her end of the bargain.

  Except I couldn’t know any of that. Dad hadn’t spoken again. Wasn’t speaking now.

  Haven’t-touched-me-in-months-This-some-sort-of-joke?- Nothing-but-time-and-my-money-to-spend-First-the-book-Now-this-crap-This-is-what-I’m-worth?

  I rubbed my eyes. This was like accidentally pushing the wrong button on the remote so the director’s commentary comes on.

  You-shouldn’t-have!-You-stupid-shallow—

  ‘I thought you’d think—’ Stephanie started to say. It-was-funny.

  Her mouth tightened. Her eyes narrowed. ‘What did you call me?’

  Behind her venom I heard—thought I heard—whispers of desperation.

  I-should’ve-gotten-him-something-better!-Should’ve-left David-earlier!

  Lightning-etched flashes of my stepmother with her personal trainer bombarded my mind. Yesterday afternoon, while I’d been crying in bed and Dad had been working and Evan had been at special care, Stephanie had gone to David’s city apartment. Her plan had been to break it off and get busy with Christmas shopping. But him listening to her so beautifully was like a form of seduction and the hours had gotten away from them. Stephanie raced home, feeling guilty as hell, swearing never again, his bouquet of marigolds on the front seat. She was nearly through the front door when she realised she didn’t have gifts for me or Dad. So she rushed to The Grocery, grateful my episode meant I wouldn’t be on the checkout, and grabbed the book, the socks, my CD and the reindeer bags, telling herself she could spin these last-minute purchases into thoughtful-sounding presents.

  Dad, Stephanie, me: my hallucination had us all hooking in and out of her tumble of thoughts and emotions in the nanosecond it takes to light up a neural network.

  But my delusion didn’t just include the three of us.

  Man-nude-Mummy-Daddy-silly-angry . . .

  I couldn’t believe it. My mental illness had taken me inside Evan’s head. I was inventing a reaction to him being in their minds. There was no coping with this crazy. No way to hide it. Did Dr Jenny make Christmas Day house calls with her straitjacket? I laughed loudly like the mad girl I’d become.

  Dad and Stephanie didn’t hear me.

  Or Evan as he announced, ‘Goof! Goof! Goof!’ and tipped his bucket of golf balls across the floor.

  My father and stepmother only had hate-filled eyes for each other.

  Dad spasmed and for a second I thought he’d been electrocuted by a wayward Christmas light.

  ‘You’re having an affair?’ he whispered. ‘With some gym guy?’

  My mind had his thoughts screaming with self-righteous hurt and anger at Stephanie’s mental picture of David. I-gave-you-everything!-This-is-how-you-repay—

  Beneath Dad’s fury was the big regret. Robyn-wouldn’t-cheat-Should-never-have-let-her-go.

  My mum: Robyn. My secret hope: Dad and her would get back together. My poor sick brain: creating this wish-fulfilment fantasy. But knowing it wasn’t real didn’t stop my skull from echoing with Stephanie’s scorn and Dad’s fury.

  Her: I-knew-it-You-still-love-that-druggy-psycho!

  Him: How-long-you-been-slutting-behind-my-back?

  Her: Now-I-know-why-you-don’t-talk-to-me-or . . .

  Him: Is-he-better-in-bed-is-that-why?

  ‘Well, you’ve never—’ Stephanie shouted. Satisfied-me-like-he—

  Dad launched himself at her. They hurtled across the floor. Tumbled into the French doors in a crunch of splintering wood and shattering glass. The Christmas tree slumped against a wall, baubles breaking, lights flickering. Whatever was wron
g with me had gotten so much worse. Auditory delusions had become visual hallucinations.

  Dad was on top of Stephanie. Maybe in reality he was tickling her as payback for the Soxies. Maybe they were laughing instead of screaming. It’s not what I was seeing and hearing. He looked like he was killing her.

  ‘Stop!’ I yelled at them and myself. ‘Stop!’

  Stop!-Stop!-Stop!

  They didn’t hear me. They didn’t stop.

  Dad throttled. Stephanie scratched.

  I-gave-you-everything-You-cheated-you-cheap—

  Get-off-This-is-assault-You’re-hurting-Can’t-breathe.

  Her face turned purple as he clamped his hands tighter around her throat.

  Evan was crying or laughing, I couldn’t tell which. Either way, I had to make this stop. Without thinking, I snatched a golf club from the floor.

  ‘Dad, stop!’

  He shuddered as he pressed his weight down.

  I-hope-it-hurts-you . . .

  Stephanie’s bloodshot eyes bulged over his shoulder. Please-Danby-hit-him-hit—

  Dad turned his head just as I swung the putter and cracked him hard across the temple.

  TWO

  With just a dozen shopping days till Christmas, we worker bees were abuzz with activity in The Grocery. Slicing ham in the deli. Spritzing fruit for that dewy look. Gift-wrapping cosmetics. Ensuring the imported towels were properly fluffed. Manning and traffic directing the checkout. Not that I was complaining. Working at The Grocery was my ticket to freedom and added two hundred dollars to my name each week that had nothing to do with Dad or Stephanie. Other GenZees might be stuck in the nest until they were thirty but I’d be flying the coop as soon I finished school. Destination? As & Es, baby. Asia. Americas. Africa. Europe. Everywhere Else.

  Work was more fun than it had any right to be because Jacinta had started there the same time as me. Faced with oh-so-serious supervisors and even more self-important customers, my best friend and I amused ourselves with a furtive semaphore of rolled eyes, cheesy grins and spirit fingers. We made it our mission to make fun of The Grocery.

  My theory was that its name had been contrived so the snobby clientele could sound down to earth when they said, ‘I’m just popping out to The Grocery for a few things.’ But the place was far from humble. This consumer temple had fake marble columns and banners along the colonnade that celebrated the excess of success. Big lips smooched a strawberry, a Champagne cork rocketed from bubbly froth and silver platters glistened with sashimi and caviar. Jacinta and I joked that The Grocery would sell panda prosciutto and whale wagyu if it was legal—and that Beautopian gourmands would gobble up the endangered delicacies just because they were so deliciously expensive.