Prologue
She stared into the face of a person long forgotten, the face of a stranger painted in diluted acrylics upon the rivers’ soft ripples. A slight breeze blew through the small, bejewelled alcove- stirring the long, weeping branches of the willows.
The alcove used to be beautiful, it used to be filled with the cheerful songs of birds, harmonies of joyful laughter echoing along the betrodden bush trail. Now it is scarred, marred, sullied; the place where a teenager sought her final resting place months before.
No one comes there anymore, and although the birds still sing, their songs seem depressing and haunting. She sat on the calloused ground and listened to their sickly melody, swaying side to side. Her mind abandoned all thought as tears blurred the scenery around her, cascading forth as endless streams of salt water, staining her drained, sleepless face.
She whispered incoherently through her clogged throat, sobs wracked her distraught frame. Her charcoal lace dress was torn and her onyx black slippers, muddied and ruined. The bow in her hair was trailing and slowly undoing into the wind.
A flame tree swayed in the breeze, wishes written by two girls scar its exterior. The tree groaned as a sudden gust of wind forced its tattooed branches to strain. The wishes are whispered to the winds as they pass, hoping that they will be fulfilled. But they never will be.
The lake in front of her holds the memories of her childhood, they are swirling in the currents below. Ripples show snippets of little tea parties, adventures, mischief she used to have with her friend. But they are fading now, spilling over into the creek that runs to the river and will be eventually swept out to sea.
The phone in her navy blue silken purse vibrated. She took it out gingerly and turned it on. The screen lit dimly, eeking out the last trace charge from a week ago. She hasn’t used this phone since the death. Every time she turns it on she remembers that she had been talking to her right before she killed herself.
She could be right where her friend had been sitting, looking at the same things she was looking at. When she texted me to ask about the ‘lily pad’ incident, she was probably staring out onto the lake at the great expanses of them over the north side of the alcove.
When she asked about the tree, she was probably reading through every wish that never came true. Every time she got her hopes up, only for them to be crushed. Every disappointment since we were twelve.
Memories of the day she’d last texted surfaced, and she wondered if her Mum hadn’t taken her phone, could she have prevented this? If her mum hadn’t harped on about her ‘needing to socialise’ with your cousins or about how she ‘shouldn’t be on the phone all the time’. If her mum had just let her use social media like every other normal teenager, she might have noticed her friend’s changing behaviour.
If that day, she’d caught on to her quick changes and misdirections sooner, would she be alive now?
She shook herself out of her dazed nightmare to see who was trying to contact her. It was a text from Mark;
‘Sarah. I need to talk to you.’
Rage clouded her mind. She used to think of Mark as her brother. What on earth was he thinking? After all, he put her best friend through...he has the gall to text her number.
‘Not a chance, you jerk.’
‘It’s important.’
‘It’s about Liza’
She wanted to tuck her phone away and ignore him, he deserved it. Frustrated, curiosity overcame her and she replied, slim fingers swiping hastily across the screen.
‘What about her?'
‘She had a daughter’
Shock. Pure and utter shock instantly numbed her mind, as if her brain had been cauterised by liquid nitrogen. She stared dumbly at the words on her screen, as if willing them to change. Liza hadn’t told her about this, then again, she hadn’t really told her anything.
‘What?’
‘That's not even the tip of the iceberg’
‘What are you talking about Mark?’
‘I think Liza was drugged.’
‘I think it was murder.’
Imprint
Publication Date: 03-07-2019
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