Gold Digger

4. Abyss

I saw Archer this morning.

At least, I thought I did. Which is dumb because he's dead. The rational part of my brain knows it; feels the loss like a kettle ball heavy on my chest. But the rest of me still hopes, still dreams, still sees my brother in strangers on the corner and side-eye flashes of blond.

I swear I heard him laughing once. That low raspy chuckle that was always more surprised than amused, as though the world had caught him off guard with its funny.

I miss his stupid laugh.

"I need to talk to you." She appears at my elbow like a soggy apparition, wet braid dripping on my chemistry notes. A Granville Grammar swim team duffle thuds unceremoniously onto the table as her schoolbag hits the library floor. We have a couple of classes together, but I don't remember her name. Daisy? Davie? Something like that. Not that it matters.

"I'm busy." Keeping my voice hard and flat, I raise a single eyebrow in what has become my trademark way of broadcasting that I have no interest in anyone. Instead of backing off, she arches an inky brow of her own.

"Don't be a dick." Her onyx eyes flash. "I have no more desire to speak to you than you do to me, but I promised I would." She yanks a metal chair out from the table and sits down opposite me.

Even glaring, she's undeniably cute. Hair the colour of winter at midnight, clear tawny skin, an overly full bottom lip, and long, long limbs. The old me would have turned on the Viera charm. Flipped my dark hair off my forehead, flashed a cheeky grin, leaned forward, flirted up a storm. The new me just wants to go to sleep in a quiet corner of this library and pretend I don't exist until the school day starts. Maybe for much longer than that.

"Look." Soggy Girl sighs. "There's no way to tell you this without sounding like I've lost the plot. I need you to listen and try to keep an open mind."

I stay stubbornly silent. She huffs and mutters something under her breath that sounds weirdly like 'should have gone skydiving'. But when she raises her pretty eyes to mine, her gaze is so intensely serious I can't look away.

"I saw your brother this morning," she says.

I'm up and out of my chair so fast it tips backwards, clattering to the carpeted floor with a muffled thud. The girl flinches at the noise but doesn't break eye contact.

"Why would you say that?" I growl. My fists clench reflexively at my sides. "Don't say that to me."

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "This must be hard to wrap your mind around. I can't imagine... but it's true. I promise. I met Archer on the bus this morning and he wants to talk to you."

My laugh is a bitter bark. "Now I know you're delusional. My brother would never voluntarily catch public transport."

"Somehow, I don't think it was his choice. He says he's been there since he died a few weeks ago."

"Archer's been dead almost six months," I grind out. "Why are you making this s**t up? What could you possibly hope to gain?"

"Nothing. I mean, I don't... I'm not trying to gain anything. And I'm not making it up. I really did talk to him."

We glare at each other. I should leave. Take my stuff and walk away. Out of the library. Out of this school. Just away. Away. AWAY. But I promised Mum I'd stick it out here. Get Year Twelve done.

I lift my hands to the back of my head and squeeze in frustration. I know she's lying. She has to be. Yet the part of me that thought I saw Archer this morning—that small, stubborn sliver of my heart refusing to let my big brother go—blooms and wriggles and thuds with stupid, pathetic hope. So, I stay, and she stays, and we stare at each other in wary silence.

The stand-off ends when three girls burst into the library on a cloud of obnoxious noise and coconut-scented confidence. I recognise one of them from my biology class.

"Can you believe Juno?" Biology Girl scoffs. "She's such a simp. As if Scotty is ever going to take her back."

"I know. It's pathetic."

"Totally pathetic. She had her chance, and she blew it. Now she needs to roll over and get out of the way."

Their conversation screeches to a halt as they realise they aren't alone. Soggy Girl scrambles to gather her bags, a look of resignation and mild panic shuttering her features.

"I'm so sorry, Hunter." Biology Girl approaches. "Is Darcy bothering you?"

That's it! Darcy. I knew it started with 'D'.

Darcy's almost out the library door when the quietest of the three interlopers—a petite redhead with lurid pink nails—grabs her hard by the arm and hisses something I don't hear. Darcy rolls her eyes, hunching her shoulders as she scurries away without so much as a glance in my direction.

"Please excuse my sister." Biology Girl says. "Darcy's tragically socially awkward. Looks like she has a darling little crush on you though..."

Something in the biting way she says it offends me on Darcy's behalf. Sure, Darcy's a little... intense. And claiming she saw my dead brother on a bus is pretty f****d up, but she seems weirdly sincere. Her sister talks as though Darcy inherently deserves ridicule. I don't like it. I don't like it at all.

"I'm Danica," Biology Girl purrs, laying a hand on my upper arm. "We have bio together. Call me Dani."

I'd be lying if I said I hadn't noticed Danica before today. She has Darcy's height, colouring and similarly delicate features. But whereas Darcy's cute is unassuming, Danica carries herself with a smooth, practised confidence that automatically turns heads in the hallways, in class, and on the quadrangle steps at lunch. Danica's beauty is hypnotic... but apparently only until she opens her mouth.

I'll take cute, intense, and awkward over beautiful and bullying any day of the week. Which is the only reason I say what I say next.

"Darcy's great," I tell Danica with a grin. "We clicked instantly. Meant to be, you know? What can I say-she's my girl."

I throw in the 'she's my girl' because it's frustratingly ambiguous and could mean anything from 'we've joined an outlaw bikie gang and sworn our fealty in blood' to 'she's the love of my life'.

It has the desired effect.

Danica gapes like a cartoon goldfish and her minions wear matching worried frowns. I don't know whether they're thrown by my enthusiastic endorsement of Darcy or by my apparent immunity to Danica's charms. Either way, their shock gives me a chance to exit, and I take it, striding off to homeroom like I can't wait to get there.

The rest of my morning passes in a mundane blur of classes. I try to take decent notes and avoid attention. My basketball-honed, six-foot-two frame makes flying under the radar tricky, but by ducking my head and slouching down in my chair, I do okay.

Most of all, I try not to think about a certain raven-haired weirdo who thinks she can talk to dead people. I do okay at that too until I'm slinking out of Australian History and see Danica and her crew bail Darcy up at the other end of the crowded breezeway. Danica grabs her sister's shoulder and spins her off balance. The two minions act as flanking guards to prevent Darcy escaping, while Danica backs her up against the bank of navy lockers. Danica's right up in Darcy's face, spraying words like bullets.

Eyes downcast and body language loose, Darcy meekly submits to her sister's verbal onslaught.

Until she doesn't.

As Danica rants away, her sister suddenly laughs—a fizzy burst of sound that breaks free above the noise of the lunchtime throng. Danica freezes, silent and frowning. Laughing again, Darcy slips under Danica's arm and saunters off.

I should turn around and walk swiftly in the opposite direction, but I don't.

I find Darcy in the elm-shaded paved courtyard outside the school café, chomping on an apple and staring thoughtfully into space. The rest of her home-packed lunch sits in neatly arranged containers on the wooden picnic table in front of her—a crusty baguette, a chocolate chip cookie, and a small tub of cashews.

Channelling my old social self, I sit opposite her like I belong there and steal half the baguette.

"Oi!" She scowls. "Get your own lunch."

"But yours looks so delicious," I cheerfully mumble around a mouthful of ham, salad, and crusty bread.

She throws a cashew at me. "Why did you tell my sister we're a thing?"

"I didn't."

"You must have."

"Nuh, uh."

"So, why does she think, and I quote, that I'm 'your girl'?"

"Okay... So, I might have said that," I admit.

"Why would you say that?... Don't even think about taking the other half of that baguette."

"Because she was insulting you and I didn't like it... Really? C'mon. I'm a growing, athletic lad. I need carbs."

"Insulting me?" Darcy scoffs, shooing my hand away from her lunch. "Insulting me is like kitten kisses in Danica's language. It's the fairy floss of what she's capable of. Insults are nothing. But now you've made her mad. Now she thinks I've stolen the toy she wanted. That's you, by the way. Now I've stolen the toy she wanted, and it's going to be an alien-springing-free-from-my-stomach, blood-pouring-on-my-head-from-a-bucket, giant-shark-tearing-me-limb-from-limb kind of experience... Darn it, dude. Get your own lunch."

"Your twin is kinda full on," I tell her. "Also, this baguette is awesome."

"'Kinda' is an understatement. And she's not my twin. Seriously, Viera. Leave my baguette alone or I'll stab you with my newly sharpened pencil."

"Stabbing is unkind. My girl wouldn't stab... You aren't twins? But aren't you both in Year Twelve? Also, you know my last name. That's sweet."

"Irish twins," Darcy clarifies. "Eleven months apart. Our parents thought it would be lovely if we were together for school. Our parents were wrong... I really did see your brother, you know."

"I know."

"You believe me?"

"I want to."

"Why?"

"Your eyes. Mum always says kind eyes don't lie. Also, my girl wouldn't lie to me."

"You are ridiculous."

"I used to be," I admit. "Now I'm mainly a dick." I break off half her chocolate chip cookie and shove it in my mouth just to prove my dickishness.

Darcy looks ready to stab me, and I'm pretty sure she's going to, until she glances at my wrist and smiles a tiny, wistful smile.

"You have it too. The bow and quiver tattoo." She sounds almost reverent as she crosses to my side of the picnic table and straddles the bench. "May I?"

I nod, and she takes my wrist gently in her hands like she's cradling treasure. Long fingers trace newly healed ink, following the fine lines as though committing them to memory. It tickles and teases and I suck in a shaky breath.

"Archer talks about this tattoo; about you, with such pride," she says. "He really loves you... Why is your quiver in colour?"

Up close, she invades my senses like a drug, smelling like honey and vanilla with a faint hint of chlorine. She's biting her full bottom lip as she studies the ink lines, dark lashes dancing against her cheeks. In this moment, 'cute' seems like a massive f*****g understatement.

Don't even think about it, Viera. Focus on her question.

"Arch always said I was his bow, because an archer's nothing without one," I tell her. "Which I figure makes him my quiver... because I'm worse than useless without him. He designed this for his nineteenth birthday, two months before he... I didn't get it inked until recently. He was always so much larger than life, you know? I wanted to remember him in colour."

She nods like my babbling makes perfect sense. "Even dead on a bus, he's still larger than life."

In that instant, I really do believe her when she says she's seen my brother. I don't have a single reason to trust this girl beyond kind eyes and irrational hope. But I believe her.

"What time tomorrow do we catch this bus of yours?" I ask.

She smiles in technicolour.