Cold Tomorrow

[7]

CHAPTER SEVEN

The bus seat is lumpy and uncomfortable beneath me as the bus leaves the stop, driving on down the street and around a corner. Beside me, Sarah is silent, her eyes on the passing houses out the window.

It's only 9am, but we had both agreed last night to make an early start. If we want to get to her fathers' place and still have time after to go to lunch, it needs to be early. Who knows how long the truth will take to explain? Maybe it'll take hours. Maybe only minutes - enough time for me to let out a sentence before her father refuses to hear anymore, declaring it insane.

I don't entirely know why I call him that: 'her father'. They may be related by blood, but I was the one he raised. I was the one he supported through everything, every doctor visit, every trial at school. I am the daughter he cracked jokes at, and then later, watched in silence as we sat in our quiet and cold home. And it was I who walked out on him just when he needed me most, all because I felt that my grief and my battle were more important than his.

Daughter of the year, I think dryly.

I suppose, then, I don't call him my father anymore because of all that's happened since I left. I've swapped back, into my original body, my original life, and it's not just my physical appearance that has changed as a result. Now that Sarah looks like I once did it makes him feel more distant, like we're standing on opposite shores and I can only watch him through a telescope. But Sarah - Sarah can go right up to him, stand by his side, play daughter, and he won't know the difference. She looks like his daughter, she can act like his daughter, she is his daughter. Just not the one he brought up.

I wonder for a moment if this is what it feels like for Sarah to see Katherine and I talking. Then I shove the thought away.

Eventually, we pass into familiar territory: the road that leads to my old school; the road that takes us down by the beach; the road that I once walked along when making my way to school. We pass the local shopping centre where my parents did all their shopping and various landmarks my brain has stamped an invisible mark on, declaring them home. I've only lived here for seven months, but somehow it feels like I've spent an eternity in this place.

Before this, I lived in small town up in northern Queensland, where the temperature was high and the humidity was higher. It took a lot longer to get cold there, which is probably why my parents chose it in the first place, and there weren't many people in town to hate me for ruining their tropical paradise. I can remember thinking that it was the best place I'd ever called home, but I can't remember much else. That town hangs in the shadows of this Sydney suburb now, drowned out by hard days spent slogging on through torrential weather and the crazy life-changing events of the previous month.

It's not long before the bus approaches our stop, and I give Sarah a nudge, pressing the stop button. I stand up and make my way to the door, expecting people to stare at me as I do, but no one on the bus pays me any notice. Then I remember I don't look like I used to, and that the girl who brought the early winter is meant to be long gone, living in some other distant country. Is it weird that even with all the hardships of my old life, I still miss it?

The bus screeches to a stop and Sarah and I step off onto the wet pavement. It's a cold day today at only fourteen degrees, but still warmer than it was a couple weeks ago, when this part of the city was only beginning to thaw. The wind blows and I shove my bare hands into the pockets of my rain jacket, burying my nose in my grey woollen scarf.

"Lead the way," Sarah says, her cheeks tinged pink from the cold.

I nod. "This way," I say, taking her around the corner and down the street. My old house is only a few blocks from here and a weird tingling starts up in my stomach, like moths swarming around in circles, pushing up against my stomachs walls. Nerves, says a voice in my mind, and I know that it's right. I haven't seen my father in weeks, and I didn't exactly leave him in the best of conditions. Of course I'm nervous.