9.
‘So, you came from a city, left on a road trip, and… ended up… here?’
Joshua cocked his head to one side. Like a dog trying to rid its ear of water. His broken glasses slid down his nose.
Staying in a car next to a gas station seemed to have sparked an unorthodox friendship. For a month, I told Joshua how we ended up in Meagalloo, about my parents and myself, and grand stories of places where there were concrete paths just for walking, and how people would pay to look at animals in cages. He stared, open-mouthed and fish-eyed, like a stupefied salmon.
Of course, the quaint town on New South Wales’ north coast was ostentatious compared to Meagalloo. I told him I came from a city.
‘Tecnically, yes,’ I said.
The hollows above his collarbones steepened. He whistled.
It’s funny, I thought, how a whistle can tell as much about a person as their face.
Joshua’s whistle was a funny, spittle-y whistle. A jittery bird-whistle. It circled above us with jittery bird wings and jittery bird eyes.
‘Where is the school here?’ I asked. Joshua smiled.
‘There isn’t one. There’s forty people in this town and fifteen children.’
‘Then… where did… how do you learn… things?’
‘My grandfather went to Oxford. One of the first Japanese graduates. He taught me. At least, he tried.’
He tried.
‘How on earth did you end up in Meagalloo, then?’
Joshua’s answer was textbook-perfect. Word for word copied from a dusty, murmurish, leathery encyclopedia.
‘My grandparents travelled here when a vein of pure gold was discovered here. Of course…’ he trailed off. His eyes wandered languidly to the ceiling. ‘They didn’t find much.’
Silence dribbled out the ceiling cracks. Not the peaceful kind you find in somewhere old. A black, oozing kind. The bitter kind with a cheated sneer. It flooded the service station and licked at our ankles.
Jeering only when alone. Revealing itself when no one needed it.
‘The abandoned mine is a twenty minute walk from here. Everything’s still there,’ he said. Silence withdrew itself quickly.
‘Is it safe?’
‘Mostly.’
Something in me fluttered at the thought of seeing history as frozen as a photograph. I rose from my cardboard seat.
‘Let’s go!’
Joshua’s eyes smiled. Not his mouth, but a glittery-twinkly-dazzle-and-gleam eye-smile. His expression turned hungry.
‘Yes.’
YOU ARE READING
Hollow Bones
General FictionSola Hindemid is haunted by the effects of "not fitting with normality the way stacked teacups did". After her grandmother's death, she, her mother and her dog embark on a roadtrip to nowhere in particular, forming an unorthodox friendship that culm...
