The Last Girl by Michael Adams Read Free Book Online Page B

First Family was crumbling as details of Karen’s drinking relapse, Doug’s furtive gambling and their son Alex’s homosexuality all poured out. In a house a few doors down Renee was shattered that Kenny really did think she was stupid and he was filthy that she’d been bored by him for years. Over on Second Street, elderly retirees Pete and Edie were going the other way as they realised beyond words that they really shared one soul and wordlessly exchanged regrets that they’d argued over nothing for decades. But like minds like theirs were the exception. Most people’s desperation to suppress their secrets only blasted them louder. The elephants in every room had been set loose to stampede.
    He ate greasy burgers despite last year’s heart attack and hid his bonuses and sexted his secretary and pretended to believe in his wife’s God and thought he deserved a bit of consideration and wished his boyfriend would lose some weight and gazed at his high school sweetheart’s profile and had the divorce mapped out and knew those stocks had been toxic and she took his punches and pretended to deserve them and worked back to avoid the kids and felt bad still about cheating on her final-year exams and hated herself for hating her love handles and forgiving his and made faces at him under the burqa and really hated her girlfriend for backing out of IVF and left the baby in the bath alone while she was online dating and wished he’d have another heart attack.
    I felt like I was swirling towards a whirlpool. Opening my eyes and ears again only made it more awful. Stephanie dead. Dad unconscious. My mind reeled away again.
    This time I touched down somewhere familiar. Jacinta’s bedroom. I wasn’t just inside her teenage retreat. I was inside her terror and sorrow and anger and confusion as she sobbed convulsively with her back to her door.
    Can’t-be-happening-Not-adopted-A-bad-dream - I-hate- you . . .
    Mr and Mrs Chang screamed at her and each other and themselves from other barricaded rooms.
    Don’t-be-stupid!-Wasn’t-my-idea-to-hide-it-Your-father . . .
    That’s-a-lie!-You’re-the-one-who . . .
    ‘Jacinta,’ I said. Jacinta.
    She couldn’t hear me, couldn’t find me like I’d found her. It was as though I was in a cone of silence or on a different plane of existence.
    Then Jacinta was gone as I ricocheted elsewhere. Alex knew Karen was thinking about a drink even as she mouthed words about loving him and they both hated Doug for promising God he’d give up gambling if He would cure his lush wife and ungay his son. Ben smashed windows as he stormed from the house ashamed and angry, but Lisa’s mind was already suburbs away and brawling with her mother’s self-pity at being denied a grandchild. Elsewhere, dark thoughts rapidly metastasised into darker actions. In horror, I witnessed Blago across the road punching demure Karina into unconsciousness just to get her out of his head.
    You gutless bastard! I mentally screamed at Blago.
    I was the one voice he couldn’t hear. Not that it mattered with dozens or hundreds of others engulfing him in their hatred.
    I tried to reach Karen and Doug and Ben and Lisa and Edie and Pete. No one could hear me and I couldn’t hold anyone in my mind for more than a moment. But I shared their relief as a siren cut through the clutter. Although my emergency call had gone unanswered, the wailing getting louder and closer said my distress had been picked up anyway.
    Any hope I had that first responders would rush in to save the day burned away when I locked onto the black mind behind the siren. Death grip on his steering wheel. Screaming through Beautopia Point’s streets. Sound and signal so intense it sucked me and many others into his consciousness.
    Those thoughts didn’t compel me to run onto our front lawn and flag him down. But I also didn’t want to believe what I was tuning from his mind. So I scrambled up the spiral staircase to our Captain’s Nest to see with my own