The Ellie Chronicles by John Marsden

Author:John Marsden [Marsden, John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: ePub Bud (www.epubbud.com)
Published: 2012-04-17T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

I DON’T KNOW whether this is anything to do with love but over the next few days I made a fool of myself a zillion times, except that luckily most of the time no-one was there to notice. Maybe it was just total exhaustion, but I managed to spray the griller with eucalyptus instead of cooking oil, then I left nearly a dozen eggs on top of the stove when I was doing a roast, which didn’t do much for their freshness. The eucalyptus spray had been standing around in the kitchen for as long as I could remember. We used it for pretty much everything, like spraying around the room after I’d made a sardine sandwich (Mum hated the smell of sardines), spraying on burns, spraying on beds to get rid of dust mites, spraying on Gavin when he was being a nuisance.

Lee and Pang left and I missed Pang’s bright friendly chatter but I didn’t miss Lee much. I was scared of the way he looked at me, those dark brooding eyes, sombre and impenetrable. I didn’t know what he expected of me any more, but whatever it was, I was fairly certain that I couldn’t provide it.

I didn’t hear from Homer but I assumed he was chained to the bed and banned from leaving the house again until 2050. Then he rang and said he’d had to tell his parents a bit about Liberation, and they weren’t happy, and Liberation wasn’t happy, but the Scarlet Pimple was trying to get him a new motorbike and he’d asked for a four-wheeler for me.

Jess rang twice and Bronte twice a day. Bronte and I talked a lot. I told her about Jeremy but needless to say I didn’t tell Jess.

I didn’t see Jeremy, or hear from him. In a way that didn’t matter to me. I felt a kind of security, knowing that he was out there. I felt like now we had an understanding and it wouldn’t go away in a hurry. I was in a strange mood. I felt a great tiredness after escaping from the shopping centre and the helicopter. Suddenly I was eighty years old. I’d been tired plenty of times during the war, but never like this. This was in my bones. I wandered the house, looking after Gavin but not after myself. I travelled the paddocks dreaming of life with Jeremy. I didn’t know if I was in love or just distracted for a short time by his warm hands and strong presence. The thing I found strange was that most of the time I felt not happy but sad. Is that love? Or was it just the sadness of living my life?

Sometimes a river of sadness flowed through me. Not depression, not grief, not despair, just sadness. I moved heavily and I was clumsy, I couldn’t think, and I couldn’t laugh very much. I wanted my parents back. I wanted them so badly that nothing else mattered. And all the time, shadowing my sadness, was a terrible fear, the fear that I would never recover.

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