Roadkill (LiveWire) (5 page)

“And you just clicked on it?” I suggest, good humour restored by a massive caffeine hit and Rose’s help conquering the bridge.

“Idiot. I don’t think ginger is supposed to be quite as dumb as blonde but sometimes I do wonder.”

I slap him, and lean into the screen, fizzing with anticipation. This means something, I can tell, or maybe I just drank too much coffee!

“Oh look, don’t they make a cute couple. Set a date yet guys?” Anita is taking her seat noisily two rows behind. Her bitchy little entourage, heavily made up, teeny skirts, and sky high heels, totter in next to her.

Rose’s picture burns a hole in my purse, and as Leo cringes I swing round, “Get lost Anita. Just go find some dumb boys to show off to. Although,” I sweep a contemptuous glance over the sharp faced, weasily crew, “guess you could head off Lacey Street and make some cash.”

Leo draws a sharp breath, as I make a show of turning my back and returning to our huddle. The sun beats down in a flash of fire, and in my hand, Rose nods her approval. Lacey Street is in the west of town, where the all night bars, and dodgy takeaways compete for the drunks, the homeless; and the prostitutes. 1-0 to me I think.

Anita looks shocked, as though a mouse has raised its head and blown a raspberry at her. Then she leans forward, thin little face a mask of spite. “You shut up you loser. Miss I can’t even get a decent boyfriend….oh! I’m talking to you bitch.”

I ignore her, surprised at my own defiance, and luckily the pro skateboard team, led by a sober looking Ashley, erupt onto the ramps in front of us. The grinding roar of wheels, clouds of hot dust, and yells from the crowd indicate we are forgotten.

“What did you do that for?” Leo hisses, with a quick backwards glance.

“What?” I am impatient for his information, Anita forgotten.

“You know…wind her up. Just means she’ll be even more of a bitch later.”

“Whatever. She might even leave us alone! We’re not at college anymore. Another month and half the kids here will be gone. University, travelling….hey if we’re lucky Anita might even head off to Australia.”
             

He gives me a long disbelieving look, and returns to the screen, “So look, this is the main home page, with the menu tabs at the top, but if you click (okay, okay!) on the sword and moon icon at the bottom it takes you to another page.” Leo looks expectant.

“Oh my god, these are their blogs. Quick, where’s Rose’s? Jeez these are like diaries.” The commentator is introducing the pro boarding team and the lads (only one girl) are spinning and twisting in gravity defying stunts. I am speed reading, some of the blogs are pretty intimate, all the details, not only of the LiveWire dares, but also stuff about boyfriends/girlfriends.

“Whoa, too much info!” exclaims Leo, pointing at the top entry for ‘AllyFive’. He is almost blushing.

“Can’t see Rose. Ouch!” A latecomer hustles past with two lurid pink smoothies and jogs my coffee.

“Annnnnd here’s Matt Amos. Northern National Champs last year, and off to Canada in September for the Festival. Red Bull sure missed out on this boy!” The commentator is working it, and the mainly all girl crowd are busy trying to catch the eyes of the pros, flashing legs, and skimpy crop tops. Ratz
ramps up the volume and the bass beat shakes the rickety wooden stands.

Distracted for a second I look up in time to see Matt swooping through the air, performing a double somersault and flying up the other side of the ramp. As he finishes with a seemingly endless leap across the obstacles, totally disproving his laughing dismissal of pro status last night, a tiny spark ignites deep in my belly. I hastily force my eyes back down to the blinking screen.

“Fancy him do you?” It’s Leo, giggling and nudging me.

“No.”

“You so do. I saw you eyeing him up at Paul’s party at Easter. He’s cute, you should go for it. Hell I would!” This last is said in a naughty whisper and I crack a smile.

“She isn’t here,” I say with disappointment, after a prolonged study of the blogs.

“Don’t give up so easily, look I found Kelly again,” Leo pulls her blog up and I read about an endless round of beach parties, crazy LiveWire dares in the Santa Monica mountains, and her ambitions to be a model or actress. Just a regular all American girl.

I smile again, in her energy and enthusiasm she sounds a lot like Rose. I can see why they messaged each other. “Wait, if they were messaging and Rose did have an alias can’t you find it?”

He taps deftly, frowning as a list of names flashes up on screen. “Got it! Look Farlan. Weird name. It links to Rose’s hotmail account.”

Pain stabs me like an arrow in my heart, and the heat of the day, the roar of the excited crowd, fade to background noise. I am ten years old again and my big sister is filling out an entry form. One of the hundreds. I forget what it was for; gymnastics?

“Rose is a boring name. You know when they announce you coming out, and everyone looks just at you?”

I didn’t but I nodded anyway, swinging my legs, and drawing animals on my sketchpad.

“I want them to remember me,” she chewed the end of her biro, black hair sleek in a high ponytail, thinking hard.

She decided on Rose-Farlan because she said she’d seen it in a film. Farlan was, she told me, a cool name.

Wanting to please her I chirped up “Then when you win it’ll sound really…um..cool
.
”
My sister looked slightly condescending, but a smile hovered over her full lips. Purely for show (mum and dad were reading on the sofa), she said “I might not win.”

She didn’t believe it anymore than I did, and I hastened to fill my usual cheerleading role, assuring her she always won. It was true, she always did, except maybe that one time. When it really mattered.

Chapter Six

She called herself Rose-Farlan all summer, then got bored with it and went back to ordinary old Rose. Except my sister was never ordinary. I slide a hand into my purse and touch her photo, smoothing a shaky thumb over it.

“Caz? Come back,” Leo is waving a hand in front of my face.

“Sorry. Yeah that has to be her.”
             

The competition is still going full throttle in front of us, but there has been a mass exodus in pursuit of the pro team, who are signing autographs next to a Red Bull tent. The remaining spectators are families, or hard core knowledgeable fans who talk knowingly about half pikes. And us, looking for my sister’s murderer.

Something niggles me about the whole thing and I hunch back on the hard wooden seat, stretching cramped legs, watching the flickering laptop screen without seeing it. Then it hits me, just a little thing, but it jars.

“Leo don’t you think it’s weird it was so easy to find out all this LiveWire stuff?”

He has put on his geeky huge prescription sunglasses, so I can see only myself reflected where his eyes should be. I look pale, and tired.

“What do you mean?” he stops tapping at the computer.

“Well …um….. It was so easy to find this stuff in her diary, and follow the link…..like we were meant to do this. Like its fate or something?” I don’t really know what I mean actually so I trail off and he stares at me, black glasses dwarfing his pointed face.

“Forget it! Can we go in the shade Leo? My head is killing me,” I scrunch my coffee cup and aim half heartedly for the bin.

He looks surprised, pushing the glasses awkwardly to the top of his head, “Of course. What you were saying though. Maybe it is meant to be. Seeing this whole LiveWire thing might be just what you need to give you closure on Rose’s death. We don’t have to do this now you know.”

I stare at him, “You still don’t believe Rose was murdered do you?”

Leo sighs, fidgeting with his bag, slipping the laptop into its leather carry case. “Honestly no. I think she was coming home and just misjudged the traffic. Sure whoever hit her should have stopped but I don’t think there is any great mystery. Sorry.”

Aware I sound tearful, I quickly stand, take a breath, “Maybe the police missed something on the forum. They might not even have seen the blogs. We need to find out what the hell she was doing at 2am on a bloody motorway.” Even to myself I sound like a broken record, but the more people tell me to leave it alone, that there is nothing more to know….It just makes me surer that there is something. Call it instinct or just plain stroppiness, but I will find out who drove that car and why.

“Well yeah….Look whatever you want to do I’ll help okay?” My best friend wipes a bead of sweat from his forehead, pushing back the lank straw coloured hair. “LiveWire is probably our best link so we can go back to checking out the forum and stuff?”

I smile gratefully at him as we clank down the stands, quickly bypassing Ratz
,
which is packed. Stopping to grab a hotdog each from a mobile stand, (food poisoning here I come I think, then tell myself to get a life, I sound just like my mum), we dodge the crowds and take up residence underneath a huge gnarled oak tree.

I kick off my flip flops, and remember with a pang the last time Rose and I hit the park. The day before she died, we spread out a towel right over there and just chilled out, all evening. Of course it wasn’t just us, there was a huge entourage of about eight, and Ashley sitting on Rose’s other side, bending to whisper to her, so she smiled.

Pretending not to notice their flirtation, I was used to it, I studied the park, spotted with footballers, dog walkers, picnickers. Some younger kids were climbing the oak tree above our heads, dropping acorns into my hair. Two pairs of dusty bare legs, red nailed toes (Rose had as usual insisted on giving me a ‘makeover’ for the party later) stretched out in the low evening sun.

Leo and I flip onto our tummies and read Rose’s blogs. Luckily she doesn’t give any explicit details, in fact she hardly mentions Ashley, except to mention she and her pro boarder boyfriend are training for an ultra in November, before heading off to climb Kilimanjaro. Oh yeah, then they were off to build a school in Kenya.

The really interesting stuff is when she starts doing the LiveWire dares, egged on by insanely competitive Kelly.

“Look, her first time. That’s April sixteenth. She got a win on her first go,” Leo sounds impressed.

‘
Freaked about tonight, but really looking forward to it.’

Then afterwards, at 4am the next day she was back, obviously buzzed;

‘The biggest high ever! Bring on the next one (and that’s not the shots talking!). I can’t believe what a buzz that was – Keila you are awesome!!’

“Keila?”

“Search me – shit! Look what she did….” Leo whistles and I just stare.

Even though I have grown used to looking at all kinds of crazy stuff on LiveWire watching my own sister do this crap is heart-stopping. There are a few blurry photos, obviously uploaded from mobiles, and a minute or so of video, which was shown as a live feed.

The location looks vaguely familiar, “That’s Higham Cement works!” I exclaim, recognising the derelict, graffitied chimneys, nestling into the cliffs about twenty miles from here on the coast road. The LiveWire participants are scaling a chimney that stretches maybe a hundred and fifty feet into the air, inching up to the top, and clinging to a rusty guard rail. For a moment I think that’s it and actually think it’s a pretty easy dare compared to some of the ones I’ve watched, then I realise there is a metal beam, I guess originally fallen from the rusting crane that dangles from the cliffside, high above the brick chimneys.

The beam has come to rest, or maybe been positioned, between the two chimneys, like a terrifying high wire. Or a gymnastics beam. One by one the kids inch across the metal rod, some crawling, one faltering step at a time. A girl is crying, and I can hear the chink of glasses, which, in the video, they then hurl off the edge, along with the bottle of vodka, which smashes on the rusty machinery far below.

I can identify Rose immediately, instead of shaking or crying she steps confidently onto the beam, and halfway across, to screams of horror and delight, swings into an easy handstand. Her dark hair brushes the beam, dangling into space. Oh my god…

The last photo shows a couple of lads, and my sister, posing for the camera, sticking out their tongues, giving a thumbs up. I wonder fleetingly what happened to the crying girl. Did she make it, or did she give up and climb down. No wonder Rose won that one. I will see her in my nightmares, caught in the glare of a security searchlight, silhouetted against the inky sky, laughing. Always laughing, especially when there was danger. Was my sister ever scared? Even that last time…

*

The party is buzzing, and to my vague surprise I am almost enjoying it, except for the small fact that it’s at Anita’s house. After the competition we hung out in the park, then Leo and I sort of drifted along with the mob, and luckily ended up right next to Ashley and Matt.

“What are they doing here?” Anita snapped, her straggling black hair cascading in ringlets, highlighting her scrawny too tanned shoulders.