Rain May and Captain Daniel Read Online Free

‘Not that I expect to shop here — the prices were always horrendous. I think I might drive to Bendigo once a week. Well, I’m done in. I’m going to run a bath — you can hop in after me, Rain — that way we won’t waste any hot water.’
    â€˜You mean in the same water?’
    â€˜Yes, of course.’
    â€˜But Mum, all your skin will be in the bath. There’ll be a sludge of dead skin cells floating on the water.’
    â€˜I don’t think you need to worry about dead skin cells tonight. Just for one night.’
    She was right. There were worse things ahead. The house made so many unfamiliar noises that I couldn’t get to sleep for the longest time. And when I did finally drift off, someone thumping around on the roof woke me up and I screamed out wildly.
    â€˜It’s a possum,’ Mum called, ‘that’s all. Possums in the roof. We’ll have to get them out somehow. They can damage the wiring and wee up there.’
    I looked up at my ceiling. In one corner, right above my bed, was a round stain I hadn’t noticed before. ‘It’s done it,’ I shouted. ‘It’s peed above my bed.’
    â€˜Rain!’
    â€˜Mum, it has. It’ll probably leak down during the night. I’ll get possum pee in my eyes and up my nose. Please, please can I come in with you?’
    Mum appeared at my door. She was wearing her saggy, sleepy face. She peered up where I pointed.
    â€˜I don’t think that’s possum pee,’ she said. ‘I think that might be a rain leak, or something. Anyway, it’s not fresh. I wouldn’t worry.’
    â€˜Please Mum,’ I said, ‘I don’t like the night here. It’s too noisy. My heart is still thumping all over the place.’
    â€˜Noisy?’ she said. After the traffic on Sydney Road? Oh come on, then. Just keep your dead skin on your side, all right?’
    Mum’s room already smelled like home because she’d burnt some incense in her little brass burner. She had unpacked some books, too, and they lay on her bedside table as though she had been reading them all week. The room looked friendly. It had been waiting for her, I decided sleepily. Maybe the whole house had been waiting for us. Maybe it could be the best Maggie-and-Rain house just like Mum promised.
    I nearly got out of bed and changed my moving-day fridge poem, which was only small but packed in a lot of bitterness and had been inspired by the lack of pizza. I didn’t though. It was too cold out there in the middle of the night. I thought I’d get up early in the morning and change it before Maggie even noticed.
    I thought that maybe when Dad got sick of Julia and executive stress he’d come up and like the house so much he’d move back in. He and Maggie would fall in love again and watch television at night holding hands and kiss in the commercial breaks like teenagers and that would be really sick. Maybe Daniel has an older, gorgeous brother who would fall in love with me when I turn fourteen and we’d get married and open a groovy Brunswick kind of pizza place in Clarkson and everyone would say it was a great day for Clarkson when Rain May Carr-Davies-Gill moved in to town.
    Moving Day Fridge Poem
    me
cleaned out
homeless
girl
everything about me
decay
I am haunted
and asking
why
    Maggie’s Reply
    celebrate grass
    tree
    cloud
    no concrete
every day
can laugh
and will heal
we are secretly feline
our slow rhythms
flower brilliantly
    o crap
have a bath
    The Captain’s Log, Stardate 130901 —
Winter ’s End, Alpha Quadrant
    Counsellor Diana just informed Dr McGarvis to expect alien activity on Planet 7 tomorrow. New settlers are arriving. This is bad news as it means the back territory will be out of bounds again but good news as all change brings with it new potentials.
    The people moving in actually own the place — the old woman’s daughter, she said — rather