Chapter One

The Secret Life of Maeve Lee Kwong

Kirsty Murray

‘So, it’s time to talk to the dead!’ said Maeve.

In the moment before she pulled down the blind and flicked off the overhead light, Maeve caught her reflection in the night window. She looked pale and her long fringe brushed against her dark eyelashes. The safety pin that held the strap of her summer pyjamas had come undone and she smiled, the dimple in her cheek like a dark star. In the glow of the bedside lamp, Stephanie’s eyes shone with excitement but Bianca sat on a pile of doonas, her arms folded firmly across her chest, chewing the ends of her long blonde hair and frowning at the ouija board.

‘Haven’t you seen that old film The Exorcist?’

Maeve laughed ‘Hey Bunka, it’s okay. You could look cool with your head on backwards!’

Steph scrunched up her face, annoyed. ‘That film was such crap. Like, we’re not speaking to the dead. They’re just going to send us some messages. You know, they’re on ‘the other side’, sort of outside time, so they can see the future.’ She pushed the cushions and pillows away from the ouija board to make a clear space around it and sat crossed legged, her hands resting on her knees. Her blue eyes looked almost black and her pale, red eyelashes and eyebrows were almost colourless in the half-light.

Maeve and Bianca glanced at each other and tried not to giggle at how serious Steph was taking the game.

‘Turn everything off! It’s way too bright in here,’ said Stephanie. ‘No spirits are going to show with the place lit up like this. We need total darkness.’

‘How are we meant to read the ouija board if there’s no light?’ asked Bianca.

‘Candle-light, remember!’ said Stephanie. ‘Don’t tell me you forgot to bring extras, Bunka!’

Bianca rustled around in her backpack and pulled out two fat pink candles while Maeve gathered all the tea-lights that were scattered along her shelves and set them in a circle on the floor.

Bianca wrapped her doona around her head like a hood. ‘Oh mi God! This is so like something out of Charmed or that Wicca film. I am so spooked. I don’t know if I want to do this.’

‘Yeah, we might scare up some hungry ghosts,’ said Maeve.

‘Hungry ghosts?’ said Bianca.

‘They’re Chinese ghosts, spirits with tiny little mouths and great big stomachs full of fire and my grandmother reckons they are deeply pissed off with the living.’

Bianca let out a squeal and pulled the doona over her head completely.

‘Stop pretending to be scared,’ snapped Steph. ‘We have to concentrate.’

Moonlight glowed through the cracks in the curtains and a bright strip shone under the bedroom door. With the glow from the candles and light seeping in from so many other sources, it felt more like a fairy party than a séance.

‘I think I’ll turn out the hall lights,’ said Maeve. She tiptoed past her little brother’s bedroom, switched off the light that hung over the stairway and then hurried back to her room.

‘Hope Mum doesn’t spring us,’ said Maeve. ‘ She’ll definitely wreck the mood. She is a total sceptic.’

‘Better your mum than mine,’ said Stephanie. ‘At least your mum doesn’t believe in it. My mum would think we’d invited the devil into the house.’

Bianca giggled. ‘My mum would probably want to join us,’ she said. ‘She is such an old hippy.’

Stephanie set the ouija board between them and they wriggled in closer together until all their knees were touching. Maeve glanced through the list of instructions.

‘Where’s the planchette?’

‘The what?’ asked Steph.

‘It says here in the instructions that there’s meant to be a planchette that we all put our fingers on.’

‘Tim lost it on school camp. He said we can use a glass upside down. That’s just as good. But first we have to do something to invoke the spirits.’

‘Like what?’ asked Bianca. ‘If you’re planning some weird cult crap, you can forget it right now, Steph.’ She flicked her long hair over her shoulder and gave Steph one of her haughty, sneering princess looks.

‘Bunka, lighten up,’ said Maeve. ‘It’s only a game.’

‘It’s not just a game,’ said Stephanie. ‘You have to take it seriously, Maeve. We have to chant ‘power words’ to attract something into the room.’

‘Like “Josh Whitton is gorgeous, Josh Whitton’s a spunk”,’ said Maeve.

Bianca blushed and then covered her mouth to hide her smile. ‘He is totally gorgeous! I could so handle attracting him into the room.’

‘Get serious, will you,’ said Steph, miserably.

Bianca softened. ‘How about: Om mani padme hum,’ she said humming the last word.

‘That sounds like some sort of hippy chant.’

‘So, it’s still kinda magic. My mum says it when she’s meditating. At least it should attract a good spirit.’
Stephanie shrugged and together they all chanted the mantra.

‘Now, we all have to put our fingertips on the edge of the glass, like this.’

Stephanie centred the glass on the battered ouija board. Maeve wondered how it was going to slide across the board’s scratched surface. There were two arcs of letters, a row of numbers and ‘GOOD BYE’ written across the bottom of the board. In the top right-hand corner there was a picture of a crescent moon and ‘NO’ in big letters. In the opposite corner there was a smiling sun and the word ‘YES’.

For a long moment, they were all silent, waiting for something to happen.

‘Is there anyone out there?’ Stephanie tried to make her voice sound deep and magical, but she choked on the last word and it came out squeaky.

Maeve bit her lip to stifle the laughter that kept threatening to burst out. But suddenly the glass began to move.

‘Are you pushing it, Steph?’ she asked.

‘No, shhhhh…’

The three girls leant in closer as the glass slid across the ouija board to the smiling sun and the word ‘YES’.

Bianca caught her breath. ‘Are you a friendly spirit?’ she asked.

The glass began to move towards ‘NO’ on the opposite side of the board. Maeve wanted to snatch her hand away but it felt as if her fingertips were fused to the glass. She looked across at Stephanie, trying to decide whether her friend was guiding it or whether it really was moving of its own volition. Suddenly, the glass veered around again and headed back towards ‘YES’. They all sighed with relief.

‘Think of good questions,’ whispered Steph.

‘Who does Josh Whitton really like?’ asked Bianca.

The glass moved down to the letters on the ouija board and stopped over the letter ‘B’ then headed determinedly towards ‘I’.

‘You’re pushing the glass, Bianca,’ said Stephanie.

‘I am not!’

It took a few minutes for the board to spell out Bianca’s name .

Steph rolled her eyes and then leant forward, as if she were speaking to the board. ‘Will I be famous and find success as an actress?’

The glass moved quickly towards ‘Yes’. Steph smiled. ‘You ask next,’ she said, nodding at Maeve.

Maeve tried to think what to ask. She didn’t really want a boyfriend yet and she didn’t know if she liked the idea of being famous. She bit her lower lip, trying to come up with a good question.

‘Will all my dreams come true?’ she asked finally.

The glass began to glide across the board, circling the letters in the middle and then it looked as if it was going to dip down towards ‘GOOD BYE’. Maeve felt annoyed that she’d asked such a lame question. Now she wasn’t even going to get an answer. Suddenly, the glass started to twitch. It was as if two opposing forces were trying to move it in different directions. Maeve wanted to snatch her fingers away but before she could, there was a popping noise and the glass exploded beneath their fingertips.

Bianca screamed, the room was plunged into darkness and Maeve felt a slicing pain in her finger.

Steph leaped up and switched on the overhead light. Maeve held her hand up where a drop of red blood beaded on her fingertip. ‘Check this out. I thought it said it was a good spirit!’ she said shakily. ‘Tim told me sometimes things can go weird. He said his friend Damien got a bad spirit who told the séance about all the evil stuff that Damien had been doing behind everyone’s backs but… nothing like this.’

From the next room, Ned set up a wail. There were footsteps in the hall. Maeve quickly dropped her pillow over the board and the fragments of broken glass.

‘Is everything all right in here?’ asked her mother, opening the door and peering into the bedroom. She held Maeve’s brother on one hip, cradling his head against her shoulder.

‘Fine, Mum. We were just mucking around.’

‘You need to keep the volume down. You woke Ned. And it’s getting late, girls. You’ve all got dance in the morning so it’s time you switched off. I don’t want to have to come and tell you again.’

When the door closed, Maeve hurriedly picked up the board and tipped the broken glass into her wastepaper basket. No one spoke as they settled down into their makeshift beds.

‘Maeve,’ said Bianca, her voice small in the darkness.

‘Yes?’

‘Nothing bad’s going to happen, is it?’

‘No, nothing we can’t handle.’

There was a long silence and then Bianca whispered.

‘It’s okay for you,’ said Bianca. ‘Nothing freaks you out. But now I won’t be able to sleep worrying about what might happen. And what about tomorrow night when I’m in my own bed and you guys aren’t around to make me feel safe? Then I’ll be even more flipped out.’

Steph groaned and punched her pillow. ‘Now I can’t sleep either. Why do you have to be such a scaredy cat?’

‘I’m not a scaredy-cat. I just have a good imagination,’ snapped Bianca.

‘Okay,’ said Maeve, turning on her bedside lamp. ‘I’ve got an idea.’

She pulled open her bedside drawer, took out a pair of scissors and handed them to Bianca.

‘Friendship braids. That’s what we need. What we do, is braid a really skinny plait into everyone’s hair. That way, when you’re by yourself tomorrow night, you can wrap it round your finger and know that we’re out there. Sort of like a lucky charm.’

Maeve brushed her dark hair forward. ‘Cut,’ she said. The cold metal made her skin prickle. She flipped her hair back and sat up. ‘Did you get it?’

Bianca held up a tress of Maeve’s silky hair.

‘Cool. Now you let me cut some of your hair and then we’ll do Steph.’

Bianca knelt in front of them both, her long blonde hair spread in a fan across the pillow. Maeve cut a lock from the nape of her neck and held it up to check it was the same length as her own. Then she cut a strand from Steph’s thick, mane of red-gold curls.

‘Okay, Steph,’ said Maeve, ‘Sit down with your back to us and we’ll fix it.’

She set the three locks of hair in a row on her dresser and then divided them into piles. Maeve’s long hair was brownish-black in winter, but in summer, the sun touched it with red-gold streaks so that it glowed like rich, dark chocolate. Steph’s hair was a curly, gingery mane with bright red highlights all through the tangle and Bianca’s hair was white-gold. When they walked with their arms linked and their heads together, they made a perfect combination. Ever since primary school, everyone had joked that Maeve, Bianca and Steph were like a bowl of Neapolitan ice-cream; Balmain’s triple treat of chocolate, strawberry and vanilla.

They sat in a tight triangle, each braiding the two opposing colours into the other’s hair where the single tress had been cut. ‘See, now, no matter what happens, we’re tangled up with each other. Three in one and one in three. If you get scared, you know that you can always count on your best friends. Always.’