Grief Girl Read Free

nothing. I’m not moving, but everything inside is. I’m moving without moving.
    Uncle Steele’s just closed the door to Theo’s room. What does that mean?
    I can hear murmuring. Do they know something? Are Mum and Dad finally at the hospital or are they on their way home? I don’t want to know. What if it’s something I don’t want to hear? I don’t want to wait anymore, but while I wait, nothing’s changed. They’re both still alive and everything’s fine. What if I’ve waited all this time to hear something awful?
    They’ve found them. I can tell. Auntie Connie just made a terrible
Aaahhhh!
sound behind the door. She’s moaning and trying to muffle it. A kind of moan I’ve never heard before.
    No, no, no!
Take it back, God. Take it back. Turn the clock back. Don’t let it be.
I want to run but I can’t move. I lift my feet off the floor. Don’t ask me why, because I don’t understand it myself. I just don’t want my feet on the floor. They open the door. Auntie Connie looks pale. She’s speaking to Theo in Greek and Uncle Steele is walking toward me. He kneels where my feet were.
    â€œThey’re at the hospital. Your dad is in critical condition,” he says with his hands on my knees.
    â€œAnd Mum?” I ask, wanting, and not wanting, him to tell me.
    He just looks at me and I know.
    And I run.

Before
    T onight on TV they had people eating each other for dinner.
    A group of people were in a plane that crashed in the snow. After several days with no food, they were forced to eat the bodies of the ones who didn’t survive.
    â€œI’d do that for you girls, you know,” Mum announces. She’s ironing in the other room.
    â€œDo what?” I ask from my spot on the floor in front of the TV.
    â€œI’d let you eat me.” She pokes her head in. “If we were starving, I’d chop off my arm for you to eat.”
    â€œWouldn’t you then just bleed to death?” I ask, trying not to picture it. This is too much for an eleven-year-old!
    Now Dad’s listening to us and not the news for a change. “Nah, she could just stick her stumps in the snow and they’d freeze up nicely,” he says, smirking. “She’d have a couple of Popsicles for arms.”
    â€œDon’t play games, Ron. This is serious.”
    But Dad’s on a roll. “Maybe they could suck on your stumps for dessert!”
    Mum’s always talking about dying. About how she couldn’t live if something happened to Tracy or me. She prays God will take her first.
    â€œI couldn’t
eat
you. That’s gross,” I tell her.
    â€œWhat, you’d just chop them off and expect us to eat them? Just like that?” Tracy scoffs.
    â€œYeah,” Dad says in the breathless wheeze he gets from laughing too hard, “and once you’ve chopped one off, how will you do the other?”
    â€œGod, Mum, you say stupid things sometimes,” Tracy tells her. “Anyway, stuff like that doesn’t happen in Australia.”
    Mum looks hurt. “Look, you know what I mean. It’s because I love you. That’s what I’d do in that situation and that’s that.”
    Mum’s been this way ever since Nanny died. Nanny was Mum’s mum and was much nicer than Dad’s mean old mum, Grandma, who is still alive. As Mum says, “The good people always go first and the assholes live on forever.” When it comes to talking about Grandma, Mum stops being a lady.
    Nanny was as good as they get. At four foot eleven, she was like a little bread pudding. All warm and sweet and soft. Last year Nanny came to live with us. Actually, she came to die with us; I just didn’t know it at the time.
    She got breast cancer, turned yellow, and died. Then the ambulance came and Mum went to bed. She just lay there staring at nothing, shaking as if she were colder than cold. I thought she was going