The Thunderbolt Pony Page 2

  I know what it means now. Oncology is another word for cancer. That’s what they found in my dad’s spine when he went to see the doctor about the back pain he kept getting when he was milking the cows.

  Even when I knew the word, I didn’t really know what it meant. Looking back now, I feel unbelievably stupid because I had actually found it fun making those family trips from Parnassus to Christchurch each week. Mum and I would drop Dad at the hospital and then we’d go for lunch in Container City – which is the part of town where they have made all the shops out of these big shipping containers. They did it as a temporary thing because all the buildings were destroyed in the earthquake seven years ago, but then it remained and I kind of like it the way it is now. There’s a really good noodle bar in Container City so usually we’d have noodles and mostly we’d get takeaway noodles for Dad too for later.

  Things changed once he was on the ward and he didn’t get to go home. We’d still get him noodles but he never, ever wanted to eat them. He wasn’t hungry because of the medication he was on. Mum kept buying them anyway, even though he’d just leave them sitting there going cold beside his bed. By then the cancer had metastasised. That was another word I didn’t know. It meant it had spread, travelling from his spine to his liver and his brain. Me-tas-ta-sised – that word sucked all the air out of the room when they told Mum. She couldn’t look at me as we walked back to the car without Dad that day.

  I remember how, when she unlocked the car, she kind of crumpled over for a minute and didn’t get in. I had this lump in my throat that wouldn’t go away, and when I opened my door and sat down in my seat for some reason it seemed like the right thing to do to shut my door not once but twice. Then I did the same to my seat belt, buckling and unbuckling, doing it up twice too – click-undo-click.

  Looking back, I can’t tell you why, but from that moment on the way home from the hospital when I double-shut that car door, that was when it began. I did the same thing when I got out of the car at home. I shut the door and then opened it and shut it again. I thought Mum would ask me what I was doing, but she didn’t even notice. I guess she had other things on her mind. Anyway, from then on it wasn’t that I wanted to do it. I had to do it.

  Mum didn’t notice at home either when I shut my bedroom door twice. In the morning she told me off because I’d left my bedroom light on all night and I said I’d fallen asleep but really it was because when I went to switch off the light, I had this urge for making things even, just like the car door, and I found it impossible to only press the switch once so I had to switch the lights back on again, and off and on again to make it even, and then the lights were still on and so I slept with the lights glowing and my head buried in Moxy’s fur.

  Every time from then on, when I got in the car or entered my bedroom, I completed that double door slam and on the second swing as the lock clicked shut I felt this incredible release. It was like a rush to my brain, this surge of energy that felt solid and real, and in that perfect moment I knew that somehow my actions were making everyone that I loved – Dad and Mum and Gus and Jock and Moxy – safe.

  Double-slam, double-slam. I didn’t realise that pretty soon the urge for release would become my prison. That when I tried to stop doing things twice it would throw me into an anxiety attack that made me feel like a swarm of bees was invading my brain, the buzzing inside my head making me want to scream and curl up in a ball and disappear forever.

  As the rituals took hold of me over the coming months, I desperately wanted to tell Mum what was happening to me. I mean, I was so scared of my own mind, I really thought I was going crazy. But what if I was crazy? And what if Mum found out I was having all these weird thoughts and she stopped loving me? You know, they have mental hospitals where they lock up kids like me – I’ve seen it in movies.

  The more I thought about telling Mum, the more afraid I got. And the more I double-slammed those doors.

  I couldn’t tell Moana either, even though we were best friends at school. I told Moana once about how I’d wet the bed on school camp and she told Juanita Wanakore and she teased me about it all term. If I was going to tell someone, I had to know I could trust them to never tell another soul.

  I remember when I told Gus, he just held me with his eyes. I sat on the five-bar gate and I stroked his neck as I spoke and I told him everything. I knew he was really listening because the whole time his ears swivelled back and forth and his dark, liquid brown eyes were soft and sad and sometimes he wrinkled his muzzle. And as we sat there together, I very carefully did two tiny braids into his mane at the base of his neck by the wither. And that was when I knew that Gus was a part of my OCD too, and that I needed to do these two braids to make sure that Gus was safe. They would protect him, and even Jock and Moxy too.

  When I first got Gus, he came from a farm where he was in a big herd of horses. I thought maybe he’d miss having a herd, but when he came to live in Parnassus, it was like me and Jock and Moxy became his herd. With Gus and Jock, they have this real respectful relationship. Like, when we go for rides across the farm, Jock will always fall in at Gus’s heels and keep in time with his strides. Border collies are smart like that and Jock is super well-trained. He used to be a working dog until he got too old, and I can give him instructions and he does whatever I tell him.

  Moxy is the wild one of the group – she always runs ahead, being our trailblazer, sniffing and scouting the way. She’s intrepid for a cat. It’s in her breeding. Cornish Rex are real explorers. If you don’t know what they look like, well, they are almost bald because they have this crinkled-up fur like they’ve been shaved and the skin stretches taut so you can see the bones of her skull through it and she’s super-skinny with a long, ropey tail like a rat. I’m not making her sound very beautiful and I guess she’s not, but she is kind of amazing-looking, like the sort of pet an Egyptian princess would own.

  We paid almost a thousand dollars for Moxy, and Dad was furious when he found out because he said he could buy a good working dog for that and you can get kittens for free around here because people are always giving them away. You shouldn’t have to pay for them. But Mum said Cornish Rex weren’t like ordinary cats – they were explorers, more like dogs than cats in their way, and loyal like a dog is loyal, choosing just one master. Also she knew this lady in Christchurch who was a “cat fancier” who bred them and did us a cheap deal. She was a really odd woman – she kept her cats in cages and washed them in special shampoo and wouldn’t let you play with them and when you went round to her house it smelt of cat poo and all her furniture was covered in plastic.

  Dad soon changed his mind about paying for a fancy cat once Moxy chalked up the highest kill rate of any ratter we’ve ever had. She’s an amazing huntress. And she eats the rats too. Lots of cats will eat mice but not rats because rats taste gross, I guess, but Moxy swallows them down – she crunches up everything except for the fangs at the front and the tail at the back.

  Moxy is supposed to be my cat, but if she’s loyal to anyone it’s Gus. She thinks she belongs to him. Or maybe it’s the other way round and she thinks Gus is her horse. If I’m looking for her then I’ll find her out there in the paddock with him, curled up on top of his rump, purring contentedly.

  Gus was the only one I told about my OCD for a long time. In fact, I never would have told Mum at all. I was going to keep it a secret forever. The problem was, the OCD got worse. It got so bad I began to lie about stuff. Like, I would pretend to be sick and just stay in bed all day because I figured if I didn’t move, if I did nothing at all, then I didn’t need to do any of my rituals and I wouldn’t have to try to fight the urges inside me.

  Only Mum wouldn’t leave me alone. She kept insisting that if I wasn’t actually sick, I needed to go to school and do my chores. But the OCD made it impossible because I’d developed this complex world of chaos in my bedroom. It looked like a big mess, but it was all part of my plan and I’d lie in the middle of the floor like a statue with the lights as brigh
t as heaven above, unable to switch them off and trying not to think as the bees made my head fuzzy.

  One morning Mum came into my room. I’d had the lights on all night and when she left my door open and touched the light switch I started shouting. It all suddenly burst out of me like pus from a swollen wound.

  “Mum!” I began sobbing. “There’s something wrong with me!”

  It was Mum who looked up my symptoms on the internet and discovered I was OCD. The initials stand for Obsessive Compulsive Disorder.

  “Evie,” she said, “it’s going to be OK. We’ll find someone who can help.”

  That was what led us back to the hospital, following the blue line this time instead of the red. Once a week every Tuesday at four.

  We come here, to these familiar corridors with their weird, tainted smell that is a mix of antiseptic and blood, and every time I catch sight of that sign in the lift that says “Level 8: Oncology” I feel the tears well up and I get so mad at myself, and I tell myself not to cry. I tell myself all sorts of things. And I count my footsteps. One-two. Even steps between each floor tile, an even number of buttons that must be pressed when I enter the lift, and two whole glasses of water from the cooler in the waiting room before I enter Willard Fox’s rooms to begin our session.

  CHAPTER 3

  The Minotaur

  I still can’t believe Gus is gone. I stand beneath the bough of the tree where I tied him last night before I went to bed and then I walk round the tree again until I have done a full circle, as if this is some insane game of hide-and-seek.

  I shove my torch under my armpit to free up my hands so I can untie the remaining length of rope that he left behind. When I touch the frayed ends where the rope has been broken off, it makes me feel sick. Poor Gus! He must have been terrified to rip it apart like that. It would have taken such force! He must have pulled back like mad when the quake struck. Terrified and alone, desperate to escape.

  I work the rope free, prising it off with my shaky fingers, and all the while Jock stays with me and squashes so hard against my thigh I can feel his heart pounding through his bony ribcage. I lower my hand to his head and stroke his ears to soothe him with my own trembling fingers. He gazes up at me and gives this desperate whimper and we look each other in the eye and I know what he’s thinking because I’m thinking it too.

  “It’s OK,” I say. “We’re in this together and we will find him.”

  Anyway there’s no way we can make it to Kaikoura where the rescue boat will be waiting without him. And it won’t wait forever. Time is already running out. So we have to find him, and soon.

  But I don’t even know where to start, here in the dark in this paddock somewhere between Hawkswood and Ferniehurst, the remotest hill country of the South Island coast. No people for miles, no houses, no lights.

  I desperately want to go back into the tent and curl up in a ball and cling on to Moxy and stay in the tent with her and Jock. Then we could look for Gus when the dawn comes. But I can’t do that. I think of my pony out there on his own and I know he’s scared and he’s in trouble and I can’t abandon him to survive the night alone. Darkness or not, I’m going to find him.

  One thing on my side is that Gus is a smart horse. Back at home in Parnassus, when I fetch him from the paddock, I don’t need to go far because I can call him to me. So even out here in the middle of nowhere, I know that if he can hear me, he’ll come to me.

  And so I call him.

  “Gus!” My voice breaks in the night air and it sounds so frail I hardly recognise it.

  “Gus!” I try to be stronger this time. I need the sound to travel as far as it can for him to hear me.

  I don’t keep shouting. I pause for a minute and wait to see if he will whinny back to me. That’s what he does back home. Gus is clever. He’s always known his name. He knew it even before me, from the very beginning …

  ***

  “So you didn’t name him Gus?” Willard Fox asks me.

  “No,” I say. “He was already called that when I got him. You never change a pony’s name. It’s bad luck.”

  “And you’re superstitious about it, huh?”

  I raise an eyebrow, as this seems like a dumb question. I am superstitious about everything.

  “What sort of riding do you do with Gus?” Willard asks.

  “He’s really good at cross-country,” I say. We’ve jumped one-star fences at home, which is really big for a 14.2 pony. I think he’s good enough to make Eventing Champs.

  “His actual competition name isn’t Gus. It’s Pegasus. I just call him Gus for short.”

  “Pegasus!” Willard Fox exclaims. “Nice. Like the horse in the Greek myth?”

  “Well, Pegasus was white and Gus is kind of, well, he’s dapple-grey,” I say. “And so they’re the same except the Greek Pegasus had wings and he was born from the neck of the Medusa to be the carrier of thunderbolts for Zeus.”

  Willard Fox looks impressed. “So you know your Greek gods?”

  “We’re studying them at school.”

  I thought Willard Fox would be different from this. A psychologist should have a white coat or a stethoscope or something. Willard Fox wears a plaid shirt and jeans and his hair sticks up all scruffy and he’s got this smile that takes up his whole face. He gives me one of his big grins when he says, “You must be really upset to be missing school,” but I don’t smile back.

  “I’d rather be in school,” I say.

  “Really?” He doesn’t look at all offended, he just shrugs it off. “OK, cool. So this whole psychologist thing is all your mum’s idea, huh?”

  I don’t reply.

  “So why don’t you want to be here, Evie?”

  “Because,” I say, “I don’t even have OCD.”

  Willard nods. “Fair enough,” he says. “Tell me, why are you so certain, Evie, that you don’t have OCD?”

  I frown as I think about this. “Well, I don’t ever care if my hands are dirty.”

  Willard nods thoughtfully. “So that means you can’t have OCD, right? Because people with OCD are clean freaks, right? They wash their hands all the time and they keep things totally neat. And they say things like, “Oh, I simply have to keep the kitchen spotless because I’m sooooo OCD!”

  He waves his hands about theatrically as he says this and I can’t help laughing.

  He sees me laugh and he smiles too and his goofy little-kid grin takes up his whole face again.

  “Evie,” Willard Fox says, “it’s not about being a neat freak. There are lots of different ways to be OCD. So tell me about you. Let’s talk about what you do.”

  Then there is this enormous vacuum in the room where I say nothing for ages and Willard Fox just sits there and he says nothing too. And he waits and waits and when I speak at last my voice is all trembly.

  “I count things …”

  ***

  I shine my torch into the darkness in every direction but I can’t see Gus and I am just thinking I should give up when Jock, who is still glued to my side, lets out this low growl.

  “What is it?” I say.

  Jock growls again, and this time it’s in the back of his throat, and the growl gets lower and lower until it becomes a bark.

  Grr-woof, grr-woof!

  I put my hand down to touch him and realise that the hackles have risen up on the back of his neck. Does he sense that Gus is near or is it something else? “What’s up, Jock?” I ask him.

  The only time I’ve seen Jock act like this is when an aftershock is coming. And so I brace myself for the boom and the rumble beneath my feet, but then when it doesn’t come and he’s still growl-barking I know there is something out there. It must be Gus.

  Jock tenses up. He wants to go, but I’m worried I’ll lose him too! I grab his collar to hang on to him and he strains against my hand as I take the rope that I pulled down from the tree and I tie it on to him.

  A Border collie knows one hundred and sixty words. I remember Dad telling me that. I’ve alway
s wondered how many words Jock really knows. I know he knows my name, and his. I’m pretty certain too that he knows “Gus”.

  “Jock,” I hold his muzzle in my hands as I speak to him. “Go. Find. Gus.”

  When I let go of him this time, I feel the rope go taut in my hand and he pulls me forward with a lurch. I stumble to keep up and I train my torch beam on to Jock’s back so I can follow him. I’m surrounded by darkness except for his blurry black and white form that moves ahead of me through the void.

  The rye grass is long and damp from evening dew and I feel wetness seeping through above the top of my riding boots as I half walk, half jog to keep up with him.

  I can feel the anxiety creeping up on me, making my pulse race. I hope the braids in Gus’s mane have held. I can’t do anything about them now, but there are other rituals I can do. I could stop again and arrange the contents of my backpack to squash the anxiety back down. But I push through the fear and keep going, even though my mind is racing with thoughts like What if we get lost? Then we’ll never find our way back and Moxy will end up trapped in the tent alone and she’ll be stuck in there forever and she’ll starve and die …

  … and just as I’m running all the worst-case scenarios through my head and I’m about to lose it, Jock stops running. He freezes in front of me and the hackles on his neck stiffen straight up and he starts barking his head off. But when I shine the torchlight ahead of us, there’s nothing there!

  What is he going on about?

  “Gus?” I call out.

  “Gus!”

  I shift my torch to the left and there in the clean, white beam of light he stands facing us. His white face is dappled like the moon, dark eyes reflecting and unblinking.

  If I had hackles like Jock, they would rise on the back of my neck too. Because the eyes captured in my torchlight are not the ones I expected. The fur is grey like Gus, but the face is broader and coarse, and gleaming above his temples there are two sleek, hard horns, lethal and as highly polished as sabres, curving and sharpening to a brutal point on either side.