A Million Things

by Emily Spurr

Genres: Coming of Age; Literary Fiction; Women's Fiction

Synopsis

Rae is ten years old, and she's tough. She's had to be: life with her mother has taught her the world is not her friend. Now suddenly her mum is gone and Rae is alone, except for her dog Splinter.
Rae can do a lot of things pretty well for a kid. She can take care of herself and Splints, stay under the radar at school and keep the front yard neat enough that the neighbours won't get curious. But she is gnawed at by fear and sadness; haunted by the shadow of a terrible secret.
Lettie, who lives next door, might know more about Rae than she lets on. But she has her own reasons for keeping the world at arm's length. When Rae finds out what they are, it seems like she and Lettie could help each other.
But how long can a friendship last when it's based on secrets?
Tender, funny, heartbreaking—A Million Things is a story of grief and resilience, told with eloquent simplicity. In brave, spiky Rae, Emily Spurr has created a character you will never forget.
“An original and impressively assured debut. A gem of a novel.” GRAEME SIMSION
“Poignant, uplifting and beautifully written.” CATHERINE JINKS
“Direct, assured writing, hard-hitting emotion and a wonderful sense of optimism. A Million Things is a debut to treasure, with characters whose dignity shines through their struggles.” JOCK SERONG

Release date: August 24, 2021

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 304

Sample

The First Days

 

Silence isn't really silent.

 

It's not loud, exactly. But it sits under things, making the little sounds stand out: my heartbeat in my ears, the sharp echo of the kitchen clock, the fridge humming. I move, and the rustle of me fills my head. Splinter laps water from his bowl. His eyes tell me when it's time to eat. Alarms go off when it's time to wake.

 

Sleep, wake, eat, school, home, homework, dinner, TV, sleep. Wake.

 

Time goes weird. It keeps tripping over itself and dropping things. I stand in one room and then I'm sitting in another, but how I got there is gone.

 

And something grows. Pushing into my head. Something else.

 

Day 14

 

Saturday

 

The smell eventually drifts into all the corners of the house. It's got to the point I can smell it from the lounge room. A heavy stink, seeping weighty and liquid, bad enough to drag me up from sleep.

 

At first, before I moved to the couch, I tried sleeping in your bed, wrapped in your duvet, one of your T-shirts pressed to my nose. Each breath in taking a little more of you, till all your scents were gone. Till only the warm, swampy smell of dog and the nothing smell of me were left and your pillow held only the shape of my head. Then this new smell started to invade.

 

It's time to clean out the fridge. Your meal, the last one you didn't eat. I heated it for you, had it sitting on the bench, and it was still there when I went to bed. So I covered it in plastic and put it away.

 

I know I should chuck it out. It's going moldy, growing life of its own. Releasing spores, probably, that are landing on every other thing in the fridge. But I don't.

 

I imagine you bursting through the door and asking, What the hell is that smell? And then, looking at me: You're nearly eleven! Why didn't you throw it out, for Christ's sake, why didn't you give it to Splinter?

 

He follows like a shadow. My Splinter, my pup, my scruffy gray stretch of mutt. I trip over him, wake to his breath on my face. He sits with his big dog head resting on my knee. I look at his brown eyes, lean my face into his and inhale the familiar humid breath, the scent of dog biscuits and bones.

 

I woke to Splinter's nose in my face that day too. That first day. The room was cold, colder than usual cold. I looked into your bedroom: the bed was made. Into the kitchen, and the back door was open. The air stung my cheeks; I puffed experimentally and I could see my breath. There were leaves on the floor. I couldn't see you in the backyard but I knew you were there. You'd have shut the back door if you'd gone out somewhere. I remember looking at the clock: seven. On a Sunday morning. It was still gray light outside and there was no smell of coffee. I went out, saw the big-shed door ajar. I pushed it open.

 

And in that second our house vanished. I stood, feet in the grass and nothing but blackness behind me.

 

There was a breeze. It's funny how air's just there. You don't notice it. Looking at you, I could feel it touching my face, the pressure of it on my skin, the tickle as it lifted a hair off my cheek, as it shifted ever so slightly, making the rope creak.

 

The back door slammed and the sound sent a familiar shock up my spine. Or it would have if I'd been standing in my body rather than slightly to the left. The alarm chik chik chik of a blackbird exploded in my ears, too loud and too sharp. I could hear the grass growing.

 

My ears have always been sensitive to you leaving. Each time you'd go, noises muffled and sharpened and silence got loud. I'd stand still, trying not to breathe, waiting for the door to open and for you to come back through it. The silence you left after you grabbed the keys from the bowl on the table and slammed out the door would stand like a person beside me. The bang made me jump every time. Even though I knew it was coming. Knew from the second your eyes lost focus and tightened and you stopped seeing me and saw only this thing ruining your life. You'd shout, grab those keys and stalk to the door, and bang. And I would jump.

 

I cried, when I was little. But you'd come back. My nose would squish into your shoulder, your arms around me and the warm smell of you in my whole head. The knot in my tummy would loosen and melt with the tingle that ran up my neck into my skull as you stroked my hair and made my eyes close. It almost made the before worth it.

 

You just got angry. It just was-like the weekends you'd get sad and stay in bed-and I stopped hiding under the duvet, stopped crying about it. The shock of the door would go through my spine but I'd stay where I was. I'd be still and Splints would sit on my feet and we'd wait. My heart racing. Sometimes you'd be back before we moved, my toes warm under his bum even as my legs went numb from the standing. Other times you wouldn't, and Splinter would move. Or I would. I'd do my homework, or clean up, or fix whatever it was that made you snatch up the keys this time.

 

Sometimes I'd flip through the fat blue dictionary, looking for the right word for it, the feeling inside. Agitated was almost right, but it didn't quite fit. It matched the chill of the tiny bubbles popping in my chest but not the stillness. Aimless felt close: floaty. I floated, but I always had something to do. When it was summer we'd go outside and I'd cut the grass. Or weed the veggie patch you liked in theory. And sometimes we'd just lie in the sun, Splinter's big head on my lap, and I'd watch the swirling red behind my eyelids. I guess I was ambivalent. But that wasn't right either because it hurt, you being gone. I never did find the right word.

 

Then you'd come back. You'd pull me into your chest and squash my nose into your shoulder and everything would be okay. I was used to that. Used to the nipping worry of not having you here. Used to the little voice that said maybe this time was different but knowing it wasn't. Knowing you'd always come back.

 

Now I don't know what to do.

 

But I suppose you're not really gone, not properly. Not if I know where you are.

 

That morning I closed the door to the shed and opened the back door and went inside. I walked through rooms that were all surface, my knees bending at the wrong time, each step ending in my hips as the floor happened too soon.

 

I climbed under my duvet.

 

My breath was warm under there and slow, like the ocean.

 

After a while the room was close to dark and Splints's big head rested on my leg, the weight of him making my toes tingle. Sometimes he'd lick his nose and sigh. I stayed where I was. When it was very dark a paw thumped through the duvet onto my arm. He whined.

 

I got up, shut the back door and fed him.

 

The next day I went to school.

 

So, here I am. Here. Not here.

 

Everything's here and not here.

 

You.

 

The house.

 

Me.

 

I don't know what anything is anymore.

 

Day 15

 

Sunday

 

When the fridge is clean there's nothing to distract from outside.

 

I've left the washing on the line and it's gone stiff and crusty and no longer flutters in the wind. I think it'd snap if I folded it. I use the clotheshorse in the kitchen instead. There's not much washing anyway.

 

I take your debit card and buy things. Bread, milk, cheese, eucalyptus spray, incense sticks, lavender spray, mosquito coils, three sonic oil vaporizers, ten bottles of essential oils, a large bottle of bleach, gaffer tape, some fruit, dog food, pot noodles and toilet paper.

 

 

The old lady next door sits on her porch and watches me lugging stuff home. Watching, pretending sheÕs not, looking over her teacup. I walk past like sheÕs not there. Like everythingÕs normal.

 

I hold my breath and stuff rolled towels under the shed door. You're a smart kid, use your brain. I tip the bleach on the towels.

 

The incense sticks I place around the back door, on the outside. The smokiness works its way inside anyway, making Splinter sneeze and leaving me with a stuffy feeling and a dull ache to either side of my nose.

 

I gaffer the window and door cracks of the old shed. I don't look in.

 

I'm glad of the cold.

 

I set up the oil vaporizers inside. One next to the front door, one next to the back door and one in the kitchen. The oils have names: Energy, Sleep, Breathe Easy, Stress Relief . . . The instructions say to add five to seven drops at a time. I add twenty. They go for up to ten hours. I'll fill them every morning, when I get home from school and before bed. They'll just keep going.

 

The house isn't too bad now, if you don't mind rose geranium, peppermint and lavender. And that other smell, heavy underneath.

 

I watch a show about sharks, one with scary music. I stare at the giant mean-eyed, sharp-toothed fish as a diver opens packets of something yellow and oily-looking. The sharks jerk away and disappear into the camouflage of sea so quickly I have to look at the diver to check it's not in fast-forward. The biggest predator in the oceans and the smell of one of them dead makes them flee.

 

Their disappearing act almost makes me laugh. It's not really that funny, though.

 

Day 21

 

Saturday

 

It's just getting worse. Now I can't go in the kitchen without gagging. I light more incense sticks and keep the vaporizers topped up. I hold my breath, and I go out and tip more bleach onto the towels at the door. I don't think about what I'm doing.

 

I tape the kitchen windows shut.

 

We leave the TV on and go out for a long walk.

 

Day 22

 

Sunday

 

Splinter's not coping too well with being locked inside so much. I've started to let him out the back for longer sessions-more than just a quick wee or poo. At first I tried keeping him on the lead to do his business, but he'd look at me with his brown eyes, and I got the point. I always found it hard to go when you were standing in the bathroom doorway telling me to hurry up. I don't bother with the lead now. If he's not on the lead I don't have to stand with him, and it's cold out there. Colder than the rest of outside.

 

I ignore the hole he's dug near your shed door. I ignore the small dark shapes he chases. I know what they are. That first night, one of them came crawling through the back, wiggled its way

under the house and clawed up through the wall, between posts and plaster. It popped out an air vent and scrabbled down into the lounge. I didn't see it, but I know it happened because while I was sleeping it crawled up on the bed and climbed inside me. I woke with it in there, nipping and shifting, scratching and clawing. Eating away.

 

I stand at the window and watch for Splints. I don't like him chasing sharp-toothed shadows. What if he catches one? What if he eats it? Everything eating everything. I don't think about that. I stand not looking, just watching so I'll know when he's ready to come in.

 

The grass is getting long. I've watched it grow, not looking out the window waiting for Splinter, and it's nearly halfway up your shed door now. I can't see the towels stuffed at the bottom anymore. It's all long and straggly, lanky, like it's working to make your shed disappear. The thistles are getting higher too; spiky, like the creepers in my head when you used to read Briar Rose.

 

I like that things are growing out there. It means it's different every time I open the door.

 

Splints doesn't seem to mind the jungle. He's made himself a nest near the back door. He chases imaginary things, small furry bodies that barrel away from him as he jumps over the top of the grass. He's like a wildcat, or a gazelle if gazelles were gray and goofy-looking. I watch him bounce around. There's a tiny bit of sun. A little dribble of bright in the middle of the yard. It draws insects out. I thought they'd all be sleeping, or dead, but give them a little bit of sun and here they are. Especially the flies.

 

Splinter's licking my foot. I look down at his furry eyebrows twitching at me. He collapses on the floor with a huff. I check the clock. I've been watching the insects for over an hour.

 

How long would it take for them to start running the world if we all just disappeared?

 

Not very, I reckon.

 

Day 23

 

Monday

 

I wake as usual to the cold pinching my face. The TV is muted but the screen lights the room, chasing away the shadows from my sleep, with their pointy teeth that rip and bite, and eyes that shine in the dark. Now it's TV light and the sound of my tight, frosted breaths.

 

My heart settles. The house is cold and all the quiet things are loud. The fridge, the clock, my breathing, Splinter's. He sleeps on the couch with me. I don't put him out at night.

 

I swing my feet onto the floorboards. Every morning for the first week your digital alarm cube came on at seven, spilling voices into your room. I'd fumble, my fingers searching over the smooth surfaces for the spot to touch that would turn it off, slipping over its pretend-wood surface. It's actually glass and hard plastic, which is why I was surprised it didn't smash when I threw it against the wall. Your room's not that big, so it didn't go far; didn't even unplug. But it doesn't go off at seven anymore. It says 11:11 and blinks madly, like it thinks it's still keeping time; 11:11: blinking, like it hasn't been destroyed. Some mornings I go in just to watch it blink. I bend down and run my fingers over the display, the hairline cracks barely registering on my skin. The quiet it left is louder than I thought it'd be.