Look Me in the Eye

by Jane Godwin

Genres: Young Adult; YA Social Themes

Synopsis

running late
drop it off without me
I type drop what off? I don't know what Mish is talking about.
While I'm typing, another message appears. don't tell bella
But I am Bella.

Best friends Bella and Connie live on the outskirts of the city in an area that was once full of open fields and paddocks but is changing as the suburbs creep closer. And now there is Mish, Connie's cousin, who has to be included even though she is unfriendly and unpredictable. The pandemic lockdowns have lifted and the three teens are eager to explore their newfound independence. But with the world opening up, there has been a rise in surveillance, from apps that track their movements to voice recorders and hidden cameras. It feels like everyone is watching them. But when does 'watching' become 'watching over'?

Do we have a right to know everything about those we love? Look Me in the Eye is a gripping tale of young teens navigating freedom and trust-building, privacy and secrets, in an era of parental surveillance.

'An important novel that rings true to life' BOOKS+PUBLISHING

Praise for Jane Godwin's writing:
'Fantastically tense in places, A Walk in the Dark is a great read for all kids ages 11 plus' Readings
'Refreshingly unpredictable, bold and refuses to minimise the complex lives of [its] characters' Saturday Age
'This book is a joy to read' CBCA Judges' report on When Rain Turns to Snow
'Quality storytelling . . . gripping' The Australian Women's Weekly

Release date: February 28, 2024

Publisher: Hachette Australia

Print pages: 256

Sample

I’m in the city, sitting on the steps under the clocks at Flinders Street station. It still feels strange to be allowed out. I’m nervous, as if someone’s going to tap me on the shoulder, tell me to put my mask on, to go home, stay inside.

I look behind me. No one there, only the CCTV cameras moving, silently zooming in and out. But that’s the thing. You can’t see a virus; it’s in the air. I might be the person breathing in that particular tiny particle at that particular second in time, and bang, I’ve got it. Covid. Or whatever new virus might come next. It’s because we’re too close to animals, we’ve taken over their habitat, and now it’s easier to pass illnesses from animal to human.

I mean look at Connie’s house. That whole area used to be paddocks, and before that, who knows, probably forest. There are still two big gum trees at the entrance to her estate. Their bark is smooth and almost pink. Probably the whole suburb was once those tall gums that smell fresh, like lemons. Connie lives in a small, brand-new house with a small, brand-new garden that has small, brand-new plants in it, but if you climb up on her back fence and look over, it’s still paddocks.

The fence seems pointless because behind it is nothing but flat, dusty ground. It’s a wasteland. Scrub. Thistles with bright purple flowers. There used to be horses. Connie and I fed them carrots. And Connie’s little sister June loved those horses so much. She was never scared of them, even when she was really small. Soon the land will be prepared for more streets, more houses. I don’t know where the horses have gone.

When you drive down the highway, there are huge billboards with new suburbs and pictures of families riding bikes by a lake, or playing golf, or having a picnic on bright green grass. Start Here, the signs read. Brookfield Lakes, Summerhill Rise, Come Home to Highville. Display Village Now Open. Land Now Selling.

But back here at the city station, I’m waiting for Connie. She’s coming in on the Upfield line, because they’ve been at the hospital. I’ve come in on the Werribee line.

Families walk past. Little kids skipping along, running ahead. No masks. Most kids look strong, with their small muscly legs and white teeth and big smiles. But they may not be. I think of June, who had Covid and still isn’t completely better. She’s in the high-risk group. Immuno-compromised. We have learnt a lot of new words.

The steps at the station feel cold. People say that these steps are heated but I’m not sure. Still, the sun shines on my back. How nice is that feeling.

So I’m standing up to look at the clocks, to see if Connie’s train has come.

My phone vibrates.

A text from Mish, our other friend.

Kind of a friend.

Running late

drop it off without me

I type Drop what off?

I don’t know what Mish is talking about.

While I’m typing, another message appears.

Don’t tell Bella.

But I am Bella.

Connie is very sweet. She will do anything Mish wants. Plus, Mish is her cousin. Their mums are sisters. Mish is nearly a year older than Connie, but she’s in Year Seven, like us.

We get to the statue right on two pm. It’s called Ophelia – a face made of tiny mosaic tiles, with huge green eyes and a wide red mouth. You might have seen it if you live in Melbourne. Ophelia’s mouth is closed, and she’s a wonky shape, like a Picasso painting. From far away it looks like a real face. Close up, its shape is strange. Distorted.

We wait. Two police walk by, a man and a woman. I suddenly think, Should I be wearing my mask? The rules have changed about masks, but it’s a habit. The police walk back past us again. Are they watching us? Are we breaking some new rule?

‘Do you know what the person looks like?’ I ask Connie. ‘Who you’re supposed to meet?’

Connie shakes her head, her ponytail swings. Her hair tie is elastic towelling, pale yellow. She puts on her mask, so that all I can see are her surprised eyes, her thick black lashes. I put mine on too; it makes me feel safer, less exposed. We got so used to wearing them. Our masks are matching yellow gingham because Connie’s mum made them for us.

We both check our phones. Nothing from Mish.

Connie clutches her bag with the envelope in it. The painted sunflowers fold in her fingers. Her nail polish is bright yellow too. I bet she did her nails with June. June loves manicures and pedicures. Connie’s bag is something a little kid might have. Not someone who’s nearly halfway through Year Seven. I bet her mum made it from leftover curtain fabric.

A skinny guy comes towards us. He hovers at the statue. He’s older than us, maybe twenty-something. He’s wearing black jeans and a hoodie with some metal band on it.

Connie edges nearer to him. ‘Excuse me,’ she says politely, as if she’s speaking to a teacher. ‘Do you know Mish?’

Her white T-shirt is bright in the autumn sun. Connie’s clothes are spotless, with no creases. They always look brand new, never a shirt that’s lost some of its whiteness, never a jumper that’s gone fuzzy with those little bobbles. Nothing frayed.

The sharp corner of the brown envelope is poking out the top of her bag.

The guy looks at Connie, then at me. He has very short blond hair. You can tell it’s dyed because it’s almost white, but his eyebrows are black, and he also has a bit of a moustache, and that’s black, too.

The police walk back again. The guy pulls his hood further down over his face and starts to walk quickly. He bounds up the down escalator to the restaurants and shops on the middle level of Southbank. The police don’t chase him, but then Connie walks in fast motion, away from the statue. I follow her. Then we run. I don’t know why we’re running. We haven’t done anything wrong.

We don’t run after the guy. We run across the road; we just get the lights. I pull my mask off. Connie does the same.

A man on a scooter bumps into Connie, making her stumble. ‘Watch it!’ he says as he zooms past.

The police don’t come after us. I mean, why would they? It’s not like running is against the law.

We sit on the bluestone kerb at the top of a laneway.

We’re both puffing. I see a lot of graffiti on the wall opposite. There’s a huge painting of Dustin Martin’s face, but someone has spray-painted over part of it in purple so it looks as if Dusty has a bruise over his eye and cheekbone. He stares at us. Connie puts her hand into her bag. She looks panicked, her dark-brown eyes even wider than usual.

‘What’s wrong?’ I ask. ‘What’s happened?’

‘I’ve dropped it. The envelope.’ Connie stands up, looks around, then down at the blue-grey cobblestones. ‘Mish will be mad with me.’ Connie peers into the bag. Puts her hair behind her ears, first one, then the other, which she always does when she’s nervous. She might be about to cry.

We leave the laneway and Dusty’s intense, staring eyes. We retrace our steps to the statue. Connie’s white runners are super clean; mine were white once, but not anymore.

We don’t find the envelope.

But now Mish has messaged us because she’s arrived at the station. So we return to the clocks, like time going backwards. I’m hot now; I’m sweating. Connie still looks neat and fresh and clean. But she’s frowning, her eyebrows pushing down, making a verandah.

‘Did you give him the envelope?’ Mish says as soon as she sees us. ‘At the statue?’

‘Yes,’ says Connie.

‘No,’ I say at the same time.

‘What?’ Mish looks angry already.

Connie’s arms cross her body, hands gripping, shoulders tense.

‘I dropped it.’

Mish turns to me, but I have nothing to add.

I keep quiet.

Mish messages someone while we stand at the clocks.

It’s hazy; the day is still. Every now and then I can vaguely smell smoke. There’s probably a controlled burn somewhere outside Melbourne. They do them at this time of year. Our shadows aren’t defined and sharp like on a clear day. Their edges are fuzzy and out of focus.

‘It was an accident,’ says Connie, ‘I’m sorry Mish, it was an –’

But Mish is already marching off.

She doesn’t mention the envelope again, so we don’t either.

We follow Mish into Sportsgirl. Mish gets some earrings.

We go to Koko Black. Mish gets cute little packets of chocolate.

We go to the sushi shop. Mish gets an iced tea.

I need to tell you something about Mish. You might have guessed it already.

She’s a shoplifter.

Addicted to shoplifting.

I thought that the pandemic might have cured Mish of her addiction because how can you shoplift when you’re in lockdown. But she still took stuff from the supermarket. And the chemist.

Cheap mascaras that she didn’t even need but were easy to hide in her pocket.

Cans of Coke Zero.

Lip balm.

Corn chips.

Chocolate.

Bath bombs.

A small, scented candle.

We walk around. Connie and I look.

Mish takes.

Watching Mish makes me think of a zombie – she moves slowly, as if she’s asleep to what she’s doing, even to what she’s actually taking. She wears a purple mask, and I wonder if she’s using it as a disguise. If she stretches the top and bottom, it covers most of her face.

She even takes a vape from a laneway shop. Peach Strawberry Ice. It looks like a USB.

We sit on a bench in the Bourke Street Mall. Mish takes her mask off.

‘Did you open the envelope?’ she asks me. Mish has a very quiet voice, as if she thinks someone is listening to her who shouldn’t be. Eavesdropping.

‘No.’

‘She didn’t, Mish,’ Connie tries to reassure her.

‘What was in it?’ I ask.

Mish doesn’t speak.

‘Was there anything in it? It was very light.’ I’m holding my hand out flat, as if I’m weighing the missing envelope in my palm.

‘Shut up,’ says Mish, and she opens her stolen Coke with a hissssss.

‘Why do we even hang around with her?’ I ask Connie once Mish gets off the train at her stop on the way home.

‘Mum says I need to include her,’ says Connie. ‘Until she gets settled.’

I feel like asking Connie if her mum knows that Connie and Mish have basically nothing in common, even though they’re cousins. They don’t even look alike. Mish looks heaps older than Connie, and older than me, too.

‘I hope she gets settled quickly, then,’ I say. ‘I don’t get why she’d want to hang around with us? Unless she wants to use us to distract shop owners so she can steal stuff.’

‘We used to spend so much time together,’ says Connie, looking out the grimy train window at the backs of houses. ‘We went on holidays together and everything.’

‘Yeah, I remember her from your birthday parties,’ I say. ‘But that was before Covid. When we were younger.’

Connie nods. ‘Then when Covid happened I hardly saw her, for like two years.’ The train makes a clacking sound, a song beat. ‘Now she’s a different person. I don’t think she likes me anymore.’ Connie frowns. ‘If Mish doesn’t like people, she spreads rumours about them.’

I wonder if we’re all different people now. I definitely think about the world differently. I don’t count on anything actually happening. Mum and Pete seem quite happy. They don’t go out much these days. Maybe this is just our lives now. We’re in a different time and place.

Connie and I live in a five-kilometre zone so we could go for walks together through lockdown. Sometimes we went to the dam; lots of us went there to hang out. Parts are fenced off, but there are holes in the cyclone wire that you can get through. It was like we were kids again; we put tarps between the trees and built cubbies. Some kids dived off the big rock into the water on hot days. It’s an old quarry; diving isn’t allowed because the edge of the dam is shallow in places. People made bike tracks with mounds and jumps. We climbed trees and sat in them with our phones.

‘Mish likes you more than she likes me,’ I say, because it’s true. ‘Even though you’re pretty different from each other.’

I’m hoping Mish doesn’t spread rumours about me.

I take my feet off the seat facing us in case the inspectors get on. I scroll through my phone, then gaze at the dry paddocks moving by, the half-made roads that go nowhere yet but will soon be suburbs. ‘What happened to her other group?’ I ask. ‘Who she hung around with when she first started? Danni and Bianca and them?’

Connie looks up from her phone. ‘Now her parents won’t let her see them. That’s what Aunty Ren told my mum. She’s forbidden to see them.’

Forbidden. The train slows down. What a final word. No ifs, no buts, no discussion. Forbidden.

‘Why?’ I ask.

‘Because they’re a bad influence. Uncle Mark found messages and videos on her phone and that was it; forbidden.’

The train pulls in at our station. We stand up, swaying, balancing.

‘What were the videos?’

‘I don’t know,’ says Connie. ‘Mum said they were “inappropriate”. Uncle Mark is really strict.’

We both jump onto the platform. I’m thinking that Mish herself is a bad influence. On Connie. On us. I wonder if Connie’s parents know that.

We touch off with our myki cards. ‘Mish probably only hangs around with us because she needs someone to sit with at lunchtime,’ says Connie.

‘But how would her parents know if she ignored their rule and sat with Danni and Bianca?’ I follow Connie up the ramp to the street. ‘You wouldn’t tell your aunty and uncle, would you?’

‘Oh but they would know!’ Connie stops, and she almost whispers to me. ‘They know exactly what Mish is doing all the time. They track her with their phones. On Life360.’ Connie speaks quickly, glancing behind her as if Mish’s parents might be tracking us as well. ‘They would have tracked her in the city today. Uncle Mark listens to her conversations.’

‘Really?’ I ask. ‘Can people even do that?’

Connie nods. ‘With a voice recorder. He put one in her school bag and for ages she didn’t even know about it. She told me at pony club. And he has spyware.’ Connie pauses, as if she’s deciding whether or not to tell me anything more. ‘Mish got into trouble at her o. . .