Cover

Praise for

A MILLION THINGS

“An original and impressively assured debut. A gem of a novel.”

—Graeme Simsion, New York Times bestselling author of The Rosie Project

“Swept me into its thrall so immediately that I didn’t realize I’d been holding my breath until I reached the end. . . . Fresh and slim, this novel pierces like a bullet and soothes like a psalm.”

—Amy Jo Burns, author of Shiner

“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

Dedication

For Kevyn, whose quiet belief kept me going through the periods when mine faltered.

Twenty-five percent (which is still outrageous).

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?