Sketching hearts on the doors of bathroom stalls at school, furtively coupling with someone else’s initials in there. 4 ever. Like stealing jujubes from the Mac’s Milk. Phoning a random number and hanging up. When Virginia was 10, a little girl disappeared from an apartment block. Was wearing a striped t-shirt and blue shorts, and had a Kermit the Frog purse slung over one shoulder with enough money in it to buy a litre of milk. Four feet nine inches tall, 80 pounds, straight brown hair to her shoulders. A neighbour remembered seeing her by the kiddy pool in the middle of the complex at about 1:15pm, and then one of the other kids from the complex saw her waiting at the red light on the corner, definitely before 1:30. The guy who had been working in the mini grocery that day where she would have gone to get the milk, only fifteen metres from the corner crossing, didn’t remember seeing her at all. She was a few years younger than Virginia, and her classmates said she was Smart and Nice. And her mother, single, pleaded on television to the person who took her to please bring her back.

Then there was another little girl, maybe a year later, 12 years old. She ran for her school’s track team and she was really good they said. Someone called her on the telephone while she was home alone on a Saturday. The person on the other end of the line must have said something like, ‘I work for the Star. I’d like to take some photographs of you and some other kids down at the track. Will you meet me there?’ And she must have said yes because she put on her runners and her track shorts – possibly red – and her maroon and gold school shirt and left to meet him for 3pm, leaving a note saying: a man wants to take pictures of me for the Star. Gone to the track.
And that was the end of that. One of Virginia’s friends knew someone who lived on the same street as this second girl.

Virginia remembered a birthday party. A bunch of girls playing broken telephone around a table covered in cake crumbs and paper cups. The girl who lived on the same street as the second missing girl was at the party, and Virginia wanted to sit next to her. Wanted to be her friend and not necessarily ask her about the missing girl, but maybe get some sort of idea, an image or feeling or sound or anything, of what the missing girl was like.

Virginia grew up on a street with uneven sidewalks, grass growing out the cracks. (It was among these cracks that she first discovered caterpillars.) Broken glass sparkled in the gutters. A patched road and clusters of leggy pines on the large front yards. Lots of kids lived and played there, made tracks over the unkempt lawns. Virginia nearly cracked her skull once, when her mother took the training wheels off her bicycle. The Heaths lived two doors down. There were eight kids in that family. The oldest one had a boyfriend and once they French kissed in the garage, and the other kids stood outside on the driveway while one of them pressed the button to open the garage door. And as it slowly opened, the audience squealed first at the two pairs of legs, then four arms held awkwardly around two parted waists, then two pairs of lips pushing up against eachother like a traffic jam.
Virginia had sleepovers with Rosanne who lived at the end of the lane. This house, way back in Virginia’s memory, before she was old enough to have sleepovers and her world never wandered more than a couple of feet from the smell of her mother, this house had a balcony.

And Virginia thought the balcony was heaven.

But later she grew up to be six years old and became friends with the little girl who lived there, and they had sleepovers. The Heaths didn’t like Rosanne. They made fun of her and her little brother Ben, because when it was time for them to go in at night, their mother would stand at the back door, under that same balcony that Virginia once thought was heaven, and scream for them to come inside: “Rosanne! Little Ben! Rosanne! Little Ben!” And the Heaths, as well as Virginia and her older sister Amelia, would mimic the calling, in catty, drawn out tones. Then laugh like fiends as the two kids, Rosanne with a podgy bum and Little Ben always dirt encrusted in the snot under his nose, would run down the laneway to their mother. He was called Little Ben because his father was Big Ben.

Virginia ate dinner with Rosanne’s family once. Her mother was tired and spooned the food onto their plates before she sat down herself. Fed Little Ben with a spoon, even though he was five years old. He glared at her, chewed his spaghetti and let half of it fall to the table. Rosanne said, “Little Ben is a spoiled brat. He breaks all his toys.”
“Don’t call your brother a spoiled brat Rosanne,” her mother said. The house smelled. It smelled like people on the bus who hadn’t washed in a while. And when Virginia looked closely, she could see dirt in Rosanne’s black hair, down the part in the middle of her head where the braids hung on either side. Big Ben came home when they were almost done their food and picked up Little Ben, threw him over his shoulder and made him spit up the spaghetti that was in his mouth. “Ben! He’s eating for fuck sake!” said Rosanne’s mother, chasing the two around the dining room, orange wallpaper.
“He’s fine. Who’s this?”
“I’m Virginia.”
“Virginia’s sleeping over Big Ben,” said Rosanne. “She sleeps here lots of times.”
“I’ve never seen you before,” he said. “Pleased to meet you.” He held out one hand, nearly dropped Little Ben on his head. Virginia took his hand and shook it hard, as her mother told her that was a good way to make friends. “Are you enjoying your spaghetti?”
“Yes.”
“Dad, let me down,” Little Ben’s little voice cracked from behind his father’s back.
“No.”
“Let me down!”
“Nope.”
Little Ben started pounding his father’s back and then Big Ben let out a screech, dropped Little Ben on his head. “Fuckin’ hell!”
“What the hell did you do that for?” Rosanne’s mother screamed, dropping on her knees over Little Ben, who lay on the floor with his knees up to his chin, his hands over his scrunched up eyes. He cried silently with his mouth open wide, snot falling over his strecthed lip.
“The little bastard bit my ass!”
“Well you should have put him down!”
“Let’s go up and play,” Rosanne said to Virginia, grabbed her by the hand.
Upstairs in the playroom, the floor scattered with bits of broken toy, Virginia felt disrupted.
“Your parents swear a lot.”
“What do you mean?”
“They use the ‘f’ word a lot.”
“You mean fuck?”
“You’re allowed to say that?”
“My parents say it all the time. I can say anything I want.”
“I’m not aloud to say that ever. Or the ‘s’ word either.”
“What’s the ‘s’ word?”
“I can’t say it.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s dirty. It means poo.”
“You mean shit?”
“Rosanne!”
“Poo shit fuck! Poo shit fuck! Poo shit fuck!”
“Stop it!”
“You’re such a baby. I dare you to say the ‘f’ word.”
“I’m not allowed.”
“You’re in my house and I say you’re allowed. Your parents will never find out.”
“I don’t have to if I don’t want to.” Virginia said this and looked around her. A Tonka truck lay wheeless at her feet. A Barbie, hair butchered, lay naked in the corner, with red marker pen as a stab wound at her heart, like an explosion in a child’s drawing. She didn’t want to be there anymore.
“Say it,” Rosanne said, and grabbed Virginia’s forearm in a tight pinch.
“You’re hurting me!”
“Say the ‘f’ word or I’ll hurt you more, and I’ll let Little Ben kiss you.”
“Fuck!”
“Say it three times!”
“No!”
Rosanne twisted harder.
“Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”
Rosanne let go of Virginia’s arm. “See? I knew you could say it. You’re such a scaredy cat.”
“But I said it three times.”
“Only because I made you.”

That night in bed, they decided to play boyfriend girlfriend. They turned to eachother in the dark and Rosanne said, “Let’s kiss like boyfriend girlfriend,” and Virginia said, “Okay.” And Rosanne said, “We have to use our tongues.” And she did. But it was more like biting. Rosanne’s mouth was wet and warm and soft, and she stuck her tongue in and out quickly, and bit Virginia’s lower lip. So Virginia mimicked the action, thinking Rosanne had done it before, since it was her idea. Virginia felt the kinkiest thrill. Too young to know what kinky was, or to even be able to associate what she was feeling with anything else, she felt bold and wrong and aroused. And then without knowing why, she felt repulsed, and turned her back. Slept on the edge of the bed that night and felt sick in the morning.

Virginia’s sister Amelia was two years older. It was just the two girls and their mother, Dawn, and they liked it that way. When Virginia was six and had her first kiss with Rosanne, Amelia was learning to play the piano. The piano sat in a small room in the house, just off the bathroom, with a south-facing stained-glass window. The sun shone in on Amelia as she practised her scales, leaving her in a shadow of firey ruby, saphire, and wet-leaf emerald. In between practising her Grade One songbook, Amelia played The Rose, and the theme song to The Young and the Restless. The piano was old but in tune, worn around the edges and some of the keys were browned and cracked like old toenails. The attic stairs came down opposite the door to the piano room, and Virginia listened from there, sometimes sitting, sometimes lying on her stomach, feet above and arms resting on the floor.
“Play The Rose again Amelia,” Virginia said.
“I’ve already played it twelve times you goof.”
“Play it thirteen times.”
“Thirteen is bad luck.”
“But this is the song I sing when I think about my boyfriend.”
“You don’t have a boyfriend.”
“My imaginary boyfriend.”
“So what does he look like?”
“He’s Poncho from Chips.”
“That’s gross!”
“It’s not. When I think about him, I pretend I’m stuck in a well. And nobody can get me out, and I’ve been in there for days. I’m hungry, and also I have noomonia.”
“You would die if you had noomonia.”
“I’m almost dead but then Poncho makes this special machine that he can go into the well, and he goes down and when he sees me, when he sees how sick I am, he just… kisses me.”
“And then what?”
“I just do it all over again. I get stuck again and he saves me again. And kisses me.”
“Does he use his tongue?”
“Of course.”
“That’s gross.”
“You think everything is gross. Please play The Rose.”