They rode in silence for the next five minutes, and Michaela turned her attention back to the computer.

‘The options are endless,’ Trisha said.

‘What?’

‘I said, the options are endless. Here I was thinking we had bugger all choice about what we did next, where we went and so on, but all the time, we had all these options I never dreamed of.’

‘How’s that?’ Caro asked from the back seat.

Michaela answered. ‘The thing that having money really allows,’ she said, ‘are choices. If you have no money, your choices in life are severely limited.’ She twisted around in her seat and looked back at Caro. ‘Trisha’s just getting used to the idea, that maybe she won’t have to work in a diner all her life.’ She laughed.

‘You guys are really going to be together?’

Michaela and Trisha looked at each other. Trisha snaked a hand over and grasped Michaela’s.

‘Yes,’ they both said at the same time and laughed.

‘Cool,’ said Caro. ‘Don’t forget you’re taking me wherever you go.’

Trisha grinned. ‘What if we don’t go anywhere? You need to finish school, remember.’

Caro pouted. ‘I can go to school anywhere,’ she said. Let’s get out of boringsville.’

Michaela was thinking. ‘Come back to New Zealand with me,’ she said. ‘Both of you.’ She shrugged. ‘I have to go back no matter what. I really want you to come with me. We can decide what we want to do after that, but in the meantime, I have the orchard to run. It’s coming up summer at home, fruit season.’

Trisha was shaking her head. ‘Mom will never let us take Caro away.’

‘You’re not going without me – you promised!’ Caro looked totally alarmed.

Michaela spoke up. ‘No offense, Trisha, but it doesn’t seem like your mother is really worried about her daughter.’

Trisha tapped her fingers on the steering wheel.

‘She’s not around at the moment because you’re here. She can’t turn a blind eye to the way I am if you’re staying in the house. She cares about Caro.’

‘Not much,’ said Caro.

‘Enough not to let you move to the other side of the world. Or anywhere, for that matter.’

Caro had her arms folded. ‘I’m going and she can’t stop me. She’s hardly ever home and we all know it. I’m sixteen in five weeks and what’re a few weeks? She’s not going to do anything when she knows I’d just pack up and leave the day I turn sixteen anyway.’ Caro sat back, a determined look on her face.

Trisha glanced around then back at the road. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘We’ll argue about it later, all right? We’ll work something out, I’m sure. Now, are we almost there?’

Michaela looked out the window. They were surrounded by farmland. A grassy ditch ran on each side of the road and beyond it were paddocks, some with cattle, others showing the stubble from freshly harvested crops.

‘Where are we?’ she asked with a laugh.

Trisha pointed to the map. ‘You’re the navigator.’

Michaela picked up the map and scrutinised it. ‘Wouldn’t have a clue,’ she decided after a minute.

‘Useless,’ Trisha said with a shake of the head and a quick grin. ‘We’ll be there in about an hour.’

Michaela nodded and looked out the window again. It looked a lot like home, she decided. The land was fertile, good farmland. She startled and saw a hare leap out of the ditch and dodge under their wheels. There was no bump, maybe they didn’t hit it. She shrugged and turned to her computer again. This time no one interrupted her when she clicked open the program and brought up the recording made by the video camera in Caro’s room.

It was strange. Michaela fast forwarded through the ten or so hours of recording, then went through it again. And a third time. By now, Caro was leaning forward again, watching with interest, and the same puzzlement on her face that Michaela felt.

Trisha looked over. ‘Well?’ she asked.

‘There’s nothing on it,’ said Michaela.

Trisha frowned. ‘What do you mean nothing? Didn’t it record properly?’

Michaela slowed the recording to real time speed and watched. ‘It recorded,’ she said. ‘But it didn’t record anything.’

‘What are you talking about?’ asked Trisha. ‘That doesn’t make sense.

Michaela tried again. ‘I mean it recorded, but the picture is just black. Just darkness.’

Caro was watching from the back seat. ‘Stop it there a minute, Michaela,’ she said. ‘Go back a tiny bit and play it in slow motion.’

Michaela played it slowly forward, squinting at the screen. ‘That’s a bit freaky,’ she said.

‘What’s a bit freaky?’ Trisha asked, trying to see the screen despite the fact she was driving.

Caro answered. ‘It looks like faces,’ she said. ‘Just faint faces in the darkness.’

Michaela replayed it again. ‘They are faces,’ she said. ‘And they’re not just faces, they’re our faces.’

‘From when we were in the room, right?’ asked Trisha.

Michaela shook her head, then realised she had to answer. ‘No. Not from then. The faces are looking right at the camera. We never did that. In fact the camera shouldn’t have caught our faces at all, not the way it was positioned. And it doesn’t show the lights going on and you getting Caro out of her bed or me checking the wardrobe or anything.’ She paused. ‘It doesn’t show anything that happened. It’s just blackness except for the one bit where you can just make out our faces like shadows in the dark.’

‘That sounds scary,’ Trisha said, a trace of nervousness in her voice.

‘It’s horrible,’ Caro said from the back seat. ‘I don’t like it. Turn it off Michaela, it makes me feel weird, like I’m going to be sick or something.’

Michaela was feeling the same. Her stomach was churning and sweat broke out on her forehead. She felt nauseous.

‘Turn it off, please,’ Caro said.

‘Pull over,’ Michaela told Trisha, snapping the screen of the laptop down on the eerie footage.

Trisha raised an eyebrow but pulled over. Michaela stumbled from the car and bent over in the tall grass. She’d only had coffee for breakfast but that and half her stomach lining ended up on the ground. And then she was dry retching, suffering suddenly from vertigo and feeling like the world was spinning out of control under her feet. 

The car door opened and Trisha was beside her. She reached a hand out and found support. She steadied herself against her girlfriend and rested her forehead on Trisha’s shoulder.

‘Oh my God,’ she groaned.

‘Are you okay?’ Trisha asked.

Michaela wiped her mouth. ‘Need to sit down, babe.’

Trisha led her to the open car door and lowered her onto the seat. Michaela stuck her head between her legs and groaned again. Caro was sitting on the grass beside the car, looking pale.

‘Are you all right?’ Michaela asked her.

‘Queasy,’ Caro replied. ‘What’s going on?’

Michaela shrugged, still with her head down. She straightened up and caught Trisha’s concerned face. She tried a sickly grin.

‘I’m okay honey,’ she said. ‘Don’t think my legs are ever going to support my weight again and half my internal organs are over there in the ditch, but I think I’ll live.’

Trisha looked at her. ‘If you can make a bloody speech like that, then I have to agree with you. You’re definitely going to live. But what the fuck caused this?’

Michaela shook her head and ran a hand over her face. Her skin was clammy. ‘The recording,’ she said. ‘Got a huge case of vertigo watching it.’ She turned to Caro. ‘Same with you?’

‘Yeah. I was watching it then suddenly felt like the world was collapsing in on itself or something.’ She shook her head. ‘Made me feel sick.’

Michaela tucked her feet back inside the car. ‘Let’s go, shall we? Time’s wasting.’

Trisha gave her one more look then helped Caro back up and into the car.

‘Do you think we should turn back?’ she asked.

‘No.’ Michaela placed the laptop on the floor out of the way of her feet. ‘No, I think we should keep going. Visit this mound. See what there is to see.’

Trisha got in behind the wheel. ‘What if there’s nothing to see?’ she asked. ‘Do we even have the slightest idea what we’re doing?’

No one replied. Trisha sighed, shrugged and started the car. She pulled out onto the highway and drove down the road.