THE PSYCHOLOGIST’S room was at the general-practice clinic in town. It must have been his part-time gig — there were only a few psychology books on the shelf, but lots of medical equipment: disposable gloves, tongue scrapers, a blood-pressure monitor. The bright red-and-blue Lub Dub Goes the Heart anatomy poster on the wall above the examination table made my own heart go too fast. The psychologist invited me to take the chair beside his desk. Mum hovered at the door, and he asked her to leave.

‘Why do you think you’ve been sent along today, Sidney?’

I was staring at the bright-red aorta and had to ask him to repeat his question. Pay attention, Sid, or you’ll end up in an asylum like Esther, and Froggy’s niece. ‘The GP referred me because a fill-in teacher thought my story was weird.’

He nodded and smoothed his dyed-brown comb-over. ‘You did describe some weird things. Your narrator stepped outside of herself, heard voices, and could see time stretching.’

I smiled. ‘That’s just my imagination.’

‘And then everything turned grey. Do you feel grey sometimes?’ His shirt needed an iron.

‘I wonder what a psychologist would have asked Lewis Carroll.’

He picked up a pen and opened a notebook. ‘How’s school going?’

‘Pretty good.’

‘Good grades?’

‘I usually get A’s, except for that essay.’

‘Does that bother you?’

Lub dub goes the heart. ‘Yes.’

He wrote something in his notebook. ‘Make you angry?’

‘I didn’t start the fight at school.’

He looked up. ‘Was it over a boy?’

‘No. Well, yes.’

He nodded. ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

‘Not really.’

‘Bet you have a few?’

I didn’t like the way he smiled, and I ignored his question.

He cleared his throat. ‘How are things at home?’

I pulled my sweater sleeves down over my knuckles. ‘OK.’

‘Is it hard not having a dad around?’

‘Mum and I are fine.’

‘You two must be very close.’

Lub dub goes the heart.

‘And how have you been feeling emotionally? Happy? Sad?’

I shrugged.

‘Can you rate your mood out of ten, where ten is really happy, and one is as low as you could imagine being?’

I wanted to get away from that heart so I said, ‘Nine.’

‘Nine? OK. What kinds of things are you interested in?’

‘Reading, writing, my new kitten.’

‘Play any sport?’

‘I run, and do aerobics.’

‘So you have lots of energy?’

‘Yes.’

‘How about sleeping? Is that the same as usual?’

‘I’ve been having a bit of trouble sleeping lately.’

‘Staying up late?’

I nodded. He made more notes, and glanced at the clock on the wall. Nearly lunchtime.

‘And how about your appetite?’

‘OK, I suppose.’

‘Has your weight changed recently? Clothes looser or tighter?’

‘Not really.’

‘Do you think a lot about death or dying?’

I shook my head.

‘Have you been taking drugs or drinking alcohol?’

‘I’ve tried alcohol, but I don’t like the taste.’

‘Good.’ He selected a folder from a stack on the desk, and opened it to what I guessed was some kind of checklist. ‘Have you had any odd experiences recently?’

The heart poster caught my attention again while I considered the question.

‘Maybe things that have happened to you that other people haven’t had happen to them?’

I thought about the girl in the white dress, but that was just a dream. And I didn’t want to tell him about levitating.

‘Ever thought people were talking about you, or the TV or radio was sending you messages?’

I drew my eyes away from the blue right atrium and ventricle, and frowned.

‘These are just routine questions I ask everyone. Have you ever heard voices when no one was around?’

I remembered the jolts and flashing blue lights of shock treatment in The Bell Jar — I didn’t want that, so I shook my head.

‘Ever heard your own voice out loud?’

‘What, like now while I’m speaking?’

He smiled, closed his notebook, and, after a few more questions, picked up the phone receiver.

Shit, he’s calling the asylum. Lub dub, lub dub, lub dub goes the heart.

He asked the receptionist to send Mrs Madsen back in.

Mum entered in poor-little-old-me mode, wringing her hands.

‘Everything’s fine,’ the psychologist told her. ‘Sidney’s a very bright girl.’ He glanced at me. ‘Perhaps a little too bright.’

I widened my eyes.

‘I’ll be writing a report, of course, but I can tell you now that I don’t think she has any psychiatric problems.’

Mum smiled, relieved. Her smile turned upside down when the psychologist handed her a booklet on parenting.

The nature strip out front of the GP clinic was dead, but the street was shaded with leafy-green elms. Mum and I walked to the Fairlane without speaking.

Mum climbed into the driver’s side and stretched across to pull up the button on my door. She tossed the parenting booklet into the console and lit a cigarette. ‘What did you tell him?’

Lub dub goes the heart. ‘Nothing. Just answered a bunch of routine questions. Bet he gives a copy of that booklet to everybody.’

‘Do you want to go back to school?’ she said as we buckled our seatbelts.

‘No. Can you please take me home?’

‘I can’t stay with you. I have to go back to work.’

‘You heard Sigmund — there’s nothing wrong with me.’

She checked the mirrors, indicated, and pulled out into the street. ‘Have you got some homework to do?’

‘Yep. An art project.’

She did a U-turn, and headed towards Broken River Road.

I yawned, drowsy, dreamy, from the afternoon heat, as I cut out a death notice from The Adviser, and added it to my shoebox collection of death and funeral notices. Catsby circled my ankles. I had enough clippings now to start my collage. The flour-and-water glue I’d prepared in a mug was still warm; its texture was sexy, somehow, like the white stuff often on my undies. I shifted in my chair, and reached down to feel between my legs — yes, there it was again. Was it normal? My fingers lingered, slid inside. Ashamed, I quickly withdrew them, wiped the stickiness away with a tissue, and tossed it into the bin under my desk.

I dipped an old paintbrush into the glue, and coated it onto the back of a death notice. I stuck it inside the outline of a gothic house, which I’d copied from a picture of the mansion in Psycho.

My stomach growled, but I was denying it food, compensating for missing aerobics.

‘Aah–aah! Aah–aah! Harelip! Harelip!’ called Elton and Liberace. Barky barked.

I ran out of glue halfway through my death-house project. On my way to make more in the kitchen, Catsby stalked and attacked my feet. He almost made me stand on a crack in the foyer.

While the kettle boiled, I looked at the packet of shortbread biscuits in the cupboard, and then closed the door. I looked at the vanilla ice-cream slices next to my towel in the chest freezer, and then closed the lid. And opened it again. ‘Maybe just one?’ I said to Catsby.

I lifted out the box of ice creams, unwrapped one, and placed it on the chopping board. My mouth watered. I sprinkled the ice-cream slice with hundreds and thousands, and sandwiched it between two shortbreads.

Lub dub goes the heart. I couldn’t stop at one. I had another. And then another. The whole packet. I caught my reflection in the window — gorging like a wild animal, making a mess on the kitchen bench and floor of melting ice cream, hundreds and thousands, and biscuit crumbs.

I ran to the bathroom, fell to my knees in front of the toilet, and vomited. The hundreds and thousands swirled through the bubbling ice cream, pretty like confetti on snow.

<to the river walk walk>

‘Who’s there?’ I scrambled to reach up for the toilet button to flush. ‘Mum?’

There was nobody.

I vomited again, and lay down on the floor, resting my face on the brick hearth in front of the chip heater. I could see a square of black rubber levelling the right side of the washing machine.

Catsby stank up the bathroom with a shit in his litter tray. He kicked kitty litter everywhere, and then strolled out with his tail pointing towards the ceiling.

Barky coming in and starting to eat Catsby’s shit drove me to my feet. I yelled at him to get out, cleaned up Catsby’s mess, and returned to the kitchen to clean up my own mess. Catsby was licking melted ice cream off the floor.