I put my hand lightly on her shoulder. Nosipho doesn’t always like to be touched when she’s upset, so we all try to be sensitive to that.

“I know it’s hard,” I say, feeling inadequate.

She moves away from my hand. “How do you know? How can you know how I feel?”

“Okay, I don’t know, but I can imagine.” She paces in a tight circle.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m taking it out on you and it’s not your fault. You guys gave up your evening to come here with me. I’m grateful, really I am.”

“You don’t have to be grateful,” says Lael. “We also wish that Themba could have been here tonight. But there’s still lots of time. Maybe he’ll still come around.”

Like Jim did?

The question flits through my brain. Because that’s the thing. Sometimes boys don’t come around. In fact, most of the time they don’t. Sometimes they don’t ever face up to their responsibilities. Sometimes they just don’t care – or else they shut off that part of their heart that would let them care.

“Yes,” Nosipho says sadly. “Perhaps he will.”

Ms Waise calls us into her classroom the next day after school. This is the first time we’ve seen her since Lael
forwarded her the most recent diary entry. I expect her to look different somehow, but of course she looks exactly the same.
“Hi, girls. Thanks for coming. I found out something new about Jim Grey. I know you two are particularly interested in what happened to him, so I thought I’d share it.”

“Yes, please,” we say at once.

“Okay, so when my documents arrived from Vander-bijlpark, I found out some things. For instance, they included a copy of the death certificates for both of my birth parents – Jim Grey and Amelia Lucite. I am their only living descendant, so I am entitled to all their documents. Amelia died of bacterial meningitis, just as Mrs Backeberg said, but you must see Jim’s death certificate.”

She opens her desk drawer to take out a copy, while Lael and I almost fizz with excitement. At last! After all this time! The goal we have been aiming towards this whole term is about to be achieved. Death certificates always include the cause of death, don’t they? This will tell us how Jim died. We’ll find out the truth.

Lael and I almost pounce on it when Ms Waise hands over the piece of paper.

“Date of birth … blah, blah … place of birth … Male Caucasian,” says Lael. “Wait, here we are … place of death, Johannesburg. Cause of death … misadventure.”

“Misadventure?” I say, looking up. “What does that mean?”

“Well, that’s where it gets interesting,” says Ms Waise.

“Misadventure usually means an accident of some kind – something that you accidentally do to yourself.”

“So if you got into a fight with someone and that per-son killed you, that wouldn’t be misadventure?”

“No, that would be murder or culpable homicide. Why, what are you thinking of?”

“It seems as though the media suspected Amelia’s brother Jack for a while, but he had an alibi. There was a theory that he had gone to confront Jim for getting his sister pregnant.”

“Really? But they decided he couldn’t have done it?” “That’s what we found out. What would be an example of misadventure?”

“Like hiking in the Drakensberg and falling off a cliff. Or taking part in a pie-eating competition and dying of overeating. It’s when you voluntarily assume a legal risk, and then die from it.”

“He was sitting in the common room of Sisulu House,” says Lael. “It’s hard to imagine how he could have got into trouble like that. But obviously he did, because that’s where they found him.”

“But that’s not all,” says Ms Waise. “There is also a toxicology report that was done at the time of his death. It is a very faded copy, as though it was made on a photocopy machine that was running out of ink. There are things I can’t read, but have a look here. What word do you see written there?”

She turns the page towards us and we both have a close look. Ms Waise is right – this copy is so faded you can hardly see a thing. Plus, in the old days, people used to write in cursive with fountain pens, which makes no sense to me. I mean, if you wanted people to be able to read what you were writing, why would you even do that?

Lael and I practically have our noses pressed against the paper, trying to make out what Ms Waise is pointing to. Then we raise our heads at the same moment.

“Whisky!” we say.

“That’s right,” says Ms Waise. “I’m glad you agree. It looks like ‘whisky’ to me too. I wonder if they found a whisky bottle next to him? The report mentions his blood alcohol level. I just don’t see how…”

But Lael and I are not listening. We’re dancing around the classroom, going, “Whisky! Whisky! It really says whisky.”

Ms Waise looks at us like we’ve lost the plot. “Um … girls?”

“Sorry, Ms Waise,” I say. “Sorry. It’s just that…” “It’s a bit hard to explain…” says Lael.

Ms Waise folds her arms and gives us the teacher-eye. “Try.”

I take a breath. “Okay, well, it all started at the begin-ning of this term when we decided to set up some … equipment in Sisulu House.”

“You decided!” says Lael, throwing me under the bus without hesitation.

“We decided!” I glare at her.

“Okay, we.”

“What kind of equipment?” asks Ms Waise.

“The kind that is supposed to detect … um … unusual visitors, if you know what I mean? Like Jim, last term.” “You mean … ghost-hunting equipment? Like in

Ghostbusters?”

“Yes, but the reboot, because we’re girls.” “Goodness.” Ms Waise sits down at her desk. “And what did this equipment do?”

“Well, not much, to be honest. Except for this one thing that is like a ghost-writer or something.”

“Paranormal Automatic Writing Machine,” says Lael. “It picks up vibrations from, like, the ether, and trans­ cribes them into letters and words.”

“It’s gobbledegook most of the time, but a couple of weeks ago, it kept throwing up the same word over and over. We’ve been wondering what it means ever since.”

“Whisky!” Lael yelps. “The word was whisky!” “Really?” Ms Waise stares at us. “Of course, it might be a coincidence…”

“I think it means something,” I say. “I think it’s im-portant.”

“Why would a sixteen-year-old boy have been drink-ing whisky? He was underage.”

Lael and I manage to keep a straight face.
“Because that’s what boys do,” Lael says. “They do dumb stuff just because it’s there to be done. Girls do it too. We’re teenagers and sometimes our life choices are super dodgy. It’s like – I don’t know – we always believe we’re going to have a second chance.”

“I just wish I knew exactly what happened that night,” says Ms Waise.

I close my eyes and try to insert myself into that time more than fifty years ago. It’s night-time. It is dark in Sisulu House. All the girls have gone home for the holi-days. Wait, I mean boys. It was a boys’ hostel in those days. All the boys have gone home for the holidays. There are cleaners who come in once a day in the mornings, but apart from that, the place is deserted.

I’m not supposed to be there. I am out of bounds and could get into big trouble if I’m caught, but I don’t care because…

Okay, I’m not sure why not.

I have a bottle of whisky with me. I’m planning to drown my sorrows. I got it from … my father’s liquor cabinet? Maybe. I know I’m safe from being disturbed because this place is a ghost town at night during the school holidays. So, I sit down in one of the armchairs and I start to drink.

“Trinity?” says Lael. “Earth to Trinity. Have you fall-en asleep?”

My eyes snap open. “Sorry. I was just trying to visualise what might have happened that night. Could he have drunk so much whisky that he died? Is that even possible?”

“I’ve been researching that,” says Ms Waise. “It’s sur-prisingly hard to do. Your body forces you to throw up before the alcohol reaches toxic levels. Or you fall asleep, which puts a stop to the drinking.”

“What about people who fall asleep and choke to death?” asks Lael. “That’s a thing, isn’t it?”

“It is, but why wasn’t it mentioned in the press? That’s what I’ve been wondering. Why was it made into a big mystery?”
None of us can imagine what it was like living in that time when babies were legally snatched from their moth-ers, and teenage boys died without a whisper of a reason reaching the press. And that was in the white communi-ty. We all know that much worse things were happening to black people, and that those perpetrators were never held responsible.

A knock at the door makes us all look up.

“Hello, Nosipho.”

“Hi, Ms Waise. Sorry to disturb you. I was just looking for Trinity and Lael.”

“Not to worry. You’re not disturbing us. How are you feeling? You look gorgeous.”

Nosipho rubs a hand over her little bump. “I feel okay, thanks, Ma’am. I have much more energy these days, and I can concentrate better.”

“That’s good. They say the second trimester is easier. Your Vietnam essay was very good, by the way. You’ll see when I hand them back tomorrow.”

Nosipho’s smile is a mile wide. She is all about the marks, that girl.

“Thank goodness! I thought I might not have under-stood the question properly.” She turns to us. “I just came to tell you guys – you know that old diary you’ve been obsessed with all term?”

“Yes?” we say eagerly.

“There’s a new page open. You might want to go and check it out.”

***