NATALEE A few months later. I’m not a girl
anymore, no longer a body to be dumped. I’m a water body. My hair seaweed, my
legs driftwood, my fingers sea anemones, my face an aquarelle. Who can still
recognise me? It’s me, Natalee.
My fingers, they were holding on to something but I can’t remember what.
There’s a woman on the beach, a psychic. The same beach. She sees things no one else sees. And my mother pays her a lot of money and there’s also a man, another psychic and they both see things other people can’t see and together they look for traces and they begin somewhere, a startingpoint. They’re sitting in the club where I started drinking and they drink what I was drinking. Their lips ask what I asked. They are psychics, after all. They get a message from high up: something with bits of fruit and rum. They know what I had to drink. Their fingers run along the bottles and stop at what I had been drinking. They’re grabbing bottles off the shelves, of what I drank. The cameras register everything perfectly: something with bits of fruit and rum. They speak with the dead, but me they can’t hear.
PSYCHIC I can hear you, Natalee.
NATALEE The words roll out of their mouths, what I have been drinking, the words I have been speaking, every action, my every action, they retrace everything I did that night. The viewing figures are huge. I am a hype.
PSYCHIC She was dancing.
The psychic starts to dance.
She was dancing, typical for a girl of her age. She was just having fun. She was not flirting. She was not asking for anything bad to happen to her. She didn’t see it coming.
NATALEE I’m the biggest flirt in the western hemisphere, but okay. Nobody listens to me.
TEACHER She was a model student, says her highschool teacher.
FATHER Nattie, her father says.
NATALEE Daddy. I love you, daddy.
MOTHER I couldn’t have wished for a better or sweeter daughter, says her mother.
NATALEE My mother, why is my mother crying? Don’t cry, mommy, it’s alright. I’m not gone. I am here. I am something. I am something, a water body.
They’re going to try and recall the evening when I disappeared. All eyes are on them. They’re going to solve the mystery. They are going to tell us what happened to me.
And the man on the television stresses: this can happen to you too. Besides being a psychic he believes he has an important role as an educator.
MAN A lot of the time young people
aren’t aware of the fact that any situation that seems fun and safe at the time
can all of a sudden change violently.
ONE MOMENT YOU’RE HAVING FUN AND THE NEXT MOMENT YOU’RE IN A DANGEROUS SITUATION. YOU’RE
EXCLUDED
FROM THE GROUP. YOU’RE ON YOUR OWN. PEOPLE ARE SAFER IN GROUPS. ESPECIALLY GIRLS. BAD THINGS CAN HAPPEN TO GIRLS.
BEWARE GIRLS!
DON’T THINK
THIS CAN’T HAPPEN TO YOU. DON’T THINK THIS ISN’T ABOUT YOU.
NATALEE Why am I an example? I don’t want to
be an example. Certainly not this
example.
PSYCHIC We can’t warn people enough.
NATALEE A bit late for me.
MAN One minute you’re having fun and the next you’re away from the group and you find yourself in a world of pain. Take Natalee...
NATALEE I had very different plans. For myself.
SEM She wanted to feed the sharks, she said.
NATALEE I wanted to see the sharks. My exact words.
SEM There’s always a line like that. A catalyst.
© 2008, Gijsje Kooter
© 2009, translated by Alexander Peterhans