by Cotterill
I set the table, though I’m never sure if I’ve got the knife and the fork in the right spot. My hand is still a bit sore but it’s much better than it was and you can hardly see the white lumps. Mom is doing that thing she does when she’s stressed: rushing from one side of the kitchen to the other, opening cabinets and dropping things or burning herself on the stove and pretend-swearing (you know, like “sugar,” which is what grown-ups say when they don’t want to use bad words). Then she says, without even looking at the table, “Right, Darby, can you call the others?”
I go to the bottom of the stairs and take a deep breath. I have a loud voice when I want to use it. “DINNER!” I shout.
There’s no response but I wasn’t expecting any. In our house, you have to say something at least three times before anyone takes any notice. So I shout, “DINNER!” again, wait another ten seconds, and shout it a third time.
Sure enough, I hear Olly shout back, “All RIGHT!” and a thump of movement in his room. And I hear footsteps on the top flight of stairs up to Kaydee’s room, so I know they’re coming down too.
I can’t take my eyes off Kaydee and Lissa when they come into the kitchen. They’ve done makeovers on each other, and they look amazing. Kaydee has shiny green eyeliner, like a sort of peacock color, and it has tiny flecks of glitter in it. Her eyelashes have been curled and are thick with mascara, and her cheeks are faintly pink. Her lips are red and glossy. Lissa has the same kind of look but hers is even more dramatic, with purple eyeliner and dark plum-colored lips.
“Wow,” says Mom, blinking slightly. “You two look great.”
Olly glances at them, makes a sort of scoffing noise, and sits down.
“Is Paul coming in?” asks Kaydee. She’s never got the hang of calling Paul “Dad” because she remembers our first dad much more clearly than I do.
Mom shakes her head. “Too much to do out there. So much to tie down and prepare. Anything to protect the plants, he’s doing it.” She serves the food—beef stew with dumplings, one of my favorites—and hands around the bowls.
“Oh,” says Kaydee, suddenly looking horrified, “I forgot to tell you, Mom. Lissa’s vegetarian.”
There’s a silence. Mom looks baffled. “But we had sausages last time she came.”
“It’s recent,” Lissa says. Her purple-streaked hair swings forward, brushing her smooth cheeks. “I read a book about food production. It’s disgusting the way animals are treated. And breeding cows for beef contributes to greenhouse gases and global warming. If we all stopped eating meat, we’d be a lot healthier, and so would the planet.”
I stare at her. Lissa, as far as I know, lives on Pringles and Reese’s Pieces. “The planet isn’t a person,” I say. “It can’t be healthy.” And I give a giggle to show how silly Lissa is.
“She means the planet needs certain things to keep supporting life,” Kaydee says gently. “And the things that mankind does to it are damaging it.”
I blush and feel stupid.
Mom runs her fingers through her hair. “I don’t know what else we have.” She looks even more stressed. “Do you eat fish, Lissa? I’ve got some canned tuna.”
Lissa shakes her head. “Sorry, no. Have you got any cheese?”
“Yes!” says Mom, relieved. “Lots of cheese. Would you like to go and look in the fridge and see what you’d like? I’m sorry; I’d have made something else if I’d known.” She shoots a glance at Kaydee, who goes a bit pink.
“No worries,” says Lissa, skipping to the fridge. “I’ll have a cheese sandwich.”
“It’s not exactly a hot meal …” says Mom, but Lissa isn’t listening.
I eat an extra-big portion of my stew and enjoy every mouthful, though I notice that Kaydee only picks at hers. “I’m thinking I might become vegetarian too,” she says.
“That’s fine, Kaydee,” says Mom, in a voice that sounds like it’s not quite as fine as all that, “but we would need to discuss what you’d eat instead. You can’t live on cheese sandwiches.”
There’s a sudden gust outside and the window frame rattles, making us all jump. Lissa says a swear word (a real one) and then laughs. I look at Mom. Her face is creased up with worry lines. “It’ll be okay, Mom,” I say, even though I have no way of knowing if this is true. I lean over to give her a hug, knocking over an empty glass by mistake.
“Be careful, Darby,” Mom says, standing it up again.
“Sorry,” I say. “I was trying to hug you.”
She reaches over to hold my hand. “Thanks, love.” Then she sighs and gives me a tight smile, one that presses her lips together and doesn’t reach her eyes. “We’ll be all right. We’ve come through storms before.”
… the last time. It was February 20. It was really, really cold—so cold that I wore three pairs of socks when I was forced to go outside, and I had a pair of Hello Kitty hand warmers, the kind that heat up when you click the metal thing inside. The farm was smaller then, and Mom and Dad did everything themselves. Aunty Milly had to come and stay to look after me and Kaydee and Olly. She smelled of jasmine, which is a stinky smell, and she made me wash my hands all the time because she said I was picking my nose. I wasn’t—I was covering my nose so I didn’t have to smell her. But when I told her that, she yelled at me for being rude and she wouldn’t let me have any candy.
Mom and Dad were very stressed, and whenever I saw them they were too busy to talk to me. One time I clung to Mom’s leg and she couldn’t get out of the door, and she shouted at me and I burst into tears, and then she cried too, and then she hugged me, but she still went out to the farm instead of keeping me company. And Aunty Milly tried to hug me, but I threw up my dinner all down her back because of the jasmine smell.
Chapter 8
Dessert is cherry pie, my favorite. Lissa has seconds, with ice cream.
“What are you guys doing after dinner?” Mom asks.
“I want to watch a movie,” I say. I love movie nights. We have a big livinng room with squishy sofas, and we all get comfy with cushions and blankets and settle in.
Kaydee looks at Lissa. “What do you want to do?”
Lissa raises her eyebrows, and they both giggle.
“I’m busy,” Olly says curtly, which makes me jump because he’s hardly spoken all mealtime.
I feel anxious. “I want to watch a movie.” It is suddenly important. And it’s the only way I can think of to get Kaydee in the same room as me. I’ve hardly seen her since Lissa got here. “Please.”
Olly looks at me. “I’ll only watch if it’s something decent. Not Disney.”
I am disappointed. I love Disney.
“I’d watch Captain America,” Olly adds.
“Ugh, superhero movies are so boring,” Lissa says. “A load of men in tights prancing around saving the world. So sexist.”
“Did you know,” Kaydee says to us, “that women in superhero movies account for less than twenty percent of speaking roles?”
“Darby can’t watch Captain America,” Mom says. “She’ll get nightmares.”
This is probably true.
“Darby,” says Mom, “why don’t you go into the living room and pick three movies you want to watch? Then everyone can vote.”
The light above the table suddenly flickers and we all look up. It stays on. The window rattles in another great gust of wind.
I go to the sitting room and look at the DVDs. Then I bring three of my favorites back to the kitchen.
After a lot of arguing, we decide on Mamma Mia! “Go,” Mom says to us. “I’ll clean up.”
Kaydee and Lissa snuggle up under the big blanket on one of the sofas. Olly goes to the other sofa and puts his feet up on the coffee table. He’s brought his phone with him, and he’ll probably just look at that all the way through the movie.
“Have you got any popcorn?” Lissa asks.
“No,” Kaydee says, “we hardly ever have popcorn. The last time we made it, Darby lifted the lid to see the corn, and it popped all over the kitchen fl
oor.”
… the popcorn. Kaydee said I could help her. We put some oil in the bottom of the saucepan and tipped in the corn and turned up the heat. Kaydee put the lid on, and we waited to hear the popping noise. It takes a while to get going, but when it does, it sounds like there are fireworks going off inside. I really wanted to see the corn popping, so I lifted up the lid. Only I forgot to use the oven glove, and the knob of the lid was very hot, so I shrieked and dropped it on the floor, and it clanged loudly, and then all of a sudden the air was full of popcorn, bouncing out of the pan and landing on the floor. And Kaydee tried to pick up the lid but she burned her fingers too and then she got the giggles and so I got the giggles, and we were both scrambling around on the floor while popcorn rained down on us. And the dogs rushed in and started trying to catch it, and that just made everything funnier.
Remembering this makes me laugh all over again. Lissa looks at me oddly, like I’m weird. Somehow that makes me laugh even more.
“Darby, are you going to laugh all the way through the movie?” Kaydee asks, but she says it nicely.
I sit down next to Olly, still grinning. Lissa might have Kaydee for a bit, but she doesn’t share the popcorn story!
Chapter 9
We’re nearly at the end of the movie. Cherry, our black Labrador, is lying on the sofa with his head on my knee. Pike stuck his whiskery face into the room earlier and walked over everyone on both sofas before deciding he’d rather be somewhere else. On the screen, Sophie is about to not get married, and Donna is singing a song about winners and losers.
Then the TV goes off. And so does the lamp. And there’s a kind of PTCHOOO noise as all the electricity dies.
Three of us let out a wail. “Oh, what?!” complains Kaydee. “Not now!”
Olly jerks awake. “What? Has it finished?”
“The power’s out,” I tell him. As if to agree with me, the patio doors rattle really hard.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” he says. “This house is nuts.”
“It’ll come back on again, though,” Lissa says. “I mean, we just have to wait a few minutes.”
“Yeah, right,” mutters Olly, throwing off the blanket and getting up. “I’m gonna find a flashlight.” He bumps into the door on his way out and grunts in pain.
“Sometimes it can be out for hours,” Kaydee tells Lissa. “Chances are, we won’t get the end of the movie tonight. Or any lights.”
“Seriously?” I can hear Lissa speaking, but I can’t see her or Kaydee very well because it’s dark. “But it’s only nine o’clock. What are we going to do now?”
There’s a pause. “We could listen to music in my room,” Kaydee says slowly.
“Can I come?” I ask. I don’t like the dark. I don’t mind it if there are other people around, but I don’t like being on my own.
Somebody whispers something. Kaydee giggles, and then she says, “Well, yeah, but it’s okay if Darby comes, isn’t it?”
Lissa gives a sigh, and then she says, “We never get any time to ourselves, though.”
I can feel my eyebrows jump up my forehead. “You’ve had all day to yourselves!” I exclaim.
Kaydee says, “You can come, Darby. It’s okay.”
She knows I don’t like being alone in the dark.
Lissa says, “Oh, all right.”
Mom comes to the doorway. “You guys okay?” she asks. “Sorry about this. To be expected. Just hope the electricity can get up and running quickly. I brought you some flashlights.”
“Thanks,” I say, taking one from her. Flashlights make shadows, which are a bit scary, but it’s better than being in the dark.
“It’s bedtime, really,” Mom says. “Shall I come up with you, Darby?”
“We’re going to Kaydee’s room to listen to music,” I say.
Mom looks surprised. “Oh. Right … Well, that’s fine for half an hour, but then you need to get to bed, all right?”
“What about Kaydee and Lissa?” I ask.
“They should get to bed too,” Mom says, “but they’re older than you. They can make their own decisions.”
“I can make—”
“Darby, not now.”
“But I want—”
“Darby, I told you, you’ve got half an hour. Don’t waste it arguing.”
I let out a big huff, but I don’t argue any more.
Kaydee, Lissa, and I head up to Kaydee’s bedroom, trailing blankets from the sitting room. I keep bumping into the walls and doorways as I go, because it’s so hard to see, even with a flashlight. We have night-lights on the landing, but of course they’re electrical, so everything is dark. As we reach the landing, Olly throws open his bedroom door, which makes me jump so much I nearly drop my flashlight.
“I’m out of juice,” Olly growls. “Anyone got a portable charger thing for my phone?”
“I do,” says Kaydee. “But I don’t know where it is.”
“Can you look for it?” Olly asks.
Kaydee hesitates. “I dunno where to start. I suppose it could be under my bed.”
“I’ll look,” says Olly, starting up the stairs to Kaydee’s room.
“No!” Kaydee races after him. “There’s all kinds of stuff under there! I’ll do it.”
I follow the others up to Kaydee’s room. Kaydee is half under her bed with Olly’s flashlight. Only her bottom is sticking out. Her voice is muffled. “If it’s not here, then I don’t know where it is … and I’m not spending all night looking … it’s too dark to see.”
Lissa says, “I like the dark. We use too much electricity anyway. It causes light pollution. That’s why we can’t see as many stars as we should.”
I really don’t like Lissa. Everything she says is about how we’re doing stuff wrong. “Can we listen to music now?” I ask.
Olly doesn’t hear me. He’s staring at Kaydee—or what we can see of her. Which is mostly her bottom, in a skirt that’s stretched all tight because she’s wriggling on the floor. She looks very silly. I bend over and poke it.
“Ow! Darby, stop it.”
I laugh. “It was Olly.”
“It was NOT!” says Olly furiously, much louder than I was expecting. His face is all strange from the flashlight. “Forget it, all right?” He stomps down the stairs, hitting his head on the low bit of ceiling. “Ow.”
Kaydee wriggles out from under the bed. “What was all that about? I can’t find the charger. He’ll have to live without his precious phone.”
“Can we listen to music now?” I say again.
“Yes, okay.” Kaydee still sounds annoyed.
“Honestly, brothers.”
“He’s not even your real brother,” says Lissa as we climb onto the bed. “You’re not related in any way.”
“He’s been around long enough to feel real,” Kaydee says, and she rolls her eyes.
“Yeah,” I say, and I laugh. “He’s such a pain.”
Lissa cuts across me. “What are we going to listen to?”
“I’ve got loads of music on my phone,” Kaydee says. “Darby, you can choose first.”
“Can we have the strawberry song?” I say.
She smiles. “Sure.”
“Which strawberry song?” Lissa asks.
“It’s by the Beatles,” says Kaydee.
“The who?”
“The Beatles,” I repeat. They’re the boy band that Dad likes. When he first told me their name, I thought they were called the Beetles, and for ages I wondered if they all had six legs and antennae. Then he wrote it down for me and I saw that it was spelled wrong. I guess the people in the band didn’t know how to spell and it got stuck like that, and by the time anyone realized, it was too late to change it.
“Boy band back in the sixties,” Kaydee says to Lissa.
“Oh, them. That’s ancient music.”
“It’s still good,” I say, and then I stop talking because the song has started.
To my relief, Lissa doesn’t talk through the song. She really seems to b
e listening. When the song plays, it makes me think of rows and rows of strawberry plants in the sunshine, with their ripe red berries all juicy and ready to be picked, just like we have every year here on the farm. There are no faces in jars in this song, which is a good thing. Instead, there are words that don’t quite fit into the tune, which is how I feel sometimes. There’s an extra-crazy bit just when you think the song has finished and I almost like it the best because it’s saying, “Go wild! Run around in strawberry fields!” Or at least that’s how it sounds to me.
The three of us sit, warm under the blankets, with the flashlight making bat shadows on the walls.
When the song finally dies away, there’s a moment of silence. Kaydee has her arm around me, and her head is resting on top of Lissa’s. It feels as though time has stopped, and a part of me wishes that this moment could last forever.
And then Lissa says, “Is it my turn to choose now?”
Chapter 10
I wake in the night because of the noise. The wind is howling and the trees are whooshing and something outside is making a metallic dragging noise. Like a robot with an injured leg. Or a monster.
I lie under my duvet and listen, and I feel cold. I don’t like the dark, and I don’t like strange noises. I could reach out for the flashlight on my bedside table, but what if there is something in my bedroom too? What if, as I stretch out my hand, something grabs me? Or bites me? Or cuts my hand off completely?
I can’t move. The metal scraping comes again, and again. And then a pause … and then again.
Scrape … scrape …
I want Georgie. Georgie is a small giraffe I had as a baby. I took Georgie everywhere with me until I was seven and Mom persuaded me to leave her at home. Georgie is now under my bed, hidden away. Everyone else has forgotten about her, but I haven’t. I like knowing she’s there.
But I can’t get out of bed and feel around in the dark. I’m too scared.
My eyes are wide open, staring at the ceiling. I can’t cry. I can’t move my head. This must be what it’s like to be stone. You can’t move, not at all. Maybe stones feel pain. Or fear. No one would know, because they can’t tell you.