Lost for Words

by Alice Kuipers

  I said, “Where’s your skirt from? It’s nice.”

  “I cut it up from an old dress.”

  “What old dress?” My stomach sank.

  “A green dress I found in the wardrobe.”

  “Whose wardrobe?”

  “I don’t know.” The phone rang. She was already on her way out of the room.

  I waited for her to finish talking to whoever it was, listening to her grating cheerful voice, each word sticking itself into my ears like a cotton bud pushed too far. When she got off the phone, I bounded from the sofa and grabbed a hold of the skirt. “What wardrobe?”

  “Get off me! Get off!” she yelled.

  “That’s MY DRESS you’ve cut up! My favorite dress.”

  “It was too tight on you anyway.”

  I slapped her cheek and she reeled back. “You cow,” she said. Even as she said it, I knew I’d gone too far, but I couldn’t stop.

  “What’s your problem, Emily?” I screamed at her. “You can’t bear something not to be yours. I loved that dress and you knew it.”

  “You looked like a tart in it.”

  “No, I didn’t,” I yelled. “You’re just old and you can’t wear a dress like that anymore.”

  She tried to get away, but I had her backed against the wall.

  I screamed, “I didn’t look like a tart in it! I looked totally great in it, which is why you had to cut it up. Right?”

  “I don’t know why you’re so stressed out. It’s better as a skirt. You can borrow it if you want.”

  I hated her at that moment. I wanted to slap her again, but I knew it wouldn’t make me feel any better. I wanted to spit in her face. I said, “I wouldn’t touch it if you paid me.” Then I backed away and started crying.

  “Come on,” she said, “it’s only a dress. I’ll get you another one.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Take the stupid skirt. You can have it.” She pulled it down and stood in her white knickers in the corridor. I walked into the living room and turned up the TV insanely loud. My blood was pulsing in my body. I kept thinking about her face as I hit her, the red mark on her cheek, the way she stood in the corridor in her underwear holding out the skirt. I stayed sitting on the sofa with my arms crossed, waiting for the rage to die down.

  Now I can’t even believe I got angry about it. It seems so stupid.

  MONDAY, APRIL 3RD

  Mum came into my room just now. She sat on the edge of the bed and told me a friend of hers was coming over a week from Friday. She said she’d be really happy if I could be there. I could tell from her voice that she was nervous but also kind of excited. I remembered how she’d been going to that support group and how she had tried to talk to me a couple of times recently. And now here she was sitting on the end of my bed smiling. What was going on with her? I lay there and flung my arm over my eyes.

  She said, “Are you all right?”

  “I didn’t think you’d even noticed.”

  “That’s not fair, Sophie.”

  “What’s fair about life, Mum?” I said. I squeezed back the tears that were fizzing up.

  I thought for a moment she was going to put her hand on my shoulder and I thought for a moment she was going to make it all better so I could say to her, “I miss you.”

  Except she said, “I don’t know what to do, Sophie. I really am trying. I know it’s not good enough. I know I haven’t been doing very well.”

  Even though you’d think what she’d said would have made me feel better, it didn’t. It was like I went crazy. Like the right numbers had been rolled into the combination lock and I was opened up. I sat suddenly and yelled at her to get out. I told her I didn’t want to meet her stupid friend and I was sick of us pretending. Mum’s face went slack. The light faded from her eyes. I hadn’t realized until it was gone that she’d had light there because it’s been so long since she’s looked happy. I’d just made her miserable again. I couldn’t stop though; I yelled, “You don’t care about me!”

  “I’m sorry, Sophie,” she said. “I’m doing my best. I promise. I’ve been going to a support group to try and get myself together. I know how hard this is—”

  “You never have time for me. You never even see me. And now you have a friend coming over and everything is supposed to be FINE?” I could hear how horrible I was being. And then I caught her look. I said, “Your friend is a man, right?” Even as I said it, I was hoping she’d tell me I was wrong.

  She looked down and then looked back up at me, tears in her eyes. She said, “Please, Sophie. He’s just a friend. And I have been trying, I have, but I don’t know how to make this better.”

  What was I supposed to say to that? I couldn’t make things better. It was my fault in the first place. It was my stupid shoelace. I was on the far side of the bed from her and tears leaked out of me. I said, “You have no idea what it was like. No one has any idea what I live with EVERY day.” Then I started screaming, “Get out! Get out!” I told her again and again to get out, but I stopped yelling it. My voice became quieter and stiffer. I repeated the words, frightening myself. She gave me the saddest look, but she left. I took a deep breath. Fear clambered over me like a body trying to get out of a grave. My heart slammed, my breathing became choked, I cried silent tears. I got into bed and lay there shaking. I thought I was going to die.

  TUESDAY, APRIL 4TH

  I pretended I was going to school this morning. I’ve never done this before, but I was feeling too shaky and weird to go in. I left without speaking to Mum. I waited on the other side of the road from our house, not knowing what I was doing. It was warm, and little yellow flowers are poking through the scratches of earth by the straggly trees on our road. I could smell blossoms and hear birds singing. I was dizzy with panic, and I wasn’t really sure what I planned to do with the day. Luckily Mum came out after a while. I wondered where she was going, but when I got inside, there was a note in case she got back later than me saying she planned to go food shopping and clothes shopping and then over to Highgate church.

  Indoors, I shut out the liveliness of spring. I thought it would be really quiet, but houses without people in them aren’t quiet; they’re more creaking and breathy, like they have personalities of their own. I wondered what sort of personality our house has—sort of melancholy and lost, I’d think. The wooden floor varnished by Mum creaked as I brushed past the dresser with the old phone on it (so old it has a dial). The mirror reflected me walking past, and I was shocked at my pale, wrecked appearance. I fingered the big dark circles under my eyes. The hanging plants over the door to the living room needed watering, but I didn’t get the watering can. Instead I stood looking at all the books in there, the paintings on the wall that Mum did years ago. I tried to recall when it was that she gave up painting. I remembered then that she used to play the saxophone when I was little; she used to play and Emily and I would mock her and beg her to stop. And she did stop at some point. I couldn’t remember when I’d last heard her play. If I’d known it was the last time, I’d have begged her to play on.

  I climbed the stairs. I stopped at Emily’s door, pushed it open, looked at her things laid out like they always had been. I fell to my knees, this sound coming out of me: the howl of a wounded animal. I clutched my stomach and doubled over. The pain did not go away. I could not stop crying.

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 5TH

  Ms. Bloxam, all sweaty with her hair falling around her chubby face, lumbered up to me at break today and said OUT OF THE BLUE, “How are you dealing with the whole thing?”

  She said “the whole thing” like it was a thing under the bed. Weird word thing. All words are weird if you keep using them too much. Weird is a weird word.

  Considering Ms. Bloxam usually looks like she’s about to have a heart attack and has a bulgy, googly-eyed thing going on, she actually looked SO sympathetic, I couldn’t believe it. I felt like crying and then I felt like running out of the room or throwing up, but I just stood there and nodded.


  She said, “Are you okay?” She has really long red nails that she must spend ages on every few days, maybe even paying for manicures, despite the fact the rest of her looks swollen and awful. Her expensive perfume wafted over me. I looked at her fingernails and then back up at her face, thinking I was going to tell her that I wasn’t okay, not really.

  She was glancing at the clock. She was obviously too busy to hear how I really felt. I said, “I’m fine.”

  She nodded and said, “You’re doing well.” Then she went out of the room, and I stood there, shaking. I went into the bathroom and tried to calm down. I thought I was going to throw up but I didn’t in the end.

  I could imagine Ms. Bloxam in the staff room having a cup of tea and a doughnut, thinking she’d been good to me and feeling all pleased with herself. But she didn’t do anything, not really. Then I felt bad for having such mean thoughts; she’d only been trying.

  THURSDAY, APRIL 6TH

  Oh my God. Lucy Haywood’s dad, Mark, had a heart attack. He was playing squash, and he just keeled over. Mum and I are going to the hospital now to see if he’s okay. He’s not dead but it sounds pretty bad. If I was sure there was a God, I’d have this to say to Him right now: “STOP MESSING EVERYTHING UP FOR EVERYONE!”

  Mum let me miss school—she didn’t know it was the second time this week—and spend the day at the hospital. Normally she wouldn’t, but—and she said this—considering everything that’s happened to us and how supportive the Haywoods have been, we might want to be there for them. This morning the doctors really thought Mark wouldn’t make it, and then there was a long operation. We spent all day bringing them tea. Mum held Katherine’s hand.

  Mum was so supportive and nice. Like a mum. And we didn’t mention the most recent fight we’d had or anything. I brought her two cups of coffee, and she smiled and said, “Thank you,” and she looked like herself. Then FINALLY the doctor came out and said Katherine and Lucy and the twins could go and see Mark. Mum stepped back and—no one saw except me—she had this look on her face like someone had put something sharp against her throat: she winced. I wasn’t sure if she was happy or sad. The worst thing is that I knew exactly how she felt.

  Katherine and everyone went into Mark’s room. Mum and I sat in the corridor in total silence. Horrible. Then Lucy came out a while later and said her dad was talking, and she was all excited. She went straight back in. It was pretty obvious we didn’t need to be there anymore. I thought about them all in the room together as a family, and I felt like Mum and I were the loneliest people on the planet.

  If something bad had happened to them, like if Mark had become worse, then we might not have felt so lonely at the hospital. But then Mark would be dead, which would be awful. God, I don’t even know what I’m trying to write.

  I was thinking in the car on the way home about a family holiday we all took. It must have been ten years ago, because I was really young. I think it was the year we went to France. But anyway, we were by a lake, and it was really hot. Mark and Katherine are there in the memory with Lucy and the baby twins, obviously. Mark is throwing a ball up and catching it. I can see the ball, a red ball, against the blue sky, just hanging there for that extra beat before it starts to fall to Mark’s waiting hands.

  I do want him to get better. I want him to get out of the hospital.

  8

  Last summer lies

  FRIDAY, APRIL 7TH

  School. Horrible. When I walked through the main doors, my heart was beating so fast it scared me. I spent all of morning break feeling panicky. Rosa-Leigh was away sick. Megan and Abigail were doing some project together, so they weren’t around. I ended up having to talk to Zara, and neither of us could think of anything to say, so I told her all about Mark’s heart attack. She tried really hard to look interested.

  Then, during lunch break, ABIGAIL came over to me. I could tell she was standing next to me even without looking up. She coughed and said, “Hey, how are you?”

  “Why do you care?”

  “Because we’re friends.”

  I looked straight at her, completely confused. After the fight we had, I didn’t think we’d ever make up. I’m not sure I even want to be friends with her anyway. She wasn’t looking straight back at me, more off to one side, and she shifted foot to foot.

  She said, “I heard about Mark Haywood from Zara. It’s really sad. How’s he doing?” She knows the Haywoods because she’s met them at our house before.

  I suddenly realized she was only coming to make up because she felt bad for me. A sympathy apology, not a real one. I’ve never felt so distant from her—even when we were screaming at each other it wasn’t this bad.

  I said, “He’s fine. You don’t have to worry.” I couldn’t help remembering all the horrible things she’d said when we fought, and how she read out my apology letter, and how she flung herself at Dan.

  “Good. I’m glad,” she said.

  “Yeah, everything’s fine.”

  She leaned over suddenly and gave me a hug like everything was okay. She felt really bony, a bit like a bird. She asked me to come and sit with everyone, which I did, then she started to go on about her and Dan. I got all shaky because I hated her so much again, even though she doesn’t know I like him. I made my excuses, which Abigail hardly noticed, she was so wrapped up in Dan this, Dan that, and left the table to wander outside on my own. I know I haven’t heard from Dan in ages and he’s seeing Abigail and I should just get over him, but there is just something there I can’t stop thinking about. I’m an idiot.

  Because it was sunny all day, I thought the winter might have finally melted away, but as I was leaving school, it got really cold and I half froze to death waiting for the bus. When I got home, I wrote a prose poem about the word death. I guess that was the mood I was in.

  Death—inky blue, she gives in to you, she takes you home and away from home and in the dark tunnel there she waits, lonely hot, like fire, like waste, like the sticky smell of rubbish in the heat and there’s no end to her waiting, her patience, her simple, easy smile, and she takes your hand and leads you away from me and I can’t stop her, not this death, not this woman waiting in the darkness like a dancer with veils, revealing nothing, she takes you slowly and then faster, and the ache of death is nothing compared to the smell of rubbish in the heat.

  SUNDAY, APRIL 9TH

  The weekend slid by like mud.

  MONDAY, APRIL 10TH

  The Haywoods called early this morning to tell us that Mark is doing much better. He might even get to go home soon. I felt lots calmer when I heard. At lunch at school everyone was in the cafeteria because it was raining. Abigail was being okay, although things are still weird between us. Zara was making everyone laugh. Even Megan wasn’t being too bad. Kalila was sitting with us, and we were all talking and it was really cool for once.

  Megan suggested we play a game. She said we should each take a sheet of paper and write our name along the top. Our name would be passed around and everyone else could write whatever she wanted about that person. Secretly.

  No one really wanted to do it, but we were curious, too—you could tell because everyone sat a little straighter, leaning forward. Abigail wrote down her name, then handed her sheet to Megan and said, “Let’s do it. There’s nothing else to do.”

  I wrote my name, so did Kalila, Yasmin, and Zara. Rosa-Leigh jumped up and went to sit with some other girls. I wish now that I’d done the same thing.

  Abigail said, “Get writing,” to everyone. I wrote on Abigail’s that she could be the most amazing person but she’s very unpredictable and could be mean when she didn’t even realize it. And bossy.

  Here’s what everyone wrote about me, and before the statement, who I think wrote it. The list makes me feel HORRIBLE.

  Yasmin: I like Sophie, but sometimes she’s a bit emotional, which is under standable but hard to deal with.

  Zara: She is clever and sweet but quite clingy.

  Kalila: She is funny and lively and
good at English. She is perhaps too easily led by everyone else’s opinions. She gets sad sometimes. I’d like to know her better.

  Abigail (and this is the WORST): Sophie thinks she’s better than everyone. She thinks she’s the most intelligent person in the world and also that she knows more about real life than everyone else. She’s judgmental. She is self-obsessed, and she cries too much. She’s much more uptight than she used to be, which I know isn’t her fault. When she isn’t in a bad mood, she’s good fun to be with.

  Megan: I think she’s a bit boring but all right. She never wants to do fun stuff and gets all worried when the rest of us do. She’s hard to get along with and VERY moody. Emotional roller-coaster!

  The bell rang. I sat with the words from that sheet of paper burning a hole in my head all afternoon. Rosa-Leigh wasn’t very sympathetic when I told her on the bus that I was really hurt by some of the things that people wrote. She said, “Don’t ever ask someone else what they think of you. You’ll never hear what you want to hear.”

  I said, “How would you know?”

  “It’s just how it is.” She told me to tear up the sheet of paper and forget about it.

  The whole thing makes me wonder how it is that I can see myself one way and everyone else can see something else. I NEVER thought I was judgmental. And I don’t really think of myself as too emotional, or at least I didn’t. I think I’ve had a lot of bad stuff happen recently. When Emily was around, I was different, I’m sure. Happier. I wish I hadn’t played the stupid game.

  TUESDAY, APRIL 11TH

  I can’t face going to school. I have to go: we have a big talk today about our future. I always tune out of those sorts of talks. As if I care about the future. As if any of that matters. It’s the last day of term before the Easter holiday, but I just can’t face it.

  I told Mum I was too sick to go in. It wasn’t true, but she didn’t even question me. She shrugged and said she’d make me scrambled eggs on toast, which she brought to me with tomatoes cut up, how I like them. I was amazed she remembered. She pottered around downstairs and didn’t seem to mind that I watched TV nearly all day. A couple of times she looked like she might come and sit next to me, but I glared at her, so she stayed away. I thought about writing a poem, but there were no words in my head.