by Holly Bourne
“Poppy, can we talk?” He grabbed my hand, intertwining his fingers with mine. His touch burned, but I couldn’t bring myself to pull my hand away.
“What about?” I shrugged my shoulders, trying to look casual.
“It’s quite obvious, isn’t it?” he said, temper flaring in his voice. “Can we talk about us?”
I mumbled something.
“What?”
“I said, there isn’t an us. I only just met you.”
He squeezed my hand tighter. “Don’t be stupid. You must have sensed there’s something between us. It’s driving me mental. I can’t stop thinking about you and I don’t even know you. It’s crazy. Just now, out there, when you looked at me, I thought I was going to explode. I know you felt it too.” He searched my face for a reaction. “It’s why you fainted, isn’t it? You couldn’t handle it.”
I let his words sink in, trying to analyse logically what he’d just said to me. I was shaking. I felt so happy I wanted to dance down the road. He couldn’t stop thinking about me! Me? Plain, sceptical little me. But the rational part of my head was screaming at me to ignore these emotions: He will hurt you. He’ll get bored. And most importantly…something is wrong here. This guy makes you sick.
I forced my voice to go cold. “Nice line,” I said. “Bet you use it on all the girls.”
His face screwed up in what could only be described as pain. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“Did you honestly think I was stupid enough to fall for that?” I made my voice harder. “I’m not one of your groupies, you know.”
The pain on his beautiful face turned immediately into rage. “Of course I know,” he almost growled. “You know this isn’t a line. I know you feel it too. You’re just scared. Scared of whatever this is.”
I laughed nastily, hating the sound of my own voice. “God, can you just listen to yourself? You sound like someone out of my mum’s Mills and Boon books.”
It was his turn to be humiliated. He blushed, hurt bleeding across his face. I felt awful. Hollow. But something was telling me this was the right thing to do. I had to protect myself. From whatever this – he – was.
“I completely overestimated you,” he said. “You’re not the person I thought you were at all.” The words stabbed me. He withdrew his hand, and mine felt freezing without his touch.
I couldn’t stand it – the way his face had changed from admiration to hatred so quickly. I wanted him back already. I ached for his affection.
“Look,” I said, almost pleadingly, wishing I could undo what I’d just said, “I know I’m being a bitch and I’m sorry.”
He glared back at me.
“It’s just…I don’t think you and me are very good for each other. We’ve only just met and we’re already fighting.”
“You’re lying to yourself.”
“I’m not.”
“Yes you are. And you know you are.”
I had to end this. Everything he said was true but I couldn’t let myself fall for him. I would get hurt – badly hurt. I made my voice cold again.
“Noah, you just need to get over the fact that I DON’T FANCY YOU!” I shouted for effect. “I know that’s probably never happened before, but deal with it.”
He stepped back from me, disgust on his face.
“You’re right,” he said. “You are a bitch.”
Then he skulked out of the corridor towards the exit, leaving me standing alone.
Dr. Beaumont stared at her computer screen, not daring to blink. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting there. Six hours? Maybe seven? A cup of cold coffee lay abandoned next to her keyboard, along with empty pretzel packets. This was no week to worry about dieting.
The laboratory was buzzing but she was concentrating too hard to notice the bustle of people around her. If she’d been able to drag her eyes from the screen, she might have noticed that most of them were staring at her, concerned looks on their faces.
Her focus was broken by that stupid assistant.
“Alright, Anita?” Rain’s voice was remarkably chirpy considering the circumstances. And he’d called her “Anita” again, the idiot.
He placed a freshly made cup of coffee on her desk. “I thought you might need a refill.”
She looked up at him, annoyed that she’d been distracted but grateful for the drink. “Thanks, Rain,” she replied curtly, before turning back to the screen.
The monitor was full of green code. Complete nonsense to an outsider, but to Dr. Beaumont it was easier to read than an airport novel.
Rain pulled up a chair and sat astride it.
Again, she was forced to turn away from her monitor. “Yes?”
Rain looked nervous for once. “We were just wondering…”
Anita was really annoyed now. “You were just wondering what?”
“Well…er…people, I mean, myself and others… We were just interested to know if, you know, another reading had come up?”
Anita sighed. Of course they wanted to know. Everyone did. The Defence Secretary wanted a twenty-page report by midnight.
She leaned back and shook out her harshly scraped-back bun. It felt good. She ran her fingers through her hair and sighed again. “Not since last night.”
Rain pulled his stool closer. His voice went down to a whisper. “And last night?” he asked, the whites of his eyes shining with fear. “This reading was…high up on the scale?”
Anita nodded. “It’s a true match. Worst-case scenario. The shit-hitting-the-fan scenario you wrote essays about in training.”
Rain gulped involuntarily. “And you think they’ve made…?”
She finished his sentence for him. “Physical contact? No doubt about it. You don’t get these from chance encounters.”
She pressed a button on her keyboard and a graph slid silently out of the printer. She passed it over to him, noticing her fingernails were still unfinished from that disrupted manicure the other day. “Here, look for yourself.”
Rain held the paper away from himself and squinted, trying to read the pattern. He blinked a few times and held it further away. It fell into place. “Jesus H Christ.”
Anita took the paper off him. “I know.” She sipped her coffee and turned back to the monitor.
“But there’s not been another reading since last night?”
“I’ve been staring at this for God-knows-how-long and got nothing.”
“I can help if you want…?”
She considered it for a moment. If she were honest, she would be glad of the company. “Alright.”
Rain pulled the stool even closer and peered at the coding. He couldn’t believe she’d said yes. The others would never believe him. Right. Concentrate. Save the world, remember? He focused on the screen and let his eyes blur slightly like he’d been taught.
Anita sat silent next to him, hardly breathing.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there but, out of nowhere, Rain saw a momentary flash on the screen.
He looked at Anita. Her eyes were wide.
“Did you…?”
“I saw.”
Anita jumped off her chair and hit a large red button at the end of her desk. She began frantically typing indecipherable things into her keyboard, her fingers blurring with the speed of her work.
“Try and get some coordinates,” she instructed, still typing.
Rain pushed his chair over to the next computer, logged on as quickly as possible and he too started bashing his keyboard in earnest.
“It’s too late for an exact location.”
“What? You’re telling me we’ve lost them three times now?”
“I’m sorry. We just weren’t there quick enough.”
Dr. Beaumont fired directions over her shoulder. “Check the news. Anything that’s happened in the north of Europe in the past twelve hours, I want to know about. Any flood, any fire, any odd death, no matter how unrelated, I want to know about it FIVE minutes ago.”
Rain logged onto
their newsfeed, stabbing in keywords before pressing return.
Headlines flashed up onto his screen and he quickly devoured each one before springing on the next. “Nothing’s come up.”
“That can’t be possible.”
“I’m telling you, no disasters… Not yet anyway.”
Anita stopped typing. She lay her head down on the desk – suddenly vulnerable, everything stripped away. “We got lucky,” she whispered, counting her breaths.
The latest reading slithered out of the printer. Rain snatched it and could see the pattern immediately.
“We definitely got lucky.”
When I got home I cried harder than I’d ever cried before. I lay face down on my bed as my body emitted hollow wretched sobs. I closed my eyes to try and stem the tears but, whenever I did, I saw Noah’s disgusted face, which created a fresh wave of hysteria.
At one point I became vaguely aware of my mother gawping at me – transfixed with anxiety over yet another development in my ever-dwindling mental health. I couldn’t look at her and turned to face the wall to continue blubbing and gasping for air. And all because of a boy. Mum wouldn’t believe it anyway. Last week I wasn’t remotely interested in any male in a fifty-mile radius, yet now I was hysterically bawling over some silly guitarist I hadn’t even kissed. There was no way she would understand. I didn’t even understand.
There comes a point though, when you physically can’t cry any more. The sobs slowly began to subside and turn into hiccups. I hugged my legs and practised my breathing until I was eventually calm enough to walk over to my dressing table. I sat down and dared myself to look into the mirror.
My dressing table has always been one of my favourite things – 1970s-style with a huge gilt mirror and tacky gold leaf. Right then, sinking down on the mini-stool, I wished I’d never got it. My reflection horrified me. My face was puffed up like I’d been through ten rounds of boxing, my eyes barely visible under the swelling. My hair was slicked back with tears and my general complexion resembled a blotched painting by a kid who likes using the colour red. A lot.
“Looking good, Poppy,” I mumbled to myself.
I stared at myself for a long time, exhaustedly running through the past few days and trying to identify what the hell had happened. No wonder they called it a “crush” – I was a car wreck. I’d neglected all my carefully honed anti-men beliefs just because I’d met someone with floppy hair.
No, Noah had been right – it was more than that. What the hell was going on? I tried to convince myself that it didn’t matter, that these feelings would pass. Without bothering to brush my teeth or wash my face, I clambered into my single bed and fell into an uneasy sleep.
I spent most of Tuesday at college in relative hiding without bumping into anyone. When the final bell went, I hurried out to meet Mum in the car park. Following the previous day’s crying extravaganza, she’d booked me an emergency appointment with Dr. Ashley and at the time I’d been sobbing too hard to protest.
I spotted her, looking out worriedly from behind the steering wheel of her car. I felt a sudden surge of love for her. And then the inevitable surge of guilt. I hated that I made her worry more. Another reason why purging Noah from my life was a good idea, I told myself.
I slumped into the front seat, a strained smile across my face.
“Hello, Poppy dear. Good day at college?”
I stretched my smile wider. “Oh yes, brilliant day, thanks.”
My response only drew a worried sigh. She knew I was lying. Parents’ psychic abilities never failed to surprise me.
“Yes, well did you learn anything? I suppose that’s the most important thing.”
I nodded my head enthusiastically. “Yeah, loads,” I said. “In Psychology we learned about this guy who showed violent videos to children and then gave them a doll afterwards to see if they beat the doll up.”
Mum raised her eyebrows. “I see.”
I turned the radio up to avoid any more of the third degree and we both stared out the windscreen in silence, pretending to enjoy the cheesy dance track pumping tirelessly out of Radio One. It was called something stupid like “Short Attention Span” by a “band” called ADHD. I’m not even kidding. Frank had been trying to make me listen to it for weeks.
When we arrived at the doctor’s office, or mental health clinic, if I’m being honest, I opened the car door.
“Hang on,” Mum said, tugging my shoulder.
“What is it?”
She dug in her handbag to retrieve Dr. Ashley’s cheque. I looked down at the amount scribbled in my mum’s neat cursive writing and felt a fresh surge of guilt. Not only was I making her feel awful, I was bankrupting her. Maybe I should have been paying more attention to what Dr. Ashley was saying instead of trying to outsmart him all the time.
“Thanks,” I said, ashamed.
“I’ll pick you up later.”
“Cheers.”
She leaned over and kissed my forehead gently before putting the car into gear. I clambered out awkwardly and made my way towards the imposing doors of the surgery.
The clinic tried very hard to be “normal” – if there was any real meaning to that word. The receptionist was always chirpy as you tried to ignore the high-security entrance process. As I hadn’t completely lost it, I only ever went in for day sessions, but the place had lots of residential patients. The walls were painted a chipper yellow and there were fresh flowers everywhere to combat the distinct hospital smell. The waiting room even had current magazines – good ones as well, like Vogue, rather than the tattered ten-year-old issues of Good Housekeeping so commonplace in GP surgeries. It paid to go private, I supposed. They had to justify charging such huge amounts of money somehow. There was always this fake and very British let’s-pretend-this-isn’t-a-mental-hospital attitude here – you would smile and nod at each other in the waiting room, trying to ignore the bandaged wrists and scratched faces, while really thinking, So what’s wrong with their brain then?
After about five minutes my name was called and I tentatively knocked on the door of Dr. Ashley’s office, even though he was expecting me. Another weird and totally unnecessary social norm for going to the doctor’s.
“Come in,” I heard and I pulled open the door.
He was sitting in his normal chair, an old antique thing – the sort that fetches a lot of money on Antiques Roadshow. The rest of the room was pretty sparse. A few nondescript paintings hung on the magnolia walls, a PC sat on the corner of the desk. A square glass coffee table sat between Dr. Ashley and “my” chair. The telltale box of tissues was displayed neatly in the middle. I cringed when I remembered how many I’d got through when I’d been here in the past.
“Good afternoon, Poppy.”
I sat down awkwardly and started scrunching my hands together, pretending I wasn’t there. This isn’t happening. This isn’t my life. I’m not really one of those people who need therapy. “Afternoon.”
We sat in silence for a good thirty seconds before he asked his next inevitable question. “And how are you today, Poppy?”
I gave the same stock answer. “Fine.”
Another silence.
“But how are you really?”
I sighed. It was all so predictable. So forced. Although there wasn’t a leather couch in the office, I could still picture myself lying on it, hand over my head, talking about some terrible childhood memory.
My thoughts turned to the hefty cheque folded in my jeans pocket and I forced myself to play along. “Well, I’ve had two fainting attacks in the past week.”
Dr. Ashley nodded, almost unimpressed, like I’d just listed everything I’d had to eat that day or something. The only sign of his interest was his pen, frantically scribbling across his notepad.
“I see,” he said, still scribbling. “And that’s not…usual, is it?”
“Nope.”
He finished writing and studied me over his notepad. I wished I could read it.
“And why do you think
that is?”
Honestly. Maybe I should do a psychology degree. All you have to do is ask questions in a nice calm voice and you get a hundred and fifty quid an hour.
I shrugged my shoulders, playing the nonchalant teenager role. “Dunno.”
This prompted another burst of notepad scrawling and I fidgeted as I waited for him to finish. I crossed my legs and uncrossed them.
“Your mother,” he began, finally taking the initiative. “When she rang this morning she said you had your first of these attacks at a gig. Is that right?”
How did Mum know that? Dad must have told her. I cursed him under my breath.
“That’s right,” I said. “It was horrible. I puked and everything.”
I didn’t like the way the word “puked” sounded. It was crass. But it made Dr. Ashley flinch and I enjoyed that. I wasn’t sure why.
“You were sick?” he asked, his hand picking up pace again across the secret notepad. “Hmmm, that’s not happened before has it?”
“Nope.”
“And the other attack? What was that like?”
“No puking. The usual. I think I’m going to die. It’s horrible. Then I don’t die.”
Dr. Ashley was deep in thought, chewing the top of his pencil. This obviously wasn’t part of his plan. I’d been getting better. I was a “success”.
“And when the panic attacks happened…you did all the techniques I’ve taught you?”
I nodded.
“And you’ve been practising your mindfulness of breath?”
I nodded again. “Every morning.”
He looked stumped. Maybe it didn’t pay to go private after all.
We fell silent again. I shook my foot about and let him think things through. I was a little unimpressed. Usually he was so…sorted. He usually had all the answers.
“Has anything changed in the past week? Have you done anything differently that might have brought this on?”
My mind immediately went to Noah and I welled up again. But it was stupid. Noah couldn’t be causing this. It didn’t make sense. Anyway, even if he was, I couldn’t tell Dr. Ashley about a boy. It would be too embarrassing.