Friday Brown

by Vikki Wakefield

  ‘Speak for yourself,’ Darcy said.

  ‘Yeah? Hey, Darce, tell us how you earn your keep,’ Carrie hissed.

  ‘I earn more than you do…’

  ‘Dysfunction is the new black,’ Joe smirked.

  Arden held up her hand and their bickering stopped. ‘Here’s the deal. We all contribute two hundred dollars a week to the family budget. We don’t care how you get it. Nobody will judge you. That money is looked after by me,’ she pointed to Malik, ‘and him. You feed yourself during the day and we meet back here every night at six for dinner. We watch each other’s backs. We are invisible. We’re quiet and we don’t get caught.’

  ‘I got caught,’ AiAi said.

  Arden smacked him on the top of his head and his mouth snapped shut.

  ‘What happens with the money?’ I asked.

  Arden frowned. ‘Expenses. If you need a doctor, stuff like that. It’s for our future.’

  AiAi said, ‘Tell her about the place, Arden.’

  Arden ignored him. ‘So, can you keep our secrets, Friday?’

  Silence grabbed my hand and squeezed it.

  Carrie’s eyes were dark with something unsaid and Darcy stared at a crack in the floorboards.

  Bree closed one eye and looked into her empty bottle. She turned it as if it was a kaleidoscope.

  Only Joe nodded and smiled encouragement.

  ‘I can’t stay long,’ I said. ‘I need to find my father.’ It felt like a lie as it left my lips.

  Arden pounced. ‘I thought you said nobody was looking for you.’

  ‘He’s not looking. I’m looking. He doesn’t know I exist.’

  ‘Then why do you want to find him? Look, we have a good life here. Nobody tells us what to do or when to do it. It’s perfect.’

  It sounded perfect. So why did I feel like somebody had walked through my web, like all the strands of my life were just floating in the breeze? It seemed wiser to hole up in a hotel until my money was gone or until I found a new beginning, whichever happened first. I could at least sleep in a real bed and live by my own rules.

  Silence timed his beseeching look perfectly.

  My resolve slipped. ‘Maybe I could just stay for a while. If that’s okay with everyone, I mean. I have enough money for a couple of weeks.’ I looked around. ‘Just until I can sort out something else.’

  Arden glanced at Malik.

  Darcy got up and flounced off.

  Malik shrugged as if he didn’t care but his eyes were blinking like a camera shutter on high-speed. I sensed violence curled up inside him, waiting for a nudge. I couldn’t erase the image of him lying with Arden on the bed. He made me squirm, even though he was perfect, aesthetically—built like a fireman on a calendar. His expression was indifferent but he was wound tight.

  More rapid, reptilian blinks. He twisted one of Arden’s dreadlocks around his finger and brushed the end over his chin stubble. He looked straight through me.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Arden dismissed us all like children at nine o’clock, I discovered that Darcy had made up my bed with a blanket and pillow. My backpack was lying next to the mattress and a corner of the blanket had been turned down. This unexpected kindness left me confused but grateful. I climbed in and waited for my body heat to build up, but the cold kept getting colder and my toes went numb inside my socks.

  Nights were the worst. Insomnia came when Vivienne left—just as I felt the descent into sleep a switch would trip in my brain and my eyes would spring open. My body had turned traitor. The harder I chased sleep, the further it drifted away.

  I’d been lying awake for hours. I shivered in bouts and remembered vaguely that it was the body’s way of increasing blood flow and temperature. It wasn’t working. My jaw was clenched so tight I was waiting for a tooth to crack.

  Outside, a branch scraped against the window, caught by the wind, and the headlights of passing cars projected shapes and shadows onto the walls like a scratchy silent movie. When it was quiet, I could hear the rhythmic breaths of Carrie and Bree.

  I couldn’t count the number of different beds I’d slept in. Mostly they were motel mattresses, warped and flattened by too many bodies. Often they were doubles and Vivienne and I shared. We’d drifted from town to town for sixteen years before she finally took me back with her to Grandfather’s house. The way she’d spoken about him, like he was a ghost of the past, I’d assumed he was dead. That first night, I couldn’t sleep. I wasn’t acquainted with luxury. The sheets were new and slippy and everything glowed white in the dark, like I was drifting in a cloud.

  I sneaked into Vivienne’s room.

  She was still awake, lying on her back and staring at the ceiling.

  ‘Can’t sleep? Me neither,’ she said and made room for me beside her. ‘Damn ghosts.’

  I could feel her bones through her skin. She stroked my hair because she had none of her own, and I prayed. I prayed to rewind back to the last time she was whole, really alive, jigging to her favourite song while her beer slopped all over the dance floor and men turned to watch. Sometimes I got tired of moving on and all I wanted to do was stay—if I found a new friend, or settled into a school where the teachers found some promise in me, or fell in love with a town that made us feel like we’d lived there forever. But leaving was worth it every time—to see Vivienne emerge from her blue funk or whatever it was that brought out misery in her. Beginnings were always exciting.

  ‘He can give you things I never could,’ she whispered. ‘I’m so tired. I can’t run anymore.’

  ‘Tell me why you left.’ I could feel the familiar frustration of unanswered questions warring with my need to protect her.

  ‘It’s complicated,’ she said. Then, as usual, whenever I asked the wrong question at the wrong time, she steered me off in another direction. ‘Everything you need for the rest of your life is right in here.’ She pressed her finger into my chest. ‘When I’m gone, never forget who you are.’

  ‘Who’s that, then?’

  ‘Friday Brown, you are a twentieth generation direct descendant of Owain Glyndwr, a man revered in Wales during the fourteenth century. He was the Welsh equivalent of King Arthur. Or William Wallace.’

  I’d heard this one before. So many times. ‘William Wallace?’ I asked to keep her talking. But that night I had no desire to play along.

  ‘Braveheart,’ she said. ‘The guy with the blue face. He turned back a whole army. He led a revolution.’

  ‘Well, shit,’ I replied. ‘A dude with a blue face would frighten the crap out of anyone.’

  ‘Don’t swear.’ She swatted my shoulder. ‘Owain Glyndwr was the last true Prince of Wales, before the English claimed the title. Shakespeare wrote about him in Henry IV two centuries later. They say he was as brave as Hector, as magical as Merlin, elusive as the Scarlet Pimpernel.’

  ‘The Scarlet Pimpernel sounds like a skin eruption.’

  She sighed. ‘Owain Glyndwr was a hero to his people.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Is that all you have to say? Oh? Friday Brown, you are descended from kings.’

  ‘That’s like saying a flu capsule is pure heroin.’

  ‘I didn’t raise you to be a cynic,’ she huffed and withdrew her arm.

  ‘You used to tell me there was magic everywhere. There’s no magic here. I don’t want to stay.’

  ‘So, now you’re a sceptic, too,’ she said. Her tone was heavy with exhaustion. Or perhaps it was disappointment. ‘I didn’t say magic was always a good thing. Others will give it another name, like serendipity, or irony. Bad juju, good luck, premonition, omens. It’s all magic to me. When there are things we can’t explain, we give them a name. I call it magic. It happens.’

  ‘Shit happens. That’s the original bumper sticker. I’m starting to think it’s all in the interpretation.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Shit happens to us all the time. It’s only after it’s happened that you say it was a sign. Did you see this coming
?’

  She knew what I meant by ‘this’. This thing that was killing her.

  ‘This is normal,’ she said, almost to herself. ‘You growing away from me.’

  ‘There’s nothing normal about what’s happening to us,’ I cried.

  She stroked my hair again. ‘It would kill me if you stopped believing in me.’

  We both fell silent at that.

  ‘You’re growing up,’ she said firmly. ‘It takes time to believe again. It took me sixteen years, but I hope it takes you less. That’s where you’ll find your peace.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘We’ve had our differences, my father and me, but we’ve forgiven each other. There are things you need to know.’

  ‘Like what? How to make good choices?’ I said bitterly.

  She shook her head. ‘You can’t always make good choices. Sometimes you have to settle for making a choice you can live with.’

  ‘Can’t we just go back? Let’s go up north. I liked it there.’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ve come full circle. He’s not such a bad old guy and you’ll be able to finish school. He’ll look after you.’

  ‘I don’t need looking after.’

  ‘It’s too soon,’ she said fiercely. ‘You have to be brave now. This is the last new beginning for me.’

  Which sounded to me like it was an ending. Which it was.

  Three months with Vivienne, forty-two days without her. That’s how I defined my time in that house. I didn’t want to remember any of it.

  The ceiling of the squat seemed to press down. I burrowed further under the blanket and pinned the edges underneath my arms and legs. I felt a burning in my sinuses and a lump in my throat that meant tears were coming, so I pinched the bridge of my nose to stop them.

  ‘Damn ghosts,’ I whispered to the dark.

  Another car drove by. For a few seconds, the newspapered walls lit up.

  My eyes were playing tricks.

  A slow-moving shadow crept down the hallway: the shape of a head, shoulders, a pointed chin. The shadow froze until the car had passed.

  My body went rigid. I kept my head so still. My eyes ached from staring sideways at that shadow and, after long minutes, it started moving in my direction. The dark shape sidled through the doorway. It crouched low and leaned over me.

  I felt the soft weight of a blanket pressing down. Scratchy fibres scraped my cheek. The shadow moved away and I heard the wheeze of laboured breath.

  ‘Silence, what are you doing?’ Bree hissed. ‘Go back to bed.’

  The shadow gave a salute.

  Bree sighed and rolled over.

  Creeping warmth made my toes tingle and my eyes close. When my heart stopped pounding, I fell into ruptured sleep.

  A toilet flushed. Somebody coughed. Shards of morning stabbed between the gaps in the newspaper; the exposed pipes that ran like veins through the creaky old house shuddered. Footsteps overhead and the cobweb-strung globe above swayed. I needed to pee, desperately, but I knew once I released the heat from the blankets it would be impossible to get it back.

  Carrie’s and Bree’s beds were empty.

  I hadn’t heard them get up which meant I’d slept harder than I liked. I curled myself into a ball on my side and waited.

  ‘Wake up, sleepyhead.’

  I jumped and sat up.

  Arden lounged in the doorway dressed in a long, black T-shirt. Her legs were white and endless, with the hard-edged muscle of a dancer, or a gymnast. Lines that begged to be drawn, if I could draw, and I couldn’t. Her dreads were tied in a clumped knot that sat like a sewer-rat on her shoulder. I noticed that her breasts were full, but high, even without a bra—like Vivienne’s had been. I would keep registering these similarities but I didn’t know what to make of them; they brought pain, but at the same time comfort.

  ‘Sleep well?’ Arden drawled.

  ‘Yes, thanks,’ I lied.

  She was hiding something behind her back.

  ‘Was there something you didn’t understand about being invisible?’

  At that moment the creeping light burst into a wall of sunshine. Arden moved to stand in it. A newspaper exploded in my face, the pages separating, fluttering down around me.

  I cowered and put my hands up.

  ‘There mustn’t be much happening in the world today.’ Arden said. She rummaged through the paper and spread a page out over my legs. ‘Look who’s made headlines.’

  I crossed my legs and smoothed the paper.

  TEENAGER SAVES BABY, screamed the front page. There was a picture of me pulling the pram onto the edge of the platform, one of those Big Brother images that looked grainy and indistinct. Below it, a close-up of my face with my hand up, fingers spread, like I was trying to ward off the paparazzi.

  A mystery girl’s quick thinking averted tragedy yesterday morning when seven-month-old Reilly Cooper’s pram rolled…

  ‘But I didn’t…’ I started.

  ‘You’ll have to leave. You’re putting us all in danger.’

  ‘But it was Si…’ I stopped. If Arden was making me leave, what would she do to Silence?

  Arden gathered the scattered pages to her chest, had a second thought, then threw the crumpled mess back on the floor. ‘No hard feelings, hey. It’s for the best.’

  She sounded like someone much older.

  As if she realised it, she laughed at herself. Her expression turned serious. ‘You don’t fit in, really. You don’t seem…damaged enough.’

  I slid out from under the blankets and pushed the newspaper pages away from the mattress. I pulled my backpack close and looked inside for some clean clothes.

  Arden stood over me, frowning. ‘There is another way, I suppose.’

  My stuff seemed loose, like there were things missing, or out of place. ‘What do you mean?’ I pushed the clothes aside and felt for my purse. It wasn’t there. ‘My purse is gone,’ I mumbled.

  ‘It must be there somewhere,’ Arden said, irritated. ‘We could cut your hair.’

  ‘Why? What for?’ I sounded breathless. ‘It’s gone.’ My money was gone.

  ‘So nobody will recognise you. Then you could stay.’

  ‘It was here last night.’ Darcy, I thought.

  ‘Did you hear me? You could stay. Let me cut your hair. You’ll be unrecognisable.’ Her eyes were shattered glass.

  ‘It’s okay. I’m leaving.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I thought you wanted me to go?’

  ‘I do, but Silence won’t be happy.’

  ‘He doesn’t even know me.’

  ‘I think you remind him of his sister. She looked a bit like you.’ She bent down, grabbed a hank of my hair and inspected the ends. ‘When was the last time you cut this?’

  ‘Not since I was about ten.’ When was the last time you cut yours? I thought, looking at her snarled dreadlocks. I backed away from her and she held on a moment too long until the roots pulled. ‘What happened to her? Silence’s sister?’

  ‘Who said anything happened to her?’

  ‘You used the past tense.’

  ‘I didn’t. Oh, come on. Let me cut it.’ Arden cut the air with two fingers, snip snip. She knelt behind me and ran her fingers through my hair, combing the tangles. ‘Stop covering up that pretty face.’

  After a minute, I relaxed against her. It felt good, like I was five years old again. I closed my eyes and she could have been Vivienne, winding sections into a fishtail braid. I sank deep into the pleasure and pain of pull and release.

  Arden’s fingers moved to my scalp and started to massage hard, hypnotic circles.

  ‘Do you like that?’

  I nodded. ‘I need to get dressed,’ I said but didn’t move. I couldn’t.

  Her hands moved to my shoulders and she dug her thumbs into the tight muscles.

  I groaned.

  Arden caught and held her breath. She worked one cool hand from my shoulder, down, between the fabric and skin
, until she scooped and cradled one of my breasts.

  I froze.

  She held me there until her hand grew warm.

  And I let her.

  I’m not sure who moved first.

  She let me go, stood up, looked down at her near-nakedness and shrugged. ‘See you downstairs.’

  I was shaking. I took my time and turfed all of my stuff out onto the mattress—two pairs of jeans, a few T-shirts, thongs, underwear, my jacket and a thin jumper. I wanted to put them all on.

  My purse was definitely gone. The thought made me feel sick. Finally, I got dressed and went downstairs.

  Only Carrie, Darcy, Arden and AiAi were there. AiAi was wolfing bread, his hand dipping into a brown paper bag to break chunks from a crusty loaf. Darcy was quiet and shifty, sitting on a crate, nursing a mug.

  I gave her my best accusing stare but she wouldn’t look at me.

  Carrie was stirring crazy circles in her mug with a teaspoon.

  ‘Where’s Silence?’ I asked.

  Carrie looked up. ‘Gone out,’ she said.

  Arden slurped the last of her drink and handed her mug to Carrie. She hadn’t bothered to put on more clothes, despite the chill of the house. Snip, snip, went her fingers. She behaved as if nothing had happened and I was relieved.

  I looked at Carrie’s and Darcy’s short hair.

  Bree wandered in, yawning.

  I checked out her cropped curls and wondered. It crossed my mind that I’d been manipulated in some way, but I was embarrassed and confused.

  ‘What’s going on?’ Bree said.

  Arden hauled a crate into the middle of the room and slapped it.

  I thought it was a test. A girl rite of passage that must be endured. It was hair. Only hair. Dying cells oozing through pores, that’s all it was.

  Arden was waiting, daring me.

  Carrie ran her hand over her own stubbled head, almost like she wasn’t aware she was doing it.

  Bree took a chunk of bread out of AiAi’s hand and said, ‘Gotta go. See you all tonight.’ Her eyes darted to me, then away. She left in a hurry.

  I sat on the crate and gathered my heavy hair into a ponytail with both hands. I handed it to Arden.

  Arden started to cut. But not with scissors. With her knife.