Friday Brown

by Vikki Wakefield

  I had left my boots standing on the brick pillar. Like bloody Cinderella.

  Arden put her arm around me and drew me close. She prised my fingers apart and extracted the necklace. In the light it was hideous—a garish mix of blood-coloured stones set in cheap, chipped silver. A heavy silver crucifix dangled in the centre.

  I massaged my palm. The shape of the cross was imprinted on it.

  Arden stroked the stones, then slipped the necklace over her head. She tucked the cross between her breasts.

  I knew it was the thievery, not the bounty, that pleased her. But when she kissed my forehead and wrapped her trench coat around my shaking shoulders, I decided that guilt was a small price.

  I was back, safe, under her wing.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The next morning, my boots were sitting at the foot of my mattress as if they’d walked home all by themselves.

  I sat up. Looked around. Was it a joke? Did Arden go back to get them?

  Carrie snored softly. Bree was lying on her back with her arms folded under her head, coat-hanger style, smoking her breakfast cigarette.

  ‘You’ll burn this place down,’ I said.

  ‘Pfft,’ she said and flicked her ash onto the floor. ‘Where did you and Arden go last night?’

  I ignored her, sat up and stretched my aching body.

  ‘What happened to your face?’

  I touched my swollen lip. Overnight, it had split and I could taste dried blood. I catalogued my other wounds: scratches on my arms, a throbbing tailbone, a scrape on my upper back. Raw and sore all over.

  ‘Reconnaissance and retrieval mission.’ I shrugged. The boots sat there like an accusation.

  ‘You don’t have to be like the rest of us,’ Bree said in a serious tone.

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Yes, you do.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘Welcome to the Dark Side.’

  I cupped my hands over my mouth and gave my best impression of Darth Vader breath.

  Bree smiled and cocked an eyebrow. ‘What’s that?’

  First Peter Pan, then Star Wars. Maybe my upbringing wasn’t as culturally barren as I thought.

  ‘Shut up or get out,’ Carrie grumbled and rolled over.

  Bree went downstairs first.

  I pulled on my jeans and a T-shirt and followed. The guilt and fear of the night before was still stuck to my skin. I could hear Arden laughing in the kitchen.

  ‘How did my boo…’ I started.

  It was obvious now that my boots didn’t get there by themselves.

  The guy was there. The bare-chested guy from the house. The bare-chested guy from the house I broke into, and stole from. He was so tall he made everything around him look like dollhouse furniture. Elbows and angles stuck out as if he’d only ever grown up, but not out. He was pale, dark-haired and unremarkable, sipping coffee from Arden’s mug like he belonged there.

  Arden was relaxed, sitting cross-legged on a crate.

  Bree was smiling a lot and refilled his coffee without being asked.

  Darcy sat on the floor with her knees up to her chest, one arm wrapped around them. For once, she kept her nasty looks to herself.

  ‘You’re a girl,’ the guy said and stared at me.

  I crossed my arms over my braless front, shoved my hands into my pockets, then folded them back over my chest. I didn’t know what to do with them. They felt like leftovers, or an untucked shirt. Had he called the police? Is that why he was there?

  ‘I was asking Arden who the boy in my room was last night. Except you’re not a boy.’

  ‘Obviously,’ I snapped.

  Arden laughed. There was something deeply satisfied about that laugh.

  ‘I didn’t think you’d be there,’ she said to him. There was no apology in her tone. ‘I didn’t know you were back.’

  He leaned forwards on his elbows. ‘How about you tell me next time you want to break in and I’ll save you the trouble by opening the front door,’ he said.

  They knew each other. My skin prickled. I covered my confusion by making myself a coffee and, when I’d recovered, I sat down at the table. ‘Who’s he?’ I blurted.

  ‘Wish,’ he said carefully. ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Friday,’ Bree answered for me. ‘She’s new.’

  ‘Wish. What kind of a name is that?’ I said.

  Wish smiled. His face changed from unremarkable to miraculous.

  I smiled back as if he’d tapped a reflex. He could have been a set mousetrap and I’d still have reached out and touched him to see how he felt. How do you go from ordinary to fascinating with one lopsided smile? Then he opened his mouth and I was annoyed all over again.

  ‘Friday. That’s a boy’s name, isn’t it?’

  ‘It’s good to see you,’ Arden interrupted. ‘I’ve missed you.’

  I looked around for Malik. There was an invisible, twanging cord between Wish and Arden. I wondered if Malik knew; he didn’t seem the type to share.

  ‘I’ve missed you, too,’ Darcy said. ‘Are you coming back or what?’

  ‘No, he’s not,’ Arden snapped. ‘He has a higher purpose now.’

  ‘I’m over eighteen,’ Wish said softly. ‘The rules have changed.’

  ‘Your rules or theirs?’ Arden said.

  ‘Both.’

  Arden nodded. She spread her fingers. ‘I know, I know.’

  I put my hand up. ‘I have some questions. Like, why did you ask me to break into his house when you could have knocked on the front door?’

  ‘That’s no fun,’ Arden said, laughing.

  Wish looked at me and leaned across the table. ‘I have a question for you, too,’ he said. ‘Did you ice this?’ He touched my split lip with his finger.

  In my head I was whispering, No, no, no. He’s going to touch me like that, then disappear.

  My mouth said, ‘My real name is Liliane.’ Infantile. Forgettable.

  ‘Nobody cares who you really are.’ Darcy got up, dusted off her pants and stormed out.

  She pushed past Silence, who hovered on the bottom step. He was brushing his teeth, lounging in the doorway, drooling foam all down the front of his hoodie. Still gripping his toothbrush in his cheek, he walked over to Wish. They bumped fists. He turned to spit in the sink.

  ‘How’s it hanging, buddy?’ Wish said. ‘It’s been a while.’

  Silence asked a question using his finger-puppet language.

  Wish obviously got it. ‘No, I’m not back. I just came to retrieve something.’ He gave Arden a hard look. ‘I know she took something for you.’

  ‘So?’ Arden shrugged. ‘It’s just junk. Nothing special.’

  ‘And where’s the fascist bully-boy?’ Wish stood and looked around. His mouth twisted.

  Arden drew herself up to her full height. She was still a few centimetres shorter. They faced off.

  ‘I need to talk to you. Privately.’ She headed up the stairs and beckoned for Wish to follow. ‘Don’t worry. Malik’s not here.’

  He followed.

  There was a bad brew of emotion in my belly. I watched them walk upstairs and in a sad part of my mind I imagined them, entwined, on Arden’s mattress.

  It was their business, not mine. There was no valid reason for me to feel sick about it.

  Silence gave me a smile and busied himself making breakfast. He and Bree exchanged a loaded look.

  I needed air. I went down into the cellar and slipped outside.

  Darcy was there, poking a stick into the soupy surface of the pond, fishing out dripping strands of slime.

  The pond gave me the heebies, so I went the long way around it, through the tall grass.

  Darcy barely noticed.

  I exited the trapdoor and sat out in the alley with my knees to my chest. Time to go, Liliane Brown, I heard in my heart. A breeze whipped through the tunnel, out of nowhere. It sent leaves tumbling.

  I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe that Vivienne is still here in another
form. I don’t.

  A leaf floated up and landed in my hair. It was perfect, still green, fallen too soon.

  Darcy came through the trapdoor about ten minutes later. She sashayed off on high heels, swinging a strappy handbag as if she was on her way to a garden party and I wasn’t even there. Suddenly she stopped side-on and looked back. There were several bald patches on her scalp the size of dollar coins.

  ‘You don’t belong here with us,’ she said.

  ‘Don’t I know it.’ Under my breath.

  ‘Just go, why don’t you?’

  ‘Am I such a threat to you, Darcy?’ I stood up and brushed dead leaves off my backside. I tried to keep my cool and not look like I was completely without gumption at the same time. What I really wanted to do was rip some more of her hair out.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself. You’re no threat.’ She started pulling at her own hair.

  ‘If you hadn’t taken my money I would have gone by now,’ I said.

  ‘What money? I don’t need your money. I have wads of the stuff.’

  ‘And how do you get it, huh?’ I stuck my tongue in my cheek and poked it in and out. It made a disgusting, sucking sound. I wasn’t proud of myself.

  She tossed her bag onto the ground and stalked towards me. ‘You’re a real bitch under that little-girl-lost act, aren’t you?’

  ‘You started it.’ I planted my feet and braced for impact. In her heels she stood a head taller. I was braless, shoeless, and thinking about someone else.

  As if I’d summoned him, Wish ducked through the trapdoor.

  I forgot all about Darcy—I looked at his mouth, searching for a sign that he’d been kissed.

  Darcy’s expression erased itself. She smiled and toed the dirt.

  I tried to stay calm, but I snorted. I leaned against the fence, slid down and started laughing. I had to hold my side because it hurt; it was giving me a stitch to laugh that hard. I couldn’t seem to stop.

  Wish and Darcy gawked.

  Wish’s mouth twitched. He picked up Darcy’s bag and handed it to her.

  ‘What’s so hilarious?’ he asked.

  I couldn’t answer. I had no rational thought left in my head.

  Of all my beginnings, this was the worst. Even if I could delete the part where he thought I was a boy, and the part where I left my boots standing on his fencepost, I’d still be left with this:

  I am Friday Brown. I buried my mother. I ran away from a man who buried a swimming pool. A boy who can’t speak has adopted me. A girl kissed me. I broke and entered. Now I’m fantasising about a guy who’s a victim of crime and I am the criminal. I’m going nowhere and every minute I’m not moving, I’m being tailgated by a curse that may or may not be real. They call me Friday. It has been foretold that on a Saturday, I will drown…

  ‘She’s a lunatic,’ Darcy said and tapped her head with a finger. ‘We’re supposed to be quiet. Shut up, you freak.’ Her bald patches looked like the crop circles in the backyard.

  The thought set me off again. My face ached. I was near tears.

  ‘Oh, God, make it stop,’ she threw over her shoulder as she stalked away.

  Wish walked with Darcy to the end of the alley. He kept looking back at me like I was a car crash—but he was smiling.

  The odd thing was, while Darcy and I were squaring off and spitting venom, all I could think was that finally I felt something. I was alive. And when that laugh came up in my throat, it was downright confounding. I could feel myself coming back, like a ghost materialising, absorbing others’ energy. Maybe I was the one who was see-through.

  And Wish. His touch. Seeds of obsession. I was Vivienne’s daughter to the core, and suddenly there were more reasons to stay than to leave.

  I spent the afternoon with Silence.

  He took me to a hostel where they let me have a three-minute tepid shower. I used shampoo that left me feeling itchy and smelling like a toilet-block air freshener. We wandered the streets and shared lunch in the park. Our conversation was easy, if a little one-sided. He made me laugh some more, and whenever I laughed, I could feel the million criss-cross cuts on my soul starting to heal.

  On the floor of a gazebo in a memorial rose garden, I drew the shape of a snail’s shell and decorated it with stones and flowers.

  There were no coins, but Silence watched and clapped when it was finished.

  In Silence’s secret garden, I showed him how to climb, how he had to plot his ascent like advance moves in a chess game—one foot in the wrong place could ruin your whole strategy and the descent could get scary. Up high in a tree, we dropped prickly pods on people strolling underneath; I hung upside down with my legs hooked over a branch and made enough noise for us both. Later we ate ice-cream in a paddleboat and I barely thought about the void underneath. I could swim, after all. Like a goddamn fish. Even with boots on.

  At one point I caught Silence staring. He was looking at me like I was something precious he’d found.

  I’d missed being looked at that way.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The next night, Arden was behaving badly. She couldn’t sit still and a few drinks didn’t calm her down either. She found something to criticise in everyone, even AiAi, who couldn’t be offensive if he tried. At ten o’clock she banished AiAi to bed and informed Bree that she was babysitting. She told the rest of us to get changed.

  ‘We’re going out,’ she said. ‘Arden needs to party.’

  ‘Shit,’ Joe said to me. ‘When she talks about herself in the third person like that, look out.’

  Darcy rolled her eyes and bolted upstairs to use the bathroom first.

  I was wondering what to wear, but then I was offered a public makeover, courtesy of Carrie. She made me sit on the kitchen counter while she did my make-up. She ran her fingers through what was left of my hair, using a handful of stuff that looked like congealed fat. She worked carefully on my face while Silence watched. He looked worried.

  After an eternity, Darcy emerged wearing red stilettos, an oversized leopard-print shirt and not much else. When I got to the bathroom I held up a small battery-powered lantern that we left standing in the hall. The mirror was covered in a sticky film of hairspray, but even the airbrushing didn’t prepare me for how I looked.

  There was nothing of me left. Everything belonged to someone else. I was an alien with Cleopatra eyes. Two blue, glitter teardrops dripped beneath my left eye and I had a slick, pale-blue mouth. My hair had been pressed into a lopsided Mohawk that curled like a frozen wave.

  When I went back downstairs, Arden looked me over. ‘Darcy, give her your silver dress,’ she ordered.

  ‘No way. She’s not having any of my stuff.’

  ‘No, thanks,’ I said.

  ‘Darce. Pretty please. Help the androgenoid look like a girl,’ Arden pleaded. ‘You can have extra drink money.’

  Darcy reluctantly handed over a shimmering, knee-length dress that, paired with my boots, completed the look I wasn’t after. I waited for the others, standing so the dress didn’t crease. No expression, so my face wouldn’t crack. My skin felt set in concrete.

  The club was underground. Entry was down a steep flight of steps, past a bouncer with overblown biceps, through double doors with handles the shape of a crucifix. The bouncer had yellow plugs stuffed in his ears. Music louder than anything I’d ever heard before was pumping out into the night. The whole building had its own pulse. Bam, bam, bam. I pressed my hand against the wall and the beat passed through me like a kick from a cattle prod. A neon sign wrote itself in molten, red-lava letters, then erased and started again—Le Freak.

  ‘You’re going to love it,’ Joe reassured me. ‘It’s party-time, it’s Saturday, all the freaks come out to play,’ he sang to the tune of It’s raining, it’s pouring. He had his usual bib’n’brace pants on, but he’d gone all out with a tight, purple shirt.

  Freak, all right. When we left the squat I felt like a walking corpse, dressed up for Halloween. But I fitted right in. In fact, I
was less freaky than the other Halloween characters lining up outside. I tried not to stare.

  Arden wore spiked heels and skin-tight Lycra pants. Her dreads were twisted into a knot on top of her head and she had fake eyelashes with miniature peacock feathers on the ends. She looked like a Vegas showgirl. Slow blinks kept the eyelashes from falling off. It made her look sleepy.

  Arden drew a line down the bouncer’s chest with her nail and batted her peacock-eyes at him.

  Carrie went first, pumping her fist in the air. Darcy looked underage—for that matter, so did I—but the bouncer just held the door open and let us in.

  ‘God, it’s been forever since we went out,’ Carrie said. She barged through a crowd of people lining the corridor. ‘Coming through. Scuzi. Beep, beep. Fuckin’ mooove. Carrie needs a drink.’ She stopped by a kissing couple and yelled, ‘Get a snorkel!’

  Darcy had been practising her model-walk. Instead of sophistication, she managed to pull off the little-girl-dressed-in-mummy’s-clothes look. She had to keep tugging her shirt down so it covered her backside. Most of her patchy hair was tucked under a red beret.

  ‘What do you want to drink?’ Carrie yelled.

  ‘Beer,’ I said. It was the easiest to say over the noise.

  Arden leaned over an iron balustrade and surveyed the action.

  The dance floor was a sinkhole in the middle of the club. Two levels of bars and standing room surrounded it. Nobody appeared to be dancing, even the people on the floor. There was a lot of writhing and jumping and fist-pumping, but not dancing. Not the kind I was used to anyway.

  Carrie came back without the beer. She had a holder with plastic test tubes lined up. They were filled to the top with purple goop and I imagined they were giving off toxic gas.

  ‘Here.’ She handed me one. ‘Heart-starter. Clear!’ She threw her head back and the goop glugged down her throat.

  Arden did the same and took another. She dropped the empty tube over the balustrade into the crowd below.

  ‘What is this stuff?’

  ‘Just drink it,’ Arden challenged. She spotted Malik coming towards us and turned away, her mouth tight. She said something I couldn’t make out and strode off.