‘What’s all that stuff in the cellar?’ I asked.
‘How the fuck should I know?’
‘Charming.’ I spun on my heel and went into the bedroom. It struck me that the house was just as dusty, rotten and mildewy as when I’d first arrived, but by now I was used to it. I couldn’t smell it anymore. It was the smell of blankness. Emptiness.
As usual, Silence and Bree had left their beds unmade. Carrie’s and mine were made. A corner of Silence’s notebook was sticking out from under his pillow. I pulled out the notebook and flipped through the pages. It was nearly full and the last few blank pages were scarred with outlines of words from the pages before. Silence had a whole lot more going on in his head than he could say out loud. His frustration was there on every page; in places the pen scored right through the paper. Some phrases stood out more than others:
Today I caught Darcy and Malik together when Arden wasn’t here. Darcy isn’t the same anymore.
He didn’t elaborate on what he saw them doing.
Carrie said her teeth hurt and she wishes she had her old ones back.
I found another girl in the train station. We saved a baby. Darcy doesn’t like her. I like her. She looks so much like Amy.
Amy? His sister?
Friday showed me how to climb a tree. The world looks different from up there.
Joe sleeps like a dead person. I don’t feel safe. I can’t sleep without someone watching over me.
Was that why he’d started sleeping in our room?
Nothing.
I am nothing.
On the last few pages, this was his recurring theme, as if he’d fallen into a place of darkness.
Reading his words left me feeling unsettled. So many gaps to fill in. I tucked the notebook back under his pillow.
I jumped up to stick the peeling corner of newspaper back onto the window, but I couldn’t reach.
A hand stretched above my head and I caught the whiff of male underarm.
I fell back.
Malik stood there. He pushed the loose corner back onto the Blu-Tack and turned around. He was wide awake, obviously had been for some time, and he reeked of petrol.
‘Hey,’ I blushed.
‘Hey,’ he said.
‘Where’s Arden?’
He rolled his eyes towards the ceiling.
‘Sleeping?’
‘Nuh.’
My skin was crawling. He stood directly between me and the door, wearing an empty stare that screamed sociopath.
‘Well. I gotta…’
Malik put out a hairy arm to stop me. He looked me over crudely.
I was flustered and sweating. It was like I was trapped underneath, trying to break surface tension. My vision was smudged, my hearing distorted. I was panting and he took it for something else.
Malik’s jeans were partly unzipped as if he was halfway through dressing or undressing. When I made eye contact his pupils dilated until they were whole.
I took another step back and measured the distance between my foot and his crotch.
Arden appeared. ‘What’s going on here?’ she asked. Her eyes landed on me, ran up and down, darted to Malik, back to me again.
Darcy sidled up behind her in the hallway.
‘Jesus, Malik. Lay off the sniff,’ Arden said.
I was so grateful to her for coming when she had that I staggered past Malik and stood next to her.
Arden’s fist shot out and connected with my jaw.
I flew backwards. I landed on my side on top of Carrie’s mattress. The release of tension followed by the shock of her punch made me burst into noisy tears.
Malik sniffed. He zipped up his jeans and stomped out.
Arden stood there a moment longer, barely moving. She said calmly, ‘You’ll be all right.’ As if I deserved punishment but she hadn’t meant to hit me that hard.
Darcy looked shocked. She stared after Malik with an expression of distaste.
The pain set in a few seconds after they had left the room. Aching, throbbing, and the sensation that some of my teeth were in the wrong place. My bite was off. I wiped away tears with the hem of my shirt and noticed that my zipper on my jeans was also riding low. Is that what Arden had seen? Is that what she’d thought?
The punch, Malik, Silence’s notebook—it was all too much. I’d never been hit. Not ever. Even when Vivienne was furious, she’d never reacted like Arden just had.
I stuffed my things into my backpack. I gave in to the despair that had been threatening to spill over for weeks. There was no point trying to keep it inside. Maybe that’s how it had felt for Vivienne—all those times I’d thought she was at her lowest, it hadn’t been that at all. She hadn’t been draining away, she’d been spilling over.
It took hours to find Silence.
In a city that big, it should have taken even longer. He was a creature of habit, so I checked his favourite places first. The first time I went to the glasshouse he wasn’t there, but an hour later, he was. I caught him trying to scoop the fish into a jar. His balance was precarious, his sleeves wet to the elbow. His hair too, from trying to peer through the murk.
‘What are you doing?’ My question squeezed out between gritted teeth; my jaw felt wired shut, out of alignment. ‘Arden hit me.’ I hadn’t meant to spring it on him like that, but it came out before I could think.
Silence had caught one goggle-eyed goldfish. He tipped it out. It dived tail-first and disappeared. He watched it swim free then turned and hurled the jar at the square, greenish panes of the glasshouse walls. The jar shattered, but the panes held up.
‘I’m okay.’ I looked around but there was nobody nearby. ‘I can’t stay. For real, this time.’
I know, he said on a sigh.
I was thinking, It’s too late, I’m already attached. I hated goodbyes.
Silence held up his hand. There was a spark in his expression that had been missing for some time. I’m coming with you, he signed.
‘But I don’t know where I’m going.’ I tried to stop the surge of excitement I felt.
I don’t care. I’ll come with you.
‘Me and you against the world, huh?’
He smiled. Me and you.
We put off returning to the squat until it was dark. Silence bought hamburgers and we ate as we walked. He swapped his tomato for my onion and he gave me his hoodie when I mentioned the cold.
When I hesitated outside the cellar window, he held my hand.
Arden met us at the top of the cellar stairs. She launched herself at me. I cowered and nearly fell, but she was hugging me, her embrace a vice. I was stiff and unforgiving but she folded me into her.
‘You’re back,’ she purred in my ear.
It sounded like a threat.
She stepped away from me and my heart did a stage-dive.
Wish was there. He was playing cards with Joe, whose face still looked collapsed in places, who still struggled with the stairs and moved like an old man.
Carrie and Darcy watched as if there was a thousand acres at stake.
Wish high-fived Silence and eyed me with friendly curiosity and not much else.
Barely moving her lips, Carrie said, ‘There’s beer in the sink.’
‘Chug-a-lug,’ cackled AiAi.
Silence grabbed a bottle out of AiAi’s hand and smacked him on the top of his head.
AiAi, drinking? Arden would never allow it. I raised an eyebrow but Arden seemed not to care.
‘Leave him alone,’ she said and twisted the top off a fresh one. ‘It’s only beer. Don’t be a killjoy. Look, it’s the old crew all together again. Cheers.’
The others followed with a chorus of clinks.
I went to the bedroom and dumped my backpack. I could stay there and sulk, or I could join in and go through the motions. Maybe even have a conversation with a guy who made me feel all thumbs and two left feet, instead of behaving as if I was an asylum inmate like I had the last time I saw him.
Except he’d said I was pat
hetic.
I wasted time rearranging my bed, changing into cleaner jeans and a T-shirt.
Back in the kitchen the air smelled like an old keg and everyone’s voices were louder than Arden would usually allow. It was like she’d scrapped all of her rules.
Bree wasn’t there. Malik wasn’t either and that suited me just fine.
I helped myself to a beer, even though I didn’t much like the taste, and sat next to Carrie.
‘Here she is,’ AiAi said as if somebody had just asked where I was.
‘Do you want me to deal you in?’ Wish said. He shuffled and split the deck like a pro.
‘Don’t do it,’ Joe butted in. ‘He counts the cards. If this was Vegas he’d get dragged off with a bag over his head.’
‘I don’t know how,’ I said. ‘I’ll just watch.’
‘Story of her life,’ Darcy snorted.
Wish dealt two cards each to himself, Darcy, Joe, Carrie and AiAi.
AiAi immediately turned his cards face up and showed everyone what he had.
‘Not yet, numb-nuts,’ Joe told him and flipped them back over.
I watched Wish’s face as he dealt. Sure enough, he seemed to be cataloguing the cards as they were revealed. He told everyone to place their bets—with bottle tops—and scooped the pile towards him when he won.
I drained the last of my beer. ‘Who wants another one?’ I plunged my hand into the ice-filled sink and dredged up a couple of bottles.
Silence was sitting in a corner, sucking on his inhaler. He said something to Arden. She crouched next to him, talking in a low voice. He shook his head suddenly, violently, as if a bug had crawled into his ear. Arden grabbed his chin and turned his face to hers, slapping his fingers away when he tried to communicate.
I put my hand under the ice again. Fished out two more.
When I looked across again, Arden and Silence had gone.
‘Where’d they go?’
Darcy shrugged.
‘I’m shattered,’ Carrie said and pushed away from the table.
‘Me too,’ yawned Joe.
Wish scraped up the deck and accepted another beer. He turned his attention to me.
I forgot all about Silence.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Darcy and I were waging a battle of wills.
If it had been Carrie or Joe still standing, I would have gone to bed hours before—but it was Darcy. Wish and Darcy and me. All of us almost sober and sleepy at an hour that was closer to morning than night.
Wish said he’d had one too many beers to drive home. Darcy was grim and determined, incapable of speech.
My eyelids felt like they were being pulled shut by invisible threads. Dry mouth, hot cheeks, aching bladder—I wasn’t a good beer drinker. I could feel diamond-shaped imprints from the crate on my butt.
Wish had done most of the talking—about joining the Army Reserve, about starting his electrician’s apprenticeship, about missing Arden and the others—until he ran out of things to say.
None of us had spoken for about five minutes when he said, ‘Darcy’s asleep.’
I looked over. Her head rested on her hands and she was snoring quietly. Limp hair hung over her face, her mouth so slack and childlike I couldn’t imagine anything nasty coming out of it.
‘I might crash, too,’ I said. ‘I wonder where the others went?’
‘Dunno. Arden’s always been nocturnal. She’s probably clubbing with Malik.’
‘But she took Silence with her. And why would she leave if she invited you over?’
‘She didn’t invite me,’ he said. ‘I just came.’
I believed him.
‘She said…never mind. Did you really say I was pathetic?’
Stupid mouth. Stupid, stupid mouth.
‘What? Pathetic, no. I said you were lost. I knew it the moment I saw you standing in my bedroom doorway. Like you’d just stepped into another dimension.’
‘I was in shock,’ I said. ‘Arden didn’t tell me she knew whose house it was.’
‘Well, she wouldn’t. That would spoil her fun, wouldn’t it?’
‘You mean she knew you were home?’
‘She knows where my bedroom is, if that’s what you’re asking,’ he said. ‘The light was on. She knew.’
‘That was an accident. I went to the wrong door. But why would she do that?’
‘Why does Arden do anything? She’s a force of nature. Other people just get swept up with her. When you get too far away from her she yanks your chain. I should know.’ He sounded bitter.
‘So why do you keep in touch?’
He looked at me with a quizzical expression. ‘How could I not? I love her. Always will.’
‘Oh,’ was all I could say. It winded me. I’d danced around the definition of them, together, and now there it was. Plain and simple.
‘We haven’t really seen each other much, not for at least six months. I just brought your boots back. Arden never used to be like this. She needs to go home, face her demons.’
‘She told me a bit about her family.’
‘You would have got the “my father is an abusive cop-bastard” version.’
‘Something like that,’ I admitted.
‘It’s not so black and white.’
‘Nothing ever is.’
‘Arden’s version will change depending on who she’s telling,’ he said. ‘And I never said you were pathetic. So how did you end up here?’
‘I’m between dimensions right now,’ I joked.
He loved her. Always would. It didn’t get much more black and white than that.
Wish leaned across the table and ran his finger along my jawline, where Arden had hit me. For a second, my vision shimmered and if I hadn’t already been sitting, I would have fallen. He traced the slight swelling, still there. Suddenly it didn’t hurt at all.
‘How did you get this one?’
I thought of Arden’s fist. ‘Can’t remember.’
‘Liar.’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does to me.’
‘I wonder where Arden went?’ I glanced at the cellar door.
‘Don’t change the subject. She’ll be fine, she always is.’
‘It’s not her I’m worried about. And what was the subject?’
‘You. This.’ His finger had a rapid pulse.
I looked at Darcy sleeping, wondered what we were going to do with this super-charged energy between us. With Darcy there it felt illicit, dangerous. Thrilling. It was me he wanted. I was tired of being alone. Tired of being me—timid, sexless, unremarkable me.
Darcy didn’t stir.
Wish was waiting for me to start something. Holding his breath.
I thought of Arden, how she danced Malik on her string. I remembered how Vivienne never had to ask. I wanted that indescribable thing that made them female and powerful. I thought that if I hadn’t been born with it in my marrow, I could maybe try it on, wear it for a while, see if it fitted.
My heart was pounding. I kneeled, crawled under the table and surfaced between his knees.
He lifted me easily, like I weighed nothing.
I felt like I was slipping. There were only rules to break, taboos to challenge, and nothing else mattered. There was a dragging sensation in my lower belly. It was unfamiliar, yet still belonged—and it was taking me over. I stood between his legs, I leaned down, and he kissed me. It was a hello kiss, slow and deep. For the first time since forever I had something solid and real to hold; I could feel his bones, his ribs, shoulderblades, his hips. His lips. His hands traced light circles on my back and ran up to my neck. He was holding back. Was he afraid I’d break?
He stood up and we staggered into the dark hallway, joined in too many places to count. The papered walls were rough against my back where he lifted my shirt. It was so dark. Too dark to see his face, so I traced his eyes with my fingertips. He closed them. Went by feel. My bra unsnapped and hung loose. Warm hands with a cool air chaser. Goosebumps wherev
er he touched. I tried to breathe normally but it wasn’t possible.
It was so far from anything I’d ever experienced; those few awkward, sticky moments in fogged-up cars with guys who didn’t even notice when you’d gone, when you were nothing but a sordid rumour the next day.
I would be chasing that feeling forever and, because I didn’t want it to, I knew it had to end. I wanted to be alone with him. Not like that. Not with Arden in his head.
‘Wish…’ I let my hands fall to my sides. I willed them to stay there.
‘I know,’ he said and his hands fell, too.
He leaned his forehead against mine. We breathed each other’s breath and pulled apart. I expected pain, as if a vital organ could have gone with him, but all I felt was cold and tired and empty. And confused. I’d taken what I wanted, but what would it cost?
We went back into the kitchen.
Wish looked at Darcy, still sleeping. He smiled ruefully and kissed her lightly on top of her head. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered to her. ‘Tomorrow night,’ he said to me in a low voice. ‘Can I pick you up? Take you for a drive somewhere? Away from here?’
I loved that he had to ask, that he wasn’t sure of my answer. ‘What about Arden?’
‘What about her?’
‘Yes,’ I answered, because he’d said what I wanted to hear.
As soon as he was gone, I felt the wrongness of what we’d done. I saw the inevitability of it, too. I was my mother’s daughter, destined to run, and to be with a guy who would never be mine, except for a moment. And I knew that it wasn’t a good fit; I could never be a taker.
My eyes were already closing when I crawled into bed.
‘Good night?’ Carrie murmured.
‘Goodnight.’
‘No, that was a question. Did you have a good night?’
She must have heard us in the hallway. ‘Yes,’ I smiled.
‘Be careful,’ I thought she said, but I couldn’t be sure because my mind was already drifting.
Wish.
I wish.
I woke too soon, yanked out of a deep sleep by the sound of pounding feet on floorboards. Carrie bolted upright at the same time. We looked at each other, still groggy, trying to make sense of what was going on.
‘What the…?’
Friday Brown Page 12