by Olivia Levez
Titters from the classroom. Everyone’s listening; I can feel them drawing all the air out of the room because they’re listening so closely.
Sigh. ‘Well, it’s your decision, Frances.’
Then she gets down and crouches by me; it’s that stupid thing they all do – get down to the level of the kid who’s playing up so they’re not threatened. I can read her better than all those books she likes to read us.
‘You have a choice, Fran: you can either comply with my reasonable request of moving back to your seat, or, if you insist on continuing to disrupt my lesson, then I’m afraid I’m going to have to reroute you.’
Rerouting is this thing where you have to go and sit at the back of a Year Seven or a Sixth-Form class with a great fat boring textbook and everyone ignores you. It’s stupid ’cause they’re never going to be able to make me leave this classroom.
Ever.
Miss turns her back to me and prepares to write the date on the board but I’m not having that.
I’m. Not. Having. That.
‘Fuck you,’ I say.
My voice could shatter glass.
Miss’s back freezes.
And everyone’s listening so hard they’re going to spontaneously combust.
‘OK, Frances,’ she says – and I’ll give her credit, her voice is only a little bit shaky. ‘It appears that you have made your choice. Please take this book and make your way to room E6.’
She thrusts a tatty textbook at me. It’s open at a page on similes. Happy cartoon bubbles telling me that:
Her face is as white as snow.
The sky is as black as a witch’s cloak.
I am so angry I could burst.
‘You can stuff your stupid book,’ I scream, and hurl it across the room.
I leap up out of my chair and slam my desk over. I kick it.
Everyone stares. Everyone waits.
A million hours pass.
Miss swallows. ‘OK, everyone,’ she says. ‘It seems that Frances needs…um…a little while to calm down. Please pack up your things and follow me. It’s a lovely day so we’ll work outside.’
And I have to watch as they all troop after her.
I am alone, in this stupid classroom with this stupid book.
I grab Miss’s marker pen and scrawl in big black letters all over her desk:
TRAITOR
Shrinking
The red cover is hardest to tear but I manage it, hands shaking. All those pages, all those stories, all the words, words, words. I scatter the pieces over the piles of magazines, all the books I could find, anything that could burn, newspapers, junk mail, unpaid bills.
Picture books.
I hear the ducks from the lake, still splashing even though it’s late. The park’s locked up. I had to climb over the railing by dragging up the old trampoline that’s been at the bottom of the flats since for ever. Around me, the dark shapes of the kiddies’ climbing frame and wooden tunnels in the playground. Below me, the coolness of the sandpit.
The smoke smells good; it reminds me of bonfires and Grandad on his allotment, chucking all the bad weeds on top of the pile. And all the time the smoke from his pipe curling, curling, a million years ago, before Johnny was born.
My notebook flickers. I’ve torn the pages out and scrumpled them up into little balls on the sand. They light easily and I watch the words wrinkle.
I’ve made one last entry in my red notebook, especially for her, for Miss.
And I’ve even done it as an ink waster so, Miss, if you ever read it in hell, I hope you really like it.
Dear Miss
You’re a snake. A smiling snake.
I want to rip out your ponytail and spit in your face and scratch out your eyes and rip the vintage buttons off your stupid frickin cardigan and pull out your hair and slash through that smile.
No more stories, Miss. Are you listening? Can you still hear me?
I hope you frickin can. You lying, treacherous bitch.
Made you look so good, didn’t it?
‘Write me a story, Fran’ and ‘Why don’t you set it all down?’ and ‘Let’s do an ink waster, an ink waster, an ink waster – maybe it’ll turn into something.’
You’ve been waiting for me to come out,
prising me out
like a crab out of its shell. And you’ve taken the innermost secret part of me, the bit that I’ve hidden and covered up and protected, and I let you read my dreams and all the time you’ve been waiting.
Maybe it will make me
open myself up like a blank page
and, while you’re at it, why don’t you scour lines through my words and scribble deep gouges in my heart and rip out my heart and tear it up, tear it up
into little fleshy shreds.
Because that’s what you did
when you told.
I screw up more pages because the first ones are going out already.
The words wither to embers that flash and die in the sand. My rage burns.
And I watch the words wrinkle till they burn into an idea.
Clean as Forgetting
I don’t know how long I sit in our tattered camp under the trees.
I clean my bleeding feet with seawater from a bottle and my torn-up leggings. From out of my Hello Kitty washbag I take:
1 black eyeliner
1 turquoise nail varnish
1 broken mirror.
And between swigs of vodka, I outline my eyes precisely with the eyeliner, taking great care with the flicks. My eyes stare back at me, glassy and huge. There are fragments of dirty brown skin and flashes of wet cheek and red peeling forehead, but they belong to a stranger.
I concentrate only on making perfect flicks.
When I’m done, I replace the cap on the eyeliner and put it back in the bag.
Another swig of vodka, clean as forgetting.
Off comes the lid of the turquoise polish. I stretch my legs out in front of me and they are long and brown and grubby. Old scabs and new scabs cluster from rock scratches and sandfly bites. But this doesn’t matter.
What matters is applying my nail varnish, carefully, breathing in the fumes. The polish gleams like a blue teardrop on each grimy toe. I do my hands next, holding them to the sun to dry. My hands are black shadows like palm leaves; through my frond fingers the sun shivers.
I blow on them to make sure they’re dry and put my Ray-Bans on.
Vodka.
Lie back now.
Because vodka tears are the sweetest.
Cave of Tears
We can’t stay here, Dog and me, that is certain.
One Tree Beach, our little camp, our home, they’re all gone; all smashed and broken. One Tree Beach has become Dead Man’s Bay.
I think of the weeping cave and its sucking tunnels and look at Dog.
‘There’s got to be a way through to the other side of the island,’ I tell him. ‘We’ve got to be brave, Dog.’
He wags his tail solemnly. Watches me as I refill the vodka bottle with rainwater and place it into my rucksack along with the Hello Kitty bag.
So we leave the broken-backed forest with its smashed-up trees, its tumbled logs and branches. We leave Dead Man’s Bay with its flies and flesh and pelicans.
Dog leads and I follow.
A bark, high and shrill; it comes from the back of the cavern.
I push against the darkness, one step at a time.
‘Wait for me,’ I say again.
His bark bounces off the unseen walls and mocks me. I follow and grope my way further in.
One foot. One foot at a time. It’s like pushing against a force field. I breathe hard and focus on reaching the back wall where Dog waits for me.
Then, moth-soft, a breath on my cheek.
I scream and scream and scream, loud as bells, loud as gulls.
And Dog joins in, yipping and yawling. He’s here with me; I can feel his wet fur pressing against my legs.
‘Oh God, oh God,’ I say
. ‘What was that? What the frick was that?’
As if in answer, two bats flit up and out of the cave, squealing. I can just see them, like scraps of cinder with my unblinding eyes.
‘Keep going, Dog,’ I say. ‘Frannie’s all right now.’
But I am so not all right.
The back of the cave doesn’t stop; it is an endless passage, a nightmare thing. Here, the dark is rock solid. I reach forward with my hands.
‘Wait for me,’ I say.
My fingers shrink from touch. Eyes wide and stretched and unseeing.
Dog is fast. I pant as I try to catch him up, Coral’s too-big shoes squelching and slipping – here is wet slime, there’s a rockfall. But Dog is always there, waiting; my little white guide.
Deeper and deeper we go, till the tunnel twists round and there is the ghost-light –
light at the end of the tunnel –
which I saw the first time I came. It’s a weird light, sort of blue-green, all shimmering and glowing like a misty pool.
The rocky floor begins to descend and I gulp –
Oh God, not deeper down –
and Dog’s claws tick-tack on the stone as he leads the way.
When we climb through the window in the rocks, I stare and stare.
We Are Rock
We’re in a cavern the size of St Paul’s Cathedral and it’s both beautiful and terrible.
‘Careful, Dog,’ I say, but this time it’s only a whisper.
This is the sort of place that makes you shiver because it doesn’t care about you; you’re nothing and it’s been here for millions of years, sighing, weeping.
Glistening shapes squat in the middle of the rocky island like little hunched monkeys. Stalagmites. I remember from school. They’re huddled in groups, these stone gargoyles. Crocodile-shaped stalactites cluster around the roof. They’re prehistoric claws, ugly, grasping; hanging like twisted turds.
Inside this huge stone chamber, I feel small and soft and raw –
but I am a rock.
‘We are rock and you are flesh,’ they say.
There is a splash and Dog’s swimming round and round a wide pool, his little face held up, tongue licking the water every now and then.
I shout a warning and the cave takes my voice and bounces it from wall to wall.
Carefulcarefulcarefulcareful.
I look up and there’s a sun-hole shining over this shimmering pool. It’s beautiful and misty and high up like a promise.
‘That’s where we’re going, Dog – to the other side of the island.’
It’s like, I don’t know, something unlocks inside me and I want to let everything, everything in: all this fear and beauty and wonder and promise – I want to strip myself raw and throw myself at it; soak up the light to kill all the shadows.
I take a deep breath.
Then I strip off my T-shirt and jump in.
The water slaps me coldcoldcoldcold.
I whoosh upward, gasping.
‘Oh. My. God.’
And the chamber takes my voice and throws it around, turning it into something sweet and beautiful, like choir music or something.
OhmyGod God God God Go-o-o-o-o-ddd.
I swim around with tiny strokes because it’s too cold to stretch your arms and the water freezes my chest so I can’t breathe.
Dog has climbed out, and is waiting for me, on the other side of the pool. I can feel him shiver from here.
I soak up just one more moment of this bathing light; I’m on stage and the spotlight is on me, alone in this strange cave theatre. I turn my face up to the light and close my eyes and inside my head I say a little prayer, just one, because it’s that sort of place.
Dog waits like a ghost in the shadows. He knows where he’s going.
Shivering, I follow.
Black Water
Here in this passage, the dark is solid as a punch and my eyes strain on blind stalks. It’s like my eyes are never going to get used to this dead-weight blackness.
Dog’s bark is always ahead. I turn round, and the glow of light from the cavern has shrunk to a thumbnail.
‘Dog,’ I shout again, and my voice echoes, high and tight and anxious.
I go forward. Think of the torch that I no longer have.
We’re in a thin sort of passageway that’s slimy with seawater. A passage that goes up and up.
After hours or minutes, we break through into a watery tunnel, which must be at the edge of the coast ’cause the sea’s coming through, closer and closer each time. There’s a dim light in this passage, revealing another chamber. Here it’s like entering the jaws of some prehistoric creature. All veined belly, cruel mouth. Below, swirling water. In front, the glistening rock has tapered to a bridge. We’ll have to get across somehow, even though it’s a narrow ledge. I’ll just have to crawl, shuffle.
Beneath me, the water sucks. There’s not much time before the water comes in and cuts us off. We’ll be trapped between the sea and the other side of the island. Trapped inside this mountain, in the heart of hell.
I start to shuffle across the bridge.
Dog is already over on the other side. He pants, watching, but I’m hugging this rock because any minute now the tide’s going to come in and when it does I’ll be beaten and battered like a rag doll. Rocks slip beneath my sliding fingers. I hold on, gritting my teeth as the wave-swell bashes into me, my fingers clawing so hard that I must have lost at least three fingernails.
I hold on – just.
Then sigh with relief as the water sucks back out.
Muscles shaking with the effort, I claw my way over the water, along the slippery rock. My knees burn and my hands throb with pain and I sit and get my breath back, and listen to the suck and glop of the seawater as it, too, rests.
‘?’ says Dog.
‘Not much further,’ I say. ‘Wait for me, Dog.’
I look across the chasm. Halfway there.
Through the greenish light I can see the rocky passage up ahead. It’s definitely going up and I feel a flip of excitement in my belly. Soon, soon, we’ll be on the other side of the island, Dog and me, away from the dead things, away from the rats, the things that sneak in the forest. There’ll be fresh water and a new shelter to build; a new little-house-by-the-sea.
Below me, the water gulps and ploshes.
‘Wait there, Dog,’ I say. ‘Don’t go without me.’
But he seems uneasy; his little feet dig into the ledge, as he watches something behind me. I twist around.
The tide must be coming right in now; I can make out the roll of it, surging into our dark cavern.
‘Dog, you’ve got to hurry!’ I yell.
I’m frightened now. The next swell of water will cover up the tunnel. He’ll be drowned; swept off his ledge in the tide-surge.
‘Please, Dog. Please go. Off you go, Monkey.’
But he won’t budge. His little claws are clinging on to that rock and his eyes are watching me. He watches me, tail twitching just a little, those treacle eyes never leaving my sight.
Then he cocks his head, and he’s gone, through the tunnel.
There’s a hissing roar, and seawater swells and crashes over me. I throw myself forward and grip on to the bridge, pressing my cheek against its stone surface and gasping as the icy water hits me.
A sucking sound and it pulls back, ready for round two.
‘Dog,’ I shriek. ‘Dog.’
Dog’s gone and I’m here alone, in this secret, sighing cave.
My cries echo round me like a flock of bats, and once they start, they don’t stop. It’s like something’s been unleashed and I’m a blind thing inside a cave and I’m whispering, whispering for someone to find me.
This is how I will die. Shivering in a cave, in the dark, because this is how monsters live and how they die. They don’t die on beaches. They die inside rocks.
Hand over hand, I shuffle over the bridge to the other side.
I know why I’m cursed, ’course I
do.
I’ve always known.
London’s Burning
Today is Sports Day. See how thoughtful I am?
I may be fucked up but I’m not a killer.
I only want to burn down every brick, every book, every lie –
’cause books are lies and Miss is a liar.
Mr Sparrey, the caretaker, turns and says, ‘All right, love? Shouldn’t you be outside?’
Out in the sun, everyone’s choosing teams and doing stretches and getting ice creams, and the teachers are all relaxed and they’ve got their sun cream on and their bad fashion shades on, and some will have even got their legs out.
The PE staff are on the loudspeaker.
The Head’s picking litter and pretend-smiling.
The coast is clear.
A carrier bag clinking with bottles.
Heart boomboomboom angry.
I hate.
It’s so easy to get inside English Block. No one’s bothered locking it.
There’s no one on the landing. Usually there’d be a cluster of Year Sevens messing about doing drama, but not today.
So I head straight for the stock cupboard next to Miss’s room. It’s that easy.
Shut the door. Here are piles of exercise books (old and new), old coursework, controlled assessments, sugar paper filled with students’ scrawl, books, papers, sliding piles of essays.
More importantly, there are all the books Miss loves so much.
So let’s destroy!
What will it be first?
How about a heap of textbooks? I rip the plasticky covers off and shove the paper middles on to the floor.
Next, the Shakespeare plays. Off with the plastic jackets. Off with their heads. On to the pile they go. I splash the vodka around and the smell of it is sharp and sweet.
Slosh.
I sweep all of the books off the shelves and there are hundreds of them; all those stories; all the words Miss likes. I want her to realise why I’ve done it.
Slosh.
Bitch. Behind that smug, I-really-care-about-the-kids exterior, behind the nods and the shoulder-taps and the winks and the smiley faces, she’s no better than the rest of them.