Wonderland

by Joanna Nadin

  “Just out. Got to see a man about a dog.”

  “What dog?”

  She tuts. “It means stop asking questions.”

  “Sorry,” I murmur. “Come around tomorrow, yeah?”

  “Maybe,” she says.

  I feel the blood drain from my head, and dizziness engulfs me. I clutch at the sink to steady myself. Catch my reflection in the mirror. Pale. Terrified.

  Stella sees it and laughs. “God. OK. What are you worried about? I’m not going to run off, if that’s what you think.”

  “I don’t,” I lie.

  “You don’t get it, do you?” She stands behind me. Puts her arms around me. I meet her eyes in the glass. Her easy smile gone now. “We need each other,” she says. “We’re soul mates. Like that Greek philosophy thing — with the two halves of the egg waiting to meet each other.”

  “Aristotle,” I say.

  “Whatever. We’re Bonnie and Clyde.” She smiles again.

  “Laurel and Hardy?” I try.

  “Morecambe and Wise.”

  “Fred and Ginger.” We’re both laughing now. Stella’s face next to mine. Her hair falling down over my chest.

  “I’ll always come back,” she says.

  And I see the way she looks at me, feel the way she is holding me. And this time, I believe her.

  “Where’s Harry?” Alfie is in the kitchen. Empty fishbowl in his hands, water slopping out over the floor.

  Dad is sliding something frozen out of a packet onto a baking tray. He looks up and sees the bowl. Then looks at me. Realizes what I have done. What Stella has done. But I don’t care. I’m tired of pretending. He’s not five years old anymore. And it’s not like she killed it. They die. Everything dies eventually.

  Alfie asks again. “Dad?”

  But I answer. “He’s gone,” I say.

  Alfie looks at me. Then back at Dad. Expectantly. Waiting for him to deny it. But he doesn’t.

  “Alfie . . .”

  “Where is he?” Alfie demands.

  “I flushed him,” I say. “He was already dead. I said a prayer and everything,” I lie.

  Alfie drops the bowl. The glass smashes on the hard tiles and I feel water and colored gravel splash across my bare feet.

  “Oh, Alfie . . . Don’t move.” Dad grabs the mop.

  “I’m sorry,” I say.

  But Alfie is crying. And then Dad is hugging him. Telling him it’ll be all right. That Harry was just old. That he can choose another fish tomorrow.

  I kneel down in the dirty water and pick up the pieces of glass, all the time thinking, It’s only a bloody goldfish. But not saying it. Because no one ever does around here.

  That night I’m woken by the sound of something falling on the kitchen floor, rolling along the ridged surface. Then footsteps, heavy, the knock and scrape of a chair. I squint at the glowing red numbers on the alarm clock, my eyelids aching with sleep and the heat. It’s past one. I hear a clink. The sound of glass against glass. I sit bolt upright. Stella. It can only be her. What is she doing? What if Dad catches her?

  Sweat sticks my feet to the painted boards of the landing. Dad’s bedroom door is shut. “Don’t wake up,” I beg. “Please don’t wake up.”

  I hear a thud. Then something else. Something slammed hard on the table. Oh, Stella, Stella.

  But it’s not her. It’s him. Dad. He’s sitting at the table, his head resting on his hands. Bottle of shop whiskey open. An inch of it in the glass in front of him. I realize he’s drunk, and I want to go back. To hide. Don’t want to see him like this. But it’s too late. He raises his head and looks straight at me, in my T-shirt and knickers, framed by the door.

  “Jude.” It’s a strangled sound, a sort of sob. “Oh, Jude, I’m sorry,” he says. “I —”

  “It doesn’t matter,” I say quickly, trying to shut him up. I want to get out, before he says anything else, but he won’t let me.

  “It does.” He shakes his head.

  I should go to him, I think. Sit with him. Let him say all that stuff. Tell him it’s not his fault. Any of it. That I’m sorry. That I miss her too. But something about the way he is makes me shrink back. His face is contorted. By drink. Or sorrow. He’s not real. Not him. I stay in the doorway, my arms wrapped tight around myself for protection.

  “You can go,” he says. “To London. I won’t stop you.”

  I nod.

  “Just promise me you’ll —” He sobs again, stifling it with the back of his hand. “Just be careful, Jude.”

  “I will,” I whisper.

  His hands are over his mouth, elbows on the table. He’s staring at me. But it’s like he’s seeing someone else.

  “You look —”

  Say it, I think. Just say it.

  But he can’t. And in that second I feel nothing but pity and hatred for the pathetic wreck sitting in front of me. This shell of a man who can only speak when he’s drunk. Who has made me the shadow that I am.

  “Go to bed, Dad.” I spit the words out, hard with contempt.

  He nods. But his hand falls to clutch the glass again.

  I lie in bed, the heat enveloping me, taking me with it. “You should be happy,” Stella says. The Stella in my head.“You’ve gotten what you wanted.”

  But I haven’t. Not at all.

  July

  THE HEAT is unbearable. Headlining the Western Daily and every conversation at the till. Scorching the grass brown. Steering wheels burn to the touch, and passengers’ faces drip with sweat, windows wound down and Atlantic FM blaring out.

  Stella and I lie on the Point, wearing SPF 30, smoking and reading lines. All the time, me trying to forget why we’re there. The audition. Pretend it’s nothing. But it overwhelms my every thought.

  It’s just a day away now. I’ve booked the train. Dad paid for it. He has given me a map, an A–Z with the Tube stop and the Lab marked in red pen.

  Sometimes I’m scared of getting in. Scared that London is bigger, brighter, better than I can ever be. That I won’t touch its surface. That it will swallow me and spit me out. Another small-town nobody who didn’t make it.

  Other times I’m scared I won’t get in. That I’m nowhere near good enough. That Isabella sounds like a whining prissy, or an overblown stage-school brat. That I should have picked Juliet after all. Or Viola, and gone for laughs. That the piece is too obscure. That I can’t dance. That I’ll end up like the other village kids, doling out gum and papers and getting fat, purple veins bulging on my legs like Mrs. Hickman’s.

  “Christ. It’s like Calcutta out here.” Stella drops the book and picks up her cigarettes. A bead of sweat runs down her chest, bikini top discarded for a lineless tan.

  “Kolkata. It got changed. Anyway, come on. It’s tomorrow.”

  “For God’s sake. You’ve done the same speech for weeks. Even I know it by heart. That had he twenty heads to tender down/On twenty bloody blocks, he’d yield them up . . . Fol de rol, blah blah —”

  “OK!”

  She shrugs and lights up, holding the packet out to me. I take one and reach into my pocket for a lighter. Not her Zippo. A red plastic one, from the shop, that Stella said I needed now that I was serious. I am, I guess. My throat and lungs slowly hardening to the harsh burning. And I crave them. Not the nicotine, maybe. Not yet. But the feeling I get watching myself being this person.

  “You need to look different.” Stella brushes ash off her left breast. “There’s no shock. You’re a nun playing a nun. You need to look like — I don’t know — like a slut.”

  I smile. “Like you, you mean.”

  “Ouch. But, yeah,” she concedes. “Then when you start doing the whole Isabella, live chaste thing, it’s, like, oh, my God.”

  “I guess,” I admit.

  “And drama students are all sluts anyway.” Stella inhales again, then speaks through the smoke. “So, if you’re a slut that can play a nun, you’re their ideal candidate.”

  “I’m not, though,” I insist.

&
nbsp; “They don’t know that.” She smiles.

  I shiver, despite the heat. I’m scared. Because I know what Stella’s makeovers involve. Seen my Barbie and others like it go from prom queen to Goth whore.

  Stella leans back on her elbows, smoke mixing with her laughter. “Don’t worry. I won’t make you look like a freak.” She smiles, waiting for the beat. “Not totally, anyway.”

  I laugh and kick her. She kicks me back. Then I pick up the Shakespeare and hit her with it.

  “Bitch!” Leaving her cigarette in her mouth, she grabs her Coke and tips it over me. It soaks through my T-shirt, making it stick to my hot skin.

  I yelp. “Stella! That’s gross.”

  “Take it off,” she tells me.

  “I can’t. I’m not wearing a bra.”

  “So? Not like I haven’t seen it before.”

  “I know, but —”

  “But nothing. Who else is up here? A load of random tourists? They won’t give a toss.”

  The top stuck to me, I look like a photo in a girlie magazine anyway. I pull it over my head, then pour the last of my water over me.

  “What are you doing?” Stella says.

  “Wasps.” Like it’s obvious.

  “Great. So we’ll die of thirst now.” She sighs, then smiles at me slyly. “Wasp stings might improve them, anyway.”

  “Stella!” I hug my chest, embarrassed.

  “Joking. You’re gorgeous and you know it.”

  I smile. “You know the Hollys are getting theirs done for their eighteenth birthdays — 34DD.”

  “How low-rent.” Stella lies back and closes her eyes behind the Ray-Bans. I lie next to her, her arm against mine. She reaches for my hand and squeezes it. I feel safe and warm. And that’s how we fall asleep.

  “Jude?”

  I open my eyes. Everywhere is white. Sun-bleached. I close them again. The sky is burned onto my retina.

  “Jude?”

  I sit up. Stella is gone. Ed is standing over me. Staring. I grab the damp T-shirt and clutch it to me. I feel anger rise in me. That she’s gone. That he’s here. I don’t know.

  “Had a good look, have you?” I sneer. “How long have you been there anyway?”

  “What do you think I am? Some kind of perv? You’re just a schoolgirl.” He picks up the bikini top Stella has left and throws it at me. “Here. You never know who might be watching.” His sarcasm bites me.

  I feel anger coursing through me. Electricity, making my heart pound, the blood singing in my head. But I put it on, pulling the red halter neck over my head, snapping the strap. “What are you doing here, anyway?” I ask.

  “Came to find you. It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? The audition?”

  I pick up the half-smoked cigarette and fumble for my lighter. “Yup.”

  “So . . . good luck,” he says.

  I exhale slowly. Shrug. “Thanks.”

  Ed is silent. And it is a silence I can feel. Not like our old ones. Awkward now. And I don’t know if it’s just Stella. Or if there’s something else, something changing us, pushing us apart.

  “Good luck,” he repeats.

  “You said that.”

  “Yeah.”

  Silence.

  “What time do you get back?” he asks.

  “Dunno. Half nine.”

  Silence.

  “I’ll pick you up from the station.”

  “Dad’ll be there,” I retort.

  “So he’s changed his mind?”

  “Yup.”

  Silence.

  “That’s good.”

  I shrug and say nothing still. Though he’s right.

  “Jude. You can . . . talk to me, you know. If something’s wrong.”

  “What are you now, a shrink?”

  “No. God. It’s just. You’re not — I don’t know — you anymore, Jude.”

  I laugh, spiteful. “Who am I, then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Silence.

  “Well. Call me.” He stands up, one hand shielding his eyes against the sun. “Tell me how it goes.”

  “Yup.”

  Silence. I can feel the cigarette burning down, the ash falling on my fingers.

  “See you, then.”

  “Wouldn’t want to be you.” But I’m not smiling this time. Because I mean it.

  “Whatever.” Ed shakes his head.

  I watch him walk back up the slope to the Land Rover. Slow in the heat. And the anger still burns inside me. I’m not a schoolgirl. Not anymore. And I’m going to prove it.

  I decide I’ll let Stella do what she wants. Be her personal Extreme Makeover project. From nobody to smoking hot in one edit.

  Stella shows up after tea. Takes the new Vogue and Elle off the shelf downstairs and sets up a salon in my bedroom. Cheesy music on the CD player and my head wrapped in a fading pink towel as we flick through the glossy pages for an hour. Peroxide mixing with the sickly sweet rock-candy smell of nail varnish. Dizzy. High. The heat slowing everything down. Waiting for me to emerge.

  Five hours later and I’m staring at the not me in the mirror. I am different. Four-packets-of-Clairol-Ash-Blond, heavy-black-eyeliner, and lipstick different. Not obscure anymore, but stand-out, look-at-me bright. Shimmering. A butterfly.

  “I can’t believe it’s me.”

  “You. Totally. Rock.” Stella nudges me over on the chair so she can squeeze in next to me. We see our reflections and laugh. Because I’m not me. I’m her.

  She leans on my shoulder. “There is no me without you. Remember?”

  We look at ourselves. At each other.

  “See, Jude?”

  And I do see. I am still me inside. But now I have Stella’s hair, Stella’s face. She is everything I am not. Everything I want to be. And I can feel it. Feel what she must feel every day. Feel what Mum must have felt. Because right then I know that the world turns for me alone.

  I go downstairs for Diet Coke. Dad is in the kitchen, reading the sports pages. He looks up, startled. I wait for the shouting and the demands to dye it back. Back to brown. Back to nothing. But he just stares at the stranger I am now, then goes back to who beat who and by how much. As if it matters. As if it makes a difference.

  I walk back up the stairs. Slowly. Each footstep digging into him, I think. Reminding him of life.

  “YOU LOOK like a film star.” Alfie is agog. His Rice Krispies stopped snap, crackle, and popping ten minutes ago and lie soggy in the milk.

  I am trying to chew toast. But the butter clags in my mouth and my stomach contracts, full of nerves. I drop it onto the plate and push it away.

  “Dad, can I have yellow hair too?” Alfie dreams of another new disguise.

  “It’s not yellow; it’s blond,” I mutter.

  “No, you can’t,” Dad says, handing him a glass of juice. He gives me a foil package. “I’ve made you a sandwich for the train. Here.”

  I can smell sausages. Last night’s tea. Cold with ketchup on sliced white, I guess. My stomach turns. But I know it’s a big thing. That he’s trying to make up for before. “Thanks.” I push the package into my bag. Where I know it’ll lie forgotten, heating up before I throw it in a bin on a London street.

  I’m wearing another dress from Dixie’s, bought with the last of Gran’s money. A green vintage thing with a sweetheart neckline. And scuffed red ballet flats. All Stella’s work. Said they made me look interesting but not like I was trying too hard. “Everyone else’ll be in black. Bloody drama students always are. You’ll stand out. In a good way.”

  But alone I feel odd. Not me but not her either. Just a stupid girl dressing up in someone else’s clothes. And I want to go back upstairs and put something black on, so I am one of them.

  “Oh, my Lord!”

  Mrs. Hickman is here to look after Alfie and the shop while Dad takes me to the train. A blur of white flesh and blue cotton and a faint smell of bleach.

  She stares at my head.

  “You let her do that?”

  D
ad holds his hands up.

  Mrs. Hickman shakes her head. “Jude, you had lovely hair. Why, for pity’s sake?”

  Sarcasm rises like bile. I smile. A film-star smile. “Because I’m worth it.”

  Alfie giggles.

  But Dad saves me. And himself. “Jude. Time to go.”

  I grab my bag and push back the chair, scraping the tiles and knocking the table. Alfie’s juice spills.

  “Dad!” Alfie is soaked, the orange staining his pajamas.

  “Jude.” Dad groans.

  “Sorry.” I sigh.

  But Mrs. Hickman already has a cloth. She must carry them in her handbag. Maybe mums do that. Normal mums. She mops the table and sends Alfie upstairs to change.

  “Well, good luck. Though why you lot all want to go up to London I’ll never know.”

  She sounds like a sitcom character. The dumb local. And I’m the surly teenager with big ideas, set for a fall.

  “Because it’s not here,” I say.

  She tuts and tips my uneaten toast in the bin.

  Dad stays in the van, waiting until the train has pulled out. I watch through the window. See him start up and turn left back to the coast road. Feel the ten-pound note he pushed into my hand before I got out. “Just in case,” he said.

  “I’ve got money,” I lied. But I took it anyway. Put it in my purse with the twenty-pence coins he’d taken out of the till and given me for phone calls. I don’t have a mobile. No point. Churchtown is the Wild West. The last outpost with no reception. So the phone box is always busy. Tourists queuing in the summer to order cabs and pizza and check surf reports. Saying, “Isn’t it a relief to be away from it all?” Like it was in the seventies. But secretly longing to get back to their BlackBerrys and Wi-Fi and lattes.

  The train is quiet. Just six other seats taken in my carriage. The rest reserved from Exeter, Taunton, Reading. Places that sound gray, lifeless. Nowhere places. I look at the other passengers, with their newspapers and polystyrene cups and early morning silence. All men, four in suits. Not even the heat can persuade them out of their uniform. Two older. Retired, maybe. Still smart, though. I wonder why they are on the train. Are they going somewhere life-changing, like me? Or just to work, one of the faceless, nameless thousands scuttling into tall buildings before scuttling home again. Never making their mark. Never leaving their imprint on the world.