Valentine

by Jodi McAlister

  ‘I wish I wasn’t like this,’ he says.

  ‘Like what?’ I ask.

  He meets my eyes. ‘A fairy,’ he replies.

  I meet his gaze. ‘Just because you’re pretty and you can do a few magic tricks doesn’t mean you’re not just as human as me.’

  ‘Um, Pearl, sorry to break it to you, but it kind of does.’

  ‘No, it doesn’t,’ I say. ‘I have some experience in this area, and –’

  ‘What are you, a goblin?’

  ‘Shut up and let me finish. You think that me and Disey and Shad aren’t any less a family just because we’re not normal?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Or – you know how Tillie’s adopted? Her parents don’t love her any less just because she’s not biologically theirs.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘It’s the same thing,’ I say. ‘It’s not about blood or biology. It’s about – it’s about love.’

  He looks at me.

  ‘Too cheesy?’ I say.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I’m not very good at this whole breakdown counselling thing either,’ I admit.

  ‘You’re not so bad,’ he says.

  We look at each other for a long moment. ‘See, this thing about biology and whatnot,’ I say, ‘I don’t think most of the fairies really get that.’

  He leans back against my pillows. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, it’s pretty clear that’s why they think it’s me,’ I say. ‘You know, weird, bizarrely beautiful mother who died mysteriously, disappearing father . . . I come from generations of weird. Add it up and I can see why they would think I was their Valentine baby.’

  He scoffs.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘Trust me, Pearl, that’s not why they’re coming for you.’

  ‘Well, I suppose that whole bit about how I didn’t die after I went into a coma.’

  He stares at me.

  ‘What?!’ I say.

  ‘You have no idea, do you?’ he says softly.

  ‘What, have I accidentally been wearing a T-shirt saying, “Hey guys, I’m a fairy, catch me if you can” for all my life?’

  ‘Haven’t you ever noticed how people look at you when you walk into a room?’

  ‘No,’ I say flatly.

  ‘You –’ he gesticulates wildly, ‘– you draw people to you, Pearl. Even just for a second, people look at you. You – you have – what’s the word?’

  ‘No hair?’

  ‘Charisma,’ he says. ‘You always have, ever since I’ve known you. When you’re there, people notice you.’

  ‘Not like they notice you,’ I say.

  ‘I know people notice me,’ he says. ‘I think that’s one of the – the side effects, I guess. But what’s your excuse?’

  ‘I think you’re over-exaggerating,’ I say.

  ‘People feel really strongly about you, Pearl,’ he says. ‘Your friends, your close friends, like Phil and Tillie, they worship you. I remember how Marie always used to talk about how much she liked you. Annabel as well. Holly-Anne can’t stand you. Neither can Tricia. Cam thinks you’re the spawn of Satan. And there are at least three guys in our year who have been completely in love with you since primary school.’

  ‘Really? Who?’

  ‘Not the point,’ he says. ‘You – you’ve never – I don’t even know how to say this. You’ve always just sort of been there, doing your thing, and some people love you for it and some people hate you for it, but you’ve never apologised for who you are, you just keep on being Pearl, and –’

  ‘And so that automatically means that I’m somehow fairy-like?’ I say bluntly. ‘You just said there’s a whole bunch of people who hate my guts. Everyone loves you!’

  ‘You don’t.’

  ‘Finn, I –’

  ‘I never understood it,’ he says raggedly. ‘I tried so hard – all my life I’ve been putting myself in your way, hoping that – but you saw through it the whole time.’

  The room feels suddenly very warm, the air thick like soup. ‘Hoping what?’ I ask.

  ‘I remember the first time I saw you,’ he says. ‘It was kindergarten, the first day. I was saying goodbye to my dad. I didn’t want to be there, but I was trying to be tough and not cry. Nearly everyone else was – crying, that is – and then you walked in.’

  ‘I remember,’ I say softly. ‘I came with Disey. Her car wouldn’t start. We were late.’

  ‘You were holding her hand,’ he says. ‘You had this long hair in two plaits, tied with blue ribbon, in bows. Your shoes were really shiny.’

  ‘Shad polished them the night before,’ I say.

  ‘You weren’t crying,’ he goes on. ‘Your sister knelt down in front of you and asked if you were all right. You just smiled. Everyone else was sobbing their hearts out around you and there you were, grinning like a maniac. You hugged your sister and she gave you your bag and then she kissed the top of your head and waved goodbye and left and you walked around the room and looked for a desk and sat down. But everyone else was still going through their epic farewell dramas and so you got up again and started looking at all the posters on the wall – the alphabet and numbers and stuff – and you looked so – so –’

  ‘Excited,’ I fill in. ‘I remember – I was so excited.’

  ‘Everyone else was wailing about wanting to go home,’ he says, ‘and you wanted to know stuff. I looked at you, and you – it was like you shone.’

  ‘What do you mean, shone?’

  ‘I still see it now,’ he whispers. ‘When I look at you.’

  The question hangs between us in the air. I look at him, at his dark eyes, at the effort in his face, feel his hands in mine. I can back away and I know he will let me do it. Or I can ask the question and change the world.

  I feel like I’m about to walk on a highwire, millions of miles above the ground. I can refuse to step out and I will be safe, and no one will blame me. But if I do it . . . if I go . . .

  Adrenaline will rush through my veins. I’ll teeter and totter and there is no safety net, just the ground, so far away it seems like a pinprick, but which will rush up to meet me with alarming certainty, because if I lose my balance I’ll fall, and there will be no coming back.

  It’s foolish to go out. Much better to stay home, tucked up in a bed with a cup of tea and a good book. But if I keep my feet . . . if I keep my head . . .

  . . . .f I reach the other side . . .

  I close my eyes.

  And step out.

  ‘What do you see when you see me?’ I ask softly.

  ‘It’s like – when – when I’m with you – when you’re around – everything else in the room is black and white.’ I can feel his hands shaking, ever so slightly. ‘You’re the only thing in the world that’s in colour.’

  I’m not the only person on the highwire. He’s there with me, trembling high above the ground.

  ‘You’ve always seen through me,’ he says. ‘Everyone’s laughed at all the stupid stuff I’ve done, but not you. You look at me and you see what the fairies see – a stupid screw-up idiot who –’

  ‘You’re none of those things,’ I say.

  ‘The fairies had a choice of four kids when they were looking for their Valentine,’ he says. ‘Marie and Cardy are dead and you nearly were too, but no one’s come anywhere near me.’

  ‘Then they haven’t been looking hard enough.’

  He doesn’t say anything.

  ‘Sometimes you make me so mad I see red,’ I say. ‘You annoy me so much I want to slap you. You get under my skin and it makes me want to scream.’

  He won’t look at me.

  The rope is moving beneath us, wobbling and lurching in the wind. He totters. I shake. Alone, we are going to fall.

  I reach out to him.

  ‘And you make me want you so badly that I can’t think,’ I say, and before I can doubt myself or second guess, I kiss him.

  It’s not a very good kiss. It happens so quickly tha
t our noses collide awkwardly and I nearly elbow him in the solar plexus and his hands dig into my sides as he tries to either hold me or throw me off. Our lips are sort of mashed together and –

  Oh God. This is so embarrassing. He is going to laugh his arse off at me. This was such a mistake. This is the worst kiss ever. I bet it is.

  Not that I have anything much to compare it to. Dave and I didn’t exactly master the art in our three weeks of awkward dating.

  ‘Pearl,’ he gasps, and I pull back and I know I must be bright red and oh God oh God why did I do that it might have been the stupidest thing I have ever done in my whole life and he’s going to laugh and I should just throw myself out the window right now and let the Unseelie have me and he was totally playing me with all those nice things he said just for his own amusement and –

  ‘Pearl,’ he says, and kisses me again.

  Oh. Okay. Maybe I – oh, this is nice. He is good at this, and – shut up, brain!

  He kisses me once, twice, a hundred times, a thousand times. He has one hand on my neck, the other around my waist, drawing me closer to him – mmm, oh, he is really good at this. I completely understand what all the fuss was about. I wrap my arms around his neck and . . . oh oh, no more thinking.

  I feel like everything else in the world has faded to black. We’re one entire hemisphere of the world, and it is daylight and summer just for us. I’m drowning and floating and flying and walking on a tightrope and a hundred years could have passed without me noticing because my whole body is electric and his hands his fingers oh oh oh and his open mouth on my skin and how did we end up in this position exactly and stop thinking Pearl and his breath is warm and his hands are warm and I think I’m going to catch fire and it’s the first day of summer and Finn Finn Finn Finn Finn –

  And he’s gone, sitting up suddenly, swearing.

  ‘What?’ I say, raising myself up on my elbows. ‘Did I –’

  ‘Your hair, Pearl,’ he says.

  ‘What about my hair?’ I say, touching it self-consciously – wait, hang on.

  I have hair. Long hair.

  He swears again. ‘I’m sorry.’

  And it’s red.

  ‘Is this a mask?’ I ask.

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I – I think I grew it back.’

  I stare.

  ‘You grew it back the wrong colour?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know how I grew it back at all. I’ve never done anything like that before,’ he replies. ‘I’m really sorry – I don’t –’

  ‘Is it because Holly has red hair?’

  ‘What?! I just told you, Pearl – I have no idea –’

  ‘You and she have had a thing forever, haven’t you? It stands to reason –’

  He groans. ‘Please don’t freak out this early into the relationship.’

  ‘Who says there’s a relationship?’ I say icily, pulling my pyjama top back down.

  ‘Pearl,’ he says, and there’s such a look of hurt in his eyes that I relent.

  ‘Look, sorry,’ I say, sitting up. ‘I just . . . this is all new to me and I’m really freaked out right now.’

  He leans over and pushes some of my newly long, newly red hair behind my ear. ‘Me too.’

  ‘Oh, come on. You’ve had a bazillion girlfriends.’

  ‘None like you,’ he says softly.

  My lip trembles.

  ‘Don’t cry!’ he says hurriedly.

  ‘Not crying,’ I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. ‘Thinking.’

  ‘About what?’

  About your hands and your lips and – ‘We have to get rid of this,’ I say. God, I am so glad I can lie.

  ‘Get rid of what?’

  ‘This,’ I say, holding up a handful of my long hair.

  ‘It suits you,’ he says.

  The light catches his green eyes and now I completely understand what they mean by the phrase bedroom eyes – focus, Pearl. ‘Whether or not it does, it’s going to be impossible to explain,’ I say. ‘“Oh, hi Disey, hi Shad, yeah, my hair mysteriously grew back while I was making out with Finn Blacklin while you weren’t here and oh yeah it’s red now” – that’ll go down really well.’

  I am so immature. The phrase ‘making out’ makes me flush bright red, and I know he notices, because he grins.

  ‘I guess I’m going to have to learn to control it, then,’ he says, catching one of my hands in his and bringing it to his lips. ‘Can’t have you cutting off your hair every single time we make out.’

  Nnnnnghnnnghnnngh.

  ‘I’ll get some scissors,’ I say hurriedly, sliding off my bed and opening my desk drawer.

  We go into the bathroom. I rummage around in the cupboard and find an old box of blonde hair dye from when Disey used to lighten her hair. Finn grabs a chair from the kitchen and I drape a towel around my shoulders and sit down.

  The scissors snip through my hair. The long, heavy red tresses fall to the ground with an audible thump.

  ‘How short you do want it?’ Finn asks.

  ‘Like it was before,’ I say, trying to be firm, but I can’t keep the quaver out of my voice.

  ‘Oh, Pearl,’ he says, putting the scissors down and kneeling in front of me. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s not your fault,’ I say. ‘I – I guess I’ve just always been precious about my hair. When it was long before, I used to have nightmares about someone cutting it off in my sleep, and – I’m okay. I’m okay. Just cut it off.’

  I look at myself in the mirror a few minutes later, a dye cap over my shorn hair. The swathes of red hair look like blood on the floor, and I’m reminded inexorably of my mother, of her long red hair, of her reading me Rapunzel when I was little.

  He comes up behind me and puts his arms around me. He is tall and beautiful and shining, and I feel small and ugly beside him, like a street urchin or a chimney sweep.

  He turns me around, kisses my tears away. ‘Whether you have hair down to the ground or no hair at all,’ he whispers, breath warm against my lips, ‘I still think you’re beautiful.’

  The tightrope sways.

  But while we hold tight to each other, we cannot fall.

  I hear a car pull back into our driveway early in the morning. The world is still grey, tinged with pink, the dew crystalline on my window through the gap in my curtains. ‘You better go,’ I whisper to Finn.

  ‘’searly,’ he mumbles, tightening his arm around me and burrowing his face into my shoulder.

  ‘I mean it,’ I say, poking him in the chest. ‘If Disey or Shad catches you here, they will kill you. And then me.’

  He pushes himself up and off the bed and starts looking for his shoes. I watch him. Even now, in the early morning, dazed with sleep, dressed in Shad’s oldest, most full-of-holes trackies, his hair standing on end, he is achingly beautiful.

  I have a brief flashback to the night before. His eyes, dark and languorous. His lips, featherlight against my face, laughing against my skin. His hands . . . his hands . . .

  I colour involuntarily and straighten my clothing. I’m lucky I managed to keep it all on. And that he didn’t grow my hair back again.

  I make a mental note – buy precautionary hair dye. If Disey ever lets me out of the house.

  ‘Whatcha thinking about?’ he asks.

  ‘Nothing,’ I say, a little too quickly.

  ‘Sure,’ he says, leaning over to kiss my temple. His hand is on my knee, my thigh, my pyjama pants riding up my leg as he moves his hand higher –

  I hear a key grating in the front door. ‘You have to go.’

  I pull back the curtains and open the window. ‘Call me sometime today,’ he says.

  I nod. ‘And I’ll think about the Holly thing. There has to be some way we can make sure that doesn’t happen to her again. Maybe we can tie her to her bed by her hair like she did to me.’

  You can see I am a natural at relationships. ‘Hey, I’ll think about tying your stunningly beautiful ex to h
er bed!’ is a totes normal thing that everyone says, right?

  My phone beeps. I look at it. It’s Phil. GAAAAAAAAAAAH. Julian is being so weird I have to talk to u call me.

  ‘Hey,’ he says.

  ‘Mmmm?’ I say, putting my phone down.

  He puts his finger under my chin and tilts my face up to his. He kisses me longingly, lingeringly. ‘I’ll be thinking about you all day,’ he says, lips almost touching mine.

  ‘Me too,’ I say, kissing him again. ‘I think about myself every day.’

  He laughs quietly and then there is no more talking because there is just him and me and the world has fallen away. I hook my fingers in his shirt and pull him closer. His hands are on my waist and he is backing me away from the window, towards the wall . . .

  The kettle hisses in the kitchen. We both pull away at the same time. ‘I have to go,’ he says, resting his forehead against mine.

  ‘I know – hey, what’s this?’ I ask.

  There’s a black mark on his collarbone, almost like a scorch mark. ‘I don’t know,’ he says, squinting at it. ‘That’s weird. Must be –’

  I have a sinking feeling. Slowly, I pull the iron pendant out from inside my pyjamas.

  ‘– that would be it,’ he finishes.

  ‘I’m really sorry,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean –’

  ‘Hey, hey, no big,’ he says. He brushes his lips across mine, feather light, like a butterfly. ‘I’ll remind you to take it off next time.’

  There have been no words ever uttered in the entire world sexier than Finn Blacklin saying ‘next time’. Except for maybe him saying ‘take it off’.

  ‘I wish I didn’t have to go to school today,’ he says, putting his hands on the wall on either side of my head. ‘I wish I could spend all my time here. With you.’

  ‘Me too,’ I say. ‘But –’

  ‘– we have to be smart about it, I know,’ he says. ‘And besides, I have after-school detention and Mr Molloy’ll go ape if I miss it.’

  ‘You have detention? What for?’

  ‘I don’t even remember.’

  ‘I’ve never had detention.’

  ‘And that,’ he says, leaning forward to kiss me again, ‘is because –’ lips on my cheek, ‘– you are –’ my jaw, ‘– perfect Pearl –’ my throat, ‘– who never ever ever does –’ my lips again, ‘– anything wrong.’