Clean

by Juno Dawson

  I don’t know why, but I feel weirdly guilty about what didn’t even happen with Brady. And I’m bugged that it’s bugging me.

  And now my head starts telling tales, little film trailers showing me what’s happened to him: he’s with another girl, he’s overdosed. He’s in trouble.

  ‘Babe, you do not mess with these people,’ he once told me, pacing the hotel suite. I was naked on the bed, tangled up in bed linen. He was in a pair of saggy boxers, desperately trying to get hold of Baggy. ‘Why the fuck isn’t he answering?’

  ‘Calm down.’ I was still a little high, but he was seriously killing my buzz. ‘Come back to bed . . . it’s Sunday.’ Sunday morning with hazy, honeyed light bleeding through the drapes. I wanted to snuggle, drink tea, get eggs. ‘Should we make brunch reservations?’

  Kurt turned on me. He pinned my arms to my side. ‘Are you listening to me? These men will fucking kill me, Lexi. If I do not pay them, they will kill me.’

  My head was foggy. He was serious. He was hurting me. ‘Kurt, let go. Jesus Christ, if you just need money, I can get you money.’

  ‘It’s a lot of money, Lexi.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘Like a grand; fifteen hundred maybe.’

  I shrugged him off. ‘I’ll tell Daddy I bought a new dress. If he asks.’

  He let go of me. ‘Can you get it today?’

  ‘Yes. God. Just chill out. Now, do we want to meet Antonella and Troy for brunch or not?’

  He kissed me hard on the lips. ‘Oh babe, you have no idea. You’ve saved my life. I love you.’

  ‘Kurt, it’s Lexi. I hope you’re alive. Answer your phone for fuck’s sake. I’ll try again at the same time tomorrow.’

  Group is lively today.

  ‘None of us are safe while that psycho’s here!’ Ruby is still ranting. ‘Look at Lexi’s head, for god’s sake!’

  ‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

  Both Goldstein and Ahmed are present today. ‘Ruby,’ Ahmed says, ‘you need to calm down. Sasha stopped taking her medication and that’s why she’s back. You know she’ll be more stable in a couple of days. Until then, she’s in the Isolation Suite, so you’re all perfectly safe.’

  ‘There isn’t a drug on earth strong enough to cure that lunatic!’ Ruby won’t drop it. I wonder what went down last time.

  ‘The drugs don’t cure you,’ Guy adds softly. ‘They just make you quieter.’

  Ahmed looks at him sympathetically. ‘Guy, that’s not true. The goal of medication is to offer a clear head so you can get some perspective on your problems. They’re not necessarily for ever.’

  ‘I’ve been on medication since I was eleven,’ Guy says. ‘Ritalin, sertraline, citalopram, escitalopram . . . I don’t remember what it’s like to not be medicated to the eyeballs.’

  Well, that shuts Ruby up. At least for now.

  ‘The goal of recovery is not to surround yourself with like-minded people,’ Goldstein weighs in. ‘As we discussed in the last session, only enablers agree with your every action. Personally, I think it’s important we bring different voices to the table.’

  ‘Sasha certainly does that,’ Kendall says archly.

  I’m like, What? Poor people voices? That’s really patronising. We’re all supposed to learn how awful and privileged we are from the crazy street urchin? I’m already well aware of how utterly sickening my existence is, thanks, I don’t need any help from Sasha. If I wasn’t me, I’d loathe me. I only tolerate myself at best.

  ‘This is all feeling a little charged,’ Goldstein says, stating the abundantly obvious. ‘Look at the weather outside. It feels like the first day of spring, and here we are cooped up in therapy. Go. Go play.’

  We all look at each other. Is he serious? ‘What?’ Saif says. ‘Are you for real?’

  ‘Play is proven to improve mental wellbeing. Go on, the lot of you. Go and play outside.’

  I sit on the back steps, the mossy stone freezing my butt. It’s not nearly as warm as it looks. Ruby and Kendall sit alongside me as Saif and Brady half-heartedly pass a basketball between them. Guy is smoking a cigarette.

  ‘This blows,’ Ruby says.

  ‘I’m too old for playtime,’ I say.

  ‘Do you think we should start a game of tag or something?’ Guy asks.

  Kendall points at her heeled boots. ‘Do I look like I want to play tag?’

  ‘What she said,’ I add.

  ‘What do you even do at recess in England?’ Brady asks. ‘Drink tea? Eat scones?’

  ‘I wish,’ Kendall says. ‘I mostly got called “a girl” for not joining in with the football. Then I became a girl and they all started calling me “a boy” instead.’

  ‘We mostly bitched about people behind their backs,’ I add. ‘All girls’ school. Although you could watch the St Barnabas boys across the green.’

  ‘I was more entrepreneurial,’ Saif says, aiming the basketball at the hoop and missing. ‘Damn. My junior high school was in Dubai. I made a killing selling beers and joints from my locker. Worst Muslim Ever.’

  ‘What did you do, Ruby?’ Guy asks.

  ‘Like, jump-rope or making up dance routines to Beyoncé and stuff.’

  ‘We did that too!’ I say. ‘Or practised cartwheels and handstands on the green.’

  Kendall jumps off the step. ‘We used to do that! I can still do a handstand up against a wall. Lexi, catch my legs!’

  I follow her onto the grass lawn. ‘You better not kick me in the face. I’m already wounded.’

  She kicks her boots off and takes a step back. She pivots forward on to her hands and her legs rear up at my head. ‘Holy shit, careful,’ I yelp.

  ‘Have you got me?’ she wobbles.

  I clutch her skinny ankles. ‘I’ve got you!’ She holds the pose for about a second before she folds in on herself like a concertina. She looks up at me in a heap and I have to laugh at her.

  ‘That hurt!’ she says, laughing too.

  ‘I used to be able to do a cartwheel,’ Guy says.

  ‘Go on then!’ Kendall picks herself up.

  Guy performs a very poor cartwheel, his feet barely leaving the ground. ‘That didn’t work,’ he says and tries again.

  ‘Dude, that is awful,’ Brady says. ‘I used to pull some gnarly flips into the pool. I can do backflips.’

  ‘As if!’ I call.

  ‘I can! How much you wanna bet?’

  ‘I highly doubt gambling is allowed on Sinner Island, Ardito.’

  ‘Good point,’ he laughs. ‘Stand back . . . I need a run up.’ He takes a run over the lawn and springs into a forward flip. He lands funny and topples over.

  ‘Oooh! Bad dismount!’ Ruby calls.

  ‘Come on then, Ruby!’ Brady brushes himself down. ‘Your go!’

  ‘Ha ha!’

  ‘I’m serious!’ He’s trying to include her to be kind, I guess. ‘Do a handstand! I’ll hold your legs.’ He offers her a hand.

  ‘Brady Ardito, if you come one step closer . . .’

  ‘You’ll what?’ He goes to drag her off the step and she squirts her mineral water bottle in his face. It’s one of the ones with the sip cap thing so it fires a perfect jet of water.

  ‘Oh! Oh, is that how it is?’ He grabs his own bottle and hits her right back with a stream between the eyes. She leaps off the step and chases after him shaking her bottle over his head. ‘Kendall, back me up!’

  Kendall grabs a water bottle, but Saif is already on her case. He fires an arch of water and it lands on her hair. ‘Oh, you total dick! My hair will go curly!’

  ‘My hair will go curly!’ He mimics her tone and she chases after him. I grab a bottle of water off the picnic table and go after Saif too. Before long, we’re engaged in the ultimate boys-versus-girls water fight. I’m soon soaked all the way to my pants and freezing cold, but I don’t care. Brady empties a bottle right over my head. ‘You arse! You’re gonna die for that!’ I jump on his back and wrap my legs around his waist. I tip my bottle down the f
ront of his T-shirt.

  ‘Holy shit, that’s cold!’

  ‘Good!’ I scream as he tries to tip me forward over his head. ‘Brady! Stop!’

  From the patio doors, I see Goldstein watching us with a cup of tea. He smiles to himself and heads back inside.

  After I’ve changed out of my wet clothes, my curiosity gets the better of me. On the way down to lunch, I see the coast is clear to the Safe Room. Interesting.

  Sasha has been well and truly hyped.

  I creep down to the Safe Room. No one is guarding her door and it all seems quiet.

  Almost too quiet.

  Things so rarely live up to the hype.

  I tiptoe all the way to the door and press my ear to the wood. Nothing. Maybe she’s not the Velociraptor the others made her out to be.

  I’m about to walk away when I hear a faint voice. ‘Gary? That you? Can I get a fag?’ I wince and freeze. I wonder if she can see my shadow in the crack in the door. ‘I can see you. Look, I’m not kicking off. I just want a fag, yeah?’

  I figure I can help a bitch out. ‘I’m not a nurse,’ I say.

  In the door there’s a little hatch. This being a classy place, it’s not like a police-cell letterbox. It’s more like the quaint little door the cuckoo pops out of in a Swiss clock. Keeping a safe distance, I unbolt the hatch and open it.

  Sasha is sat in ‘classic squalid asylum hunch’ next to the bed, arms wrapped around her legs. She might as well be rocking.

  ‘I’m Lexi. You hit me with a hole punch.’ I point to the plaster on my head.

  Sasha gapes up at me with massively dilated pupils. Her mouth is slack, lips moist. Braids dangle over her face. ‘Sorry ’bout that, Blondie. Hope you don’t die.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say. ‘Look, if you want a cigarette, I’ll give you one. Just don’t tell the staff, OK?’

  She lumbers forward, feeling her way along the walls. Wow, she must be on the really good pills. I wonder what she’s taking and if I can get some to help me sleep. ‘I ain’t no grass. I got more secrets in the crypt than the Catholic Church, babes.’

  I’m wearing Brady’s hoodie. It’s not like a statement; it was just hanging on my chair, so I stuck it on. There’s a packet of Marlboro Lights in the pocket. I slip my hand through the hatch and hope she’s not gonna go Hannibal Lector on me. ‘You got a light?’ she asks.

  I’m not sure about giving her access to a naked flame, but it’s too late now. ‘Sure.’ I hand over the lighter and see her forearm is a criss-cross lattice of shiny scars, some razor thin, some like fat leeches on her skin. Burn marks too. There’s not a centimetre of unmarked flesh. Wow, she doesn’t mess about.

  She sparks up and takes a deep drag. ‘Oh man, feel them toxins. You know there’s 4000 chemicals in a fag, forty-three of which are carcinogenic. That’s a gorgeous word, innit? Wrap you tongue around that . . . car-cin-o-gen-ic.’

  She’s a very different beast on her meds. Her speech is slurred, her eyes glassy. I don’t think she could attack me if she tried. ‘Good to know. How are you feeling?’ I ask.

  ‘I feel,’ she says, ‘mighty real.’ She shuffles to the bed and sits down. She’s wearing the standard issue Calvin Klein tracksuit.

  I wonder if I’m going to get any sense out of her.

  ‘I been mostly thinking,’ she goes on, ‘about where they’ll put me when they run out of cages. How do you solve a problem like Sasha?’

  ‘Where have you come from?’

  ‘London. Hackney.’

  ‘I’m Battersea.’

  ‘Lady cyclist.’

  I frown. ‘What?’

  ‘When lady cyclists were banned from Hyde Park, they proudly took to their bikes and rode around Battersea Park. In 1890 it was quite the scandal. Glorious fucking women gallivanting on bicycles.’

  I smile. ‘Good for them.’

  ‘What you in here for? Did you . . . cycle in Hyde Park?’

  Despite everything, I flinch. ‘I’m an addict. Apparently.’

  Sasha smiles a Joker-like grin. There’s a little gap in her front teeth. ‘Tell me about the Bad Boy what gave you the bad shit.’

  Oh, fuck her. ‘There is no bad boy.’

  ‘Do not lie, Blondie. Lying is a sign the devil’s got your tongue, and if he’s got your tongue he’ll be after your ass next. Some South London gangster, yeah? Some rude boy? Princess thought she’d get back at Daddy by sucking some meaty black cock.’

  ‘Oh, Jesus Christ,’ I say, over it. ‘You don’t have the first fucking clue.’

  ‘You drive him around town in your Merc? You give him money? He’ll “pay you back”, yeah?’

  I can’t not think about Kurt. It’s not like I didn’t have my eyes wide open. Money: he needed it, I had it to burn. Playmate and payroll. ‘Whatever. I’m going now.’

  ‘Wait!’ She gets off the bed and comes right to the hatch. I take a step back. I’m not having her bite my nose off or whatever. ‘Come closer, Blondie, I wanna tell you something.’

  ‘I’m fine here, thanks.’

  ‘Don’t be a pussy, come here.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘It’s a secret.’

  ‘I thought you were good with secrets.’

  ‘You know why they won’t give me cigarettes? It ain’t the cancer, darlin’.’ She takes her cigarette and stubs it out on her forehead, in the exact position of my plaster. The skin sizzles and blisters at once.

  ‘For fuck’s sake,’ I say. ‘You’re batshit.’

  Sasha smiles. Her unblinking eyes glare through the peephole. ‘Yeah? What was the first fucking clue?’

  The encounter with Sasha weirded me out. I can’t tell anyone she hurt herself without landing myself in trouble and I wonder if she’ll grass me up. I get now why the others are so on edge. How do you ever relax around someone so unpredictable? I wonder . . . I wonder if that’s what I was like to Nik?

  After lunch, I’m all set to walk down to the stables when Kendall and Ruby chase me down on the back lawn. ‘Wait up!’ Kendall says.

  ‘God, you walk fast,’ Ruby moans.

  ‘We told them we wanted to come to the stables with you,’ Kendall explains.

  I give her heeled boots a once-over. ‘You want to come to the stables?’

  ‘Obviously not. But come with us. There’s something I want to show you.’

  ‘Is this allowed?’ I ask. ‘I don’t actually care what the answer is, but I’d like all the information.’

  ‘It’s not allowed, but we’re not really doing anything wrong,’ Ruby says.

  I gesture down the path. ‘Lead the way.’

  We wander towards the stables, but this time, we carry on past the cottages and on to a path signposted ‘Beach Path’. Winding, haphazard steps fashioned with planks, sleepers and the occasional slab of stone zig-zag all the way down the hill towards a shale and dirty sand beach. This is cool in a Three Fuck-Ups Go On An Adventure way. I’ve seen the beach while I’ve been out riding Patty, but never actually walked down.

  It’s clouded over since this morning and the wind is snappish, whipping in from the sea like lashes. It smells, and almost tastes, of salty seaweed beachiness. It’s sour but organic somehow, like being in Whole Foods or something. The sky is artificially huge, like a painting in the Tate, doomy acrylic-paint grey clouds roll and swirl out to infinity. God fingers – that’s what Nik used to call shards of light – pierce the murk and stab into the sea. The perspective makes my eyes go funny.

  Kendall can’t walk so ends up taking her boots and socks off, and carrying them across the sand, screaming as she steps on seaweed or shells. ‘Girl, what are you doing? I told you not to wear those fool things,’ Ruby says.

  ‘Like, all my shoes have heels!’ Kendall laughs. ‘Do I bloody look like the outdoors type? Nature is gross!’

  ‘God, I thought I was bad!’ I laugh at her prancing across the sand. ‘What is it you want to show me?’

  ‘Just this, just the beach,’ Kendall says. ‘
We’re not supposed to come down this far without supervision. I guess the sea is a pretty big suicide risk and all.’

  I hadn’t even thought of that.

  ‘Watch out for crabs!’ Ruby says as we climb over rock pools.

  ‘Always excellent advice . . .’ I add.

  ‘Gross!’ Kendall squeals.

  We walk along the beach until we come to a big sea-wall thing. We have to go up the slope to cross it, and on the other side is what I suppose passes as a marina. There’s a network of wooden piers and then one, larger, concrete slope for the ferry. Further inland there’s a little office and a barrier check for cars, but I can’t see anyone about. ‘Where is everyone?’

  ‘I think there’s a guy who comes down twice a day when the ferry comes in,’ Ruby says.

  A couple of ancient row boats, paint peeled away to almost nothing, clink against their moorings like ice cubes in a glass of Coke. ‘Look at that,’ I say, nodding towards the boats. ‘Let’s get the hell off this island. Quick, while no one’s looking.’

  ‘Girl, I’d sink that shit,’ Ruby says and I can’t help but laugh. She’s laughing too so I guess it’s OK.

  We sit on the end of one of the jetties, swinging our legs. Kendall nudges me. ‘So, guess what happened last night.’

  ‘Besides that psycho bitch coming back?’ huffs Ruby.

  ‘I met Sasha this morning,’ I say.

  ‘She’s out of Isolation?’ Ruby’s hackles shoot up at once.

  ‘No,’ I reassure her. ‘She’s a charmer. Anyway. What happened last night?’

  Kendall smirks.

  ‘What?’ I ask.

  ‘Last night, I totally got it on with Saif.’

  Both Ruby and I erupt. ‘What?’

  ‘He was checking me out all night, asking me loads of questions and stuff. After lights out I knocked on his door and we fooled around a little. He made me promise not to tell anyone . . . but who are we kidding, I have a big mouth.’

  ‘Was it good?’ I ask. I’m actually not surprised. I thought I’d picked up on a little bit of something-something earlier when we had the water fight.