What You Become

by C. J. Flood

  Fifteen

  From: Faerie_Queen666@gmail.com

  To: RosieBloomheart@gmail.com

  Sent: Friday, 16 March, 16:21:44

  Subject: Send help

  The Bridge is the worst. The boys are horrible. They run around punching each other in the back of the head and think it’s hilarious.

  I’m considering shaving my head just to fit in. Do you think I could pull off a skinhead with my gigantic peanut skull? Actually, I could probably cut off my head and nobody would notice. I could drip blood from class to class, neck stump showing, and no one would comment.

  What’s happening at school? Do you see much of Will? Ophelia thinks he’s cheating on her, and asked me to ask you if you’d seen him flirting with other girls. She caught him lying about something and now she doesn’t trust him. Around Mia, especially, but also just anyone. She thinks he’s irresistible, even to Chase. She’s such a bunny boiler, it’s embarrassing.

  Dad found a love letter when he was washing her jeans. There was no date on it, but he’s not convinced it’s an old one, and so he’s keeping her under even stricter observation. Sometimes I wish she would just get on with it and run away, just to have some peace. She’s mean to Mum, and then Dad goes crazy or she’s mean to Dad and Mum gets upset. She winds him up on purpose.

  Send me a long one back, I miss you. Tell me how your mum is, and how school is, who you are grooming to replace me, any suspicious Chase/Mia/Will behaviour, any bad things that have happened to Charlie Fielding, how much you miss me, how school isn’t the same without me, what exactly the importance of getting GCSEs is, and why I shouldn’t just top myself now and get this all over with.

  Oh, and also AAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

  GAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGAGA

  MISS YOU. Let’s make a plan to see each other. Ophelia thinks she knows where Mum hides the key, so I should be able to get out for a spot of nightwandering soooooon.

  Write back.

  PS Hug Joey for me

  Ti x

  From: RosieBloomheart@gmail.com

  To: Faerie_Queen666@gmail.com

  Sent: Friday, 16 March, 23:55:06

  Subject: Re: Send Help

  Okay, you asked for it. There have been developments. First the bad news: I fell down Chair’s stairs in the school hall. I know, and it was even more embarrassing, because I had a bowl of chips that I’d filled to the brim with gravy, which spilled everywhere, and everyone laughed at me, and then Alex started the ‘bloom’ call and I honestly thought my head might come off and blood just spout from my neck like a red fountain.

  But the good news: my head didn’t come off, and I saved the day by pulling Charlie Fielding down with me. She was laughing at the top of the stairs, and I just grabbed her hands, so she could join me sliding around in the soup.

  It was pretty much the best thing I’ve ever done, and I wish I could have videoed it for you and the world. It could be a YouTube sensation.

  The next thing, which is more like medium news, is that Alisha Patel and Kiaru Aki helped me in my time of need. (He handed me this ancient bit of loo roll, like my nan used to have, from his sleeve; it was so cute.)

  They asked me to join their group for the Drama project so I don’t have to do a monologue after all. Hurray! They take schoolwork really seriously. I don’t think anyone’s told them it doesn’t matter until exams.

  Also newsflash: they might not be a couple. Think about it. Have you ever seen them kiss or hold hands or even touch? If they are a couple, I don’t think they’re into it any more. Kiaru isn’t anyway. Alisha might be. She looks at him like she loves him, but he doesn’t seem to notice. They’re nothing like Ophelia and Will used to be. They’re more like my mum and dad or even you and me. Hubba hubba.

  Please don’t let Ophelia convince you to do anything crazy on her behalf. Honestly, I don’t know about Will. He’s less cocky since Chase made him director. He walks along beside her with a clipboard, nodding his head and taking notes, with this massive quiff like a Mr Whippy. I see him with Mia quite a lot, but I think it’s just for the play. He would flirt with a dustpan and brush (Ophelia does know this, right?) but I’ll keep an eye on him, and let you know . . .

  Has your dad forgiven you a bit now Ophelia’s in trouble again? What happens if you both do something bad at the same time? Don’t try it.

  I’m sorry that The Bridge sucks. Keep your head down, and you’ll be back in a proper school in no time. Maybe even Fairfields? Dream of dreams.

  Mum’s not good, worse if anything. Her aching is constant, and she’s not getting any sleep. Dad’s moved to the front room, because of his snoring they say, but I’m scared it’s more than that. I heard them arguing last night. Mum thinks Dad doesn’t believe that she’s ill. It’s hard, though. I mean, she looks fine, but she can’t do anything. Me and Dad never get any rest because we’re looking after everyone, and all Mum can talk about is how tired she is.

  The house is a tip and Dad only ever gets on at me about it. Joey gets away with everything, because he’s little, and everyone feels sorry for him because he’s missing his mum. As if I don’t miss her too!

  Anyway, I’d better go because it’s my turn to make the tea. Doctors again Wednesday, hopefully they’ll have more of a clue . . .

  Keep me posted on the key situation. I want to nightwander with you.

  R x

  PS Joey has drawn a lion’s mane jellyfish for you. Whatever that is.

  From: Faerie_Queen666@gmail.com

  To: RosieBloomheart@gmail.com

  Sent: Saturday, 17 March, 03:55:06

  Subject: Re: re: Send Help

  Is the gravy story true or did you pull it from my dreams? Rosie, that is the best thing that’s ever happened to anyone. Are you sure nobody recorded it? Ophelia did a little bit of wee when I told her she was laughing so much. She says Will’s version was quite different . . .

  Sorry about your mum. I’ll keep my fingers and toes and ears crossed for something useful on Wednesday. Chin up, my lovely.

  Mr Whippy! That’s it! Ophelia’s not impressed, but I am. Next time I see him walk past the café, I’m going to call him that. I can’t wait.

  You are so dumb. Kiaru likes you! Why else would he have shared his granny roll with you? That’s why they’ve asked you to join their group. It must be. And you like him, don’t you? I can tell. Why don’t you ever just admit the way you feel? There’s nothing wrong with liking someone, you know. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. Wouldn’t you want to know if someone liked you? Wouldn’t you be pleased? Dad says English people ruin their own lives hiding their feelings, and reading your emails I think he’s right . . .

  LIVE TRUE, ROSIE BLOOM.

  Ti x

  Sixteen

  Kiaru was dressed in baggy grey jogging bottoms and a white T-shirt, doing something weird on the grass outside the summer house when I arrived, and there was no sign of Alisha, though she was the one that had asked me to go over. I watched Kiaru as he took slow steps barefoot, and made winding, smooth hand movements as though I weren’t there. His hair was in a low ponytail.

  It had been disconcerting how happy Mum and Dad were when I asked if I could come here, especially when I explained that it was to work.

  ‘Oh, Rosie, that sounds wonderful!’ Mum said, and though I pretended to sulk because it wasn’t Ti’s, really I was excited, and as she pulled me on to the bed with her, laughing, for a minute she was her old self: in bed with a cold or a hangover or needing a nap.

  ‘Capoeira,’ Kiaru said, when he finally stopped, and I was surprised to hear he was out of breath. I asked him to spell it. Apparently, sped up, his moves were deadly. Apparently, sped up, it would be quite terrifying. There was no denying he moved nicely, though. Even the way he put on his shoes and threw his shirt over his narrow shoulders was stylish.

  ‘Alisha’s ill,’ he said. ‘Food poisoning. Whole family.’

  My pulse rate shot u
p. What would we talk about? And why hadn’t he cancelled? Mum had jumped to the same conclusion as Ti about the whole thing: that he liked me.

  ‘You’re a cool girl, after all, and he sounds like a cool boy,’ she had said, and as soon as I’d stopped cringing I felt sad that she hadn’t called me pretty. Wouldn’t that be the regular thing to say? You’re a pretty girl . . . Would anyone in the world ever think that about me? Mum said it was an unenlightened thing to care about, but I’d heard her getting on at Dad when he didn’t compliment her after she’d put on a dress or curled her hair.

  Kiaru and me stood on the lawn near the summer house looking at each other, and without Alisha it was awkward. What if he had wanted to cancel but hadn’t known my number? Should I offer to leave? He turned and walked to the back door, then lifted the brush mat under an arch draped in yellow roses, and wiped the key he found there on his jogging bottoms. Unlocking the door like it was no big deal, he held it open for me.

  Inside the mystery house was nothing like I expected, and I began to understand his reluctance. Magazines piled against the walls and boxes overflowing with various black pieces of technology and winding cables. A huge kitchen, all chrome like you’d see in a restaurant, but without the accompanying gleam. The sink was full of plates and saucepans and there were plastic wrappers all over the sides. Piles of microwave dinner trays.

  It was kind of impressive how he didn’t apologize for the mess. Maybe it wasn’t his mess or he was too proud, or maybe his dad was one of those power parents who drilled their kids with mantras like: Never apologize, never explain.

  ‘Forgot to put the recycling out again. Does it smell bad?’ Kiaru asked, which was almost an apology. ‘We clean, but it’s like there’s this smell underneath everything I can’t get rid of.’

  ‘I can’t smell anything,’ I lied. ‘Toast, surface spray . . .’

  It wasn’t that it stank, but he was right: there was an unidentifiable dankness underneath the more conventional kitchen smells. My house smelt of garlic and onions from Dad’s never-ending supply of pasta, but at least it was recognizable.

  Kiaru made pints of tea and buttered a pile of toast, and then I followed him up the stairs, trying hard not to spill my drink though new stains would have been difficult to pick out. Neither of us said anything, but my mind was so busy I hardly noticed. Why was I here if he didn’t want to talk? Could he actually like me?

  Dust stirred as we climbed the stairs and my nose began to itch.

  ‘Hoover broke,’ he said, and I hoped I wouldn’t sneeze. Imagine if he thought I’d done it on purpose? As a comment on the cleanliness of his home. I peeked in open doors as we passed – unmade beds, strewn-about clothes, black bags of fabric – each was like the box room that ends up filled with everyone’s junk. I’d assumed it would be like Charlie’s house, modern and airy, with fresh flowers in vases around the house.

  Two flights of stairs and we arrived at an attic room, like Mum and Dad’s except you could fit ten of theirs in here. Joey could have skated around it, playing British Bulldogs. Or turned it into a cinema. The whole roof area of the house had been transformed into one beautiful room with eight skylights. After that, it had been rammed to the rafters with crap.

  Boxes spilled over with fabrics, and dressmaking models perched on top. Balls of wool and rolls of netting. Fishing rods and keepnets and boxes of tackle. A free-standing bath with wooden legs.

  Inside a circle of burnt out tealights stood a gold Buddha statue on a silky sheet, and as Kiaru lit a stick of incense and replaced the candles, I wondered if I was about to become his first human sacrifice.

  It wouldn’t be the worst place to die. Sunlight shot through the swirling dust in thick lasers, and as Kiaru sat down in a glowing spot I sat with him. It was warm there, the sun dazzling. Lighting the final candle, he looked at me, expectant, and I squinted back.

  ‘I have something to tell you, but first I want you to relax.’

  That sounded like a recipe for unrelaxation. Like the opposite of what someone would say if you were going for a massage or something.

  ‘Alisha thinks that you’re not a very relaxed person.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Was I supposed to feel relaxed? When? All the time? I’d had no idea. My nose was itchy, and all I could think was how wonderful it would be to really honk it out into a tissue, but Kiaru’s intense tone prevented me from asking something as ordinary as where the loo was. Also, if he liked me, I didn’t want him thinking about me in relation to the toilet.

  ‘Have you ever tried meditating?’ he asked, and I froze. Was he doing a move?

  His skin looked firm and smooth, and I hoped the light was having the same effect on me.

  ‘It really helps me think, if I’m stuck or . . . confused . . . It clears my mind. Helps me concentrate.’

  His expression was endearing as he talked; he seemed really eager to help me.

  Did I seem like I needed help?

  ‘D’you want to try?’

  ‘Okay,’ I said, and his lips curled in the smallest smile. He took a deep breath in, and then out, and automatically I copied him.

  ‘I find it helps if I close my eyes,’ he said, before breathing long and slow again through his nose. The dust was swirling in and out, and I regretted not asking for a tissue before we got started, because the toilet wasn’t sexy but neither was blowing mucus across the room at forty miles per hour.

  ‘Pay attention to your breath. Feel it come into your body, the first moment that it hits. Maybe it’s the edge of your nostrils or maybe it’s higher up. And then out again.’

  His voice was deeper than mine, but softer, like he was driving it with his foot only gently on the pedal. I matched my breath to his, trying to ignore the tickle stretching from the deepest darkest part of my nostril to the back of my throat.

  ‘Try not to think about anything: just focus on the feeling of your breath, the way it fills up your lungs. In and out.’

  The backs of my eyes tingled. The air coming into my body was thick with fibres and skin flakes and ancient crumbs of crumbs and there was nothing I could do. Kiaru’s eyes flew open as I full-body sneezed into the golden air around us.

  ‘Sorry!’ I jumped up, face blazing. What must I have looked like just then? Had he seen the mercury filling in my molar? The lumpy back of my tongue? Was he covered in my spit and phlegm and germs?

  ‘It’s all right. It’s natural. Just a sneeze. Do you want some tissue?’

  I nodded, and he reached into his back pocket to take out a soft bundle of the stuff the way he did when I was covered in gravy, and I decided he was the sweetest boy in the world.

  ‘I’m sorry, I was really getting into it. I was trying . . . I just . . .’

  Blowing my nose was such a relief that I did it right there, then wished I hadn’t.

  ‘God, sorry. I’m not usually this disgusting.’

  ‘You’re not disgusting,’ Kiaru said matter-of-factly. ‘You just worry too much. Do you need more tissue? Do you want to go back outside?’

  ‘I want to finish the meditation.’

  Resuming the position, I listened to Kiaru’s soft voice, and I thought how odd it was to be here, with him, doing this, and then he reminded me to focus on my breathing, and I did, and then I thought about the way he’d said I wasn’t disgusting, and wondered if it meant anything, and I couldn’t resist opening my eyes again. I admired his angular face, and narrow boned nose, and then he brought me back to my breathing, and round and round we went like that.

  ‘Okay, last breaths,’ he said. ‘You’re meant to have a little bell that you ring, to come out of meditation, but I don’t have one, so you can just open your eyes.’

  I blinked, as though I had opened mine at the same time as him.

  ‘It doesn’t work straight away. You have to build it, like a muscle. If you keep practising, you’ll see. But do you feel more relaxed? I feel more relaxed.’

  Kiaru lifted his knees up, looping his
arms round them, and his fingers slotted against each other, long and slim, and he was preparing to ask me his question.

  ‘Rosie?’

  I nodded, and my face had that oversensitive feeling, and I knew the slightest thing would send it blooming, when every blood vessel seemed to tingle with anticipation of looming embarrassment.

  ‘Okay, so . . . the question . . . Alisha hasn’t really got food poisoning . . .’

  There was a kind of pressure building in the room, and my stomach dipped like I’d gone over a bump in the car.

  ‘And this might sound dumb.’ He was looking at me very intensely, and my blood pumped at an alarming rate. Mum and Ti were right!

  ‘But . . . she really likes you.’

  My heart did a double take.

  ‘I mean, she’s sort of in love with you.’

  She was sort of in love with me. She was sort of in love with me?

  Kiaru looked at me, excited to hear what I would say, but I was pre-language.

  ‘So . . . ?’ he said, in the same tone I’d heard dozens of times in the dinner hall as kids confessed their friends’ feelings to each other.

  Disappointment was like gaining a hundred stone. I was heavy enough to fall through the attic floor.

  His brown eyes were so pretty.

  ‘So you and Alisha aren’t a couple,’ I said, almost to myself.

  ‘No. And you aren’t . . . Ti really wasn’t . . . You weren’t . . .’

  I wanted to twist down into the earth like a drill, and never be seen again.

  ‘She was so sure you were in the closet.’

  ‘Is that why you wanted to be friends? She wanted to be friends,’ I corrected, and I couldn’t keep the sadness from my voice.

  Kiaru said no, but he didn’t meet my eye. Silence yawned around us, and now it was awkward, deeply awkward, because how much had my disappointment shown? It must have been all over my face when he was telling me. I fiddled with a splinter sticking up from the floor for a few seconds, then stood, realizing Kiaru wasn’t going to say anything else. For him, the point of the day, and me being there, was over.