What You Become

by C. J. Flood

  He breathed slowly out of his nose in a way I associated with Kiaru’s dusty attic room and meditation. He was nervous.

  Sophie breezed past us, smelling of soap and perfume. She ruffled my hair as she passed, and I realized Charlie must never have told her about the gravy incident after all. ‘We all miss you round here, Rosie. Come up and see us one day, hey? This fire’s been a real blow for Char, right in the middle of the finale too. You know what a sucker she is for the spotlight, and she adores Ms Chase. She could do with a friend, someone understanding and kind like you . . . Someone who’ll bring out her softer side.’

  Her voice changed to businesslike as she shifted her attention to Will.

  ‘You can put it all away as well please, William. And don’t go anywhere because we’re all sitting down for lunch, no arguments.’

  Sophie headed up the stairs, and Will pulled the last bags from the boot, shaking his head.

  ‘You seem like you’re acting very strange to me, Will. I think you know something. Ti and Ophelia didn’t go home last night, neither of them, and I got two weird text messages off your sister this morning.’

  ‘She thinks Ti started the fire, that’s why. She reckons she saw her on school grounds or something. Probably another smear campaign. Girls are mental.’

  ‘Just call me if you hear anything, that’s all I want. I won’t get you into trouble. I’m just looking for Ti.’

  He looked at me like I was mental too, then walked into the house laden with shopping.

  ‘No good?’ Dad said, as I threw myself against the passenger seat, then struggled with my seat belt.

  He put the car into reverse. ‘What awful news about your teacher, Rosie. I’m sorry Sophie sprang it on you like that; we wanted to tell you about the latest developments a bit more gently.’

  I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t think about it yet. How was she doing? And what had she been going in to save?

  ‘I’m sure she’ll be all right,’ he said, though he didn’t sound sure at all. Times like this I wished my dad was better at performing.

  We pulled out of the Fieldings’ drive and on to Castle Road, and I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t have to be reminded by Kiaru’s house of how badly I’d deserted Ti. Had she really been on school grounds last night? We must have missed each other by seconds.

  ‘Those tyre tracks we saw were to do with Sophie, apparently. Someone stole her car, joyriders, she reckons, ’cause the keys were still in her handbag.’

  I could feel him examining me, and I bet he wanted to ask if Ti or Ophelia knew how to hotwire a vehicle.

  ‘You look pale, Rosie. It is a bit much, this, isn’t it? Let’s get you home, eh?’

  ‘This never would have happened if you hadn’t kept us apart,’ I said very quietly.

  ‘Rosie,’ Dad said, reaching for my hand, but I crossed my arms tight across my chest, staring blindly out the passenger window. The car stayed where it was for a few seconds, poised on Castle Road, about to drive off, and I could feel Dad looking at me, but I wouldn’t turn his way.

  ‘Ti’s dad hit her last night, and she wanted to come over. But she didn’t know if she was allowed,’ I said, staring at the fir trees around Will’s house. ‘If anything’s happened to her, I’ll never forgive you.’

  I wouldn’t forgive myself either, but I wasn’t going to tell him that.

  Behind us a car beeped, and Dad lifted the clutch. The tiny green fingers of the fir trees rippled in the wind, and I squeezed my arms to my ribcage.

  Will was hiding something, it was obvious. All I had to do was find out what.

  Thirty-five

  Joey was waiting at the kitchen table for us when we got back. He looked up when we arrived, thumbs flicking wildly over his handheld computer.

  ‘Mum says to go straight up,’ he said, his game pausing with a ping.

  ‘You stay here, Joe. Finish your go,’ Dad said, and that was when I really felt it because Dad never encouraged Joey to play computer games; he was expecting the worst too. ‘Actually make us all a cup of tea, eh? I’ll give you a quid.’

  ‘My rates have gone up with inflation, that will be one pound fifty in total,’ Joey said, without looking from his screen.

  ‘Don’t push it, Joe,’ Dad snapped.

  Joey slapped his computer down on his lap, blue eyes drilling into Dad’s and his mouth working, but I could hardly pay attention to him. I was struggling myself. When had it become so hard to untie plimsolls? My fingers trembled, and I couldn’t get a handle on the laces.

  ‘Here,’ Dad said, bending down to undo them for me.

  Joey gawped at me like I was trying to pull my actual feet off. A feeling of catastrophe had covered me, and I couldn’t shake it. Walking up the stairs, I made promises to myself and the world and Ti. If she was all right, I would always face up to things. If she was all right, I’d stop telling lies. Most of all, if she was all right, I’d be a better friend. I wouldn’t abandon her again.

  As soon as I saw Mum’s face I knew my fear was founded.

  ‘Sit down,’ she said, patting the bed, and Dad took my hand automatically, as though he were the one delivering the news, and I realized that whatever it was he knew already.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Rosie . . . Ti’s and Ophelia’s clothes have been found on the beach at Durgan. Their wallets were there. Money, bank cards. Everything.’

  I was shaking my head, and I wished Joey was here, because I needed someone to be brave for.

  ‘There was a bottle of whisky nearby, half empty. The police think they might have drunk it and gone for a swim . . . I’m so sorry, baby, it looks like they might have got into trouble. Come here. Come here. It’s okay. It’s okay. Shhhhh.’

  I heard cups rattling on a tray and then Joey’s voice trembling as he asked what had happened. Dad whispered to Joey, and I knew he must be afraid but I couldn’t look up from where I’d buried my face in the crook of Mum’s neck. It was hot and wet from my tears, but I couldn’t let go.

  Mum held her me-free arm out, and Joey burrowed in for a cuddle while she whispered in his ear. I don’t know what Dad was doing, but Joey held my hand.

  ‘Ti’s all right,’ he said after a few minutes of this, though he looked panicked as he spoke. ‘She’s a strong swimmer.’

  ‘She is,’ I said, because it was true. I loved my little brother.

  ‘We don’t know anything for sure yet, Joe,’ Dad said in the tone he used when he was trying to discourage him from getting his hopes up, and I felt bitterness creep through my blood like a disease. If they hadn’t taken my phone, I could have helped her.

  Climbing off the bed, everything seemed uncertain suddenly: my legs, the world, my life.

  ‘Where you going, Rosie? Don’t be on your own,’ Mum said.

  I stumbled down the stairs, misjudging the distance and number of steps and twisting my ankle. Dad called to see if I was all right but I ignored him. Let him think I was hurt. I was. More than I could explain.

  Lying in the sunlight at the end of my bed, I tried to pick through all the new information, but I couldn’t get it straight. Ti wasn’t dead. She couldn’t be. She’d called me last night. I’d heard her voice!

  If Ti were dead I’d feel it, like an earthquake. I’d feel it psychically, and I didn’t.

  Joey was right: she was a good swimmer. She loved and respected the sea. She’d never go into rough water like that at Durgan, no matter how upset or drunk she was. Never. But then why had her clothes and wallet been found? And where was she?

  Thirty-six

  Rumours about Ti were everywhere. I didn’t want to listen, but couldn’t help it. Charlie said she’d seen her stumbling at the edges of school grounds with a bottle of whisky when she was getting fresh air before going onstage for Act Two. Ti must have started the fire, people said. Who else would it be?

  Charlie thought that the twins had killed themselves, like Thelma and Louise, to escape the consequences of their actions, but the police reck
oned they were only skinny-dipping drunk and had got into trouble by mistake. But it was so cold that night, who in their right minds would skinny dip?

  Liliana, the postwoman, swore she’d seen the girls in the Fieldings’ car on Castle Road, that it must’ve spun off the road shortly after because of the winds.

  Nobody was welcome near me except for Joey.

  I reread Ti’s emails, wincing at how dishonest I’d been in mine. Complaining about Mum’s illness and how hard everything was when really I was obsessing over Kiaru, and having a laugh with Alisha. I’d been so angry with Ophelia when she accused me of using Mum’s illness as an excuse to be selfish, but she had been right.

  I noticed the times on hers. How long it had taken me to reply, and how quickly she had responded. She obviously hadn’t been sleeping, or not well. She must have felt so lonely. And then I’d gotten Leon’s name wrong, the boy with the wet lips who smacked her on the back of the head. No wonder she hadn’t wanted to be my friend. The ones before the milkshake shop were worst of all. I read them from between my fingers, like I was watching a horror film. How must she have felt when she saw me? And what had I been running from?

  A terror I could hardly interact with was that Ophelia had thrown herself in the water, in a fit of madness, and Ti had been pushed under as she tried to save her. But why the piles of clothes? And if the girls had started the fire, and were hiding somewhere, what were they wearing?

  I wanted to read the messages aloud to my dad, but I couldn’t talk to him yet. His protests were all about equality and giving people a fair chance, but he hadn’t managed to do that with Ti. He preferred me to be friends with kids like Alisha and Kiaru, with perfect manners and rich parents.

  All Mum cared about was marks. It didn’t matter who I was friends with so long as they were swots. She would prefer me to be miserable and tagging along with mean old Charlie Fielding if it meant I got more As.

  Worst of all was that I’d listened. I’d let them convince me when I should have been convincing them.

  Kiaru rang, but I didn’t want to talk to him. I only wanted to speak to Ti, and it was never her calling.

  The only thing more impossible than sleeping was lying awake with these thoughts, and so one night, I dressed in black, and slipped out the back door into the darkness.

  Thirty-seven

  But it wasn’t as easy as that. Nightwandering was terrifying when you were on your own, and after walking a hundred metres along the coast path I sprinted back to the road with its lovely lamp posts and pavement and occasional car. The sky was clear and full of stars, but they only emphasized how small I was. How vulnerable. I took deep breaths and tried again, cursing myself for not bringing a torch.

  The thing was that Ti hated them, and I’d got out of the habit. She complained about light pollution and how they ruined your night vision, getting mad every time I turned mine on, and in the end it was easier to just follow her as she stomped along, breaking into a run occasionally when she got excited.

  ‘It’s an exercise in faith!’ she shouted back to me, as I ordered her to slow down or better still come back.

  ‘Faith in what?’

  ‘In yourself and your senses! In the coast path!’

  So many times she nearly fell over, but she never grew cautious. She’d trip and whoop and then I’d hear her laughing. ‘That was a close one!’

  ‘I’ve got the best night vision in the world,’ she said another time, as we lay on Durgan Beach, watching the stars. We tested it by seeing who’d lose sight of a satellite trundling across the sky first.

  ‘I can still see it,’ we said.

  ‘I can still see it,’ she said.

  Until I had to admit defeat.

  Shaking my terror away, I tried again, imagining Ti striding ahead of me. I found a big stick, and held it in front of me like a staff. I would defend myself against spirits and fate and murderers. Against my own fear. No more running away. Focusing on my breathing, I forced myself to walk on, away from the lights of the road, allowing my night vision to kick in. The hedge looked like fingers and claws, and cobwebs swept my face, but I pushed forward, telling myself I was brave until I almost was.

  Something good happened when the two of us walked together, and I tried to find it by myself. I focused on the little thunder rushes of the sea, the salt air on my face and in my lungs. I let my thoughts float freely, never getting stuck. You are safe you are safe you are safe. One step at a time, until I’d walked so far the pads of my feet burned.

  Gradually, I relaxed. Ti wasn’t with me, but we’d explored these places together so completely it felt like she was. Memories engulfed me. I headed west towards Swanpool and the golf course to check Daphne’s bench, an old meeting place of ours. The seat was named after DAPHNE, WHO LOVED THE SEA, and we argued over who was more Daphne. I said it was me because I always photographed the water, but Ti said it was her because she knew about the actual ecosystems.

  ‘You only like it as a picture,’ she said, as I focused the waves through my new camera. ‘The sea’s just an idea to you, a surface image. You don’t care about the world that’s underneath.’ Was that true?

  I touched Kiaru’s gate as I passed, growled at Charlie’s. Remembering Will earlier, I lifted the catch, and pushed, staring into the dark of their garden. I could hear the water of the fountain bubbling in their huge pond, could see its froth catching the moonlight.

  ‘Titania,’ I whispered.

  Inside the house, one of their Dalmatians started barking, then another, and I rushed back to the coast path.

  Daphne’s bench was set a little way off the steep track down to Durgan Beach, and the ocean grew loud as I approached. Of course there was nobody there, just me. I sat with a heavy feeling, remembering the years before Ti came, when I was still trying to fit in with Charlie and Mia, before Ti showed me that singing competitions and ranking each other’s hair and smiles and dance moves weren’t the best ways to spend your time.

  The cruise ships on the horizon were lit up like birthday cakes, and I thought of Ti and Ophelia’s party at the café last summer. They’d bickered about what sort of cake June should make, only agreeing on a mermaid if she could have straight hair like Ophelia’s, in spite of the fact that every mermaid in the history of the world had wavy hair like Ti’s.

  That was making a deal with Ophelia. Your forty-nine to her fifty-one was as close as you got.

  Heading to Swanpool I stopped at the meadow where I had tried to teach Ti to play Frisbee when she first arrived. My second throw had hit her in the face and made her nose bleed, and we’d had to run all the way to the toilet block at Swanpool to get some tissue. By the time we arrived she looked like a victim of crime with blood all over her T-shirt and teeth and hands, and when she was cleaned up the man at the tea stall gave us both a free ice cream.

  Staring at the spot where we had stood all those years ago I caught sight of the Petrified Lady, a skull-sized rock with an eerily human expression by the hedge that I hadn’t thought about for years. Ti and me had lifted the lichen-covered boulder once, and found an ancient-looking turquoise-tinged penny underneath. After that, if we had an embarrassing or personal question, we would ask the Penny of Old who was all-seeing and non-judgemental.

  Would Ti ever become a deep-sea diver? Would I ever need a bra?

  Tails for yes, heads for no.

  What had happened to the Penny of Old, and why did I never hold on to things? The Petrified Lady was damp and green, desperate for the summer to warm her through, and lifting her I felt dizzy with a hope I couldn’t quite understand. Until I saw it.

  The penny.

  My stomach twisted and I heard myself gasp as two thoughts hit me consecutively.

  Ti was alive! Ti was in trouble.

  We had once planned how we could use the penny to communicate if we were ever in peril. Ti loved all that Famous Five code stuff, and was for ever dreaming of adventure. Heads up was a heads up. It meant ‘Come save me. I’
m doomed’. Head’s down meant ‘Relax, I’m well. Have a cup of tea’.

  The queen’s details were dull from being in the dark for years, but I could make out her nose and crown. It was a head’s up.

  The penny was cold in my fist. Was this the last thing Ti had touched? I sent up a prayer that she was okay, and asked the Penny of Old (and the Petrified Lady, if she had any powers) to bring her back to me. I daren’t ask a direct question in case I got a no, and so I kissed the queen’s icy nose, soil dotting my lips, and placed her face down beneath the stone.

  My instinct told me to check Daphne’s bench again, and I headed in its direction, heart whacking. Hope bubbled in me. Maybe Ti had left the penny as a test, to see if I truly cared about her or not. Maybe she was at Daphne’s bench right now, and we would hug, and she would tell me this perfectly obvious story explaining where she’d been this whole time, clearing up all the rumours, and we’d be sisters again.

  Because the last time I saw her couldn’t be the last time I saw her. The memories in my head couldn’t be the only ones. I needed new memories, for her to do fresh and brilliant and embarrassing things. To get it wrong and upset me and get it right and make me brave and be herself. For us to walk.

  Gorse, gorse and hawthorn: my thighs burned from the hill, and I wasn’t breathing any more. Let her be sitting, watching the horizon, hoping I cared enough to understand her sign.

  But Daphne’s bench was empty.

  I sat, damp from the rain, surrounded by debris – Monster Munch packet, KitKat foil, piece of hose pipe – wiping water from my face. Sea mist, drizzle, tears. What did it matter? Ti was gone.

  Thirty-eight

  I woke, sweating, from dreams of tsunamis at Fairfields to find Joey by my bed, looking at me as though he didn’t know who I was. I screwed my eyes shut.

  Pots had accumulated in my room: last night’s bowl, dried-out bread, a spoon smearing soup on the carpet. I’d heard Mum and Dad whisper about me while I pretended to sleep – Mum: ‘We were too hard on her.’ Dad: ‘She’ll be fine’ – but getting out of bed felt like an old habit I couldn’t return to.