by Rhian Ivory
My eyes open wide underwater. I can see flailing limbs, sinewy arms and bony fingers full of panic, writhing in front of me. There are things here with me, under the water, pulling at me, clawing and scratching at my calves, dragging me down with them, as if I’m bound or tied by ropes. Jagged nails tear into my skin, clutch at my forearms, shoving my shoulders down, deeper and deeper down. Weeds, long and thin like green hair, whirl in front of my eyes. I hear their whispering as the weeds swim past, pleading with me to help them. I try to push them away, but their watery fingers coil around my wrists and ankles like grass snakes.
I have to get back to the surface.
I must get away.
I need air.
Then a hand appears. A different one, stronger, darker.
The solid fingers force their way through the wall of weeds and the hair.
And then everything stops, even the whispering.
I reach out for the hand, but it isn’t attached to anyone.
It starts moving, convulsing, almost as if it is trying to tell me something. I stop treading water and watch as the hand opens up and begins to move towards the surface, beckoning me. The skin is puckered, the veins underneath raised up. They look discoloured, almost dead. The hand traces the beams of sunlight that filter down, following them like a map, and I reach out too. I try to grab hold of the hand, desperate to keep it with me, clutching at it, but it twists and then it folds into a fist, charging into my face with full force.
I am out of the water, but I can’t remember how I made it to the bank. I am soaking wet, there’s blood on my hands and my legs ache. I can’t remember anything. I start to panic, cough and then retch.
‘You nearly drowned. I had to jump in and rescue you. You panicked,’ says a young man, also wet, sitting on the bank next to me, his jeans soaked through. A woman rubs his shoulders, holding a barking liver-and-white spaniel on a red lead. The dog is desperately pulling the woman towards me.
‘Stop it, Sammy, just sit! Wait! Ben tried to lift you out of the water, but you kept struggling against him.’ The woman is being pulled around by the dog. It barks wildly. She takes her purple hoodie off and wraps it round my shoulders. She shivers, her arms covered in goosebumps.
‘He had to knock you out. To stop you from drowning the pair of you! Happens all the time with swimmers. You hear about them getting out of their depth, getting confused and then lashing out.’ She tells me with pride how her boyfriend saved me.
I look across at him and he smiles, shrugs his shoulders as if in apology for punching me.
‘To be honest I hadn’t seen you. It was Sammy here. He nearly ripped my arm off pulling me down to the water. I kept whistling for him to come back but he wouldn’t listen. He knew something was up. Good dog, aren’t you, mate? Good boy, Sammy.’ He pats the dog’s head and rubs his ears. The dog’s tail starts up enthusiastically, enjoying the fuss and attention.
I take off the hoodie and give it back to the woman, then stand up unsteadily. I pull my clothes back on as quickly as possible. I am embarrassed, sitting there in my underwear in front of these strangers. Ungratefully, I wish they would leave me be.
‘Let us take you home. Come on, you’re in a right state.’ The boyfriend holds out a hand to me. But I don’t want to touch anyone. My skin stings, as if I’ve spent the day at the beach and got sunburned. I fling my arm out to avoid touching him, shouting, ‘Leave me alone!’ which makes the girlfriend jump back as if I’ve hit her. She goes flying over the dog, landing awkwardly on the ground. The dog starts barking again, first at me and then at the man who is now shouting.
‘Bloody hell!’ He helps his girlfriend to her feet and checks to see if I’ve hurt her, if I’ve hit her. He shakes his head aggressively at me. It is such a mess. Not quite the response they were expecting for an act of bravery. I feel bad, but the feeling is overwhelmed by how much I need to get away. From them, the river and whatever just happened. For once I want my parents, but not while I’m in this state. I can’t risk these two telling all this to my parents, or anyone else.
I run, without any walking or warm-up. I shout sorry as I run past them, head down, my soaked clothes scratching and chafing against my damp, sore, cold skin. I push myself on as hard as I can, as if the man or his dog will try to catch me. I run nearly all the way home, not looking back, not daring to see who might be running after me.
I wake up in my bed. I look across at my clock; the neon numbers glow too brightly in the dark. 23:01. Mum put me there, like a child, after I’d taken a hot shower. I let her fuss over me and I just sat there, on the edge of my bed, waiting for her to leave. She looked so pleased to be looking after me. She is able to love me so easily. I’d fallen asleep quickly, but now I’m wide awake.
I can hear my parents moving around in the hallway, back and forth between the airing cupboard and their bedroom. My bedroom door is ajar. Clearly Mum has been checking on me. In hushed voices they whisper.
‘What on earth was he doing, Sadie? What the hell was he trying to do?’ From my dad.
‘He’s never been a strong swimmer. That’s all there is to it. Tired probably from all the running and he wasn’t very well, he spent most of the day asleep. You have to go with him from now on, Daniel. It’s not safe for him on his own.’ From my mum. Then their bedroom door clicks shut.
I wait for an hour, to make sure they’ve gone to sleep, then creep down the stairs. I don’t know how long I have, but I’ve already looked everywhere in my room and found nothing. Mum and Dad have cleared the house of all my art stuff while I slept. There is nothing left to draw with. I guess they felt they had to do something after what happened in the river, though I haven’t told them the half of it.
All the pens in the house have disappeared. I find the pen pot in the dishwasher. It still has black and blue stains all over it. In the study, the printer is disconnected and empty of paper. I look everywhere, getting more panicked and breathless. I wrench open the ‘drawer of doom’, usually so full of paper, takeaway menus, junk mail, letters from school, leaflets, lists for shopping and Post-its that you could barely get it open. Now it is full of neatly ironed napkins with napkin rings sitting next to them. We don’t use napkins, not unless someone comes for a meal, which is almost never.
I try to find the magazine rack, thinking there’ll be something in there, but that has disappeared too. The house feels too clean and empty, like it has been taken away and replaced with a shiny new one that I don’t know. I am scared of what’s happening, where it might go – as if nearly drowning isn’t bad enough. I really want to stop. But I can’t. I’m like a junkie.
I feel more and more desperate as I pull things out of drawers, fling open cupboards, pull books off shelves, hoping for a bookmark, or an old envelope I can use. I see Mum’s handbag on the kitchen table. I unzip it slowly, feeling like a thief. I look over my shoulder, listening for footsteps down the stairs. I know there will be a notebook in her bag somewhere.
I find a brown paper bag with Flynn’s Remedies printed on the front. I open the bag, even though I’m wasting time. Inside is a small green bottle. It has the tiniest label on it. Chamomile powder. Some herbal remedy for something. Mum isn’t a fan of doctors and hospitals, doesn’t trust them. I heard her tell Dad that going to see the herbalist meant she was ‘in the driver’s seat, back in charge and taking control’. Whatever she needed to take control of.
I screw the bag of herbs back up, shoving it near the bottom, out of my sight. I find a brightly coloured notebook with tesselations on. The bold patterns scattered across the front are the kind that gave me headaches, they look like tiles from a mosque. It was in the zipped section of her bag, a smaller compartment you might miss unless you were really looking. The notebook is only half-full of her neat handwriting.
I don’t stop to read what she’s written. It’s bad enough that I am in her handbag going through her stuff. I have to decide whether to take the whole notebook or just rip a few pages out. She won’t
notice a few missing pages, but she’ll definitely be on to me if her whole notebook walks off. I try to take care as I rip out two pages and then shove them in my back pocket. There’s a leaky biro in the bottom of her handbag, a small blue stubby one that looks near its end. I take that too.
I come to in the early hours of the morning, my head resting on my hand, as if I’d just fallen asleep at my desk. I have pins and needles and my head is tight. My left hand is twitching and flexing and I feel cold. My hand starts moving again, separate from the rest of my body, searching for something. I lurch forwards and grab my jeans, which are lying on the floor. My eyes are half-shut and heavy, as if I can’t open them properly yet. My hand is frantically searching through all the jeans’ pockets until it finds the two small squares of paper torn from my mum’s notebook. They’re so small I wonder what on earth I can draw on them. My brain, arms, legs and hands are fighting against one another. The blue biro fits neatly into the palm of my left hand while my right hand locates the small scraps of paper, blank squares waiting to be filled.
My hand skims across the page, making a mesh of all kinds of blues – light blue, dark blue and blue scribbled so hard it tears through the paper. There’s wind and water and no light. Everything in the picture feels like it is in motion, but it’s also secretive, hiding something from me in the dark. There’s stillness at the centre, a depth that holds something I can’t comprehend yet. Underneath the hard scribbled layers rests a hard ledge. A naked foot, all bony and sharp, is balancing on it or falling off it and the toenails are discoloured and unnatural, almost dead-looking.
Wind and water smash down upon it, blurring it and smudging it so that I can’t see what’s happening. I realise I’m holding my breath as if I’m in there, in the picture, under all the water. I have to make my brain and body work together again or I’ll pass out. The panic builds, there’s a sharp taste of metal in my mouth and then staleness. I try to swallow, to clear my throat, but it is closing. Air seems to be just out of reach, just above my head as I tilt it up to the light.
How can these flat, two-dimensional images in front of me move, slipping and falling? How can I be sitting in my stuffy room shaking from the bitter cold? I can smell the dankness of rain in a dark place where someone’s bones are about to be broken.
I take in a deep breath, as if I’m resurfacing, swimming back up, and then vomit all over the drawings.
CHAPTER 30
BLAZE
I watch the new rain falling as the storm builds. Everything has changed. Yesterday I had my hut, my space, my small treasures, and today I am in a half life. I am not here or there, not one thing or another. In limbo.
I look down at my wrists, marked by the thick knots they’d made when they tied me up. They dragged me to the water like a stray dog. They pushed me down into a dark pool of water. I remember it moving so fast. They tried to kill me, to end me, but I didn’t let them.
They were the guilty ones, Emilia and Henry, with their stolen goods and their false tales. But no one would hear me. No one could hear my cries with my head held under the river.
And now all my hope is gone, sinking like my precious stones which they ripped from my throat and the ring that was to be my escape.
I have to find another way.
It can’t end here, in this place, not again.
CHAPTER 31
NOAH
I run steadily along the river path towards Beth’s house, warming up slowly. I haven’t seen her for three days as Mum’s kept me off school to ‘recover’ from what she and Dad have taken to calling the ‘incident in the river’. We’ve been texting, but it isn’t the same.
I’ve missed seeing her face, her hair, her smile, hearing her laugh. I’m keen to get to her house, to make up for lost time, and am just about to step up my pace when something lands on my shoulder. Before I can turn around, something else hits me hard on the back of my skull.
‘Ow!’ I shout, turning around, trainers skidding in the dry mud.
Theo and Eva are following me. Jay, Georgia and Harley run fast to catch them up. As I rub my head, I can see Sam further along the path, hanging back, looking worried. I pull my hand away from my head. It has blood on it. At my feet lies a rock with splashes of red all over it, like spilled paint.
‘You’ve done it now, Theo, look you’ve made him bleed!’ Eva shouts. She pushes Theo nearer to me. He has another rock in his hand and is snarling at me.
‘What kind of a freak are you? Like letching on other people’s girlfriends, do you, Saunders? Been watching her from your window, have you?’ Theo isn’t making any sense.
Had she seen me, when I shouted at her? Had she told Theo I’d been watching her? I’ll bet she hadn’t told him she’d been hanging her brother out of the window.
Eva is holding something behind her back. I’m worried it’ll be more rocks. My head is pulsing and sore.
‘What do you want, Theo?’ I ask, trying to sound bored rather than scared as he and his mates move closer to me.
‘You should run to Beth’s house, before we tell her what you are. She won’t want to know you then. She hasn’t got a clue what she’s got herself into. This is some serious shit you’ve pulled … freak!’ Theo warns, pointing at me. ‘We all thought you were into Beth, but turns out we were wrong. Think you know someone, eh? Well, Eva’s taken so BACK OFF!’
Theo is shouting now, encouraged by his friends. He pushes me hard towards the edge of the river, moving me away from the path. Eva draws level with me and pulls a sheet of paper from behind her back like a magician. It looks like a worksheet from school.
‘How long have you been watching me? How long have you been spying, peeping through your curtains while I get undressed? You sick pervert! I knew you fancied me! I told Beth that you were watching me, but she wouldn’t listen.’ Eva spits in my face.
I wipe it away on the back of my hand, wondering what the hell to do next. I want to shove her away from me.
‘Knew you were trouble first day you showed up, looking all cool and calm. Thinking you owned the place. I told her not to trust you. Beth should have run a mile from you. Well, she will now, she’ll listen when I show her this!’ Eva holds up a crumpled and stained piece of paper covered in my drawings. It’s of the back of her house showing her bedroom window and her face in full on close-up detail. I try to grab it, but Eva scrunches up the paper and throws it away from me.
‘Too late, Noah. Too late. I’ve seen it and so have Theo and the rest of us, so everyone knows you’ve been stalking me, watching me through my bedroom window, drawing my face, drawing me smiling when I didn’t know you were watching me.’
My stomach drops. I thought I’d got rid of those drawings in our wheelie bin. I remember shoving them down to the bottom, chucking cereal boxes on the top to hide them. How the hell did she find them?
‘You should have made sure the lid on your bin was on properly. There was stuff everywhere. Lots of sad little herbal tea boxes and Coco Pops all over the path! I mean who eats Coco Pops still? My dad made me help him put your rubbish back in, moaning on about how the bin men wouldn’t take any of the rubbish if there was a mess. And in the middle of your kiddie food, I found all these lovely drawings of me. Didn’t know you had such a crush, Noah. It’ll be little love letters next!’ Eva laughs.
Sam picks up the paper and unfolds it, trying to make sense of what’s going on.
‘Take a good look at this, Sam, don’t give me that look, I’m not making it up. See, that’s my house there right behind Noah’s. That’s my bedroom window that this perv has been drawing.’ Eva snatches the paper back off Sam and then turns on me.
‘What did you do it for?’ She thrusts her black pointy nails into my chest. Theo stands next to her in support. He grabs me by my tie and tries to lift me off the ground. Eva’s eyes widen but she looks excited rather than surprised. I shout out and Harley and Jay laugh, doing impressions of me. I can see Georgia and Sam looking less sure, turning to see if anyo
ne is coming up the path.
Theo twists the tie around his wrist, pulling it tighter around my neck, choking me as he angles me down towards him. He lets go of my tie suddenly, tipping me off my feet. I fall to the ground, panting desperately, trying to loosen my tie, to get some air.
Before I can get back up, Harley and Jay catch hold of my arms, holding me in place, ready for something. I panic and begin kicking out at them both. I manage to get Harley in the shin hard.
‘Shit! C’me here, you.’ He rips my shirt sleeve as he gets a tighter hold of my arm, pausing to punch me hard in my ribcage, winding me. I want to cry when they let go of me, unsure what to do next. Theo is arguing with Sam, who keeps on about things getting out of hand, but the distraction technique isn’t working.
‘Just shut it, Sam! You don’t know what’s going on here, so just leave your little friend to us, OK?’ Theo shouts.
Sam shakes his head, but stands his ground, refusing to leave. I don’t have time to call out to him because Eva is hissing at me, talking too fast for me to work out what she’s saying. Harley and Jay are now yelling at Sam too, but all I can hear is Eva in my ear as I get to my feet.
‘…found the other ones too. You were going to show these drawings to everyone, weren’t you? You were going to make them think that I could push my brother out of a window. Was that the plan, Noah?’ Eva looks to see if Theo had heard, but he’s too busy arguing with Sam, who sounds like he’s trying to shut the conversation down.
‘You found your tie then?’ I spit back and watch her face pale. It feels good for a second. Shutting her up for a moment gives me the chance to think, to work out how to get out of this.
‘What are you on about? Anyway, I’ve got rid of those ones. I burned them. So only you and I know what else you drew.’