“Why won’t you tell me?”
“Just drop it,” he growls. I don’t want to, but there’s a threat in his voice. I decide not to anger him.
“Fine,” I mutter curtly. I turn to leave, but he seizes my wrist to stop me.
“Wait.” He leans down and kisses me softly on the cheek. “I’ll be waiting for you on Friday. Same time, same place. I hope you’ll be there.”
After he disappears out of sight, I stand there on my own for a long time trying to figure out what the hell has just happened. Cautiously I touch the spot where he had kissed me, as if expecting that little patch of skin to suddenly feel different; to be changed, permanently altered, in some way. It’s not. I feel stupid. Then the confusion returns, attacking me like a starved tiger, so overwhelming that I want to scream at the sky ‘I don’t understand’ as loudly as possible and hope that God, if he exists, takes pity on me.
How can someone change like that, so quickly, in the matter of a single evening? And why is it that the whole time, I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been like if it were Ash instead of Ben? It’s not fair, I think, life is too complicated.
As soon as I close the door behind me, a shock of coffee hair pounces on me. “Where have you been?” Ash demands, obviously pissed. “You didn’t even bother to tell me where you went. I thought something bad had happened.”
I try to shrug off his worry. “Stop it, I’m fine. I just went for a walk. I can take care of myself you know.”
“I’m not saying you can’t. Just tell me next time you’re going somewhere.”
“Yes, mother.”
The anger diminishes quickly, and the playful idiot I’m accustomed to is back. “Stop insulting my masculinity,” he pouts. “I’m not a mother hen.”
I laugh, and I notice that this laugh is different to the laugh I had used around Ben. It’s more natural. “Sure you’re not,” I play along. But secretly, I feel a well of admiration. Who cares what Ben says, I think to myself. Ash isn’t a bad person. I know him, at least I think I do, and that’s enough. Right? But there’s still something in my chest, lingering there and clinging to me. It’s an unpleasant feeling, like having a bad cough.
It’s just before I fall asleep that I finally realise what it is. Guilt. I feel like I have betrayed him.
Chapter 11: Secrets
If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a sound?
Are people born murderers or thieves? It would make sense if they are, because people are born with talents and personalities, so why not the potential to commit a crime? I used to think that because it made sense. It’s logical. But logic works in strange ways, and oddly enough it was Lily who proved that to me.
The fact is that Lily has always been Lily. Even in the before era she was uptight and easily angered. We never got along. Unlike my other sisters who only grew distant later on, Lily has always been the same way. She has her good points too, of course. She’s clever, and a great writer. But she always found Dawn and I annoying because we were younger. She got on well with Faith, though. I’ve never understood what the two have in common.
Maybe I judged her too quickly. But at age six, I did not and refused to understand. It took another five years for me to sneak into her room and look through the drawers until I found the stacks of poems, the notebooks of drawings and the little mountains of dismantled pens. I flicked through the poems briefly and gazed in admiration at each one of the drawings. The subjects were all pretty dark – a torn up bed in one, a smashed phone, a car running over a porcelain china doll. Everything she drew and wrote about seemed to be broken in some way.
The thing I will remember most though is not the pictures, but the diary.
I can’t remember the entries word for word, but they were written in a way that harmonised each sentence so well they could have been lyrics. Each page had a small doodle on the side in a different colour, depending on her mood. They ranged from little black hearts with arrows through them, to paper boats of Persian blue, an old musty bicycle in vibrant purple and a group of hilltops in calm green. She wrote about every day things, but always with a hint of darkness. If you read between the lines, it was easy to see the real meaning behind her words. ‘Exams are soon, but I really don’t feel like revising’ was short for ‘A good grade is insignificant compared to everything else that’s happened’. ‘I was supposed to go to a party today, but I chose not to in the end’ A.K.A ‘I didn’t go because I know I don’t fit in there.’
You could only tell that something was wrong if you looked hard enough for those hidden messages. She scribbled enthusiastic descriptions of various household chores, the cleaning and the cooking and the laundry. I saw though. What she really meant was ‘I shouldn’t be the one doing these things, but I have to now because there’s no one else to’.
You see, Lily’s diary taught me something; you can be friends with the whole world and still be alone. Lily was popular, averagely pretty, smart and opinionated. She drew people to her like a magnet and yet, despite everything, each page of her diary was saturated with a desperate loneliness that wafted out of the book and seeped into my heart.
No one is one-dimensional. Sometimes you just have to look a little harder for the other side.
If a work of art is created, but there is no one there to appreciate it, is it still worth something?
I’m hanging upside down and staring through the crack between the bed and the floor to see my crumpled red backpack still stashed there, lying listlessly amongst a cluster of dust bunnies. I get onto my hands and knees and crawl, sliding stiffly across the carpet until I grab the bag and manoeuvre myself out again.
The dirty fabric of the backpack is faded and scarred. When I first bought it, it had been Persian red. Now it is the colour of rust. Inside there’s spare clothes, money, chocolate. I eat take out the chocolate and start eating it. Then I probe deeper into a hidden pocket and pull out an old, yellowing photograph with tattered edges. It is another piece of history.
On the left stands a fifteen year old Lily, scowling at the camera. She always hated photos. On the right is Dawn, smiling shyly out of the picture. She is nine years old and wears a yellow sundress that reaches to her knees. Then there is me, in the middle between them. I’m the youngest, barely seven, grinning toothily and proudly displaying the gaps in my teeth to the world. Faith, being the oldest at seventeen, is standing behind all of us with one hand on Lily’s head and the other on Dawn’s as she bends down to smile over my shoulder. Her dyed sunflower hair blends nicely with the straw hat I’m wearing. She looks amused by something, hazel eyes sparkling cheerfully. She’s wearing shorts, along with a bright azure top. When I look at it, I remember all the times I spilt tea on it.
They say that different people deal with grief in their own ways. But in reality, how many ways are there to deal when your life comes crumbling down around you? Funnily enough, the answer is plenty.
For the first few days after their deaths, Faith somehow managed to hold us all together. She had been that thin lifeline in the middle of the stormy ocean that we all held onto, afraid of sinking into the murky depths. And at the time, we relied on her. It was the unspoken rule that she was now in charge since she was the oldest. She was expected to make the decisions, take care of the financial issues, comfort us. She knew that too. And although she had never wanted that responsibility, she took it anyway.
We all knew she was scared, that she was too young to look after all of us as well as herself. She was only nineteen. She was supposed to be at university. She was supposed to be studying fashion design, just like she had always wanted to. She was supposed to be at the disco every night, out shopping with her friends in her free time, laughing and grinning and missing deadlines. But instead, she chose us.
The court wanted to send us to an orphanage at first. Of course Lily had vehemently refused. I listened to her and Faith argue once, standing outside the door and trying to make myself
walk away but finding it impossible.
“I’m not going to any orphanage,” Lily had been shouting, voice muffled slightly by the closed door.
“It’s what the court thinks is best...all of you are still underage,” was Faith’s weary reply.
“I will be in a year. Until then, why can’t we just stay here?”
“You can’t do that. What about Dawn and Hope? Who’s going to look after them?”
“Ask Grandma to do it. Or Uncle James, anyone.”
“You know as well as I do that they’d say no.”
Pause. “Will you stay with us, then?” Lily had finally asked. Faith was silent for a moment. At the time I wondered why it would be a hard decision. Now, I understand. People are born selfish. We are programmed to think of ourselves first. I realise that all along, there was a part of Faith that wanted to say no to Lily. She still had her life to live. But she gave it up for us.
She never said anything, never complained. She took on her responsibility with a grim expression, but she did so nonetheless. We were three sails, flapping pitifully in the wind without resistance. And she was our mast, making sure that we did not simply give up and disappear one day into the black sky. The mast is there to support the sails, not the other way around. And none of us wanted to admit that in the end our mast was just as broken as we were.
When I look back and think, really think, the distance between Faith and I had been there for a long time. When I was six she still loved me, but as I got older something in her changed. Or maybe it was me who changed. In the months that followed our parents’ deaths, the slight change I had barely noticed suddenly became a lot more prominent. She became cold, withdrawn and empty. We all changed; Lily became constantly angry and Dawn lost nearly all of the little confidence she had. And that was when they started to hate me.
Maybe it was because I was the youngest, the hardest to look after, the one who got the worst grades in school. Or maybe it was because I had been the only one there for the last few moments of our parents’ lives.
*****
When Ash walks in to find me lying on my bed and staring at the photo, it is only in his nature to lope further towards me out of curiosity and try to peek over my shoulder. I let him, too tired to protest.
“They’re your sisters?” is his first awestruck remark as he stares and ogles at the picture, or more precisely Faith.
“Can’t you see the family resemblance?” I ask mockingly. He just continues to observe over my shoulder, a sort of glazed look in his eyes. I wonder if he will start drooling. I hope not, or at least not on me.
“She’s hot – I mean,” he corrects himself hurriedly after sparing me a sheepish glance. “I mean she’s very pretty.” Gee, thanks for the consideration.
“So I’ve heard,” I mutter, tone bitter.
“Jealous, are we?”
“Obviously, because I care so much about what you think of me.”
“Don’t worry, I still like you best.” He winks. I cringe.
“Don’t say things like that, it scares me.”
“You scare me in all sorts of ways, dear.”
“Do you have to turn everything I say into an innuendo?”
“You set yourself up perfectly,” he defends, adding as an afterthought: “And you really should introduce me to your sisters, some day.”
“So you can get off with them?”
“You know I’d never do anything to make you feel uncomfortable.” He slings an arm around my shoulders and gives me a meaningful stare. “I know you have…jealousy issues.”
I throw his arm off. “Stop saying that,” I insist. “And stop acting like we’re a married couple from the fifties.”
However he doesn’t seem to hear me and the rest of my protests, suddenly snatching the picture out of my hands. “There,” he says proudly and promptly jabs a finger at my seven year old self, grinning triumphantly. “That’s you, isn’t it?”
I nod, surprised. “How did you know?”
“Same dark hair, same green eyes, same ridiculous fashion sense...”
“Hey!”
He smirks, eyes darting between the picture and I. “I do need to ask though, what went wrong?”
“Everything,” I say. The truth behind that one word is my own inside joke.
But he thinks I’m kidding. If only. “What a pretty dress,” he mocks. “Do you still have it? I’d love to see you try it on, even if it is a little short.”
“In your dreams, pervert.”
He sticks his tongue out in the most immature way possible. “I think your parents we’re out of it when they signed your birth certificate, because they obviously meant to call you Hostile instead of Hope.”
“Firstly, hostile isn’t a name. Secondly, the guy named after a tree can’t talk.”
“There you go, jealous again,” he shakes his head disapprovingly. “There’s plenty of other plants you can have. How about Rose?”
“I don’t think so,” I say quietly. “I’m not pretty enough to live up to that name.”
“I think it would really suit you.” He smiles, and for once it’s not mocking.
If a person has something to say, but has lost their voice, do they still speak?
It is quiet for a while, but when he looks back at me the playfulness in his eyes is gone. Instead they are hard and steely; serious, fervent. The setting sun outside casts a warm, orange glow across the room, shadowing one side of his face ominously. “You’re doing it again,” he says.
“Doing what?”
“Acting.”
I keep my gaze down, plucking at the fraying ends of my covers. “How can you tell?”
“I don’t have to, you’re always acting.”
“Sorry,” I shrug half heartedly.
“Tell me why you left,” he suddenly demands, and there’s a pleading edge to his voice. “What are you running away from?” The lingering light flickers, tinting his eyes almost crimson red as he looks at me expectantly.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper. “I can’t.”
*****
When Ash comes home on Thursday morning, arms laden with two large bags, I sense disaster immediately.
“You went grocery shopping?” I ask in disbelief as he carries them into the kitchen, dropping them on the floor. He doesn’t answer at first, instead looking around cautiously.
“Mum’s gone to work already, right?”
“Yeah, she left about an hour ago.” I frown, looking at him suspiciously. “What’s in the bags?”
“What? These?” He kneels down on the kitchen floor. One hand disappears into the white plastic and a moment later emerges with a thin tube in its grasp. “Cream. Lots and lots of cream. I told you I we were gonna have some fun.”
“You bought two bags of whipped cream?”
“I know! Great, isn’t it?” he chuckles, and as if to emphasize just how great it is, he dismembers the top of the can and squirts the white, foamy substance into his mouth.
I simply stare at him incredulously. “You...you...”
“Genius?” he suggests.
“You moron.”
“Careful,” he teases, turning the can towards me, nozzle aimed at my face. “I’m the one with the whipped cream, you know.”
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Wouldn’t I?” he shakes the can menacingly.
“How many cans are in there anyway?”
“Only about thirty in total.”
“Only thirty?”
“And all for under twenty pounds! There was a sale on.”
“Two for the price of one?”
“Yeah.” He tilts his head back and squirts more cream into his mouth, painting himself a foamy, white moustache.
“You know it’s going to take you more than a year to eat all of that cream,” I point out, arms crossed and eyebrow raised patronisingly.
“When did I say I was going to eat it all?”
As soon as he says the words, I know it’s a bad sign.
However I do not even have time to react before suddenly a fountain of white foam hits me right in the face. I instinctively shield myself with my arms for protection and in the next moment the world is white.
He. Is. Dead.
“You...you...you did not just do that,” I splutter, trying to wipe cream out of my eyes. I see red. Whatever common sense I had is kicked out by rashness. Impulsively, I snatch my own can, practically tear off the lid and shoot beautiful, foamy whiteness at him. It gives him a white beard to match the moustache.
And so the destruction of the kitchen begins.
Cold Water Page 12