by Amy Lilwall
‘Yes! Except yours will be green.’
‘Green?’
‘Well,’ Bonbon brushed down her coat, making sure that it was fanned in exactly the same way in all directions, ‘she asked me if you would like a brown one, and I said no because I remember once you said that brown is a shitty colour. Then she asked me if you would like a grey one and I said yes. Then she had a thought and said that two grey ones might get mixed up… Would Jinx like a green one and I told her yes, but I stood up and did it excitedly so she knew that I thought you should have a green one much more than I thought you should have a grey one. It was a much better idea. She would have asked you but, but, she thought you were outside.’
‘A green one,’ breathed Jinx, looking at the wall again as she twirled through her snowy head in a green furry coat. Oh yes, that was beautiful. But what green would it be? AstroTurf green or green box green or flake green – even though flakes were almost yellow, so probably not flake green – or plate green like the dirty plates at Chips’s house? There were so many different types of green.
‘Green is nice, isn’t it, Jinx?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought so. I think it’s better that we have different colours. I was right to think that, wasn’t I?’
‘Yes,’ Jinx nodded at Bonbon, ‘you were definitely right.’
‘I wonder what type of green it will be.’
‘I was just wondering the same thing.’ Jinx stopped. ‘But Bonbon, how did you tell her that I didn’t want brown?’
‘I clapped.’
‘Oh,’ said Jinx. ‘Clapping isn’t really talking, is it?’
‘I don’t know. But I can talk to her with claps. Look,’ Bonbon clapped once, ‘this means “yes”,’ then twice, ‘and this means “no”.’
‘Oh,’ said Jinx, blinking. ‘So, how do you say “Jinx doesn’t want the brown coat”?’
Bonbon put her hands on her hips. ‘No, Jinx. She asked me if you would like a brown coat and I said no.’ She clapped twice. ‘Like this.’
‘Oh!’ Jinx tried. ‘Like this?’
‘Yes!’
Jinx thought for a while, dancing her eyes over the carpet. ‘But… that means that we can talk to her, Bonbon! This changes everything.’
‘It does, doesn’t it?’
An even better thought opened up Jinx’s face. ‘And we can talk to the He-one, and, and tell them when we want something or when we don’t! In fact, we can talk to anyone, can’t we, Bonbon? We could even go to the shops on our own! We could—’
‘No, Jinx,’ Bonbon interrupted, ‘we can’t talk to anyone. We’re not allowed.’
Jinx stared at Bonbon with her mouth still open from where she had been talking. ‘Why? Why not? Not allowed? Why not?’
‘Because of the lady.’
‘What lady?’
‘In the shop.’
‘What?’
Bonbon sighed. Then explained what had happened, from the moment she had been picked up from the tile-smelling place to the moment she stepped into the garden with Blankey. She had spent the whole of yesterday putting it into order inside her head and now, and now… she could tell it. She told Jinx about the humcoat conversation with Susan, how she hadn’t understood at first but then she did, and when they tried to get her the shoe humcoat…
‘A humcoat, made out of shoes? And they thought you liked it?’ Jinx shook her head in wonder.
Well, that was why she had clapped to say ‘no’, and then the lady had offered her flakes, but didn’t really give her any, instead she told them to wait there, but the big She-one didn’t want to, and when they got back in the car, she said: ‘We mustn’t clap like that in front of other people, okay? It has to be our secret because otherwise, they might take you away.’
‘Take you away?’ Jinx gasped.
‘Or you,’ said Bonbon. ‘That’s why we have to be careful.’
‘But why would they take us away?’
Bonbon shrugged. ‘We’re not allowed to communicate.’ She’d found the word at last, the lady in the shop had said it but she couldn’t quite remember it. ‘We’re not allowed to be like them.’ She put her legs straight out in front of her and looked at her feet. The big She-one hadn’t said this to her, but she had understood. She had understood the lady when she said ‘attempted communication’, and ‘littlers are not animals, but they cannot be called people because they are kept as pets’. As soon as she had said that word, the ‘p’ word, two cats came running from opposite directions on the inside of Bonbon’s head. Grey ones, just like the one that had chased Jinx that time. They flattened their ears a little, sniffed each other, then one lifted its hand and smacked the other on the nose. The other one showed its teeth.
She repeated what the lady had said: not animals, but kept as pets. The big He-one had also talked about pets yesterday morning. She had understood everything. And she didn’t know why, but all day yesterday she’d been sad about this. Even though animals were quite nice, some little part of her, like her baby toe, or something, had thought that this was wrong. Now this feeling had spread to her whole foot.
If they were kept as pets, then they were kept as animals.
‘This is why we have to stick together, Jinx.’
‘Why, Bonbon?’
‘I don’t know,’ she replied, all these new thoughts muddled in her head.
‘Because we are both the same,’ said Jinx.
Bonbon looked at her. That was exactly right! It sounded so simple, but exactly what she wanted to say. ‘That’s right, Jinx.’
Jinx beamed. ‘And Chips. And Blankey.’
‘Yes. All of us. And…’ she started, consulting her thoughts just to make sure that they matched up with how she felt. Yes. Yes, she was sure that they did. When she thought of everything she had seen in the tile-smelling place, the thing on the side of her head and all the other heads; Champ who was so hurt, yet he asked her if she was all right, and the way, the way that he could talk to the biggerers, and the others could, with their voices; even if it was horrid screaming, it was possible to be heard, she had seen it. And, and thinking about it, now that she had seen more biggerers, and she had seen that they were the same as the big She-one and the big He-one, she was sure that she didn’t have a cat face or a bird face, she had the same face as them but, but smaller. She continued: ‘And we won’t be collecting feathers today. Or ever again…’
Jinx gasped.
‘Because that’s what animals do, and we are not animals. We are…’ Beyond the window two snails crossed the AstroTurf, wobbling under big plops of rain; they both fell over one after the other, their shiny feet sticking out into the air as they just lay like that, letting themselves to be rained on.
‘Littlers!’ Jinx tried to finish Bonbon’s sentence.
‘No, Jinx.’ Still gazing at the snails, she checked her head one last time. The white and crumpled one stood, nodding at her. Bonbon took a deep breath. ‘I’m sure that we are humans.’
Jinx had never heard this word before. But she understood it as soon as Bonbon had said it. It made all of her body go prickly and those prickles filled with air that lifted her off the ground. ‘Yes!’ she said, jumping up, then: ‘You mean little people?’
‘Yes, Jinx.’
‘The same… as them?’ Jinx nodded up at the ceiling where singing and shower noises could be heard.
Bonbon lifted her eyebrows in the middle. ‘I think so,’ she said.
Jinx looked at Bonbon’s legs, covered in coat. Then at her own legs. Then one black and one blue leg walked through the inside of her head. ‘Shall we see if we can see?’ she said.
‘How?’ said Bonbon.
‘Come on!’ and she got up and skipped over to the door, not letting her feet drag even a little bit on the nice carpet.
They ran to the bottom of the stairs and looked up into the stairwell that opened like a mouth with the stairs falling down and curling round like a great big tongue.
‘We’ve neve
r been up there, Jinx.’
‘But that’s not because we’re not allowed.’
‘But… I’m not sure if I can pull myself up.’
‘Well, I’m going to try.’ Jinx put her hand on the first step, which came up to her shoulder, and heaved herself onto it. She put her hand out to Bonbon. ‘Come on. It’s easy.’
Bonbon shook her head at the hand and managed to pull herself up by clinging onto strands of carpet on the top of the stair and walking her legs up between her arms.
Jinx stared at her, her head on one side. ‘Shall we do the next one?’ she said.
Bonbon already had her hands buried in the pile and was walking her legs up. Jinx pushed down on the top of the second stair and heaved herself over its edge. They continued like this, each with their own method, the singing and the shower noises getting louder with each step, until they reached the seventh or eighth step. Bonbon climbed onto it then turned herself around to sit with her legs hanging over the edge. Her back swelled and shrank in time to the breathy noises her mouth made. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘You can,’ breathe, ‘see really,’ breathe, ‘far from up,’ breathe, ‘here.’
Jinx sat next to Bonbon thinking it was funny the way she spoke. ‘Look at that,’ breathe, ‘we have never,’ breathe, ‘been up,’ breathe, ‘so high.’
They sat gazing at the hallway that was just about visible after the curve in the staircase. Then Bonbon got up. ‘Come on.’
They started to climb again.
By the time they had reached the top, the shower noises and the singing had stopped.
Everything was lovely up here, thought Jinx. There was nice carpet everywhere and it seemed to be really yellow, not a normal yellow but a dancey yellow, as if somebody was turning yellow on and off, really quickly, but whenever she looked straight at the carpet, and the wall, they were both just white.
She felt something nudge up behind her. ‘Bonbon, why are you so close to me?’ But even as she said it, she could feel Bonbon shaking. ‘Don’t be frightened. It’s lovely here, isn’t it?’
Bonbon’s eyes were wide and she held her arms over her chest, her wrists limp and her hands curled over.
‘But why is it a funny yellow like this?’
Bonbon looked towards the window. It was like the dining-room window but here! Up high! And it glowed so brightly that Jinx had to squint to look at it. It felt like bright yellow, and it sort of was, but it was more shiny than coloured. She stepped backwards to where Bonbon was standing and realized that Bonbon’s spot was just out of the brightness, and from here she could look with normal eyes. Her eyes took a moment to get used to the new light, but when they did…
The world rolled out before them in what seemed to be lines of white teeth that started big, then got smaller and smaller, and between them, every so often, a tall skinny thing, much much taller than the teeth, with a turny flower-head, was making the flickers in the yellow. There were many of these flower-head thingies and they faced all different directions. Some were turning really fast and others were being lazy. And way behind the lines of teeth and the skinny flowers, a white wall grew out of the ground; it grew so high that they couldn’t see over the top of it. Great big trees, bigger than anything, even bigger than the tall skinny flowers, flicked their green hair along its walls. Bonbon and Jinx ducked as a big bird, like the one that was dead behind the green box, fell down from the trees with its arms stretched out, getting bigger and bigger as it got lower, but it didn’t seem to come forward, it just, sort of, stayed on the wall. Then something started to make blue wiggly lines across the wall, over where the bird had just landed. What did that mean? What were those lines?
‘EarthSpan,’ said Bonbon, squinting at the wall-thing.
‘What, Bonbon?’
‘Our new salt-powered fleet, taking you to over two thousand destinations.’
‘What, Bonbon? What are you…’ The last word wouldn’t come out of Jinx’s mouth. A shadow broke through the flickering yellow, and they ducked back into the door frame that led into another room. It was the She-one.
‘Oops,’ said the She-one, turning off a light and turning off the shadow. Bonbon clung to Jinx’s elbow as Jinx put half of her head around the door, immediately pulling it back again. ‘I was right.’ But she couldn’t say the words. Instead, she pointed into the room, wanting to say: ‘Look, Bonbon, look.’
They both looked. Two long legs grew into a bottom that narrowed into a back before widening into hair. The big She-one was fiddling with something. She bent to step on it but put her foot right through it, oh dear! It was broken! But then she put the other foot through it and pulled it upwards, over her knees, and then her bottom. They both stared at the thing with scrunchedup eyebrows. What was it for? It wouldn’t really keep her warm, would it? The big She-one turned and reached for something behind her, showing a side view of one breast and a tummy. The thing was long with two ears; she passed it around her middle, turning around as she did so. Two breasts, she had two breasts! Just like them! Then she appeared to be tying both ends together at the front. Mouth open, she looked down at it strangely; another chin growing out from under her real one. ‘Shit,’ she said. Bonbon and Jinx twitched but didn’t move. Then: ‘There we go,’ as she turned the whole thing around and covered her breasts with its ears.
They eyed it the way they had eyed the broken thing that she had put on her bottom. What on Earth did it do? It didn’t matter, thought Bonbon. They had seen enough. She was sure now, absolutely certain. They were exactly the same as her but smaller – exactly the same. Bonbon pinched Jinx, and pointed back towards the stairs.
No. Jinx shook her head; she wanted to stay and watch the big She-one put her legs on.
Bonbon looked at Jinx for a moment then nodded, all right then, she would stay. Jinx smiled. They would leave after the legs, even though she would like to have stayed right to the end. They would leave after the legs because Bonbon wanted to.
‘Trousers,’ said the inside of her head.
It was worth staying for. Although, they couldn’t work out why she had to put the trousers on, take them off again, then put different ones on… Jinx had always wondered how they could change colour like that – it was because she had more than one trousers.
‘Pair of trousers,’ said the inside of her head.
Pair of trousers, she repeated to herself, thinking that one day, she’d really like to be able to change the colour of her legs.
CHAPTER 9
The Turning of Newspaper Pages. That’s what this notebook entry would be called.
One finger slipped up to the top of the page, over the corner, a third of the way down the inside before the whole hand opened up and, swish! The hand pushed it over. Then it rested, palm down, on the middle of the page, just for a moment, as if to say: ‘There we are, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?’ The rest of the paper languished, cradled and trusting across the length of the other arm; like the way Jasper let himself be treated for fleas, or tickled behind the ears.
Drew was so gentle. Even to newspapers. As if separating enormous butterfly wings.
That was a nice description. If Drew had any idea about what went on in Watty’s mind, there’d be piss-taking and retching noises right into the afternoon. Watty would write it down later and pretend it was about somebody else if ever it got discovered.
Ah! Already at the back page. One whole arm could be freed, what would it do? The free forearm swung upwards and its beaked hand nibbled at Drew’s eyelashes, like a long-necked bird searching for tit-bits.
Birds and butterflies. And golden dogs. Where had he left his notebook? Kitchen, probably; after using that four-berry trifle recipe from it yesterday. Watty frowned at the thought of it; blood-red and slimy yellow, like an operation on a fat person.
‘What?’ grinned Drew, catching Watty grimace.
Watty’s stare travelled up and down Drew’s face. ‘Have you always done that? Is that why they grow so long?’
Drew’s b
ird hand stopped nibbling. ‘Do you want to know the truth?’
Watty sighed. ‘Only if it’s interesting.’
‘I’m picking off my mascara.’
‘Oh.’
‘Aren’t you surprised?’
‘Why would I be? You put it on; it has to come off again.’
‘Aren’t you surprised that I wear mascara?’
‘No.’ Arms folding. ‘I didn’t think it belonged to Jasper.’
‘What didn’t?’
‘The little silver tube in the bathroom. And the CC cream.’
‘Ha! That’s your CC cream and you know it.’
‘I hardly use it but I replace it often enough.’
‘—.’
‘You know, when I go to the shops… in my car.’
Drew folded the newspaper. ‘That reminds me, trampolining at five today, Jeeves.’
Watty’s pupils rolled upwards, then back towards Drew’s eyelashes.
‘Where’s my egg?’
They both looked up to see Jasper wandering in, tongue hanging out. Isabel sat on his back, her hands lost inside his fur. ‘Can I have a whole one today?’
‘You can have a quarter of one,’ replied Drew with big eyes and spread-out eyebrows.
‘I meant to tell you, I got some quails’ eggs. Maybe she can have a whole one of them.’
‘Did you hear that, Isabel?’ said Drew, getting up and going to the fridge. ‘Special tiny eggs.’
‘What’s a quail?’ Isabel climbed from Jasper to a kitchen chair.
‘A little chicken,’ said Watty. ‘Here, let me get you your chair.’
‘Do animals come in smaller sizes too?’
Drew’s eyes came up from behind the fridge door and looked at Watty who helped Isabel into her chair.
‘A quail,’ began Watty, ‘is not really a chicken. It’s a small, chubby little thing that can’t fly. Like you.’
Isabel laughed. Drew pouted and gave a firm nod and disappeared behind the fridge door.
Isabel wasn’t allowed to go outside, or to school, or trampolining with Drew, because she was different. Instead, she read stories from books and stories that Watty would write for her… She also watched a lot of television. From this, she had discovered all kinds of funny things. Giant yellow birds could say the alphabet and fat bears with TV stomachs had somehow bought a talking hoover – of all things – and those two bears and one dog, whose legs were never, ever seen…