I’d been whining about how much I hated Hamlet and how I couldn’t bear to do the essay Ms Winters had set on it, GCSE or no GCSE, so Amy showed me a painting to try to get me interested: it was of Ophelia in an ornate silver gown, hands just lifting up out of the water of a narrow, weed-choked stream. The idea worked to the extent that I was curious enough to trawl through the rest of the play trying to figure out how she had ended up in the river. But Amy and I still had a huge argument over the essay.
I decided that, instead of writing about Hamlet, I’d just come up with my own essay question about The Tempest, then Amy could write me a note explaining. Only Amy refused to write the note or, indeed, to condone the alternative essay at all. First we argued about the fact that Amy was sure I couldn’t really be upset over an essay so there must be something else bothering me that we needed to talk about. By the time I convinced her that Hamlet really was the problem, we were both so fed up that we had one of our rare almost-shouting matches. Amy even threatened to withhold my allowance. And then Paul had to come weighing in, backing her up . . .
I did the essay: got it over with in one go between glaring at the book, at the table, at Paul when he interrupted to bring me a drink, which I would have fetched for myself if I’d wanted one since I was in the kitchen . . .
Amy insisted on checking the essay when I finished, though she never does that unless I ask her to: the fact that I wasn’t talking to her by then meant we avoided another row over it, and somehow it had all blown over by bedtime. I mean, I understand that ‘GCSEs aren’t something to muck about with’ (as Paul put it), but I really hate Hamlet – even more so after the argument. And now I’ve got this nasty déjà-vu feeling about it too, though I just can’t quite put my finger on what it is exactly that seems so familiar.
But then I find the answer. It’s on the next page, in a conversation between Hamlet and Ophelia. I remember reading this passage and having to ask Amy why Hamlet wanted Ophelia to go to a nunnery. But it’s not the nunnery bit that’s the problem. In any case, I think I read the line wrong the first time. It doesn’t sound right when I mouth the words ‘more offences at my beck than I have thoughts to put them, imagination to give them shape or time to act them in’ to myself. But I know that’s the line, even though the ‘or time’ bit just doesn’t sound right.
I flick back to the page the rest of the class is working on, but I can’t concentrate.
Ms Winters comes over while I’m packing away my books at the end of the lesson. ‘Are you feeling all right, Evie?’ she asks. ‘Are you in pain?’
I blink at her. ‘I don’t think so . . .’ I consider it for a moment. There’s a dull ache in my side, but nothing worse than usual. ‘It’s fine.’
‘You just seem a little distracted.’ She says it with a smile so I know she’s not trying to tell me off.
‘I was just thinking about the play,’ I say.
Ms Winters’s smile deepens and I can tell she’s both relieved and pleased. ‘In that case, I’ll let you get on to your next class. But do remember to tell your teachers if you’re not feeling well, Evie. It’s quite all right to go to the nurse’s office and lie down for a bit if you need to rest.’
‘OK,’ I say, though I don’t have any intention of taking her up on her offer.
I spend the rest of the day distracted and irritable. Something about the lesson keeps nagging at me: some prickly feeling that’s half frustration and half melancholy, blossoming suddenly into little stutters of rage.
I don’t know why but something about the play makes me feel wrong inside. Like I’ve made some terrible mistake, or I’ve done something dreadful, or failed to do something, or . . . Sometimes it seems like misery, but then I think it must be guilt or even fear. I can’t pin it down and so the feeling that something’s wrong just keeps prickling and itching away along the inside of my skin.
It all centres on Hamlet. Every time I read his name, hear the sound of it in my mind, my teeth flood bitter with hatred. Why can’t he make a decision and just stick to it? And why, if he is going to try to be cunning with that stupid little play within the play, can’t he figure out a way to keep Ophelia and his friends safe? Why does he have to mess about until it all ends in disaster for everyone? What is the point in any of it if no one wins?
If I were Ophelia, I’d strip his skin off for such cowardice.
I think up alternative endings, torturous fates for Hamlet, all through lunch, ignoring Lynne and snapping at Phee when she demands my attention. None of it helps.
The wrongness prickles away along the inside of my skin until I’m so tired that my head hollows out and every thought sends such a cacophony of echoes through my brain that I let it go empty with the ringing silence of exhaustion.
Finally, finally, it’s the end of the day and Phee and Lynne are kicking their way through the gravel to the back gate while I go trailing after them.
‘Come on, Evie,’ Phee says.
I look up to see that she and Lynne have linked arms. Phee is pointing her elbow in my direction, inviting me to join them. I start forward with a weary smile, then stop with a sigh. ‘Can’t,’ I say.
They pull to a halt, making the people streaming out behind them curse.
I shift the shoulder strap of my bag higher. ‘Can’t with my left arm.’
‘Well come on my side then,’ says Lynne, rolling her eyes.
‘Can’t carry my bag on my left.’
Lynne’s mouth turns down and all the animation goes out of her face. She always gets upset when she feels that she’s being insensitive about my ribs.
Phee just sighs. ‘Here. Gimme,’ she says, pulling my bag off my right shoulder and putting it on her own.
Lynne is smiling again as she darts forward, dragging Phee off balance. She swoops in and links her arm through mine. ‘There!’ she crows.
I laugh, but it turns into a gasp. We all stumble sideways as I lurch into Lynne, who falls into Phee. I tumble to my knees, my arm wrenching out of Lynne’s as she thumps down heavily against my side.
‘Evie! Are you OK?’ Phee says, crawling over Lynne to check. ‘Are you all right?’
‘Fine,’ I gasp, though I’m splinting my ribs with my left hand. Pressing against the tug of the still-healing skin. ‘Are you all right?’
‘What happened?’ Lynne asks as they both look me up and down. ‘You jumped like you’d been electrocuted.’
‘I . . .’ I start and then feel myself flush as I realise what happened. ‘Someone pinched me,’ I whisper, and I can tell from their faces that they realise exactly where I got pinched.
Phee’s round face is dark with anger as she pushes herself to her feet, dusting her knees off. She offers me her hand. ‘Sonny stinking Rawlins,’ she says, pulling me up and then doing the same for Lynne. ‘You sure you’re OK?’
I nod, glad not to have to meet her eyes as I turn to follow Phee’s glare. And there he is, straddling a fancy mountain bike, clearly brand new, that must have cost his dad a small fortune. It’s completely the wrong thing for tricks – even I know that – but he’s trying to do them anyway. And sort of succeeding. Fred looks on appreciatively from his scratched old bike, begging for a turn.
Sonny Rawlins throws out a leg, spinning the bike to a sudden stop that hurls gravel in a thigh-high wave over a group of Year 7s. They squeal, huddling together, then streak off towards the gate. Sonny Rawlins stops to watch them run. A curl of disgust distorts his upper lip, but his eyes are avid. He seems to sense my gaze and glances over at us. Something else enters his expression: some emotion or thought I can’t begin to decipher. An uneasy fit with whatever he was feeling before. His tongue darts out, sweeping over his bottom lip. Then he turns away and cycles on, throwing out a hand to shove a girl out of his way.
Sometimes I wonder what Ms Winters’s story is: whether she understands because she’s helped a dozen people like me at her victim support charity, or whether she understands because she is like me. Or maybe it’s both.
She’s never tried to get us involved in any disaster relief efforts like the other teachers – which is fair enough – but it proves she only feels fiercely about one particular charity, not charity stuff in general. So there must be a reason behind her picking that specific cause.
She’s sad sometimes, but that’s about all I know for sure: that she understands deep, dull, constant pain. Sometimes there’s that weariness in her: the knowledge that misery can just go on and on and on, getting worse and worse, and somehow you keep bending under it until you’re all bowed over but you never splinter and break quite enough to escape the weight.
‘Sometimes I wonder if I made it all up,’ I find myself saying to the ugly rug in the middle of the floor. ‘Sometimes I wonder if any of it really happened at all.’ Sometimes I feel quite sick with guilt and horror that, really, it’s all just lies. Even though I know it’s not. Sometimes I have to remind myself of my ribs and the other scars before I end up dashing downstairs and crying to Amy that I’m just a liar.
When I look up, Ms Winters is smiling at me. It’s a soft, gentle smile. ‘Everyone in your shoes wonders that, Evie. It’s one of the reasons I know you’re not making it up. Only the liars never wonder.’
My smile wavers on my lips. ‘But why do I think like that?’
Ms Winters’s smile gets even softer. ‘Because some things are so awful they really are unbelievable. Sometimes, when life is better and things are OK, it seems impossible that any happiness is possible after that type of misery.’
This is why I talk to Ms Winters. She’s not like the stupid counsellors. She knows. She really knows about people like me. And when I reach up to push away the not-there, not-now things, she just catches my hand, still smiling, and I can see in her eyes that she doesn’t think I’m going mad. She knows, without my having to explain, that even though I’m starting to see things that aren’t really there, I know they’re not real. They’re just echoes of things that were real once. But sometimes I can still see them, all out-of-time.
It starts like cobwebs at the edges of my vision: like the shadow of a fleck of dust floating across my eye. But one that can’t be wiped away, though I always try. Just as, when that fails, I can’t stop myself from trying to push the shadows back. First, I brush at my hair. It must be that. It must just be my hair, billowing in some unseen, unfelt breeze . . .
Only it never is and then I am reaching frantically into the air. There must be a cobweb. There must be.
But of course there isn’t.
And the things in the corners of my vision are creeping forwards. They’re no longer greyish and uncertain, but beginning to flush with colour, growing solid, taking shape.
And I know they’re not really there because I can still see whatever place I’m in . . . But I see those other things too – I feel them.
And it’s no use telling myself that none of it is real, because that’s not true: the past was once as real as now is. It’s time that’s the trouble and that’s so much harder to pin down: how do you tell the difference between then and now when feelings and smells and sounds are creeping in too? When then is suddenly flaring into your senses again, no longer dim and distant but clear and sharp and present.
It’s why I hate the story of Alice in Wonderland. Amy tried to read it to me once but I had to make her stop because it made me think about falling down into all the not-now, not-real things. In the book, all the characters are mad but funny: they all seem happy enough. But if I ever fell into my rabbit hole, it would swallow me down, down, down until I didn’t know what to believe any more. Then it would all become real again. All those grey, wispy visions of the rooms of Fiona’s parents’ house . . . the shiver of the floor against my bare skin. The way my bed was so old, with so much give, I could never get any leverage to push against to get away.
‘Evie,’ Ms Winters says, her voice commanding. ‘Evie, take a deep breath.’
I’m panting, I realise. I gulp in a breath that makes me cough.
‘OK,’ Ms Winters says, leaning forwards to rub my back as I double over my knees and cough and whoop and cough and whoop. ‘Slow, deep breaths.’
When I’m just hissing breath slowly through my teeth, pressing my burning forehead against my knees, Ms Winters pats my shoulder. ‘I’ll get you a glass of water.’
By the time she comes back, the Dragon is warming in my palm and I’m sitting up again, staring out of the window.
‘Evie darling,’ says Amy, and I pause in pulling the duvet out of its cover at the strange note in her voice. She’s staring down at the under-sheet and I realise that there are smears of mud across it. ‘What on earth have you been up to, darling?’ she asks, pushing the duvet back to look more closely.
‘It will come out, won’t it?’
‘I think so,’ says Amy, ‘but how did it get here? And look,’ she adds, going over to the chair where I dump clothes that have been worn but aren’t yet ready for the wash. ‘It’s all over your jeans . . . and they’re wet through.’ I’m treated to a worried head-to-foot survey. ‘You weren’t walking about in wet clothes, were you, darling? It would be awful for you to get a cold so soon after the operation . . .’
‘I’m fine,’ I interrupt, bundling the rest of the dirty clothes up with the sheets. ‘I’ll put it all on with some of that stain-remover powder.’
But Amy is still holding the jeans, pressing the fabric. ‘How is this still so wet? I remember you getting changed into your pyjamas just after dinner. There isn’t a draught in here, is there?’ she asks, crossing to the window and feeling around the frame, then checking the radiator. ‘You’re not cold at night, are you?’
‘Of course not. It’s boiling in here.’
Amy’s frown only deepens as she turns to glare at the bundle of washing in my arms. ‘But then how on earth did . . .’
‘I nipped out,’ I say quickly. ‘Last night.’
‘Last night?’ Amy asks. ‘I didn’t hear you come down the hall.’
‘I didn’t,’ I say, then hurry on, ‘I mean, I’ve just been checking something in the evening, sometimes early in the morning too. Out the bottom of the garden. Mushrooms,’ I add. ‘There are these really cool mushrooms. Or there were. There are all sorts of wonderful things out there. It all looks so different, so magical, at night. And there are blackberries too.’
‘Yes, I can see that,’ Amy says, quirking an eyebrow as she picks up a trailing sleeve and shows me a big purple stain near the cuff. ‘You don’t go beyond the garden though, do you, Evie? I know there’s that nice spot of brambles just out on the towpath, but you know you mustn’t go beyond the trees.’
I shrug then wriggle awkwardly on the spot.
‘Darling,’ Amy says, reaching out to touch my arm, ‘I don’t mind you getting a bit muddy, so long as you don’t get chilled and catch a cold, but I don’t think you should be wandering around beyond the garden. Especially at night. I don’t want to make you scared because we do live in a nice, safe place but it’s still important to be careful. I mean, you never know who or . . .’
I tuck myself under Amy’s arm so she can hug me to her, putting my own arm about her waist to lead her to the door, anxious to get downstairs so I can put the incriminating laundry on and have the whole subject over and done with. ‘I’ll be safe and careful, I promise,’ I say. ‘I promise I won’t get into trouble.’
Amy sighs. ‘You got changed and went out while I was in the bath after dinner, didn’t you? Because it wasn’t before dinner and it wasn’t this morning. Darling, why . . . ?’ She trails off with another sigh and squeezes my shoulder. ‘I’m a terrible busybody, aren’t I, my love? You do know I can’t help it, don’t you? That I only do it because I love you?’
‘I know,’ I say, smiling up at her. I set my head on her shoulder for a moment before moving away so she can go ahead down the stairs: she always prefers to go first if I’m carrying so much as a handkerchief on the basis that if I fall I can fall on her.
While Amy measu
res out the washing powder, I shove the laundry into the machine. ‘Amy,’ I say, putting just a hint of wheedling into my voice so she knows I’m about to ask for something I really want, ‘I was thinking . . . I’m going to be fifteen soon – well, soonish – and . . . and I want to be a bit more independent now that I’m getting well again.’
‘OK,’ Amy says, looking puzzled.
‘I want to do my own laundry. I mean, do it by myself.’
Amy frowns. ‘But I like doing things for you, darling. If you want to walk – or even cycle – over to Phee’s house and then go on from there to school together by yourselves, I don’t mind that, so long as it’s not raining, of course, but why . . .’
I shove the door to the washing machine shut with a little too much gusto and see Amy’s eyes go first to the machine and then to me, trying to figure out why I care so much.
‘I want to do it for myself,’ I say, a hint of grumpiness in my tone. ‘Now that I can stretch a bit because the ribs don’t hurt, I just want to do it.’
Amy’s eyebrows go up and she blinks at me for a moment, but then she smiles and shrugs. ‘If that’s really what you want, darling. But you mustn’t feel as though I’ll be cross if you change your mind again. It’s not that exciting, doing laundry.’ Then the frown is back. ‘But I hope that’s not some way of trying to get away with roaming about in the dark out on the towpath,’ she says.
‘Oh, you know how it is,’ I say airily. ‘Teenagers have to be careful about making promises of that sort. Some of us need to be free to go out in the middle of the night to . . . to exercise our hidden mystical powers or . . . or become a righter of wrongs, a rescuer of . . . er . . . abandoned, uneaten blackberries.’
‘Try to keep the blackberry rescuing to the daylight hours, darling,’ Amy says, ‘or at least let one of us know you’re creeping out to stain yourself black and purple in future, won’t you?’
The Bone Dragon Page 7