by Emily Barr
The dress I am wearing right now, packed by Mum, is all right, but it’s the only thing I’ve got that is. It’s purple like my hair, made from T-shirt material, and although it’s very plain and cost almost nothing from some high-street shop, it’s nice. I need to do some serious shopping today in order to have something better to wear for breakfast tomorrow. At home I always wear sleeves. Here I can’t do that. I’ll just have to assume that no one will notice. Wearing sleeves is a habit and I need to lose it.
Now, though, I’m in the room alone, and I need to see what’s in the safe.
I stand in front of it: it wants a four-digit code, so obviously I’m going to try and give it the exact one it needs. As well as all the big things, my phone is in there and I would really, really like my phone back. I try my birthday: 1711. It doesn’t work. I try my year of birth, and Mum’s birthday, and Dad’s, but literally nothing works.
Whatever is in here, my parents really don’t want me to find it. I start to panic.
SMASH IT UP.
That came from nowhere. I shake my head. I can’t actually smash it up. Can I?
IT’S NOT REALLY SECURE. IT’S JUST FOR REASSURANCE. WE CAN EASILY BREAK IT.
We can’t. I mustn’t. I look around for an implement, just in case, but someone is knocking on the door. Bella fades away as I stare at it, picturing the gorgeous boy on the other side, forgetting the safe. He has asked reception for my room number and come to find me.
I’ll open the door, and he will be out there, and I will step right up and kiss him. I would kiss him without knowing his name, or anything about him.
I pull my hair over my shoulder, arrange my body to what might or might not be its best advantage, take a deep breath and open the door.
‘Oh,’ I say, slumping. ‘It’s you.’
Dad laughs. ‘Who were you expecting?’
‘No one. We’ve got two keys, haven’t we?’
‘Yes. And both of them are here. We didn’t think we’d need two keys for breakfast.’
‘Ella,’ says Mum. ‘Are you all right, darling? You look pale.’
I turn on her. I can’t help it.
‘You always say I look pale. I’m pale because we live in a cold rainy country, and even though we’re in Brazil now, we haven’t actually been out of doors in daylight. We’re like the vampires of Rio.’
‘Ella!’
I cave instantly. ‘Sorry. I’m just desperate to get outside. Because we’re actually here. You know?’
Mum caves too. She hugs me, pulling me tight so my face is in her hair.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, darling. I know it’s a lot to deal with. Let’s sort ourselves out and get into the sunshine. I know you need to have a look at the beach, and it ought to be safe enough in daylight if we don’t carry valuables. There are shopping malls and things like that, so after you’ve seen the beach we can ask the hotel to call us a taxi, and get you all kitted out.’ She flicks her eyes towards me and away again. ‘And if you wanted to get your hair dyed back to your lovely blonde, we could do that too. I’m sure it would be easy.’
I frown. I don’t need to answer that part. ‘Clothes would be good,’ I say. ‘Thank you.’ I am going to keep being nice. No outbursts, despite the fact that my parents are annoying and boring and forming a constant human shield around me, and that is going to stop me talking to the boy.
I want to talk to the boy. And I want to open the safe. But I want to talk to him more. And I need some clothes.
I know Mum is trying her best but I am very nearly eighteen. They have trusted me to walk around town on my own since I was eleven, and now they’ve gone completely, freakishly weird on me. However, I am desperate to get out into the sunshine and see the beach and breathe the air and embrace the fact that I am actually here, so I pull myself together. I’ll have another go at the safe later.
‘Thanks,’ I say. I make myself smile at Mum. ‘Sorry. The beach would be wonderful. Thank you.’
The relief that swamps her face, just for a moment, makes me feel bad.
It is the middle of the afternoon. We have been to the shops and now I’m sitting on the real, sandy, gorgeous Copacabana Beach, a sketchbook on my lap, drawing the beach and the rocks and the mountains in real life. The sun is on my face and I’m doing my best to look entirely absorbed in my drawing, while secretly listening to my parents’ whispered conversation. I am frowning and concentrating hard (but not really), and after a while they start talking a tiny bit louder. I strain to catch the words, and then I hear Mum saying:
‘The cattery are asking for a fortune.’
Dad says: ‘Well, they always do.’
I carry on listening but it turns out they really are talking about how much it will cost for Humphrey to go to his own (downmarket) hotel. Apparently our cleaner, Michelle, is coming in tomorrow and Mum says she’s asked her to drop Humphrey off when she leaves. Poor Humphrey. I bet he’d rather stay out in the wild, catching his own dinner, than go to that smelly place and be shut in a cage, having to listen to the yowling of all the other cats asking loudly why the humans have sent them to prison.
My parents didn’t plan this trip at all. I feel bad for Humphrey. I would never have chosen to go away without saying goodbye to him. I would have cuddled him and talked to him and explained why I was leaving and when I would be back. He will be missing me, and he will also be missing Bella. I have had an almost Bella-free day today. I love that.
I have to find out what’s happening.
And I have to find that boy.
I watch a tiny child splashing in the shallow water. Copacabana is not how I expected it to be even though I knew exactly what it looked like; even though I did a huge painting of almost this exact view in art last year. Then I was painting from a still photo; now I am sketching from life, and it is wildly lively. Everyone is here. A group of extraordinary boys wearing tiny swimming trunks run up and down nearby, and I cannot stop staring at the chiselled contours of their bodies. They are all black and glistening. Their muscles are defined and none of them has an ounce of fat. They don’t look like humans in the way my parents and I are human. I have never seen anyone who looks like this in real life.
I remember the boy in the hotel again. Every part of me longs to be close to him.
The toddler’s mother takes its hand. Vendors come past selling peanuts and sunglasses. Up by the pavement a string of little cafés sell food and coffee and beer. Everything anyone could want is right here. My drawing is full of as much life as I can cram into it.
A woman runs past wearing a tiny swimming costume, her body jiggling all over the place, and no one is taking any notice. I know that on a British beach people would be sniggering at her, but here they really don’t care at all.
I fill in some detail of the bumpy little mountains out in the water. Mist floats around in the distance, and the green hills are sometimes hidden, sometimes revealed.
‘Nice to see you happy,’ says Dad.
I try to put on a sulky face but it doesn’t work, because they both laugh. Mum is more relaxed than she has been since we got here, and it’s actually nice to see that, and I do want her to be happy, because if she’s less haunted and stressed, the emergency might have gone away a bit.
‘You always said you’d love it here,’ she says, looking at my picture and smiling.
I nod. I want them to think that this is enough; that Rio and the sunshine and the little denim shorts and tops and sandals, and the sketchbook and the pencils they’ve bought me are enough to stop me trying to work out what is going on.
I put down my sketchbook and smile at them.
‘So,’ I say. ‘We can fit in some sightseeing now. Let’s do something.’
They laugh and look at each other. Mum shrugs.
‘I suppose,’ says Dad, ‘that this could be a good time to visit the famous Jesus up on the hill. What’s its name? You know – the Christ statue.’
‘Yeah – the Cristo Redentor?’
‘W
hat?’
‘The taxi driver told me last night. It was lit up on the hilltop. He said it was Cristo Redentor.’
‘I missed that,’ says Mum. ‘Christ the Redeemer. Well. The morning might be better really. I’m not sure the hotel will be able to arrange a trip immediately.’
‘They organize all sorts,’ says Dad. ‘I asked about it. They book the Cristo thing, and the Sugar Loaf Mountain, and any number of walking tours. There are even tours to the favelas. You know, the slums. I think we can give that one a miss, don’t you?’
I remember the film City of God. We watched that a few months ago as part of Mollie’s education.
‘A tour of the slums?’ I say. ‘That sounds like a horrible idea. Stare at the poor people! Point at them and take photos and then go back to the lovely comfy hotel? I actually think that’s disgusting.’
‘And those favelas are absolute no-go areas,’ says Mum. ‘We need to keep you safe.’
Her words hang in the air.
The man at the hotel, whose name badge says he is Pedro, tells us that this is a good day to go up the mountain because it’s so clear, but that we’ll have to hurry.
‘You don’t need a tour,’ he says, smiling the conspiratorial smile of one who knows that he’s supposed to be pushing them at us. ‘You just need a taxi. Then you buy tickets for the train. It’s very easy. When you get out of the taxi, don’t speak to anyone trying to sell you a trip, OK?’
‘Will it be OK that we don’t speak Spanish?’ I say, and he laughs.
‘Well, that won’t matter at all. Here in Brazil we speak Portuguese. But, no, you’ll be fine with English.’
‘I meant Portuguese,’ I say, my cheeks flaming. I didn’t really: I had no idea. But now I do.
The doorman flags down a yellow cab and tells the driver where we’re going, and we are off, weaving through the streets again. I sit in the front, like before. I just get in and no one stops me.
The driver grins at me.
‘Hola,’ I say experimentally. I have just repeated everything I have ever said to the boy at breakfast.
‘Hola,’ he replies with a nod.
We set off into the traffic and I stare out of the window, trying to see everything.
I could look at Rio forever. I think you’d see new things every single time. There are people in Lycra. There are gyms with huge windows looking out on to the streets, filled with people doing weights. There are old people and children, black people and white people. There are juice bars and coffee shops and restaurants. There are drag queens and old men in suits, fat people and thin people. There are old people sitting in parks playing chess. Everything is here.
At school I thought I was pretty much educated. I barely scraped through the social side of things, but when it came to the education I thought I was doing all right. I felt I knew the things you need to know. Now I’m not at all sure I know any single thing at all. The world is so much larger than I ever imagined, and there is so much more to life than my small existence. When I listen to Brazilian people speaking, I can’t make out a word of it because I know nothing about these people and their language, and I wish I did. The sounds are different: there are lots of ‘shh’ and ‘chhh’ things going on. If we stay longer I’m going to have to puzzle it out. I can’t believe I didn’t even know what language it was. That is mortifying.
A minute ago everything in my life was mapped out. Now it’s not. No one seems to hate me in Brazil; I am coming alive.
I want to go online and try to work out what I’m doing here, so I have to get my phone.
I try to remember anything I’ve read about parents running away with their children. It’s what one parent does to keep the child away from the other, but that’s not us. Some parents ran away with their child a few years ago, I think, because the child was ill and they didn’t want him to have chemo because they wanted him treated with crystals or something.
I would know if I was desperately ill. There would have been doctors’ appointments and hospitals.
There were.
With a lurch of my stomach I remember that there were doctors’ appointments.
My vision goes a bit fuzzy. This is important. I can’t have Bella stirring. I need to focus. I force her away.
I remember. I was small, and I hated them. I only remember them in a fuzzy way, but I know they happened. I remember being upset, crying and crying, and everyone trying to comfort me and tell me it was all right. I remember a woman talking to me in a nasty pretend-kind way, but I didn’t like her eyes and I wouldn’t speak to her. I remember my mother crying along with me.
I had forgotten all about it. I think little-me made a decision to forget it, and then did.
I remember my mum saying: ‘We’ll always look after you.’ I remember that making me feel better. What if I have a genetic condition? It could be getting worse. Perhaps I won’t be able to live much longer before I start to deteriorate. That would be a reason to bring me to Rio.
I try not to think about that.
There was a nuclear stand-off last time I heard the news on the radio as we drove away from school. Maybe we’re here to hide out from that. There was something about the simian flu, which has been around for a while. Perhaps, without my knowing, I have tested positive for it and they’ve brought me here to stop me being dissected and used for medical research.
Rio is not a place you visit to get away from terrifying viruses.
It all seems unlikely. Everything seems impossible, but the doctors’ appointments feel like the biggest clue. I am probably very ill. I whisper that under my breath.
I am probably very ill.
The driver looks over, but he doesn’t say anything.
If I was ill it might explain why I have Bella. I could have something in my brain, something real. A tumour with a name. I wish I had my phone. I would use it to google things I might have. I would wade through medical papers. Or I could use it for distraction, if Rio wasn’t distraction enough.
I stare out of the cab into a bus, where a woman is holding a tiny dog up to the window. I wave at the dog, and she lifts its paw to make it wave back.
I focus on my toes. They feel well. My legs feel OK. So do my knees. Of course they do: this thing is in my head. I concentrate as hard as I can on each part of my body, inside and out, to try to diagnose anything that might be out of the ordinary, but as far as I can tell it all feels fine. If I was ill, or some kind of medical time bomb, they wouldn’t be letting me out and about in Rio. Or would they? Perhaps they would. I don’t know anything.
The secret illness is, weirdly, the most plausible of the possibilities. I feel sick.
I want my phone. I want my book. Before we left I was reading a sci-fi trilogy about a place called Area X that changed people when they went into it. I am in my own Area X and I want to go back to the fictional one, please.
I want to listen to music.
I want to talk to Jack and Lily.
I want to see that boy.
When we get out of the cab, ticket touts descend, as Pedro said they would, trying to sell us trips up the mountain. I bat them away, striding over to the ticket office because I know Mum would be swayed by anyone telling her the trip would be too dangerous unless she bought a special expensive tour. I ask for the tickets myself, and Dad pays, and we go into the waiting area where a man painted silver stands very still, a hat for coins at his feet.
On the train I sit a little way away from the parents, staring out of the window. I want to hear them speaking because I am consumed by the need to know. I think I’m going to die soon; perhaps this is my last able-bodied trip out into the world. I imagine my brain melting away until I can’t read or speak or think or feed myself. I would kill myself now rather than let that happen.
The train judders into action and I stare out at the rainforest. Live every day as if it were your last, because one day it will be. That was a meme that used to be passed around at school. It felt like an easy thing to say, tri
te but kind of true. It was superficial and easy.
Now it feels terrifying.
After a while I see that Mum and Dad are leaning towards each other, muttering in their fighty way, so I slide over on to the seat behind theirs and they don’t notice.
‘Yes, I know,’ Dad is hissing. ‘But Ellie’s not demonstrative. She never has been. She’s not the hugging type. It’s not you. It’s because she’s –’
He breaks off quickly because Mum stiffens. She has sensed me there and looked round.
‘What?’ I say. ‘It’s because I’m what?’
‘Nothing,’ says Mum. ‘Don’t creep up.’
I’m not the hugging type. That is true. I want to cry but I can’t because I’m not really the crying type either; not when they’re around, anyway. I would like to be the hugging type. I think I would like that very much.
‘We went to the doctor’s a lot when I was little.’ It is hard to get the words out, but I say them carefully, one by one. ‘What was it about?’
Both of them look straight ahead. Neither of them so much as flickers. I feel the panic coming off their backs; at least I think I do. I think I feel them sitting there, utterly frozen because they don’t know what to say. I think I feel them wondering how on earth to handle this.
I wish they’d looked round at me, puzzled, and said something like: What are you talking about? No, you didn’t. But they don’t, and the time ticks by and they still don’t.
I can look back and see that Mum’s been protecting me all my life – the CCTV outside the house, the quadruple locks on the doors, the burglar and fire alarms. I have no idea what I’m being protected from. Or maybe she’s just scared of the outside world and I’ve had to stay inside with her to be safe.
I’m nearly an adult. If I’m ill they have to tell me because that’s what people do. Little children get told when they’ve got leukaemia, and yet somehow I’m not allowed to know what this huge thing is that’s wrong with my life.
I want to ask them to look after me now, but I can’t. It’s easier to be nasty. It is getting easier and easier as my head is filled with a high-pitched ringing. She’s been away from me all day but now she’s stronger than she’s ever been. She is blocking out the rainforest and the train so that all I can see is my parents. Like me, she knows that they have the answer and that there is something about me and that they are choosing not to tell me because they don’t trust me, or because it’s too awful.