Mirror, Mirror

by Cara Delevingne

  ‘Hello, love!’ Amanda sees me as she comes down the stairs, shades perched on top of her swishy blonde hair. She dresses like a photo in a lifestyle magazine, coordinated and neat, little bit of make-up, a lot of hairspray. Actually I kind of like her, she seems kind, but I’m not allowed to say that to Rose. Maybe that’s what comes from your mum dying when you were a little girl. For her, there will never be a mum as good as hers. For me, every mum seems like a vast improvement on mine.

  Amanda’s eyes are instantly drawn to my bare feet, and I clench my sweaty toes. ‘How’s Naomi doing?’

  ‘No change, Amanda,’ I say. ‘Thanks for asking, though.’

  I give her a lame little smile, careful not to make small talk. Rose hates it when she tries to be friends with us all, telling us to call her Amanda, but honestly, I’m grateful I don’t have to call her Mrs Carter. It would be too embarrassing, when she is only just over ten years older than me.

  ‘Want anything to eat, Rose?’ Amanda calls out to her stepdaughter.

  Rose doesn’t reply.

  ‘Because I’m going out. Want anything?’

  Rose doesn’t reply again.

  ‘OK! Have fun!’ Amanda never shows that she hates Rose, but somehow you know that she does. It stays in the atmosphere after she leaves a room, along with her expensive perfume.

  The minute the heavy front door shuts, Rose shouts from the garden, ‘Red, get out here!’

  It’s warm outside, even for late September, and Rose has set up her mirror, make-up and chair carefully on the outside table to ensure the best light.

  ‘So,’ I say. ‘Who is the poor sucker you are seeing?’

  ‘What?’ Rose screws her nose up. ‘Shut up, no one.’

  ‘Well, what did you want to see me about so urgently then? I was with Naomi.’

  ‘Not that Naomi knows,’ Rose says.

  ‘Rose, Nai’s your friend!’

  ‘I know that, dickhead. She’s my friend till death, and I’m going later, aren’t I? I just find it really hard to look at her that way. Don’t you? Doesn’t it make you want to scream to see her face all . . .’ She gestures, but she can’t find the right words. ‘Anyway, a new vid on the website before the concert is what we need, right now, so, here you go. Slap some lipliner on me, will you?’

  ‘Rose,’ I look at her holding out a pencil thing towards me. ‘I don’t know how to put lipstick on, for fuck’s sake.’

  ‘You don’t have to, you just have to draw an outline round my lips and then fill it in. You can do that, can’t you? It’s basic colouring.’

  The idea of being that close to her suddenly does my head in. It’s stupid, we spend a lot of time hip to hip, side by side, why this makes me feel squirmy and anxious, I’m not sure. But I also know that she is not going to stop until she’s got what she wants from me, and I don’t have the energy to fight her.

  ‘Fine.’ I pull up a chair, pick up the lip pencil. It’s not one of her usual colours, but instead a moist soft pink, more like the natural colour of her lips. I lean in, our faces close as I trace the outline of her lips, the rise and fall of the cupid’s bow, the glistening fullness of her lower lip, which undulates under the pressure of the pencil tip. And as I draw, my eyes fixed on her mouth, I feel my chest tighten, and this feeling dragging up from my toes, building like bubbles, constantly rising and as they rise all I can think about is what it would be like to kiss her, to feel those lips with my lips and there is such an overwhelming sense of longing that I can’t be near her for one single second more without giving myself away.

  ‘Done!’ I stand up quickly, walking away, the pencil falling from my suddenly thick fingers, so that it clatters on the table and rolls onto the floor.

  ‘What, have I got bad breath or something?’ Rose frowns as I shrug. She picks up her phone, tapping in the code and putting the camera on video mode.

  ‘Are you ready?’ I can’t look at her just yet, I don’t want her to look at me, I need this feeling to fade to something I can handle. ‘Shall we get on with this? I told Gracie she could help me practise before bed.’

  ‘Seriously, dude, what just happened?’ Rose cocks her head at me. ‘Why are you suddenly so salty?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ I lie. ‘I’ve just got other things to do than be your make-up artist.’

  ‘No you haven’t.’ Rose frowns. ‘Red . . .?’

  I know that tone, it usually means the beginning of an awkward conversation.

  ‘Rose, just leave it please,’ I say. ‘Not everything is about you.’

  Which normally would be a lie, because more and more each day everything is about her, but not today. Well, not until just now, anyway.

  ‘I know that. Look, I’m worried about you. We never talk about your stuff, and you’ve clearly got a shit-load of baggage. And you never ever unpack it. Why not?’

  Rose closes her make-up mirror, and walks over to me.

  ‘We talk about me all the time, how misunderstood I am, neglected at home . . . .’ She is smiling, but under that smile is something serious, a promise she trusts me to keep. ‘I know I can say anything to you, Red.’ She picks my hand up and holds it to her cheek and in that moment I would like to combust and disappear in a flash of flame and ash, that would be perfect. Instead I just stand there, a lump of flesh and nerve endings.

  ‘Do you know that you can say anything to me?’

  ‘Course I do . . .’ I draw my hand back from her face and wonder if that’s really true, could I really say anything to her? To the girl that has laughed in the face of pretty much any sincere declaration of love that has come her way? Not that I blame her for mistrusting the world, the world hasn’t exactly given any of us a reason to trust it.

  ‘Isn’t there someone that you like?’ she asks and I sigh, shoving my hands in my pockets, along with her phone. ‘Because if there is, you should go for it, tell her how you feel, whoever she is. You deserve to be happy as well.’

  ‘As well as who?’ I ask her.

  ‘I dunno, all the other happy people. Me, I’m happy, and Leckraj, he’s seems pretty snazzy beans.’ I can’t help but smile.

  ‘Well, that’s because the love of his life is his guitar,’ I say. ‘Rose, when are we going to do your poxy video? Amazing though it may seem to you, I actually do have a life outside of being your flunky.’

  ‘OK, OK! I’m just saying I think you are a great catch, and there are other girls that think so too. I know that Milly Harker in year ten constantly makes cow eyes at you and—’

  ‘Rose, just stop it,’ I say, more sharply than I mean to. ‘Look. I don’t want a girlfriend, OK? I’m not into that yet, I’m into the band and Leo and . . . y . . . you . . .’ I stumble over the last word. ‘You might be able to fool around with some stranger while Naomi is in a coma, but I’m not like that.’

  Rose watches me for a moment, then shrugs and turns back to her table, reorganising her make-up.

  ‘So you are basically saying I’m a heartless self-centred cow,’ she says, and I know I’ve hurt her, which hurts me.

  ‘No, I’m just saying I don’t want that right now, I don’t think about it.’

  ‘Well, you are about the only sixteen-year-old in the world who doesn’t,’ she says. ‘Come on then, let’s get on with the video. I’m ready for my close-up.’

  Before I can press play, Rose’s phone buzzes into life in my hands. A message from a number she hasn’t saved. I read the preview before I know it.

  Can’t stop thinking about what we did today, when can we do it again?

  ‘Hey!’ Rose snatches the phone off me.

  ‘Who is it, Rose?’ I ask her. ‘Who are you seeing? Is it Maz?’

  ‘Jesus, Red, calm down! I hung out for a bit with this guy from St Pauls, we were just messing around, you know, nothing serious. Obviously he has fallen in love with me.’

  The hesitation in her reply was tiny, but all the same it was there. Rose was lying to me, about a boy? Why would she do that? Why would sh
e lie to the person she has told everything to? There’s a tiny smile as she replies to the message, her cheeks flushed. She likes this one.

  Anger flares in my chest and I go and put on my socks and trainers, cursing the laces.

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘I’m going, I told you, I’ve got to back for Gracie.’

  ‘Red, please!’ She stares at me. ‘It will take three minutes, please. I’m sorry, OK? I don’t know why you are so bothered. He’s just someone I met at that drama camp thing Dad made me go to. Obviously he’s crazy about me, obviously I’ve already gone off him. Please don’t go feeling angry with me! I can’t help it that I’m a sexual siren.’

  She’s joking, but I don’t laugh. If it was some guy from drama camp, I wouldn’t care. If it was ‘some guy’ she’d be reading out his texts and showing us his Snapchat feed so we could all have a laugh.

  ‘I’m not angry,’ I say. ‘I’m worried.’

  ‘Worried?’ she splutters. ‘Fuck, Red. You aren’t my dad. Now can we please do this video?’

  ‘Fine,’ I say, picking her phone up again. ‘You’ve got five minutes, make it good.’

  I watch as Rose focuses her gaze on the lens in the back of the phone, talking to it like she was having a gossip with her best girly mate, except, of course, she doesn’t have one of those. I watch her laugh, her eyes sparkle, her lips part as she talks her way through her ironic makeup tutorial, and she’s funny and clever and looks destined for greatness. I think about how she walked into school this morning, like she owned it. How she took every step like she was conquering the world. And I thought, even as she looked for all the world like not a single person or thing could ever hurt her, how she was the most terrified and lonely person that I knew.

  And that if I ever let anything hurt her, knowing what I know, then I couldn’t live with myself.

  23 June

  Rose

  Sometimes I can’t get it out of my head, you know what I mean?

  Red

  What’s up? It’s late, you OK?

  Rose

  The flashes, they come when I don’t expect them. Out of nowhere, and I think I’m having a nightmare, but I’m not. Because it happened

  Red

  Everything is all right. I’m here. Want a video of some kittens?

  Click here to view

  Rose

  You get me

  Red

  Someone has to. Want me to come over?

  Rose

  No, it will pass in a minute. Just be there OK? Don’t go to sleep or log off, send me more videos

  Red

  Dog stuck in a sofa

  Click here to view

  Red

  Sea otters holding hands

  Click here to view

  Red

  More

  Rose

  More. I love you

  Red

  I know

  15

  I get home and Gracie is sitting in the front room watching The One Show.

  ‘Red!’ she leaps up and into my arms, she smells of ketchup and school. ‘Drums?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ I say, securing the weight of her in my arms by hefting her onto my hip. ‘Where’s Mum?’

  ‘In the bath,’ Gracie says as I carry her upstairs. ‘Daddy came home! He bought pizza!’

  ‘Yeah?’ I grin in response to hers. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘Don’t know. Think he went out again.’ She doesn’t seem to mind this, as long as he dropped off pizza. It’s funny that, how little kids will love their parents no matter how shit they are, because they don’t know any different. And then one day, one day that all changes. And that makes me sad. I don’t want the day to come when Gracie isn’t thrilled by twenty minutes with her dad and a pizza.

  ‘Well, you go into my room and get ready, OK?’

  I pause outside the bathroom door.

  ‘Gracie’s just going to play drums and then I’ll put her to bed,’ I call through the door.

  There’s no reply, but I can hear the movement of water and the tap running and then turning off. So I shrug and join Gracie. There is only one way I can practice at home which is for me to plug my headphones into the stereo and put mute pads on my kit. I sit Gracie on the stool and wire her up, sorting out some dirty hard rock, which is her favourite. I press play and off she goes, bashing the crap out of my kit. I watch her for a while, her eyes closed, this big stupid grin on her face. Really I need to spend more time with her, I need to make sure that she’s doing OK; I mean she seems like she’s doing fine, but how would she know if she wasn’t? How would I?

  She bashes and crashes and that moment with Rose comes back at me with a sudden thrill of want, and I feel guilty. Knowing everything she has been through. Everything she has kept secret and how much my friendship matters to her and yet I still want her. So badly that sometimes it hurts, deep in my chest.

  ‘Where’s Gracie?’ Mum shouts from right outside my door.

  ‘Here,’ I say. ‘I said I’d put her to bed.’

  ‘Come on.’ Mum whips the headphones off Gracie and drags her complaining to her bedroom.

  ‘I wanna play with Red,’ Gracie moans.

  ‘I said I’d put her to bed!’ I say again, but Mum doesn’t answer me. Sometimes it’s like I am actually invisible to her, or at least it would be if she didn’t make such a concerted effort not to look at me at all. Instead I get the worst of both worlds, Mum both ignoring me and focusing her fury onto me with a red-hot laser beam at exactly the same time.

  ‘Fine,’ I say, closing the door hard enough to annoy her.

  I sit on my bed and check my phone.

  No one is online.

  I feel restless and useless, stupid and stuck inside my own skin. Sort of like this painting I saw once on an school trip to a gallery, of a thin pale young man with bright red hair, sprawled on his bed, maybe even dead, and I feel vaguely like that. Like I’m a poet or an artist, destined to always be doomed in love. The feelings I had earlier around Rose, they knocked me off balance. Scared and excited me. But there are two very important reasons why I need to get over it.

  I am just not Rose’s type and there is no getting around that.

  And even if I was, I know her. I know her in a way that no one else does, in a way that matters more than anything else. Which seems crazy, but it’s true because, you see, I know the truth about Rose.

  Apart from her, and the ones that did it, I am the only one that knows that when she was fourteen years old something terrible happened to her. Something that changed her forever.

  Eight months ago . . .

  She was still, suddenly. Like the light had gone out in her eyes, and she switched off, lost in some other moment from the one we were in. We’d been laughing, talking and watching stupid movies in her bedroom. Our friendship was fairly new, we were still circling each other, trying to figure the other one out, suss out what we meant to each other.

  I can’t even remember the movie we were watching, some crappy generic high school movie where the nerdy girl gets a makeover just in time for her first kiss.

  ‘What’s up?’ I asked, and when she didn’t reply I touched her wrist with the tip of my fingers. ‘Earth to Rose?’

  Rose blinked and shook her head, and I sat back on my heels as I noticed the tear that rolled down her cheek.

  ‘Shit, what?’ I was caught between wanting to reach out to her, hug her, and wanting to head for the door. But I promised myself that I’d never be the sort of person who looks away when someone is in pain, I’d never pretend that everything is fine when it isn’t. So I made myself stay. ‘Rose you can talk to me, you can say anything to me.’

  She seemed to look at me for a very long time, so long I wanted to look away, but I didn’t. I waited.

  ‘If I tell you something, something I’ve never told anyone, will you swear, swear to keep it a secret?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said at once, and I meant it. Pledging my loyalty to her was that eas
y, whatever she would say next, it didn’t matter as much to me as letting her know that I was her friend.

  ‘That girl, with her prom dress and shiny eyes, and first kiss . . .’ She nods at the TV where the actress is freeze-framed in a moment of dreamy-eyed romance. ‘That’s not real, you know. You grow up surrounded by princesses, and pink things, and happy endings and romance, but that’s not real. The world is brutal, and cold. That’s what they should be teaching little girls, not this shit.’

  ‘Yeah, I know.’ Unease crept up my spine. This wasn’t about a fight with her dad, something else was coming, I knew it.

  ‘When I was fourteen, I went out with Martin Heaver. I liked him, because he was one of those boys that everyone knew. Showy, popular. Walked with a swagger and girls seemed to fancy him, even though he was clearly a class A fuckwit.’ When she spoke she kept her eyes focused on the TV screen, that girl, lips parted ready for that perfect kiss.

  ‘We went on a few dates, and it was nice. Cinema, romantic walks, he took me out for pizza. He was sweet and funny and I felt . . . totally happy, actually. The happiest I have ever been in my life, I think, which makes it sort of worse. I thought we were in love, everything seemed special. Shiny and golden, like it was covered in glitter. He was the first boy I kissed. It was perfect, at least that’s what I thought. What a fuckwit. Now I can’t think about it without wanting to be sick.’

  ‘Rose . . .’ I moved forward on my knees, sitting between her and the screen, making her look at me. ‘Tell me.’

  Her eyes met mine for a moment, and then she looked away again. That’s when I realised she didn’t want me to look at her, in that moment she didn’t even want me to see her. So I switched off the TV and went over to the window, looking out at the street below, quiet and still.