Mirror, Mirror

by Cara Delevingne

  ‘We’d been seeing each other for about two weeks.’ She spoke again, voice flat and full of shadow. ‘He kept telling me how into me he was, how serious. How he wanted to show me how much he cared. I thought he meant buy me a present or some shit. Jesus.’

  Across the road a light comes on in a living room, and I watched two little kids chase each other round and round a coffee table. I could see her, sitting behind me, reflected like a ghost in the window, see-through. Like she wasn’t really there, and in that moment she wasn’t. She was somewhere much worse.

  ‘He took me to a party; it was an older boy’s party, back from uni, there was booze and weed. I drank a bit, smoked a bit, it was my first time but I wanted to impress him. And I thought he’d take care of me. We sneaked off to a bedroom and we were kissing and he wanted us to have sex. But I said no, I wasn’t ready. Like they tell you to, don’t be pressured into sex they say, don’t they? Don’t they, Red?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. By then I knew what was coming next, I knew what she was going to tell me, but still I had to let her say the words out loud, because she had chosen me to listen to them.

  ‘I told him I wanted it to be him.’ She was looking at me now, I could feel her eyes on my back, so I tore my eyes off the happy family across the street and turned around. She held my gaze. ‘But not then, that’s what I said. Not in some stranger’s bedroom, on a pile of coats when anyone might walk in. I had this idea about rose petals and candles. We went back to the party, we drank some more, smoked some more and he took a pill, and gave me one. He said, ‘This will bliss you out.’

  Rose hesitated, her eyes dropping for a moment, and I crossed the room to her, I didn’t mean to. I meant to stay where I was, scared of crowding her out, but when I looked at her sitting there, she looked so young, like a little kid. Like the little kids we all still are when nobody’s looking. And I knew she needed someone to hold her hand.

  ‘I trusted him,’ she whispered, her hand clenching mine so tightly that her knuckles stood out, white and stark. ‘After that I don’t remember a lot, flashes sometimes. Faces in mine, lights going off. Pain. Laughter.’

  ‘Oh Rose, I don’t know what to say—’ If she heard me she didn’t acknowledge it, she just kept talking.

  ‘I woke up, and I was cold. And I was sore,’ she said. ‘I was cold because I was naked, and I was sore because . . . because I’d been raped. I don’t know who by, or how many. I don’t know who was there, who watched, or if they took photos. And I didn’t know what to do, so I got up, and I found my clothes and put them on. And I went home. Dad had been out all night; he didn’t even notice that I hadn’t been home. I had a bath. I thought, well, that happened, now I just need to get over it and move on. I thought I could do that. I couldn’t even really remember what happened, after all. I thought it would be OK. I thought it would be like breaking up with someone, or doing something embarrassing or stupid. I really thought that’s what it would be like.’

  ‘Didn’t you tell anyone?’ I asked, and she shook her head. ‘There was no one to tell, that’s what it felt like. It was before the band, before I had you, Leo and Nai, and there just wasn’t anyone I could talk to about it. Not Dad. Not fucking Amanda. Mum was gone. Everything was different, everywhere I looked and I got scared. People looked different, they looked meaner, they sounded louder. Every noise, like shouts in the corridor or a kettle boiling, made me jump. Suddenly I was frightened all the time, waiting for something terrible to happen. And Martin, I saw him at school and he walked right past me, like we’d never even met. I’d see him at break, hanging out with his mates, and sometimes they’d look over at me and I got it in my head they were talking about me, and I realised . . . I realised I didn’t know which of them had . . . ’

  Rose stopped speaking, and her body shook and retched. She bent over, her head between her knees. My hand on her back, I waited until she could breathe again, talk again.

  ‘I didn’t say anything to anyone, I couldn’t bear to. I thought, if I just close it in it will go away. Martin left at the end of that year, and his friends. So every day I’d just put on a bit more armour, you know? Layer after layer, until I felt safe again. That’s what I decided to do, I decided to be this person, the person I am now. But the thing is . . . sometimes I feel so frightened. It’s like everything is fine, good even, like tonight with you and then suddenly out of nowhere comes this feeling of . . . of dread. And I want to scream and run away and hide, but there’s nothing to hide from, no place to hide. Because all the scary shit is inside my head. I just want it to go away. Why won’t it go away, Red?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said, ‘I don’t know.’

  We stayed there, in her room, not talking, hardly moving until the lights that had switched on in the houses across the road were turned off again, and Rose’s dad knocked on her door and said, ‘Time to go home, Red!’

  ‘I can stay,’ I offered at once. ‘Sleep on the floor.’

  ‘No, you go.’ Rose finally let go of my hand. ‘I’m glad it’s you I told, Red. You’re the first real friend I’ve ever had since Mum died.’

  After that night, if I had ever questioned anything that Rose said or did before, I never did again. Because I know now that everything she does and says makes sense to me in a way that maybe doesn’t make sense to anyone else. People think she’s confident, full of herself, an attention seeker who always wants to be in the spotlight, always wants people to look at her and hear her.

  But the truth is Rose wants to be in the light, because she is afraid of the dark.

  She wants people to look at her, because she is afraid to be alone.

  She wants people to like her, because sometimes inside, she really hates herself.

  And that is why I can never ever fall in love with Rose.

  And why that look on her face when she lied to me about that text message today makes me feel so afraid for her. Rose can’t take being hurt again.

  Ashira, Red

  Ashira

  I’m going to find you today

  Red

  OK, why?

  Ashira

  I’ll tell you when I see you

  Red

  Everything all right?

  Ashira

  Will probably be lunchtime. Be somewhere obvious

  Red

  Can’t you take control of a satellite and track me from space?

  Ashira

  Oh, I hadn’t thought of that. Good plan

  Red

  You’re joking aren’t you?

  Red

  Aren’t you?

  16

  Leo is angry. I can see him across the concrete of the playground, leaning against a wall, arms crossed, face compressed like a clenched fist. And he’s alone, which is rare for Leo, normally at break and lunch he’s surrounded by people who just want to hang out with him, because being near him makes you feel kind of relevant. If he’s managed to shake them off then that means they’ve been scared off by something he said or did, like back in the day when Leo was mostly known for being scary as fuck.

  We were supposed to start rehearsing five minutes ago, Naomi’s concert is only a few days away now, but only Leckraj and I turned up, Mr Smith arriving just after us with a box of donuts and a multipack of coke.

  ‘Where is everyone?’ he asked me. ‘I thought I’d just drop these off as a treat, to keep you going. Concert’s nearly here, after all.’

  ‘I don’t know . . .’ I look at Leckraj, who shrugs.

  ‘I’ll go and find them,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell them you’re waiting.’

  ‘No, don’t.’ Mr Smith looked exasperated. ‘I’ve got a lunchtime meeting, I can’t wait, but Red, tell me you’ve got this. I’ve put a lot into getting the concert up and running for you. I let you lot get on with the music side of things because I trust you. You’re not going to let me down now, are you?’

  ‘No, sir. No, course not.’ He put the box of donuts in my hand.

  ‘You’d better not,
’ he said. ‘I’m counting on you.’

  ‘What the fuck is wrong with everyone?’ I said, the moment he left the room.

  ‘Don’t they see every time we don’t stick together, everything slides just a little closer to the edge?’

  ‘I’m here,’ Leckraj says putting his hand up, like he’s in class.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Well, don’t go anywhere, I’m going to see if I can find them.’

  ‘Red!’ he called as I got to the door.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I have a donut?’

  ‘What’s up?’ I ask Leo as I approach. He sees me and his head drops like a little kid that’s been caught out. ‘Leo, we get thirty minutes max at lunchtime to rehearse and that’s mostly all gone now, the concert is almost here, Smith is freaking out and Leckraj isn’t ready! What happened to you?’

  ‘Nothing.’ Leo shrugs, and the way that he spits out that one word reminds me that what seems like a lifetime ago he used to be this big scary kid in my year that I’d never dream of speaking to, let alone as frankly as I just did.

  ‘Don’t tell me that,’ I say. ‘It’s me, Leo. It’s your mate, Red. Tell me what the fuck is going on. Why didn’t you come to the hospital last night?’

  ‘I went, but it was late. I couldn’t get into her ward. So I stood outside for a bit. It was better than going home.’

  ‘Wait, what?’ He’s not angry, he’s sad. Leo is hiding away from his entourage because he is sad. ‘Dude, what happened?’

  ‘Aaron came home last night, earlier than we thought. It was a fucking shower of shit. Mum got upset, he got angry.’ His face is clenched tight shut. ‘It was bad, but like I say, when I got to the hospital, I couldn’t get in. I didn’t want to go home. Fuck.’

  ‘Right.’ I reach for something to say, a way to identify, but can’t find any because this part, where your violent brother gets out of jail, is the part where what I know and understand about life, and what Leo knows and understands about life, part ways. We are both sixteen, we both like the same music, we both like the same films, we can chat bullshit about almost anything all day long, and go quiet when a girl we fancy walks past, but I have never lived what he has lived through with Aaron.

  ‘So . . . ’

  ‘So Mum freaked out, like I knew she would. Got all up in his face, telling him that while he lived under her roof he lived by her rules and shit.’ Leo shakes his head. ‘I tried to tell her, just leave it. Just let him be, but she was all like, he’s not coming back here and dragging you into his bad ways.’

  He bowed his head, rubbing his hands over his face.

  ‘Aaron lost it. Broke up the place. Smashed up her stuff, told her she’d better not talk back to him if she didn’t want to . . . ’

  ‘Fuck,’ I say. It does sort of make band practice sound unimportant.

  ‘Mum was in his face the second he walked in the door,’ Leo added.

  ‘So it’s your mum’s fault, then?’ I say, thinking of Leo’s mum and the way she pretends to be strict but how she can’t stop smiling while she watches him play, and how she’ll make him his favourite tea when she knows he’s feeling down.

  ‘No!’ Leo’s eyes flash. ‘I’m saying, she’s got to see that it’s got to be different now he’s back. She’s got to get her head round that, or it’s going to be shit for all of us.’

  ‘I think she’s just trying to look out for you . . . ’

  ‘I know what she’s doing!’ Leo springs off the wall and begins to walk away. ‘But she shouldn’t, I can take care of myself. Look, I’m sorry, Red, I’m not really into rehearsing today.’

  ‘Leo, wait.’ I grab his arm. As he jerks away a phone springs out of an unzipped pocket, and skitters across the tarmac, but he doesn’t notice as he stalks on back towards school.

  ‘What the fuck?’ I pick it up, a shitty little Nokia. The screen is cracked but it’s still working. I know Leo, I know he loves his iPhone and all his tech, so what’s he doing with this sim-only piece of shit? People only have phones like this if they have smashed up their good phone and can’t afford to replace it, or if they are up to no good.

  A burner phone, that’s what they call them on TV. A phone you can do a dodgy deal with, or have an affair via and no one will be able to tie it to you. The only reason I can think that Leo would have this would be to do with Aaron, but Aaron’s only been out five minutes and this looks knackered. I unlock it, and click through the menus: no texts, no call records. I go to the contacts list, ten numbers, that’s all, but one jumps right out at me because it ends in 887.

  Taking my phone out I click on a number and compare the two. They are the same.

  So why does Leo have Naomi’s number in a burner phone?

  I am the first out of class on purpose, scrambling from behind my desk on the first metallic note of the bell, taking up position by the gate that I know she always leaves by.

  For a minute all is quiet and still.

  Then the building erupts with a crawling swarm of life desperate to be out of there. Kids tumble past, shouting, talking, singing, fighting. A few of them I know, a few of them I don’t and not one of them is Rose.

  Ashira walks past, her head down, earphones in, expression carefully neutral. And then at the last minute she shoots me a look, jerking her head to behind this old garden shed the caretaker keeps his stuff in.

  ‘So what’s this about?’ I ask as she pulls her earbuds out.

  ‘Nothing from Twitter,’ she says. ‘238 retweets, and nada. It’s nothing that anyone has seen.’

  ‘Fuck, so what now?’

  ‘Well you’ve got tattoos, right?’

  ‘How the fuck do you . . .’ Shit, I remember taking a photo of them soon after they were done. Ash has been in my cloud, too.

  ‘After she vanished, I just had to check out whether or not you guys knew anything, for myself.’ She says it as casually if she’s been checking out my Instagram.

  ‘Ash, that’s so fucked up. You get that, don’t you? Just because you can do this shit, doesn’t mean you should. You could hurt people, real people. You could get into real trouble. You understand that, don’t you?’

  Ash just blinks at me and I see that she really doesn’t understand that. Either that or she doesn’t really care.

  ‘I like your tattoos,’ she says, breaking eye contact. ‘They look good on you.’

  ‘I . . . well . . . thanks, I guess.’ This girl, she is constantly wrong-footing me.

  ‘Anyway, Twitter is too random, we need to focus our energy on experts, and then it hit me – we can go to the place you got yours, it’s a start. Maybe they recognise the style, maybe they will have a lead. What do you think?’

  She smiles, and it’s an almost sweet, hopeful smile, and a kind of off-kilter artificial intelligence fixed grin at exactly the same time.

  ‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Sure, whatever you think, you probably already know their address, so—’

  ‘But I need you to come with me,’ Ash says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I don’t like people.’

  ‘No kidding,’ I say.

  ‘I mean you’re OK.’ She shrugs.

  ‘Same.’ I shrug back. ‘Ash . . .’ I hesitate. ‘Have you thought any more about the chance that she might just have run away with a boy?’

  ‘Yes,’ Ash says.

  ‘And?’

  ‘And if she was in love with someone who presumably loved her back so much she wrote songs about him, where is he now? She’s in a fucking coma, where is her Romeo? If it had just been a boy, a nice kind boy who loved her, he’d have brought her home. But he didn’t. Whoever it was kept her away from her family. And now? Where is he now?’

  I think about Naomi’s number in Leo’s burner phone. Could there be any way that he was that secret love? Nothing about that seems possible. But nothing seems impossible any more either. Keeping it tucked in my pocket I say nothing to Ash. I need to ask him about this myself.

  ‘You’re r
ight,’ I say.

  ‘So you’ll come with me to the tattoo place, we can go now?’

  ‘We could, it’s just . . .’ I look over her shoulder, searching the crowds.

  ‘I thought you were with me on this,’ she says, insistent, standing a little bit closer to me than I’m comfortable with. ‘I need you.’

  I find the way she looks at me kind of scary, like she thinks I can solve this for her, but I’m the last person that can. Still I want to try.

  ‘We’ll cut class after break tomorrow, go then, yeah?’

  Ash nods, grudgingly. ‘Are you coming to the hospital today?’

  ‘Later probably, I’ve got this thing . . . ’

  Ash doesn’t bother to hear the end of my sentence, she speeds away, ear buds in before I’ve even finished speaking.

  What I can’t tell her is that I’m standing here like a total prick, waiting for Rose because I haven’t seen her all day. And I miss her.

  Rose is almost past me, disguised in the crowd, when I see her.

  ‘Oi, dork!’ I call out and she stops, her shoulders dropping. Was she trying to sneak past me?

  ‘Oh, hey.’ Rose half waves, her hand at her waist.

  ‘Walking back?’ This is not a question I normally ask her. Normally we just walk back.

  ‘Yeah, I guess.’

  ‘Where were you at lunch? The concert is only a few days away you know, and suddenly half the band’s gone awol. It’s important. It’s for Nai, and Mr Smith has got a lot invested in this. I don’t want to let him down.’

  ‘I know.’ Rose stops for a moment. ‘I know it’s for Nai. It’s not like I don’t care, Red.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Suddenly I feel completely exhausted, utterly tired. ‘I just want it to be good. For all of us.’

  ‘I know, sorry.’ Rose doesn’t look or sound sorry, she looks like she wants to be alone, which is so unlike Rose, it’s scary. ‘But really I know what I’m doing, I don’t need as much rehearsing as you guys. It’s you and Leo that need to bring little wossisname up to speed.’

  ‘Leckraj,’ I say, feeling like at the very least the kid deserves his name.