Mirror, Mirror

by Cara Delevingne

  Ash stares at the circle.

  ‘Fuck me,’ she says.

  ‘Look, you’re the tech-head, I’m just saying . . .’ I feel stupid for saying anything.

  ‘No, I mean in some types of malware there’s a kill switch, right? A fucking stupid long random website address and if it’s live, it turns off the virus. But a fucking stupid long random website address would be a great way to hide something really dark. Something you could only know was there if you had exactly the right combinations of letters and numbers that make up the address. But even the longest and stupidest website addresses have to finish with dot something. Red, I think maybe you’ve figured it out!’

  ‘Really?’ I stare at her.

  ‘I could kiss you!’ she says, and this time her smile is full, bright and brilliant and for one crazy second I want to say, yeah, OK then. But then I remember how it worked out the last time I kissed a girl, and she realises what she’s said, and her smile freezes into a grimace. It’s all kinds of awkward.

  ‘I mean maybe not,’ Ash looks hard at her screen and I stand up. ‘But maybe, and there are still a fuck of a lot of combinations to go through, but . . . it’s a start. You are not as stupid as the selfies you take on your phone and never post on the internet make you look.’

  ‘Great,’ I say, glad we are back to normal.

  ‘Red!’ Jackie and Max emerge from Nai’s room. ‘Did Ash tell you they are going to try and wake her? On Monday! The same day as the concert. Won’t it be wonderful if she wakes up and we can tell her all about it?’

  ‘It really will,’ I say. ‘Do you mind if I go and sit with her?’

  ‘No, please do.’ Max smiles at me. ‘You’re a good friend to her, Red. The best.’

  I go and sit down next to Nai, and talk for a long time about the good times. The times when everything seemed right.

  The night before Naomi ran away . . .

  All we wanted to do was dance.

  It was the end of the school year, it was hot and we were free. Nothing to do, nowhere to go, nowhere to be, no one to be except ourselves and it felt so good that we wanted to go out and get fucked up and dance.

  Even Nai, who wasn’t ever really that into going out; she didn’t like crowds and people looking at her, was up for it. She wore a yellow sundress and strappy sandals, and Rose put some daisies in her hair. We set off, taking a couple of pills each as we walked along the river, up past the Houses of Parliament and across Trafalgar Square, heading towards Soho. We could have got a bus, it would have taken half the time, but why be stuck in the heat with a load of strangers when we could be free, the breeze coming off the river, the blue sky arcing overhead, and the smell of the city summer in the melting asphalt and exhaust fumes. We walked and talked and laughed, and with every step the world around us got a little bit brighter and shinier, covered in gold. The feeling of joy in my chest rose and expanded until it seemed to reach my fingertips and toes; a rainbow-filled bubble of happiness.

  Don’t ask me how we got away with what we did, and where we went, because I don’t know, but we did. In and out of the bar and pubs we went, buying drink after drink, Rose flashing her dad’s credit card, picking up the tab. Fearless and ageless, we took it in turns to play chicken with the bar staff, to ferry out vodka and bottles of beer for those three and Red Bull for me. I didn’t drink, but I felt drunk, laughing louder, flinging my arms around my friends and telling them how much I loved them. We did that a lot that night, declarations of love fell from our lips with every other sentence.

  Down Wardour Street there are some basement steps that lead to an underground bar. It used to be an illegal drinking den, but Soho is almost all for tourists now, hardly anything really dirty left. Another round of pills and we headed down there, following the sound of grime that was blaring out onto the street. The bar was full, shoulder to shoulder with every kind of human you could imagine, black, brown and white, gay and straight, and no one cared about anyone else, we only cared about the music, letting ourselves fall in between the beats, moving to the heavy bass. Skin rubbed against skin, hips, arses, my body, his body, hers, all one great moving sweaty happy mass. It got dark while we were dancing and it took Rose to get bored first and drag us back out onto the street to make us leave. I think I would have stayed there until dawn if I could have, I liked being lost in all of those bodies.

  We weaved in and out of the crowds, down to Soho Square where the tramps stunk of beer and piss, and men kissed men on the benches, and we sprawled out on the grass, Leo producing the joint he had in his back pocket, a little dented, but still good. I don’t know if this happened, or if it’s just how I remember it, but I felt like when I lay back on the grass, the moon was really close, almost within touching distance, that I could push myself off the surface of the earth and land there with barely any effort at all if I wanted to.

  ‘It’s so weird that the end of the school year comes in July,’ Nai said. ‘This doesn’t feel like an ending, it feels like a beginning.’

  ‘Good, because I don’t want us to ever end,’ Rose had said. ‘We are the best things in this world.’

  ‘Me neither,’ I added. ‘Us four, forever.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Leo agreed. ‘They’ll write about this time in our lives in NME, the time we were getting around to being fucking famous. We’re never going to be over, not ever. Not us.’

  The fact that Naomi didn’t say anything, the fact that she just lay in the grass in her yellow dress, looking up at the moon, and smiling from ear to ear, didn’t seem to mean anything at all. That was just Nai, being Nai.

  But the next day she was gone, and everything started to fall apart.

  And it’s only when I look back at it now I realise, that was her, saying goodbye.

  28

  I’m almost home, head lost in music and memories, before I realise I didn’t go and pick Gracie up. School finished more than forty minutes ago for her. Fuck. I take my phone out of my pocket as I turn around and start to run back.

  I ring Mum but no one answers, so I try and run while Googling the school and calling the number. It goes to voicemail.

  ‘Hello?’ I shout and run and pant into the answerphone. ‘Hi, I’m supposed to be picking up Gracie Saunders but I’m running late so—’

  My phone beeps to tell me there is a call waiting, and I stop.

  ‘Where are you?’ Mum says, as soon as I answer it.

  ‘I had a bad day at school,’ I say, wishing so hard that I could turn to my mum and ask her for a hug. ‘I went to see Naomi after and . . . I’m sorry, I forgot.’

  ‘School phoned,’ Mum says, her voice like ice. ‘Gracie was crying her eyes out. Luckily Mrs Peterson from up the road dropped her back, but she hasn’t stopped crying since. You better get back here now and try to explain to her why you forgot about her.’

  She hangs up the phone.

  Fuck.

  Mum opens the door as I come up the path.

  ‘I thought you at least cared about Gracie,’ she says.

  ‘I do care about her, I am the only one that does,’ I say. ‘I just had a really, really shit day. Where is she?’

  ‘A really shit day isn’t a good enough reason to leave your seven-year-old sister standing on her own in the playground.’

  ‘Unlike vodka,’ I snap back, and she grabs hold of my arm tight enough to hurt. ‘I’m getting just about sick of you, Amy. You forget that you are a child and I am an adult.’

  ‘Who was too hungover to pick up her own kid?’ I say, breaking free of her and running upstairs.

  ‘Get back here!’ Mum shouts after me.

  Gracie is lying on the floor with her dolls, white-socked feet waving in the air.

  ‘I’m sorry, kiddo,’ I say.

  She turns to look at me and smiles.

  ‘I cried,’ she says. ‘Snot tears and everything. I got a biscuit.’

  ‘I’m a terrible sibling.’ I sit on the floor next to her.

  ‘You aren’t, I got a r
ide home with my teacher in her car, and no one else gets that. What’s a sibling?’

  ‘A brother or a sister.’

  ‘Oh well, then, you are the sibling!’ Gracie hugs me hard.

  ‘So you don’t hate me like everyone else?’ I ask her, and there are tears in my voice. I’m tired of being strong, and now it feels almost too much to not just cry.

  ‘No,’ Gracie says. ‘Who hates you?’

  ‘Not you,’ I say, ‘and that’s all that matters.’

  I hear the doorbell ring downstairs, as Gracie climbs into my arms.

  ‘Want to play tea party?’

  ‘No,’ I reply.

  ‘Too bad, you owe me,’ she says cheerfully. ‘I’m the queen and you’re the princess.’

  I haven’t even started my cup of imaginary tea when Mum starts shouting from downstairs, each word getting louder as she thunders up to Gracie’s room.

  ‘How could you? HOW COULD YOU?’

  She just stands there in the doorway, thrusting a piece of paper towards me.

  ‘How could you?’ she says again. ‘I know you have no shame, but do you really not care about anyone else in this family?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ I look at the paper; it looks familiar but I can’t think why.

  ‘My God, Amy, It’s one thing to look like that . . .’ She gestures at me. ‘But you force yourself on your friends? You are disgusting.’

  Carefully I remove my tiara, and get up.

  ‘Be back in a bit, your majesty,’ I say, curtseying to Gracie who watches us with big round eyes going onto the landing. I pull the door closed behind me.

  ‘What is that?’ I say, keeping my voice low.

  ‘It’s bad enough, that you . . . you can’t be normal.’ She hisses at me. ‘But this? Her father is a lawyer; you know that, don’t you?’

  She balls the paper in her clenched fist and throws it at me. It lands at my feet. Slowly I pick it up.

  Your daughter tried to rape Rose Carter.

  ‘Are you on drugs?’ she asks.

  ‘Mum, it’s not like that,’ I say, trying to keep my voice steady, even though I can feel the tremble building in every muscle. ‘This is a lie.’

  ‘So you didn’t do that to Rose, then?’ She grabs my wrist; it hurts when she drags me into her bedroom, the scent of stale breath and unwashed clothes hitting the back of my throat. Carefully I keep my face still, expressionless.

  ‘No, of course I didn’t. I’m your daughter, don’t you know me at all?’

  ‘This has got to stop, Amy. This stupidity, this phase. You are not a boy. You are not a . . . a lesbian or whatever it is you think you are. This is attention seeking, it’s desperate. It’s pathetic!’

  She spits the word out like it tastes of poison, just the act of her saying it that way hurts me more deeply than I thought possible. I tug my arm free of her grip and go to the window, pushing it open and sucking in the evening air.

  ‘Don’t call me Amy. I’m not her. I did kiss Rose,’ I say without looking at her. ‘But she didn’t want me to, so nothing happened and I left. I tried to kiss her because I’ve fallen for her, and it hurts and I’m upset and lost because she doesn’t want me. And hurt and upset and lost because for some reason she wants to punish me for caring about her. And I’m hurt and upset and lost because if it had been a boy that had treated me that way, a boy I had tried to kiss, I could have talked to you about it, and you would have been kind to me. But instead you think I am repulsive, just for being me. And that’s all I want to do, Mum, is to be comfortable in my own skin, and to love the people it feels right to love. I don’t want to hurt or disgust anyone. I just want to be me.’

  ‘No.’ Mum shakes her head. ‘This isn’t you. It’s filthy, you are filthy. Perverted! What’s wrong with you?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ I can’t keep the anger and sadness inside any more, and the words explode out of me. ‘Who can really hate their own child so much for just existing?’

  ‘You aren’t my child,’ Mum says bitterly. ‘Not any more. I don’t recognise you.’

  ‘Stop it.’ Gracie pushes the door open, her face crumpling. ‘Stop talking to her like that.’ For a moment I’m not sure who she is talking to, but it’s me she runs to, putting her arms around my waist.

  ‘Go downstairs, darling.’ Mum tries to smile at Gracie, it looks like a death mask. ‘Go and watch TV.’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I’m not leaving Red. Why do you hate her? I love her. And I hate you!’

  ‘Get your hands off of her!’ my mum screams, dragging Gracie off me, toppling her onto the floor. Gracie screams and cries, but as I go to her, Mum blocks my path.

  ‘What the hell are you doing?’ My face is in her face, fury fuelling every breath. I’m skinny and short but I am just as tall as her and twice as fit. ‘What’s wrong with you? The things you say to me; the way you treat Gracie? When did you stop giving a damn about anything except yourself and where the next drink is coming from? Do you know what the neighbours gossip about? It’s not me, your dyke daughter. It’s you.’

  The blow comes from nowhere, and it’s not a slap. It’s a clenched ball of knuckle and bone that strikes, detonating pain across my face. A crack sounds as my head snaps back and the room blurs. I will my feet to stay planted on the floor, my knees not to buckle, and I weld my balled fists to my legs, determined not to touch the place where she’s hit me, licking the blood from my lips.

  ‘Red!’ Gracie shrieks, and Mum steps out of the way as I crouch down to my sister and pick her up.

  ‘It’s fine,’ I say. ‘I’m fine, are you OK?’

  Gracie hides her hot snotty cheeks in my neck and I carry her away from my mother, keeping my eyes fixed ahead as I take her into her room and shut the door. I call Dad.

  ‘Red?’ He answers straight away and I’m so grateful that I almost cry.

  ‘Dad, we need you to come home now. Right now.’

  ‘The thing is, love, I’ve got a few more . . . ’

  ‘Dad, it’s Mum, she’s lost it. Gracie is scared of her and . . . it’s bad. We need you to come back now. We are your kids and we need you.’ I pause. ‘Gracie needs you.’

  ‘OK.’ When he says that, when he doesn’t argue or try and delay, the tears come, rapid and hot. I wipe them away as quickly as I can.

  ‘How long till you get here?’ I ask.

  ‘Depends on traffic so . . . ’

  ‘Make it quick,’ I say, hanging up.

  I sit with Gracie, behind her shut door, and pour imaginary tea, and serve imaginary cake, and admire her tiara, and sparkly plastic shoes, until I hear a car pull up outside, and the front door open and shut. I hear Mum’s voice and then Dad’s, and eventually he opens Gracie’s door, and she runs into his arms.

  ‘It’s all right, darling,’ he says, ‘I’m home now.’

  Getting up, I try to walk past him, but he stops me, tilting my face to show the bruise that’s forming there.

  ‘She did that . . .?’

  I nod.

  ‘Red—’ He tries to hug me too, but I rip myself away from him, unable to take comfort from the man that let it get this bad. Knowing that Gracie is safe is enough. ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘Out,’ I say, turning to look at him. ‘Just out.’

  And I don’t know if it’s the way my face is swelling and bruising or the look in my eye, but he just nods and steps aside.

  Downstairs Mum is crying on the sofa, her face buried in a cushion. When I look at her, I hate her, I mean I really hate her. For the first time in my life, I hate her so much my blood burns. I wish I could get in there and rip the hair from her head. I need to get out of here before I do just that.

  Sticking out of the top of her bag, which she’s left on the coat hook by the door, is the familiar cap of a half-bottle of vodka, this evening’s entertainment. Without thinking, I grab it and leave, slamming the door behind me as hard as I can.

  The park is empty, thank God, and
I scoot under the slide, only touching my fingers to my swollen lip once I’m out of sight. It hurts to wince, the pain shooting into my teeth and up around my eye.

  My whole body hurts, like every bit of me is bruised, inside and out. And I just want this feeling to stop.

  Twisting the lid off the bottle I lift it to my lips and drink.

  It tastes vile, like watery medicine, and it stings my lip where it’s cut, and the inside of my mouth around my gums. I swallow against my will and my stomach buckles and bubbles. Still I drink again, and again. And again. One steady gulp after another. Outside my little metal shelter, with kids’ names and outsized dicks scratched into the paint, it starts to rain, diagonal streaks of water turning the dry ground around the slide darker, and still I take another gulp and another. Gradually my tongue gets used to the taste, and the pain in my face fades. More, and a little more, and the pain in my chest and gut falls away, almost out of sight now, like nothing living or dead in the universe has a single thing to do with me.

  Warmth spreads through my body from my belly outward, and then all over, and even though my cheeks and fingertips are like ice, I don’t feel cold. When the world tilts, I slide over onto the hard concrete with it. I hear myself laughing, and even that seems a long way off, like I am outside looking in, looking in at a girl with a half-shaved head, and a smashed-up face lying on the ground and laughing hard. As I rest my head in the dirt and fag ends, I see myself do it. As I tip the last of the bottle into my mouth, spilling it down the side of my face where it runs into the cut on my cheek and lip, I see myself lying there, like I’m somehow not in my body any more. I see the tears, as clear as the vodka, running down towards my ears. I see myself cry and cry, my body shake, my chest contract tight as a balled fist, and from very far away I hear the sobs, ripping out of me one after another, but I don’t feel them, and that’s good, that’s very good. I look up at where the top of the slide makes a kind of a roof, strung out with dirty spiders’ webs and globules of chewed gum, and something else. Something strange that shouldn’t be there but I can’t quite figure out why, and it begins to twist left and right until I’m not sure if I’m standing up or lying down. I don’t care, I’m not afraid. All I want to do now is close my eyes, and let the world rock and shift behind my lids, until I don’t even notice that any more.