Outside

by Sarah Ann Juckes

  Willow smiles at me, turning off the tap and stopping the waterfall. The white still stays though, in big bubbles that are steaming up and making the air all warm and wet.

  ‘I’ll be just outside – I have some free periods this morning. Enjoy your bath.’

  Bath.

  He hangs my blanket off the thing I know to be a toilet and leaves the door open a crack behind him.

  I don’t waste no time taking my clothes off and getting in that water – although I need to do it awful slow, as it burns my feet at first, making it feel like I’m on fire. When I’m finally sitting in it, though, I feel like I’m back in the Outside Inside my Head, with all the green, and white water. I can almost smell me those trees and hear that wind running right through them.

  It feels like nothing I’ve ever felt before, hot water. It’s like sitting in a cup of tea all to myself. I take a strange-smelling thing that I think to be ‘soap’ – like the one in The Alphabet Book – off the side of the bath and I rub it all over me. It makes these bubbles that take my smell right off me and make me feel about as clean as I ever felt.

  I splat my hands in the bubbles.

  Are you forgetting us, Ele?

  All the clouds of heat in the air make the whole bathroom slip to the right, and I put my hands out to steady myself, blinking.

  ‘Jack?’ I say, my voice all echoey. I look about me, but don’t see nothing. ‘Is that you?’

  Nothing.

  I swear I heard him, though. Like he was in this room with me someplace.

  I frown and blink some more. It’s awful hot. I got black spots in my eyes now, and all the air is being sucked out from the heat.

  I shake my head. ‘I ain’t supposed to be thinking of you now.’

  The bathroom slips again, and all of a sudden they’re all I can see. Eyes in the dark, looking at me. Waiting for me to come back in through the door.

  My breath is coming out in strange little gasps. I reach out blindly and pull myself out of the water and find the air over near the sink. The Outside starts coming back in patches. I wipe my hand over the magic mirror, and watch myself coming out between the lines of my fingers. The blue in my eyes has almost all been sucked down the big black drain in the middle of them.

  ‘I can’t go back,’ I whisper to myself. ‘I’m Outside.’

  But the girl in that mirror don’t look Outside. She’s still got Jack’s wall knuckles on her hands, His bruises on her arms. She can still feel Bee’s fingers brushing through her hair.

  It’s all giving her away.

  How to be an Outside Person – number three: Look like them.

  I rummage around in the bathroom for something sharp and find it on two little spikes joined in the middle, with holes just the perfect size for my fingers at each end. I hold them up to my head and I watch myself get lighter in the mirror as I hack off all the bits of Inside me.

  Jack’s knocks.

  The Others’ games.

  Zeb’s wide, sad eyes.

  Gone.

  I stand in a big pile of yellow, and I see my face all clear and bright white. My eyes are already showing those trees inside of them.

  Thirty-Four

  Willow must hear me coming out of the bathroom, as he comes running up the stairs two at a time soon as I do.

  ‘How was – whoa!’

  His eyes brush over my hair – or what’s left of it, anyway – wide as I ever saw them.

  And I wanna roll my eyes and make it into no big deal, but I can feel myself heating up under his looking. I stare at my feet.

  ‘What shampoo did you use?’

  He’s laughing nervously, but me not knowing what ‘shampoo’ is, I keep quiet, wishing he weren’t blocking my way to hiding back in bed.

  He looks over my shoulder. ‘Did you cut it all with the nail scissors?’

  He gets closer and I move my head away, shrugging.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, moving his face into my line of sight and getting so close I can smell the Outside on his breath. ‘It looks nice. Really.’

  He smiles, and – goddammit – I do, too.

  ‘It needs tidying up a bit, though. Those scissors weren’t really made for Rapunzel.’

  And I laugh that time, ’cause I know exactly what he means.

  ‘Stay there.’ He runs back down the stairs and I dive back into the bathroom, looking myself over in the mirror before he sees. He’s right – it’s pretty untidy, as it goes. Especially when you look at the neat little line of his hair.

  But it’s gone. Ain’t no ladder for no Witch to be climbing up into my head no more.

  He comes in, catching me smiling at myself, but he don’t say nothing. If anything, that boy looks mighty scared. He’s holding these big blades, as big as my own hand.

  I raise my eyebrow.

  ‘I’m not going to stab you, Ele. I just don’t know how to cut hair.’

  This time I do roll my eyes. ‘Me neither, and I managed just fine.’

  He laughs. ‘Face the mirror.’

  I look back at myself and he comes to stand right behind me, clear as day over my head, on account of him being so tall. He makes my skin look whiter than white, but it’s kind of nice to see my face alongside his.

  We’re different in all kinds of ways. But we’re the same now, too.

  He lets out a big breath of air and meets my eyes in the mirror.

  ‘So … how would you like it?’

  ‘Like yours.’

  He starts laughing again and don’t even stop when I give him a look.

  ‘I’m not sure my hair would suit you, Ele. Let’s go with something a bit more feminine.’

  I shrug. His hands feel cold on my skin, which is still hot from the bath. He’s only meant to be tidying up all the jagged bits, but he’s being mighty slow about it, trimming only tiny bits at a time. Halfway through, my legs get awful tired, so he brings in a chair for me to sit on, though I’m not so good at that without fidgeting. We end up on the floor – me sitting in the way my legs know how, and him crawling around any what way to see me from all the angles he can.

  ‘There. Oh no – wait.’ He trims a bit more above my right ear and I hear the snip like a whisper. ‘OK. There.’

  He stands up. Then, thinking about it, he helps me up too, looking worried.

  I turn to the mirror and, well, would you look at that? He’s done a mighty fine job. I lean in for a closer look and see that the lines round my neck and ears are all straight-cut like his now, though I’ve still got my mess of hair on the top, with a few bits floating down near my eyes. You might even say I look nice.

  But, most importantly, you might say I look like I’m an Outside Person.

  ‘You want to keep any of this?’ Willow says, holding up bits of yellow hair as long as his arm.

  I keep my eyes on my eyes. ‘No,’ I say. ‘That ain’t mine no more.’

  Thirty-Five

  I couldn’t be more like an Outside Person.

  I have dinner with Willow and Ezra-Dad, sitting at their table in the kitchen and eating food that’s as hot as a bath. It makes me think of eating something real and still beating, and, I got to say, I don’t like it much.

  I eat it anyway, trying not to spit it all back out again, as Willow told me it’s ‘rude’ when I did that the first time, meaning that it hurts their feelings somehow. It’s not like I’m spitting it all over them, but I decide to keep quiet on the matter.

  How to be an Outside Person – number fifteen: Don’t spit no food out.

  One nice thing about eating all together, though, is that Willow gets to put on some music that comes out of a little black box on the table to the side of the kitchen door. I spent a good amount of time looking for the people making the sounds, but Willow says it’s just a ‘recording’.

  Here’s what else I’ve learnt about eating at the table: it happens three times a day. And it turns out that you got to eat different stuff according to where the sun is in the sky. In the morning, W
illow heats us up some porridge, which I remember well from ‘Goldilocks and the Three Bears’. If Ezra-Dad was ever anything, it was a big orange Bear. And I guess that makes me a baby Bear, ’cause I like everything just right – not full of the stuff Willow calls ‘sugar’, which makes my throat tickle.

  In the afternoon, we eat something that’s kind of like thick water, which Willow calls ‘soup’. It tastes all right, even if it is the strangest colour you ever did see in a food.

  Dinner is my favourite, though, ’cause of the music.

  How to be an Outside Person – number sixteen: Eat at the table.

  ‘Did you enjoy that, Ele?’ Willow says with his eyebrow raised when I’m licking the plate clean.

  I shrug. ‘It’s all right.’

  Ezra-Dad starts laughing under that ‘beard’ of his. He does it with his mouth closed, like he shouldn’t be making no sounds.

  I smile.

  Willow looks from me to Ezra-Dad, clearing his throat. ‘I found my book under your pillow, Ele. You can have it, you know. If you want it.’

  I drop my fork, turning in my seat to look him over for lies. ‘You mean I can keep it? All for myself?’

  ‘If yer looking for books,’ Ezra-Dad says, ‘ah got one ye can have, if ye want it.’

  I spin back to him. ‘Yes!’

  Willow frowns at him. ‘Since when do you read?’

  Ezra-Dad shrugs. ‘Since when dae ye?’

  Willow’s cheeks go as red as Ezra-Dad’s hair. ‘Come on, Ele. I’ve got something to show you, anyway.’

  I follow him out of the kitchen, beaming at Ezra-Dad, who gives me what he’d call a ‘wee smile’.

  Willow pushes me through the door to the living room and on to one of those big chairs that look as comfy as beds. They bounce me up and down when I land in them. The white is made of something slippery, though, and I have to sit myself up properly to stop from sliding right on to the floor.

  Willow sits down next to me and throws the Mozart book on to my lap.

  Mine?

  I daren’t touch it. I ain’t never had nothing that was all mine, not really. Course, I liked to think my space in the Tower was mine, and Jack was mine, and the Outside Inside my Head was mine. But I ain’t had nothing I could touch that was just mine before.

  I stop my thoughts, shaking my head.

  How to be an Outside Person – number seventeen: Have things that are only yours.

  I stroke the corners of the book. ‘Thank you.’

  Willow smiles. ‘I wanted to show you … We’ve got another book somewhere. It’s, well, it’s kind of special. You want to see it?’

  I’m feeling dizzy with all the nodding I’m doing.

  Willow jumps up and over to a white ladder on the wall with all kinds of junk piled up in its holes.

  ‘I know it’s here somewhere,’ he mutters, moving a pile of loose pages and looking underneath.

  I stare down at the book. My book. All about music and places. About the adventures Willow used to have with Angus. It’s like this book is a little piece of Willow – all mine.

  I hold it tight.

  ‘Here it is!’ Willow calls, pulling something small from under a box of circles. He blows on the top, smiling at the cover before bringing it over to me.

  ‘This was my mum’s favourite. I think it’s pretty old, so be careful.’

  I hold it very carefully, my hands shaking. I can smell that it’s old – something kind of like the cupboard under the stairs with all those old shoes mixed with that paper smell I know like it’s my own. I lift the book to my nose and breathe it all in.

  The cover is hard and covered in dirt. Even so, the picture of the golden girl on the front shines out at me like it’s made of sun.

  ‘She looks like me,’ I whisper, tracing my finger round the circle she’s in.

  Willow leans over. ‘Huh. I guess she does a bit, eh? Before the haircut, mind you.’ He flicks one of the short curls on my head and I smooth it back down. ‘Open it up, then.’

  The first page is torn at the side and someone has written When you can’t look on the bright side, I will sit with you in the dark – 1904 in blue at the top. Maybe they din realize there were already words inside.

  Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland it says next to a drawing that’s lost all its colour. My hands are shaking like crazy now, wanting to pull apart all the pages and read every word.

  ‘Have you read it before?’ Willow asks. ‘It’s a bit different from the film.’

  I shake my head, opening up the next pages, where more and more pictures are waiting, all with the girl in them.

  ‘I think my mum liked it ’cause it’s about coming to a different place and everything being different. Kind of like what it’s like for you, I guess.’

  I pull my eyes away from the book to look at him, my insides wriggling like fingers pulling on bones. ‘She came from somewhere else?’

  Willow nods. ‘Aye, she was born in Jamaica. Moved to Scotland when she was five or something, I think.’ He smiles. ‘We’re all mad here.’

  I let out a big breath, nodding as I fall back in the chair. ‘Thank you,’ I say again.

  I don’t know what he says back. I don’t notice when he leaves, or see if it was him that put that cold cup of tea next to the chair. By the time I’ve finished reading all the words and seeing every line of every picture, though, he’s gone. And I’m left with one line in the book floating around beside me like Ashley-Mum has painted it in the air, like what Willow said she used to do with trees.

  It’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.

  I’ve fallen down a rabbit hole and there ain’t no going back out of it. There might be food that will turn me big and small, and Queens that want my head, and I might not know how to play croquet with a flamingo, but that’s all right. ’Cause it’s normal to be seeing stuff for the first time. It don’t mean that I ain’t no Outside Person just ’cause I ain’t never seen a cat disappear before.

  And, if Ashley-Mum could see all of this stuff new and still make Willow smile in the way he does when he talks about her, then I guess it’s OK for him to know that I ain’t from here.

  He don’t need to know all about that Inside, though. I was a different person then.

  Today I’m an Outside Person.

  Thirty-Six

  I din sleep much last night. I lay on my bed listening to all the sounds the house was making and wondering how anyone could sleep in such a racket. The walls were knocking when there weren’t nothing on the other side. The windows were snoring. The lamp by the side of my bed was humming.

  Everything was alive and waiting for me to get up and go discover it. And I kept thinking of Alice and Mozart in the books. How they went out and had their adventures like it weren’t nothing. So I made myself a deal right there and then: I’m gonna go Outside. Soon as Willow wakes up and can take me.

  I wait until I can hear noises downstairs before plodding slowly down, even though I want to run down like Willow does. I don’t find him in the living room, nor in the shoe cupboard under the stairs. I run into the kitchen and don’t find him there neither. Just Ezra-Dad sitting at the table on his own.

  ‘Where’s Willow?’

  ‘He’s at school.’

  ‘Already?’

  He glances up at a circle with numbers on it. ‘Aye.’

  ‘Oh.’

  He looks back down at the white on the table that looks like some kind of big book with floppy pages, and I almost stop thinking of the Outside right there and then to read it with him. I can’t, though. I’ve got to do it.

  Today, my heart thumps out. Today.

  I walk over to the back door. It’s all window apart from a stripe of brown across the middle of it, but you can’t see nothing out of it ’cept light. The window is all scratched up, like something big has been ripping at it to get in, lines all criss-crossing and clouding it up.

  Maybe it was a Dragon.

&
nbsp; I look at the door.

  How to be an Outside Person – number four: Go Outside.

  ‘Key’s in the drawer,’ Ezra-Dad says, pointing at a side table that I ain’t never noticed before.

  There’s all sorts of stuff inside the drawer: matted white hair, bits of metal, small boxes that say MATCHES, PLAYING CARDS and PLASTERS, all torn up and falling apart. I move some of it about, enjoying how it all feels in my hands, then I see it.

  The key.

  It’s a gold metal bar with teeth on the end, just like the key from The Alphabet Book.

  I scramble over to the back door, tap the key on the side of it and push.

  Nothing.

  I try again, the metal key clinking on the metal door frame as they hit each other.

  Still it don’t open.

  My hands start shaking.

  ‘Let me,’ Ezra-Dad says, suddenly behind me. He takes the key out of my hands and pushes it into the hole under the door handle. He twists the key and the door cusses at him. Then he pushes the handle down and pulls the door open.

  The back garden.

  Ezra-Dad stands there, hand on the door to stop it swinging closed, looking at me looking out.

  It’s grey. It’s cold. It blows.

  ‘Go on then,’ he says.

  I don’t move.

  He starts shuffling, looking at my feet. ‘Ye want a piggyback or something?’

  I look at him.

  He shrugs. ‘Ye havnae any shoes, so ah thought maybe …’

  I nod.

  ‘Well, OK then.’

  He turns round and opens his arms out, looking like he wants me to climb on to his back. I take a step towards him, unsure I’ve got it right, as he’s not no steed, but he don’t say I’m wrong as I jump up and wrap my legs round his middle. He catches me under the knees and then lifts me up.

  Then he steps Outside. With me.

  I’m Outside.

  All the air blows at the back of my neck, inspecting my new haircut. I hold my head up high and show it off to the sun.

  The sun is hiding behind a cloud. It must feel awful stupid for hurting me before, now that it sees I’m a real-life Outside Person who goes Outside.