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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Teens
- Theme: Drama / Human Interest
- Subject: Novels
- Published: 03/26/2021
The Sinking
Chapter 1 Lydia
Jan. 15
7:15-10:00
Hmk. Sch.
Todo:
Reading: HWD (p78)
10:10-12:00
Notes sort No.11
Hmk finish
Meet with M 15:00
13:00. 18:00
2 points- aft. T
Notes x 2 sort N
*R: tom. Bring S.
January 15, The White Book
“Lydia, honey?” Her mother called down the hall. “Could you take Pate outside today?”
“It was my turn yesterday,” she yelled back, without turning from her notebook and its scribbles. “Let Jake take him today. Or Rosie.”
She could hear her mother’s footsteps down the hall, and the creak of her door as it opened with a bit of effort, pushing against a mountain of books, papers and clothes scattered over the floor. Her mother grimaced as she stepped gingerly over the notebooks strewn all over the floor. “How do you even find anything?”
“I have a gift for rummaging in trash. Perhaps not so much right now.” She chewed on the end of her pencil. “I can’t understand anything of what I wrote last year. Why didn’t I know I was going to need them later?”
Her mother peered over her shoulder. An unintelligible scrawl covered furled pages, smeared at places. She laughed. “Why don’t you start by cleaning your room? I thought you took pride in being—” She lifted her eyebrows—“organized.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Why do I have to take Pate again?”
“Rose is occupied at the moment, and Jake’s out with his friends.”
“What you mean is, Rosie is on a date, and Jake is downstairs playing in the sandbox. He could play there with Pate. They all like Pate.”
“Honey, it was you who wanted a dog in the first place, and I hardly think Jake would be safe running around the neighborhood by himself.”
Lydia gave in. “Wait till I’m finished with this page. Ten minutes.”
Her mother patted her hair. “Thanks.” She leaned over again to decipher her handwriting. “What is this one on?”
“Nerve endings.”
Her mother made a face. “Fascinating.”
“Glad you think so.” She squinted. “Is that an A or a P?”
“I think it’s an M, actually.”
Lydia groaned and ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing out a tangle. “I thought I could get this done today. Now it’s going to mess everything up.”
“One day won’t disrupt your holy schedule. Remember to take Pate later, ‘kay?”
“Mmn-Hmm”, she mumbled distractedly. After a while she gave up, threw the notebook to join its peers on the floor next to her bed, and got up to find Pate. Even outside her room, the house was cluttered and messy, but Lydia liked that. It wasn’t messy in a dirty way, just in a homey way. Coats and sweaters were strewn over a small but overstuffed sofa in the middle of the living room, while pillows lay on the floor under the TV set, no doubt courtesy of Jack and his playmates. Notebooks, pencils, the computer, textbooks and novels alike were cluttered on the reading table, which also served as the dining table. The sound of sizzling oil and a pungent smell of chicken and rosemary wafted by from the kitchen, her mother outlined against the last rays of the sun with a large cooking spoon in her hand. Rosie’s door was cracked half open, an array of hot pink bottles and baubles peeking out from behind its walls. Jack’s was wide open, toy cars and a train set laid on the middle of the floor. Lydia fumbled for her shoes, hopping as she pulled them on, and glanced at the mirror next to the door, raking her hand through her hair again. No point in that. Her hair was as messy as the house, had always been. A trait that she shared with Rosie and Dad, though not with Mom and Jack. Rosie had tamed her hair into a sleek pretty bun, though, with gels and mousses and hair straighteners, and Dad’s hair was thinning around the temples. Mom and Jack had brown hair, where she and Rosie taken after her father, a fiery red mass that refused to obey her. She snatched up a hair tie and made the best of it. “Pate, c’mere,” she called. “Mom, I’m leaving now!”
The big white Samoyed was lounging on its side at the foot of the sofa, but padded over quickly enough when she called. Lydia bent down to ruffle the fur behind its ears, and fastened the leash around his neck. His tongue rasped over her palm, and she laughed and rubbed his head.
The day was brisk and cool. Lydia jogged behind Pate, catching a glimpse of Jack having a great time with his little friends, squealing as he ran up a slide, his face smudged with dirt and laughter, his hair touched from brown to golden by the sun. She smiled to herself, thinking of Raymond and the way his hair shone spun gold even when it was dark. I’ll see him tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow.
Pate tugged on his leash, and she ran after him through a bright swirl of emerald green leaves.
Chapter 2 Arianne
From these gems at night
live a fiery soul of frights
And diamonds without sight
pull up to kiss the bright
January 15, Arianne’s book
The house was dark and empty when Arianne pushed open the door, but she was used to that, and it was past midnight anyway. She slung her bag over the back of a chair and fumbled for the light switch. Inside, the rooms were big and cavernous, with white walls and a large white carpet lolling on the heavy oaken floor. Floor to ceiling windows lined her right side, a long hallway at her left, and shelves of polished teak holding books behind clear glass panes. A large counter was set behind the carpet, with high chairs and a jug of water with five glasses on it. I don’t see why, she thought as she walked over to pour herself a glass. This place has never had more than two occupants at most, and it’s not likely we’ll ever have guests in this mausoleum of a house.
Dragging her bag behind her, she walked to her own room. A gust of cold air greeted her. A warmer welcome than any my dear mother would give me, I would very much think. Her room was big as well, a white bed splayed out with sheets neatly pulled out at the four corners and an immaculate desk. Her own bathroom was adjourned at the side, dark oak wood giving way to slick white marble tiles. She plopped the bag on her floor and kicked it to bar the door shut, not bothering to lock it. Everything was so clean and big and tidy when she came back, and emptier, always emptier. As much as I am. Arianne Whitewood was not what anyone would call clean or organized, but she was empty if anything. She lay back on her big white bed, and stared up at the big white ceiling. Her head was already beginning to pound. Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk that last glass. But then again, she had never been good at doing what she should do.
She sat up and switched on the desk lamp. Warm yellow light cascaded over her hands and caressed her skin. She pulled out the chair and took up a pen, leaning her head on her palm and gazing outside. The city lights had come out in a wash of neon and scarlet, radiant green and flashing whites. They snaked a glittering path up the highway, and wound down the narrow little road leading here. Others adorned the tops of skyscrapers further off, flickering and blinking. Neat yellow and white squares marked the windows of owners who were still up at this point of the night. She sighed and pulled out another sheet of paper.
From these gems at night / live a fiery soul of frights/ And diamonds without sight / pull up to kiss the bright. She crossed out the first line. Even that was as inhuman as this house: a ruler straight line crossing through slanting slender lines of cursive. Inhuman, she heard. Abomination. She crossed out the second line, then the rest.
She was up till she had finished her work. A paper every day, if only to fill out then scratch out. Then she drew herself a bath, and immersed herself up to the neck, sliding down until the water drowned her ears and the slight buzz of the bulb. Her hair floated out behind her. She wondered what her mother would think if it was her body she found floating here the come morning, with her skin as white as the house. Well, mostly, anyway. As she was soaping the scent of alcohol and smoke from her hair, she climbed out and threw up in time to get to the rim of the toilet. Water dripped from her skin, filling out in most unorderly puddles and globs on the white floor. Soap suds slid down her hair and followed the steady drip-drip-drip of water with satisfying plops. Her hands clutched the basin of the toilet and slithered off the smooth soapy surface. She threw up again. Probably good that it’s a weekend tomorrow, she thought, knowing the splitting headache that would most like appear the coming morning. Would I have stopped if it wasn’t? Maybe. Then she walked to the sink and rinsed her mouth clean, flushed the toilet, and climbed back into the tub, where she finished washing her hair out.
Chapter 3 Lydia
Lydia was piling up her books on the desk when she heard Martha. She could always hear Martha, which was strange because Martha was probably the least talkative of all her friends, and never loud when she voiced an opinion. She just sat next to Lydia, and listened, and smiled. Perhaps that was why she was so easy to hear; her quietness pervaded her.
“Hi,” she said, struggling to pull out another stack of books from her bag. The rest she shoved in her desk, but The Book stayed. Other people might have churches, or shrines, or gods and religions. She had her Book. It was 10 centimeters thick and almost twice as wide with white creamy pages, and filled with uncharacteristic tiny neat handwriting. Lydia had no belief in gods or ghosts, but she believed in the present, and the future. She had started logging entries in The Book three years ago, every nook and cranny in her life went into it. Nothing too personal, though, as she carried it everywhere and it would have been a horror if anybody chanced to look into it if she’d starting putting in her feelings. Even so, she guarded it zealously. Her Book was her future and her present and every minute in between, bordering on the religious. In it was everything that would happen and had happened to her; The Book had never failed her. It was more reliable than a person, and she felt very safe with it.
Martha eyed her opening the clasps that fastened all the pages together. She had gotten used to her obsession. Some others, less so, and Lydia knew a lot of people thought that she was a geek, but she didn’t really care. The only people that one should bother about were the people who took you for what you were, and if they didn’t like you, you didn’t have to please them. She could see them now, clustered at the center of the room, a tight knot of boys and girls, all talking empathetically with loud noises and a lot of hand gestures. Every now and then a loud swell of laughter would break over them. Lydia rolled her eyes, and Martha laughed at her expression. Ameri slid down into the chair next to them, grinning. “I thought you’d have gotten used to us by now.”
“I have. That doesn’t mean I have to cheer you on every day.”
Ameri was dark where Martha was light, heavier where Martha was slight, with a sturdier build and large expressive dark eyes and a tumble of bronze hair, a wide merry mouth and made for laughter and gossip. She jerked her head slightly to the other end of the room. “Took you some time. Seems like you still haven’t warmed up to them, though.”
She glanced at the other cluster of people. It was true. She had kept to her little circle of friends, enjoying their company, feeling comfortable and excluding the noise for a long while, but warmed up gradually after Ameri and Del urged her to. She found that they weren’t too bad, it was fun to be laughing over stupid things for a while, and even the people who eyed her and called her Booker every time they saw her would smile and welcome her if she wanted to be there. That she could at least understand, sometimes even join in when she was feeling like it, when they weren’t being obnoxious about anything or when her friends had joined in.
The other group at the back was less comprehensible, and secluded. While the first group was loud and brassy with great shouts of laughter, the other was all quiet and delicate, like an elegant tea party that only expensive people could attend. They were. Tarra Morband and Lancott Quint and Joyes Grande and their band, all dressed up in clothes that might have cost twenty times the price of her white T-shirt and faded jeans added up or more. Lydia had seen them a few times after school, leaving the campus together to go to some other place that suited them better. Once she overheard them, talking about spirits and poetry and music and such, Grande’s high musical voice raised ever so slightly as he commented on Shakespeare’s prose or something like that. Lydia thought that he looked like a statue more than a human, even though he was moving, his pale hair sliding over his cheekbones as he shook his head. In her world only ancient people spoke of such, and she had no love for things that didn’t concern where she was and where she was going. Why bother yourself with worries of spiritual babble and literature dreams when there was enough to worry about in the practical world? To live practically and in the present was the only way she knew and would ever know and understand.
In the loose ring of that group, Arianne Whitewood had positioned herself at the edge, not the center of the circle, and seldom spoke but to laugh, but Lydia knew that it was her who was the leader. They all looked at her after saying some seemingly witty remark and she would give her approval, just like that, with a little nod of her head or a small smile like she was the princess of some royal kingdom. Ameri had told her once that she lived in a palace-like house at the edge of the city, but that was only part of it. Arianne was the princess of what they valued, those “dreamers”, as they dubbed themselves, even though Lydia scarcely heard her talk about anything useful. And she was beautiful besides, with milk pale skin and cobalt blue eyes so dark they seemed purple, a waterfall of dark hair and a figure slender as a knife. Though, if Ameri could be believed, she drunk herself blind at nights with what Lydia’s mom would call “the wrong sort of friends”. Martha mingled with their group, but not her.
Lydia shook her head. “No, not really. I wouldn’t want to, anyway.”
Martha made a squirming motion. It made her uncomfortable when they even came close to criticizing her other friends. “Oh, don’t say that. They’re quite nice. I don’t you don’t like them, but maybe if you get to know them—”
“And have to wear a dress for the occasion? Not likely.”
Ameri laughed. “It is so like you to say that.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do. It just makes it even more…ah… exclusive. Organized..”
Martha sighed. Lydia punched Ameri lightly on the arm. “That I know.”
Chapter 4 Arianne
She was leaving the campus when Tarra caught up with her.
“Hey,” he said, smiling, and made to take her hand.
She pulled away a little at first, but eased her fingers through his and leaned into him. “Hi. How was your day?”
“The average.” He glanced at her. “Nothing interesting without you with me though.”
She smiled a little, although secretly she thought his clumsiness was cumbersome. A lot of things about Tarra were clumsy, but she’d gotten used to it, and could put up with it and play the part when needed. “Well, that’s nice to hear.”
He raised his eyebrows in mock disapproval. “You’re happy that I’m not having a good time?”
“I’m happy that I interest you.”
He smiled a bit bashfully. You’d think he was a little girl with her first date by the way he blushes. She watched him detachedly; It was sometimes amusing to see the shade of pink he turned.
“Where are we going today?” Tarra pulled her closer to him as they crossed a road, gripping her hand tightly.
“Not today, I’m going straight home. My mother is coming back this afternoon.”
There was a long pause. “Okay,” he said at last. She knew he was disappointed. “Can I come over later or something? We’ve heard a lot about your house and no one’s seen it.”
No one will ever see it. “No,” she replied. “I haven’t seen my mother in quite a long time and it would be nice to… catch up on things.”
Another pause, even longer. Arianne wondered if he had detected something, or he was just annoyed that she won’t spend more time with him. Probably the latter. Tarra had been with her long enough for her to realize that he took everything she gave and relished every drop of it. “See you tomorrow then.” He pulled her closer and kissed her hair. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head at the base of his throat, then pulled away and smiled. “See you.”
Tarra was easy to stay with and easy to make happy. Sometimes Arianne felt herself liking the part she played when she was with him, liking to forget who she really was and accept a normal life that he would have wanted. His arms were steady and warm and safe, his smiles shy but clear, and in his eyes Arianne could see an image of herself that might have been. She liked that, and it was the reason she picked him out of all the grasping hands. She knew what other people said that she was with Tarra for, but that couldn’t have mattered less. She had never lacked for money, and Resme and his lot had been much prettier than her Tarra.
Her smile slid off her face when she turned around. How long had it been since I was last with her, living in the same house? Three months? Four?
The house was quiet when she pushed open the door, but her nerves rattled. I should have gone with Tarra. I should have gone with Pax. Should have gone with any of them rather than come back here.
She made her way to her room.
Eliana Cain had been a dazzling beauty in her youth, or so they said. Little or none of that youth or beauty remained in the woman who was silhouetted against her window. From a distance one could say that the echoes of her attractiveness still lingered in the lines of her legs and waist, but upon closer inspect her waist was choked by a corset and legs wrapped up in similar tights, making her flesh bulge at the ankles and hips. A dark blue cape-like dress was draped over her shoulders, and metal and jewels glittered in her bronze hair. Arianne took a deep breath and settled back against the door, letting her bag drop to the floor beside her.
“Arianne.”
Her mother called her without turning.
“Mother.” She breathed again.
“You didn’t call me.” Eliana turned, smiling faintly. She sounded vaguely disappointed. “I would have welcomed you home if you told me you were going to stay here, it’s been quite a long time.”
“Yes, mother.”
Against the bright light pouring in from the window, her mother’s face was thrown into darkness. People were always quite surprised to see how young she was, the face that didn’t fit the image of her body, untouched by the years that had weathered the rest of her. It was a small, delicate face stroked by fine outlines and marked by few lines, a girl’s face, or could have passed for one in the semi-light her features were bathed in. “Are you unhappy to see me?”
“No, mother.” Arianne said.
Eliana walked to the edge of the bed and motioned her to do the same. “You should have better manners,” she chided gently, and smiled a little. “You’re always so rude to me, it makes me wonder if you’re irritated by my presence. Just like—”
“I’m sorry, mother.”
Her soft hands fluttered aimlessly in her lap. “Salla told me that there was a mess in your room this morning when she came in to clean it. She said you must have had a bad time. Would you like to tell me about it?”
You would certainly like to hear anything about “me” and “a bad time”. Arianne sat down gingerly beside her mother. “No, it wasn’t a big deal. I’m sorry if I messed things up.”
Her mother sighed. “You disappoint me, Arianne. I thought we could have a better relationship this time. I thought we could make up.”
You think that every time.
“I wish you would tell me more about you. I could get to know you if you weren’t always pushing me away.”
I had a tongue once, before you cut it out.
“This house was made for you. You shouldn’t make yourself unhappy in it.”
Arianne bit down hard on her tongue. She felt like screaming. “I’ll leave when you want me to. Mother.”
When Eliana frowned, a crease appeared between her eyes. “I never wanted to make you go. Why do you always think the worst of me? You always want to hate me.”
Arianne opened her hands and closed them again. She felt an itch building along her arms and legs. “If you say so.”
Her mother sighed, and got up to leave. “I’ll be staying for a month this time. The money’s already on the counter.” As she leaned closer to look at her face, Arianne couldn’t help but flinch. Eliana studied her eyes, her face, and frowned again. “How is it that you look so young?”
“I am young.”
“Well, yes.” Eliana pulled back. “But I am, too. Yet you look more and more… Pretty. As pretty as I used to be.”
Arianne held her tongue. Her mother closed the door behind her as she left, leaving a trail of sweet perfume behind her. Arianne remained on the bed for a few minutes, then stood up and began to pace the room, over and over. She stuck her head out of the window and tried to make herself breathe big lungfuls of air. The thought that her mother might be right outside her door made her feel a pressure behind her eyes.
Chapter 5 Lydia
III. Day Rate – A-
Finished HWD. Summaries tomorrow (No.13). Almost done with the reviews (got to No.15 in the afternoon), soon put together in F. Upcoming break soon (Mrs L, Bio, third class). New plans & format see back
January 17, The White Book
Lydia printed another entry in The Book, careful not the smudge the ink. She was at home in her room, with the desk cleared out and the white book splayed wide on top. The first entry had been exactly three years ago, she saw. The Book was a part of her. At the end of the book the final large page was already filled in, stating that she would be 25, married, with a small apartment in the city close to the hospital she worked in as a neurosurgeon.
Every page brought her closer, and her plans never failed her. She had written three years ago that now she would be training for medicine at the school she was now, and she was. She had written a year ago the exact grades she would get at the end of her year. Except for Biology, in which she’d gotten a B+ instead of A-, it was almost the same. Her life was a well greased track that she could map out, and it would take her wherever she wanted to go as long as she planned and stuck to it.
To be sure, there were some emergencies. Raymond had certainly not been part of her plans, but it was nice to let her thoughts wander just a little in her spare time. It wasn’t like he was disrupting anything. Their lives barely touched one another’s. She liked to think about him though, with his gold hair touched alight in the sun as he ran around on the basketball court, and snuck glances at him when he passed in the corridors. This morning she had walked right past him as he ran down the stairs with a group of his friends, in those hideous white uniforms that somehow he made look quite presentable. He’d called to her, a blurred “Hey, Lydia,” before he was hustled down the steps, and she was standing there at the door of the lab with her face smudged with blood from pig’s liver they had to cut up and a pencil stuck in her hair. I must have looked stupid.
Her train of thought was disrupted when Jack came running into her room, dodging the books and clothes scattered around his feet. “Liddy,” he yelled, “Liddy come see.”
She closed her Book and followed him out, taking his little hand. She had to stoop a little to do so. Mom and Dad were already there, and Rosie too, looking a bit bored about it. All three were very much used to the routine by now. Very soon Jack would pull out the train set he’d been working on for a month, and they would watch him fail to make it run even though he would promise that it had been when they weren’t looking. Mom and Dad had told him they would buy him another only when he succeeded taming this one, which was very much unlikely considering that he was 6 and the train set was meant for ages 12+. As usual, he ran into his room and pulled out the pile of plastic and metal and wires that he’d linked and fit together. Lydia thought that it hardly looked a train anymore after being pulled apart and reassembled so many times. Jack bent over and tinkered with the mess of knobs and wires, put it on the train track, and lay on his stomach to adjust some more. “Look,” he insisted solemnly, as their attention drifted. Dad laughed. Jack pressed the big red button on top, and the train’s wheels began to spin.
A good start, although through experience Lydia thought that it would turn over, stop running, or fail to make a bend. The train went forward and completed a lap, then another. Jack squealed, and Mom bent down laughing to ruffle his hair. Dad sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to get him another one.” Rosie tickled him until he doubled up with giggles and flailed around on the floor. Pate padded in from the kitchen, attracted to the noise, and licked Jack’s face.
Jack was triumphant, or as triumphant as a six-year-old could look while lying on the ground under a big white dog. “I’m going to be an engineer,” he pronounced carefully. “And I can have another train set.”
“Oh god,” Rosie muttered. “He sounds just like Lydia.”
“I never wanted a train set.”
“You were talking about being a surgeon from age 9.”
“You were obsessed with being a reporter since I learned to talk.”
Mom laughed. “True enough.”
Rosie flicked her long hair over her shoulder. “And I got there.”
Dad glanced at his three children. “Runs in the family,” he claimed. “I like young kids who have a steady sense of life. Practical sense, not that nonsense that kids now like to babble about. This is how life—”
Lydia and Rosie groaned in unison. Jack joined in. “We get the idea, Dad,” Lydia said. “No need to bring it up every single day three thousand times.”
“Your father taught you well,” Mom chimed in. “Have some gratitude.”
The three children groaned again. Mom laughed and turned to Dad. “Well, I’ve done what I could. Maybe you should start buying that train set.”
Jack bounced up and down. “I want to pick, let me pick!”
“Dinner first,” Mom said firmly. “And Rosie, you do the dishes today. Lydia, come here, we have some good news for you.”
It turned out that her mom had a business trip, and could take Lydia with her. She had assured Lydia that she would be on work most of the day and wouldn’t hamper any of her “activities” and suggested she take a friend with her. Lydia had said yes then, and asked Martha, who readily agreed.
Martha came by half an hour later. They spent the day bent over her desk and curled over pillows on the floor, looking up places they’d want to go. Later that day, when she’d mapped out all the routes and time tables, they lay spread out out side by side on the bed, after Lydia had tickled Martha until she’d collapsed. She was still giggling as she thrashed around in the tangle of bedsheets, begging her to stop. Lydia withdrew her hands for half a second before Martha squeezed at her waist, sending them both half tumbling onto the floor amid shrieks of laughter. This is why I like Martha the most, Lydia thought giddily as she fought for her breath and Martha’s long brown hair fell into her face. She can stay serious when things have to be done, and doesn’t keep thing all formal-like after they’re finished. And she never laughs at me. Never. She understands me, like I know her.
Their trip would go through mountains and hills and rivers, meadows which Lydia had circled out and bubbling brooks that snaked across the hillsides. There would be the second day too, to walk through the city streets and glimpse the glittering neon lights. Mom had booked the hotel rooms so that they could have nights together in their own room, a sleepover of sorts, spending the nights devouring snacks and gossip. It will be perfect, Lydia thought dreamily, the vacation she’d always wanted, short though it was. No pressure, no other people I don’t like… A week almost completely to ourselves…
“It’ll be perfect,” she said, and at the same time Martha grinned and said, “This is going to be awesome,” and they fell back laughing again, this time half draped across the floor and legs still tangled up in the sheets and pillows on the bed.
Chapter 6 Arianne
For I see the moon
Waxing; and I feel the body I trap
Rising; For what do I have save for
Growing; and with growth is there not always
Dying? Rise, and trap and twist
In evil ways; for the growth is always
Savage, to choke the
Weaklings, to save the grappling
Upwards, that does not
Stop, pause, slow—hear me—
Stop, pause, slow—quiet me—
Stop, pause, slow—bury me—
Arianne’s book, January 21
I need out, Arianne thought blearily, out, out, out, out, out.
Three days with her mother and she already felt as if she were going to suffocate. So far nothing had happened, but that just set her more on edge, making her jumpy, restless. That, or maybe that was just not drinking enough. She didn’t want to appear to her mother like her life was a mess and refused the invitations to stay out late, even though one look might have told Eliana if she really was looking and she didn’t even know why it still mattered. Why do I even bother? Why do I even care? What does it matter to me? She’d bothered her whole life, short as it was. Bothered when she got those perfect grades in middle school, bothered when she pretended she didn’t drink when her mother was there, bothered when her mother had left the first time. Bothered when she swore not ever to come back again after a phone call. Bother, care, matter, matter, matter. Her whole life was a heap of jumbled matter. Pretend to mother that she had never messed her life up or needed her, pretend to everyone else that she was polished and perfect. Pretend to herself that everything was fine. Pretend to Tarra that she was just a little girl and pretend to Antony that she was all grown up and worldly. Pretender, liar, inhuman, abomination.
I’m not staying tonight. Not another night. But it was too late, too late already. They had asked her, all of them, called on her and she’d said no, and she was washed and dressed ready for sleep already. If I do any of that. After winter break had started she’d been at home for whole days, sharing meals and awkward conversations with her mother and locking herself in her room for the rest of the time. The worst were the nights. She would wake up cold and shivering in sweat and curse herself of making the clever decision when she decided to reject those invitations for the fourth time. Not for once she wondered at the little black box under the mattress of her bed. She’d stopped herself that night, turning over and over on the bed until she swung her legs off and padded barefoot to her desk to write feverish notes. The next day she woke and tore them up, throwing the pieces out of the window so they spiraled like pale white butterflies.
“Arianne?”
Her mother knocked at her door. Arianne flinched and shoved the box under her mattress again. “Yes? Come in.” She readjusted her position on the bed, hiking up the covers so they covered her bare legs, and tugged the sleeves lower and neckline higher.
Eliana pushed open the door and sat on her bedside. “What is it, mother?” Arianne asked. She prayed her voice didn’t shake. Her mother had had something, she saw; drugs, if not alcohol. Her pupils were dilated to the extent that Arianne could see clearly even in the half darkness of the bathroom light. The main light and the desk lamp were both turned off, only a sliver leaking in from the door that her mother had left half open, and a warm square of light from the bathroom where steam was still rising in pearly mists. Black pupils, in a sea of pale blue.
Eliana smiled slowly. “I just wanted to talk to you. My darling daughter. My Arianne.” Her voice had the slow, slurred telltale rhythm of her intoxication; she always spoke like this after drunk. Or drugged, most like. Her mother had always preferred drugs to drink. Probably why I like it the other way round.
She shrank back into her pillows. Why did I even let her in? I should have locked the door. I did lock the door. She saw the key hanging just beneath the handle of her door.
“What do you want to tell me, mother?”
Eliana said nothing, just looked at her. Arianne could tell that she was staring, as she had stared for all the years in the past. The first day she came back she’d looked into her face. How is it that you look so young?
“Daughter,” she said again, tasting the word. “How is it that you are my daughter, mine, yet you look nothing like me?”
“I look like you, mother. Here, in the cheekbones. They say I look like you, when you were…”
“Young.” Eliana turned away. The steam kissed her cheeks and jaw, blurred the outline of her face. “When I was young. How is it that everyone remembers that? They should see it. I am not even half to seventy, yet people presume to call me old.” Her gaze swung around to meet her daughter’s. “They do not call you old. You are a scant sixteen years younger than I, I could have been your sister. I was prettier than you. I was. I should be. Why? Tell me why, Arianne. You should know.”
Arianne did not speak. Her mother laughed, too loudly. She stood up, swayed a little, braced her hands on the windowsill, and she was again a mere black cardboard cut-out lined against the city lights. Arianne twitched under the covers. A fine sheen of sweat had covered her skin and she rubbed her palms against the sheets.
“I’m sorry, Arianne.” Her mother sighed. “That wasn’t right of me. I should have been kinder to you. I should have.”
“It’s okay,” she replied. The lobe of her throat was growing hot and she had an intense desire to flee.
“It’s never been okay.” Then she was there again, kneeling at her bedside, face to face with her. Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “People are always telling me what I should have done. You. Denise. Even Salla told me that I should come back more often, did you know? She’s a maid, a cleaning maid that scrubs our floors, and talks to me about what I should do. Should have done. ‘You should have come back more often, Ms Whitewood.’” Eliana stretched her voice until it was high and girlish. “‘I think Arianne is lonely at times.’ You, lonely. Lonely in an extravagant house. Lonely with all my money!” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Should have. Should have. You all tell me that. Aaron. Aaron most of all.”
Eliana laughed again. It was lilting, drunken. She laughed until she had to hold herself and clutch at the boards of the bed. “It was so…so…funny. He told me what to do, he did! And when he left, what did I say? ‘You should have stayed longer.’ Thought he wasn’t running, did I? I was a fool. I was a fool. Fool for believing him. Fool for making you. I never wanted you… Never… I shouldn’t have. There.” A smile twisted her lips. “What shouldn’t I have done, Arianne? Tell me. Tell mother.” She clasped her hand. “Tell your darling mother, your dear mother… Mother, I presumed to be! And thought that it was right! My mother was all the great, everyone said, she did perfectly, till her pretty little slip of a daughter despoiled herself, didn’t she?” She hiccoughed herself back from laughter. “That put an end to it. That stopped it. I shut them up, didn’t I?” A glazed look had come into her eyes. “Should have… should have… Should have been like my mother…like my father…like Denise, later… Like anyone but me.”
The room had gone deathly quiet. Arianne could hear the sound of her mother’s hiccoughs and her own ragged breathing. Make her stop, she pleaded silently, but there was no one to hear, there had never been anyone to hear. Make her stop. Her hand was still tightly grasped in Eliana’s. “Mother,” she whispered. Her voice shook. She hated herself like this, hated that she still was the wide-eyed five-year-old who saw Eliana shut the door behind her and tried to push against her, reach for her. “Mother, stop, you’re hurting me.”
Eliana didn’t move. Her eyes were trained on Arianne’s face. Just as the silence dragged on long enough for Arianne to start squirming, Eliana abruptly let go and stood up. “That was… Ill done of me, Arianne. I’m sorry.” Her voice had turned crisp, cool, formal. “That won’t happen again. Please forgive me.”
She turned away and slammed the door shut behind her, and there was a rattle as she yanked the key from its lock. A few minutes had gone by before Arianne started to tremble, and grabbed a fistful of bedding to stuff into her mouth. She screamed. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought, as she slapped her face hard. Stop crying, stop crying, stop stop stop. Just stop. She slapped herself again. The pain drew her out of it more quickly, and it always felt as if there were another disciplining her, someone stronger than her, steely and implacable, that she could hide behind and give herself up to. If she would start feeling, then Arianne would stop, and the burden would be on her, that other girl, the better, stronger one, with no such tender weakness. She screamed again into the wad of bedsheets, and began to tremble violently. Then she began scratching herself with her nails, fiercely, as if her whole skin was a costume she would peel off. Would that I could.
She didn’t sleep. When she was sure her mother had gone to bed, she hurriedly smeared makeup on, slipped into a heavy overcoat over a flimsy dress and shut the door quietly behind her, then began to run from the house so fast she tripped twice till she got to the road. It was almost midnight, and there were few cars on the streets, much less in her corner of the city. She began to run again.
Chapter 7 Arianne
“Hey.”
Pax looked around, surprised. “Thought you weren’t coming.”
“I changed my mind.” Arianne smirked. “No place for me today, I take it?” It was not too late for a place like this, no time was ever too late. The night was all the same, and for that alone Arianne loved the place. Pink and purple lights pulsed around the floor, and the music was so loud it hurt her ears. Good.
“No, no, there’s enough space.” Pax grabbed a tall chair and dragged it over. “You can sit here.”
Arianne draped herself on it. Her left heel clacked against the floor. Pax raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t you cold? It’s freezing out there.”
“I’m hot enough for all of us.” Arianne grinned and flagged down the nearest waiter. After she got her drink, she leaned back speculatively and looked around her. “Ah, but don’t let me spoil the fun. Keep going.” She grabbed the remains of Paxon’s drink and downed it, leaving a smear of lipstick darker than the former marks. The mead was icy cold, but warm well enough going down, and cloying sweet. She raised her eyebrows. “You’re having mead?”
Pax flushed pink, made even more so as a red light passed over her face. Arianne was arbitrarily reminded of Tarra, blushing as she kissed him. I’d probably kiss him now if he were here. If anyone were here, actually. She cast a glance around the group, and took that back. Lancot, Grandes, Resme, their lot. My lot. I made them. They would never even have come here if not for me. She turned away. I’d sooner kiss Pax than those three, though.
“Pax was in the mood for something different.” Resme slung an arm around Paxon’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Something sweeter for the night, eh?”
Pax laughed and threw his arm off good-naturedly. “Nothing sweet for you.”
“I can make that work. You’d be surprised.”
Arianne knocked over her tall glass to shatter on the floor, effectively stopping the conversation. “Sorry,” She yelped as she bent to retrieve the pieces, but Lisa waved her off. “Don’ bother yourself Ann, letddit be.” She was in matching outfits with Pax, high stockings, long red skirt. Her words slurred much more than Pax, though, and her eyes were dully unfocused. She laughed when Arianne picked up an ice cube and slid it into the back of her shirt, making her squeal and laugh harder. Then she raised her cup and clinked it loudly against Arianne’s second glass, the drink inside slopping messily off the sides and sloshing onto the floor. “Drink. We’ve missed you.”
Arianne gulped her gin down. It was sticky and thick, clinging to the back of her throat. When she spoke she could feel it still lingering on her lips. “I’ve been away for three days is all, Lisa. And we never went out every day.”
Resme smiled at her. “Three nights,” he corrected in his silky voice, “And the absence of such beauty is well noted. Three nights can prove as long as three years.”
From where exactly does he get the impression that he’s a smooth talker? Arianne felt like splashing the rest of her thick icy drink in his face. Instead she raised the glass to her lips and drank.
It was all as she remembered; bad jokes and drunken laughing, a pull at a skirt and a turn on the dance floor, loud beating music that pounded to her pulse. Soon she felt herself joining in, laughing and shoving as the drink got her in its comforting grip. That’s good, she thought hazily, that’s good, that’s good, that’s so good. She finished a glass, then two, and two more. Ice stuck in her throat and brightly colored liquid sloshed down her sleeve. She took whatever was put in her hand, and then some that weren’t. I haven’t drunk this much since half a year ago, she thought, but then half a year ago was the last time her mother came back. It was always the worst the first few days; then she got used to it, learned to turn it down. Pity I haven’t got used to it once and for all. After a while she had to go to the bathroom and empty her stomach, and when she looked at the mirror the face was a stranger’s. Her eyes were wild with excitement and cheeks flushed prettily red. Most of the lipstick had been smeared off, though her front teeth were varying shades of red. She fumbled around in her pocket for a reapply. Panic clenched her for an instant. I’ll have to go back. Then panic transferred her to the warmth, and she was floating again.
It was well past midnight when most of them had left. Pax had stayed, and Lisa. After some particularly bad jokes, Lisa kissed them sloppily on their cheeks and left, leaving the place to Paxon and Arianne.
“So,” Pax said, “You ever going to tell me what’s happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Arianne reached for her glass, successfully knocking it over. She quickly righted it and pushed her mouth to the electric blue drops that were sliding down the outer wall.
Pax grabbed the glass and held it away. “I think that’s pretty much enough for you.”
“You think?” She made to call the waitress again.
“Do you even know what you’re drinking?”
“Some cocktail. I think. Some very blue cocktail.”
“No, she doesn’t want anything,” Pax told the waitress as she came over. “Go away.”
“You know, you’re really annoying at times.”
“I have a knack for it.”
Arianne took an almost empty glass and turned it over. The last few drops warmed her tongue. Sweet as kisses, she thought giddily. She had half a mind to call Tarra, then remembered it was probably around two in the morning.
“Come on. Arianne, you’re not going through the leftovers Remse left.”
“These aren’t his.”
“No, they’re mine. But stop. Really. What happened?”
“I told you. Nothing happened.”
“Didn’t see you drinking yourself to death last time.”
“I’m fine, Pax. Don’t worry so much.”
“Does this have anything to do with the fact that your mom’s come back recently?”
“Don’t overreact.” She lifted her head and stared at her blurrily. “How did you even know that?”
“Your boyfriend told me.”
“I’m going to kill Tarra someday. He’s invading my privacy. Has he been spying on me?”
“He told me because I asked him why you weren’t coming with us last week, and he said that you told him.”
“Oh yeah, right. I remember now. He’s still invading my privacy.”
“Actually, I called him earlier so he could pick you up.”
“Pax, it must be 2 o’clock. You always make bad jokes after you’ve had too much to drink.”
“I’ve had too much to drink?”
“Yeah.”
“I have a suggestion for you. How about you go to the bathroom now and clean yourself up so you’ll puke into a toilet and not all over your boyfriend?”
“I know he’ll love that welcome.”
“How does he put up with you if you throw up on him every few days?”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Or you could just lie down here.”
Tarra slid an arm under her arms and dragged her to her feet. “Thanks, Paxon,” he muttered with some effort. “For calling me. What happened?”
“You’ll have to ask her. Maybe wait till tomorrow though.”
“I’m not drunk,” Arianne mumbled.
“Yeah, I think I’ll wait till tomorrow.” He dragged her outside and sat her on a bench. “Bye, Paxon. Thanks again.”
The girl tucked her blue hair behind her ear and grinned. “You’ll take that back after she pukes all over you. I’d suggest you take off anything that’s worth much, now.”
Tarra took his coat off and draped it over Arianne’s legs, and pulled her closer to him. The touch made her blink and look up. “Pax, that is not funny.”
She blinked again. She thought that she was pressed against Tarra’s shoulder, his coat over her legs. Maybe I did get a bit drunk. She rubbed at her eyes. Nothing changed.
“Oh, god, no.” She pushed away quickly, but that made her head spin. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
Tarra glanced down at her. “Are we entering the delirium stage now?”
He can’t see me like this. The wind bit at her skin, and she shuddered, bringing a trickle of rationality into her head. Her mother’s voice crept in then, the vicious snarling tone and the hysterical laughter, and above her Eliana Whitewood stood, whispering. Should have, Arianne. You should never have been born.
It didn’t really matter, she had never really loved Tarra, never really loved anyone really, and Tarra had never known her other than the innocent beautiful girl-child, the real her had never mattered. Nothing mattered. Only the dream, the dream that she could construct another world for herself, that fairytale world that might have been, and now crumbling all around her. She threw up once on the bench, then another time on the car when he told the driver to stop and hauled her out so she could splatter the sewage lids with some more sewage, and another in the car when the motion was too much for her and Tarra couldn’t get the door open fast enough. She did ruin his clothes and much of his pants for that matter, and the driver glanced back nervously. Then, stupidly, she began to cry.
“We’ll get you back home soon,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not going to that house. Please. Stop. Stop. Stop, make it stop, make it all stop. Please.” What have I done? I didn’t need to come out, it wasn’t that bad, it was just that it had been so long and I’d forgotten. I should have stayed inside and everything would have never happened, this is all wrong, wrong, wrong.
Then she passed out.
Chapter 8 Lydia
I. Next day R & Ts
Packing and preparations tomorrow night (See checklist on back), Meet with M in the morning
Special reminders
Last notebook left, sort the old books in the afternoon tomorrow, new SN coming soon
7:15- 9:20
Hmk, sch (B)
Todo:Start on TSD (p10)
10:00
J’s present (5 days e)
Sch Hmk + notes
*Leaving Jan. 27 7:00!!!!!!
January 25, The White Book
Lydia flinched; she’d been expecting Martha, but when she reached the apartment, it was Arianne who opened the door for her. The girl was wrapped up in a thick white sweater with a high collar that she’d turned inside-out and pulled up so high it enveloped her entire neck. Her face was powdered with paint, lips red, lashes black. “Oh, hi, Lydia. Martha’s been waiting for you.”
I know. “Hi, Arianne.” She walked into Martha’s room. She’d been in this apartment so many times she knew it as well as her own. It was a lot like hers, even, though much bigger and not as cluttered. She found Martha sitting on the rug at the foot of her bed, clutching a mug. Her long brown hair stroked her hands. She looked up and smiled a bit tremulously. “I’m sorry I’m being so stupid, it’s probably nothing.”
“You’re not stupid.” Lydia sat herself down next to Martha and took her hand. “It’s normal. Anyone would want to stay next to their family if their dad was having surgery, I definitely would even if I had to cancel a hundred trips with my best friend. No offense there.”
Martha’s father had been hospitalized for a while now, but Lydia had always known that it was a minor thing, something to do with his liver. Originally he would have been back home by now, but Martha told her that there was to be another operation moved to the next day. Lydia refrained from asking what sort of operation it was; it would do Martha little good to hear her talk on about all the risks.
Martha laughed shakily. “I’ve been worrying so much. The doctors all say it isn’t that much of a big deal and he’ll definitely be fine, but they said that last time too and something went wrong, and I’m so worried right now. When mom told me this morning I was really freaking out, it was so nice of Arianne to come over.”
Lydia gave a non-committal mumble. Truthfully, she was a bit chafed to know that Arianne would be the first person Martha would call up instead of her. She glanced at the mug in her hands. Hot chocolate. At least Arianne hadn’t tried to introduce Martha to the wonders of drinking. Yet.
They spent the next hour talking with Martha, and at the end of it she seemed considerably more relaxed. “Lydia, you should take someone else to go with you. Ameri, maybe, or Del. I’ll make up for it next time, really.”
“You’ve got nothing to make up for, it’s completely normal. And having some time to myself will be good anyway.” She liked Ameri and Delissa well enough, but mostly just at school.
“Wait,” Arianne said. “You were supposed to go out together?”
“Day after next, actually. But I’ll be fine on my own, it’ll still be fun. A lot more privacy. Though there’ll be that empty bed next to mine, I wonder if Mom will be able to cancel the rooms this late.” She smiled at Martha.
“I could go with you.”
“What?”
“I mean… I could pay for the tickets by myself, and everything. We wouldn’t have to stay in the same room. If you mind, I mean.”
Martha looked up expectantly. Lydia quickly groomed her features into one of pondering concentration instead of obvious refusal. “Oh…right. I could think about that.”
“That’s perfect, Arianne.” Martha looked at Lydia, beseeching her. “You would get to know each other better too, and Lydia won’t have to run the streets by herself. And it would make me feel better.”
I’d do pretty well on myself. Martha knew about her dislike for Arianne, and most like the feeling was mutual. Why would she ask that? We aren’t even close. “Well… I’d love to go with Arianne, obviously. But don’t you want one of us to keep you company?”
“No, no, I’ll have to be at the hospital the next few days, and mom and grandma will be there too. It’s fine, you two can have fun.”
“We two” are not going to have fun. “Oh. Okay. That would be nice.” She would agree for now; when Martha wasn’t there she could cut things off with Arianne.
Arianne looked over to her and gave a little, almost apologetic half-smile. She’d pulled down the collar and it pooled at the base of her throat. Lydia thought she could see red scratches peeking over the rim, but wasn’t certain, and Arianne nonchalantly tugged her collar up again. “I’m sure Lydia and I will have a great time, Martha. Don’t worry. We won’t argue.”
No, because you are not coming with me.
The sky was dark when they left the apartment, as Martha’s mother had returned. Lydia hugged Martha goodbye. “Promise you’ll call every night, okay?”
“Of course.”
They were well out of the house and down the road when Lydia turned on Arianne. “Whose idea was that?”
“Mine.” Arianne gave her a lazy smile. Lydia hated that smile, hated the way the other girl never took anything seriously. “Sorry if you’re uncomfortable with me padding after with you on the streets of your beautiful city and messing up your pretty plans, but I won’t bother you, and we won’t have to share a room. You could just leave on your own, I won’t mind. And I’ll play the part well enough for your mother. It is your mother who’s coming with us, is it?”
“Why do you even want to stay with me?”
“I never said I did.”
“Then don’t ruin it!” She knew she sounded like a whiney little girl, but couldn’t bring herself to stay calm. “I was supposed to go with Martha! And it’s fine that she can’t come, but why you?” She didn’t care about offending the other girl; most likely they wouldn’t cross paths again, and Arianne wouldn’t rebuke her in front of Martha, no more than she would.
Arianne raised her eyebrows. “It seems like I’m not on the top of the list of your favorite people.”
“Did you do this just to annoy me?”
“No, I did it because I saw no cause in wasting a perfectly good ticket and a hotel room.”
“Which you will pay for!”
“That I will. I won’t spend your money, you have my word on that.”
“Is this about showing off how rich you are, then? Do it with someone else, my family is too poor for that sort of thing.”
Arianne said nothing. Lydia was starting to regret her words, but she had never been one to think before she spoke. They were standing on the sidewalk, the other girl a few inches taller than she was, especially in those heels of hers. In the dim light of a streetlamp, her eyes looked more black than blue, the dark circles under them as prominent as eyeholes in a skull. “Look, Lydia.” Her voice was cooler now, steely. The smile had left her lips. “I don’t value my precious alone time with you, if that’s what you’re worrying about. You don’t like me, and I respect that. I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll have my own room, bring my own food if you want to.” She raised a hand as Lydia opened her mouth to object. “And you promised Martha.” She smiled a little again, not showing her teeth.
The last jab was just unfair. Lydia stood there with wind eddying around her, making her pull her coat around her more tightly. It won’t be so different. Only when Mom is around. “Don’t drink anything except water if you’re there.”
“Why not? It’s not like you’ll be there. Though I’ll be more than happy to introduce you if you’re willing.”
“What do you think my mom is going to think when you come back half drunk in the middle of the night covered in your own vomit?”
“It won’t come to that.”
“That’s not what I heard last week.”
“What happened last week stays in last week. It won’t happen again.”
Lydia crossed her arms. “You agreed to make things easier for me. Just do it. I have no idea why your parents don’t care about you banging around the night who knows where with a couple of drunks, but some of us have lives, if that’s what you’re wondering about. You are not drinking anything except water the next week. Or you just stay at your fancy house and leave me alone.”
Lydia turned, and stormed home.
Chapter 9 Arianne
Arianne stretched her legs out on the pavement, letting the sun warm her skin. The wind was still cold, but the sun’s rays still warmed what they touched. She pinned her hair up and slid her hands out of her sleeves, flexing her fingers.
Pax sat next to her. She’d dyed her hair indigo yesterday, in the place of the dark blue it used to be, and new rings bumped against each other hanging on her ears. Her metal bracelets tinked softly as she ran a hand through her hair. “Arianne, he’s bound to find out sometime. You should just tell him, better than if he learns from someone else who twists the details.”
“Maybe next time.”
“I still can’t believe he said nothing after you threw up on him. Didn’t he even ask?”
“Why do you keep on coming back to that detail?”
Paxon laughed. “Well, your choice, then.” She turned around so her back rested against Arianne’s side, hefting her legs so they dangled over the park bench.
“I’m leaving on a trip with Lydia Strayen tomorrow.”
Pax twisted to look at her. “Her? Why?”
Arianne shrugged. “Get away. For some time, at least. Though truth be told, she was not high up on the list of people I’d like to spend time with.”
“So true. You should have come with me on a trip, if my parents didn’t hate you so much. Lydia Strayen probably has obsessive tendencies. She carries that huge tome of hers everywhere she goes and jots down everything in it. Don’t get on her bad side, she’ll probably write it down and kill you ten years later in your sleep.”
Arianne laughed. “I already did.”
“I fear for your well-being.”
The topic ended there. Arianne felt strange how easy this seemed, a conversation, three or four sentences, and it was all done. She wasn’t old enough to fly away on her own, and couldn’t stay with her friends too long. Lydia’s trip was like a god-send, though perhaps not the most pleasurable experience possible. She remembered how the other girl’s eyes had slit in the dark, narrowing to glittering green chips. I have no idea why your parents don’t care about you banging around the night who knows where with a couple of drunks, but some of us have lives, if that’s what you’re wondering about. Her words had cut, more than Arianne let on. She imagined grabbing the girl by her collar and dragging her so close she would see the chasm in Arianne’s eyes, as she ripped the life out of the other girl, the life she should have had.
…no idea why your parents don’t care about you…
She leaned back on the bench and let Paxon’s words wash over her. It felt good in the sun, bundled up safely in heavy coats and leggings. A leaf spiraled down to her, and she caught it in her fingers and twirled it around.
A fair puzzlement, that. I’ve had my share of wondering.
Her thoughts drifted. She felt Paxon’s back pressed against her shoulder and arm, jolting as she pushed at the bench’s armrest with a boot, so they swayed with the motion. She wondered how it would be if it were Tarra next to her, with her hooking a leg over a knee and kicking at the bench.
She had woken on the sofa in his room with knives clattering around in her skull. Tarra had his back to her, sitting at his desk. There was a quiet buzz of the heating, and the smell of coffee and toasted bread lingered in the air, though the usually pleasant scents set her stomach turning. Why am I here? She’d thought, too tired to sit up, though she’d been grateful. Thank god he didn’t take me back. Eliana would have been on the drugs coming down at that time had they gone back to her house, and Arianne would most likely be faced with hours of motherly education. She grimaced. My sweet mother, the perfect talker. Eliana had never been one to really lay hands on her, had only once slapped her hand lightly with a ruler one time when she was very young, and that other time. Mostly she just talked. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Arianne would very much prefer to have her bones broken.
She’d been laid on the sofa on her side, a blanket drawn over her, and in a sweater and a coat both much too big for her. She watched Tarra at his desk for a while. He had been typing at his keyboard, the blue screen shining in the dark. It had already been light outside, well into the morning judging from the sticky golden light that leaked in from between the curtains, but he’d drawn the blinds over the windows and closed the door. She felt oddly serene, wondering how long it would take for him to piece his puzzle together and start rummaging around in her past. Soon he’ll know, and there’ll be nothing I can do about it. Perhaps she had betrayed herself on the long drive home, saying things she should have kept to herself, and that was why he hadn’t put her back in her house.
There was a loud clink as a spoon clattered to the floor. Arianne winced loudly. Tarra turned and sat down next to her. “You look horrible.”
“Ever romantic,” she mumbled. “Lying me down on the sofa instead of the bed was a great idea, too.” Her back and neck ached.
“I was afraid you’d take it as an insult.” He brushed the hair from her forehead. “It’s great to have you talk in straight sentences again, by the way. Do you want some food?”
Her stomach turned. “Later.”
“I thought so.” He didn’t say more.
“Why am I here?”
“You were so drunk you couldn’t remember your house’s address, and I forgot to ask Paxton. My parents weren’t home, anyway.”
Thank god for that. She didn’t even remember being asked for it. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Do you want to call your parents? They’ll be worrying.” His voice was careful.
“No, it’s fine. I’ll be back later. Thanks for the stay.” So he didn’t know anything. Yet. There was a queer, dizzying rush of relief. “Are you going to ask why I got drunk?”
He turned away, and she couldn’t see his expression. “Paxton told me,” he said, his voice still calm and neutral.
Her stomach turned again, even though she was pretty sure Pax wouldn’t give her away. There was a long pause, long enough for her nerves to start fraying.
“Said they dragged you into it. Remse, and such. You could have called me earlier, you know.”
The relief returned, and she silently thanked Pax. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“To be sure. You don’t drink much, do you?” There was the slightest edge to his voice, although she might have imagined it. “A couple of glasses and you puke your guts out.”
What lies have Pax been feeding him? Anyone who’d seen her would have known at one glance that it hadn’t been “a couple of glasses”. For all he knew, the nights she spent out with Pax were in some café, poring over books. “It was… stronger than I imagined.”
“Okay. Just don’t do that again, alright? Next time it happens you call me earlier. Promise me that.” He still faced the windows, away from her.
“I promise,” she’d whispered.
He’d sat her up then, and gave her back her clothes that he’d washed. “Do you want to go back now? I could come with you.”
Again. The thought was almost tempting that she could have someone else at her side in the house other than Eliana, but Tarra could not be allowed to see. Only in his eyes can I see the person I want to be, and that mirror will shatter the second he sees me. “No, I can manage. But thank you for taking me here. Can you turn around for a minute?”
She’d dressed, buttoning the coat up to the top. She’d thought she caught the flush of pink creeping up his neck, and smiled to herself.
Chapter 10 Lydia
“It’s just wrong, Mom,” Lydia groused as she was going over her fourth round of complaining. “I don’t want to spend time with her!” I said yes to Martha. Why didn’t I agree to take Del, or Ameri? I shouldn’t have said yes.
Her mother perched on a stool next to her feet. “I still don’t understand why you hate her so much. She seemed like a nice girl. Very quiet, very polite. Good manners. And she has very good grades, too.”
“Martha is polite and quiet. Not Arianne.”
“Lydia, don’t be so stubborn. You always take the longest time to warm up to strangers. You hated Martha at first, don’t you remember? Said she was the ‘weird girl’ from the other town who stole all your friends. And you never take what other people give you. You remember how long it took you to try sushi? Then you loved it. And don’t get me started on all the books I gave you that you declined at first.”
Lydia’s cheeks heated. It was true, she always pushed people away at first, clasping on to old beliefs. New things were unanticipated, therefore unplanned, and bewildering. “But Mooom,” she whined, “Arianne is different! I really don’t like her, and I won’t ever like her. It’s not right.”
“Tell me one thing she’s done that makes you hate her so much.”
“She hangs out with a bunch of rich kids, and she wears a lot of makeup, and dresses like she’s 26. She goes to bars at night and still acts superior just because she’s popular and people think she’s pretty and rich and has good grades, and likes to talk poetry and literature. She doesn’t like me and she laughs at my book. She laughs at everything and acts like life is a joke.”
“So she’s doing good at school, has a lot of friends, likes reading, is a bit mature, goes out for a drink once in a while, and isn’t the biggest fan of your obsessive planning.”
“Mom! It’s not once in a while, and she hates me!”
“I’m sure a lot of people would if you carry that attitude towards them. Can’t you just put down those colored spectacles for a while? I think spending time with her would be good for you, teach you some respect, actually.”
“Mother.” Lydia dragged out the word until it sounded pompous and formal. “Mother, she goes out in the middle of the night, wearing nothing on but tights and a dress in the middle of winter, and gets herself so drunk she couldn’t even remember her home address. You want me to learn from her?”
“And from whom does this enchanting story come from?”
“It’s not a story! It’s the truth! Ameri says so, and so does Delissa.”
“From what you’ve told me of them, I sincerely doubt this story’s level of reality. What does Martha think?”
“Martha likes her,” Lydia admits begrudgingly, “But for the life of me I can’t see why. But Martha likes everyone, mom. You can’t take her account.”
“Martha has a talent of seeing the good in people, a talent you lack very much, from what I see. The only problem I’m seeing is that the 17-year-old girl likes to get herself a drink from time to time. While not behavior I would encourage you on, I’m not going to be prudish here. I did, at her age, and I remember that time when you came home with a bottle of wine in your hand.”
“Which I drank one swallow of.”
“Lydia, you’re being irrational. Arianne is a nice girl, and it would be a delight to have her come along. Don’t make this hard for yourself. You like Martha, but that doesn’t mean you should shut your eyes to every other person.”
“Fine.” Lydia muttered. They’d been over this many times already and she knew the battle was lost. “Do I have to sleep in a room with her, though? She said she would pay for her own. I could stay with you.”
“You’re going to isolate the poor girl who is your classmate and knows no one else on this trip to a place she’s never been before—”
Lydia threw her hands in the air. She felt like shouting. “She said so! If she agrees, I don’t see why you have to make such a big fuss about it! Arianne is just fine with being on her own, thank you very much! She lives on her own, in that big rambling mansion of hers at the outskirts of town. She’ll be just fine for five nights living in a safe, clean, private hotel room, mom!”
“Calm down, Lydia.” Her mother frowned. “If you act like you hate her so much, of course she would pick up on that and offer to stay on her own, but that doesn’t mean she wants to. She’s been alone for so long every day. And anyway, we’ve already booked the rooms, and I wouldn’t want to waste her money.”
“She has no shortage of money, dearest mother.”
“That doesn’t mean we’ll have to swindle her. It’s wasting money to order another room when she could have paid half if she stays with you.”
“Swindle her?” The idea was so absurd she almost choked. “The money is not coming to us! And she doesn’t care about saving money, mom, can’t you hear me? The girl is rich!”
“For one who hates her so much, you seem to know an awful lot about her.”
Lydia groaned, and put her head in her hands.
Chapter 11 Arianne
They all say go to the
White wall;
That all springs from in
Creation; who shuts out the angels
That rise from the
Skyline
Above that lining of jagged glass
Broken portraits that spin
From beneath my ragged limp
To graze the fires of hells
And let me stay pinned, to this
White wall;
Implacable, pure as a dream, that weeps
infinite tears as I shut
my eyes to the black
Sky, to kiss the lowly winds that touch
My ankles, in their pursuit
To erase their sins
Live their lives in a hush
January 26, Arianne’s book
“Mother.” Arianne stood at the doorstep, wavering. Eliana stood inside in a white silk blouse and a long black skirt. The warm air rushed outside, bathing Arianne in equal parts of heat and cold. “Sorry I’m late. I was in a classmate’s home.”
Eliana’s hands fluttered. She smelled of perfume and powder. The pale blue eyes searched her face, her clothes. “I didn’t hear you leave, Arianne. Why didn’t you at least leave a note?”
“I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you.” The words were bitter on her tongue, though no heavier than the lie had been. Who am I kidding? A blind person could see through them. “Mother, could I come in? It’s cold outside.”
“Oh, oh, yes… Of course, it’s not kind of me to leave you standing out there.” Eliana opened the door wider, but didn’t step back, so Arianne still wavered on the doorstep. There was a click-click-click as Eliana’s nails tapped on the door frame. Blue nails, as pale as her eyes. Her hands were the only part of her that seemed the same age as her face. There was a long moment, until Eliana said, with some irritation, “Come on in now, Arianne. Don’t be shy.”
Is she even more drunk than I am? “Mother.”
“Yes?”
“Mother, I can’t go in.”
Eliana stepped back, looking confused. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she mumbled, shedding her coat and walking to her room. She wanted nothing more than to draw the blinds and fall asleep again. The light was too bright. Her room was colder than the rest of the house, a window open, the door closed. She found herself wishing for the sofa and sweater she’d abandoned.
After a while, Eliana knocked on the door. Arianne flinched. Her mother peeked in, carrying a saucer and a cup of coffee. “Arianne? Mother made you some tea.”
That’s coffee. She took the cup. “Thanks.” She made no move to touch it; her appetite was in no means back. The first time she was back, Eliana was mercifully out, and she’d cleaned herself up and left for Martha’s, returning only when she thought Eliana had been asleep, then left early the next day with Pax. This time she wasn’t so lucky.
Her mother hovered. “Is it too hot?” She fretted. “Or too sweet, perhaps?”
Arianne put the cup to her lips and sipped. The taste was thick and cloying, but she smiled thinly. “It’s alright.”
“I wanted to take care of you, but you kept running off.” Eliana’s eyes were watery with hurt. “I haven’t seen you for three days.”
“I was here. I was just busy.”
Her mother leaned against her desk. “Why?”
Not this again. “I don’t know, mother. My classmate invited me to go on a trip with her the next week, by the way.”
Her attention snapped up. “Who asked you? When? You can’t be running off by yourself.”
“I’m not. Lydia Strayen, her mother will come with us. It’s only a few days. We’ll leave tomorrow.” She kept her answers short and clipped.
“You’re not leaving.”
“Mother, I’ve done the tickets. And the rooms.” Lydia had conveyed to her somewhat grudgingly that they would be staying together, at her mother’s bequest. Mother’s bequest.
“No. No. You’re not leaving.” Pale blue eyes drilled into her. “You’re not. You’re not.”
“I am.”
“I’ve always wanted to be good to you, Arianne. Why do you keep pushing me away?”
Her temples throbbed. “Like a few nights ago? Mother?” It was not like her to rebuke Eliana, and she regretted the words instantly. She wanted to pull the words back into her mouth, the way a fisherman does with his string.
“I wasn’t myself. I apologized. You knew that. But I was good to you, even though you hated me. I took you to the hospital that year, you remember? I was by your bedside day and night, as tired as you were. I was scared for you. I paid your fees and gave you a house, and come back to see you… I talked to your teachers about you, Arianne. But you never seem to feel it.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Do you?”
“No, mother.”
Eliana always had those reoccurring, strange bouts of remembrance when she professed to love her. I was good to you, she would say. I was, I was. I loved you, I wanted you to be good, but you pushed me away. I’m sorry for that one time, that second time and third time and fourth time I misbehaved, but I apologized.
And always the stares. She would glance at her when she was eating, when she was sleeping, when she was in the shower, when she was reading, walking, talking. Always Arianne could feel those eyes, the pale blue gaze, on her face, between her shoulder blades, at her throat, on her arms. She seldom spoke of it, but she knew what Eliana always thought when she looked at her and sank into her brooding silences. Why is it that you look more and more like him? Why is it that you look so young?
“You’re not leaving me.” Eliana said.
“No,” Arianne replied. “You are.”
“I never left. He left. Why did you leave?” And there it was again, that look of seeing past her, through her, into another face. Eliana’s voice shook. “Why did you leave me, why did you go away, we had a sweet little girl and you loved her, you liked her, you would stay for her, you said so.”
I can’t have this again. “Mother, I am not father.”
Eliana prattled on, oblivious. “You told me. You told me so, and you broke your promise. Why? I did everything, everything for you. I gave you everything you needed. I gave you the child, the little baby, and you stayed for her, and you left, and you won. You had everything I gave you, and I was left with her.”
It’s better during the day, Arianne tried to reassure herself. During the day you can just look away and forget. It’s harder during the nights, in the dark. Now you can just forget, and you’ll be far away tomorrow.
The temperature had dropped by the time Arianne heard her mother close her door, a few rooms down the hall. She breathed freely. She had just finished showering, and she was clean, the room filled with pine-scented steam. The box was stashed safely beneath her mattress. She pulled it out and locked the bathroom door behind her, then sat down on the marble floor, flipping open the black box. A pretty knife with a dainty blade and a slim supple lead-colored handle lay inside, with a pair of pincers, alcohol swabs, tape, and a pack of cotton pads. She stared at the kit. It always began with a sick, nauseating sense of excitement and panic that made her want to hit something or cry very loudly. Her head pounded; her nerves were raw, her hands shook.
She took the knife in her right hand and hiked up her nightgown. Silvery lines crisscrossed her skin. Her wrists and forearms and the skin above her elbows all still had angry red welts on them, but her thighs had been left alone long enough to seem clean. The blade of the knife was cool against her skin, and the moment it bit down she felt the tension drain out of her like a tranquilizer shot, like the blood beginning to creep down onto the floor was poison and she had been cleansed of it. Her head cleared, and her breathing became steadier. It’s okay, it’s all okay now. Everything’s going to be fine. She took a cotton pad and began to swab off the blood, pressing the pad to the cut. Then when the bleeding had half stopped she took another and used the tape to hold it firmly in place. The cut hadn’t been deep enough to be in need of bandaging, really, but the routine calmed her, made her feel cooler and steadier. She got on her hands and knees and mopped up the blood on the floor and threw the cotton pads in the toilet, then flushed. There we go, there we are. It’s all okay now. She stepped out of her clothes and discarded them in a corner, then fell into bed, pulling cool white sheets above her head.
Chapter 12 Lydia
And she gets the good seat, too? Arianne had tucked herself into the window seat, her head turned to rest against the cabin walls. Lydia squeezed into the seat next to her. She was being petty over details, but everything annoyed her at this point. Lydia took her notebooks out. Arianne looked at her for a while, then laughed. “You’re seriously doing work on a vacation?”
“Unlike some of us, I have a life.”
“Those words again. What about it?” She leaned back, tucked her legs in next to her.
“That’s none of your business.” Lydia didn’t turn around.
“It’s going to be three hours. Don’t tell me we’ll just sit through it doing nothing. Come on, Lydia, let’s talk.”
“You’re the only one who’s doing nothing.” Arianne had that small, lazy smile that Lydia hated again. She wanted to reach over and scratch it off her face. Why can you do nothing and still have everything, then take it for granted? Why do I have to reach for everything, that you have and throw out of the window like trash?
“That can change. Put that book of yours down and turn around.”
“This is not The Book. This is just a book. And don’t even start comparing yourself with Martha.”
“Ah, forgive me for my faults. I’m sorry that I’ve dishonored your holy book. An easy mistake, that. One book looks very much like another.”
“If you’d even paid the least bit attention to me instead of going through fourth-hand jokes, you’d know that The Book looks nothing like the other books. What happened to not bothering me?”
“Are you angry about me not paying enough attention to you?”
“I know I’m too far below you for that. Has anyone told you you talk too much?”
“I’m in a good mood today, it happens.”
No one would have known that by looking at you, Lydia thought viciously. The other girl looked nothing but average without her makeup, her lips too pale, her eyes not as full, hair not even combed through, the shadows under her eyes more prominent. Everything she has is fake. “Then leave me in peace. You said you’d keep your mouth shut.”
“How rude of you.” That smile again. “It’s amusing to talk to you sometimes, though. Very interesting things I can find.”
I’ll be the laughingstock of the whole school when I get back, I’m sure. Lydia didn’t reply. After a while Arianne sighed and pulled her hood over her head, turning away to look out of the window, and at last Lydia could work in peace.
When she felt the plane dive, the sky was awash in crimson. She glanced over to look outside, trying not to be too obvious as she craned her neck a little. Arianne had her eyes closed, her face half hidden in shadow. Lydia leaned over. Pink and blue colors swirled around each other on a palette of white, and where the blue met the green of the mountains red and orange bloomed in bizarre flowers, intertwining around each other. Sharp juts of rock hid the sun, but its glow bathed the sky.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
Lydia jerked back. The other girl’s cobalt eyes were watching her beneath heavy lids. They opened wider at her response as she laughed. “Am I so terrifying?”
The words were at her lips before she could stop them. All her anger spilled over; the disappointment at not having Martha next to her, the frustration that it was Arianne, the maddening lilt of her words and that slow little smile and irritating laugh, the resentment at her mother for thinking she knew everything, the regret that she’d ever agreed to this. It was supposed to be perfect, we were going to be so happy. It’s all ruined, it’s her, it’s her. If she were not in a plane cabin, she would have been shouting. Her voice was a hiss. “No. You wouldn’t scare a dog. I just find you pitiful. You have everything and you still just wallow around in your despicable self-pity, throwing everything away, and still think you’re all high and mighty because people who have nothing better to do kiss up to you and pretend they like you. Well, I don’t know what Martha ever saw in you, because you’re just a little girl who acts all fancy but broken and expects everyone to fawn over you.” Her chest was heaving. “I don’t care about what you think or what you do, if you ever do anything that isn’t just simper and smirk and wait for everything to be handed to you on a platter. Just leave me--”
The plane lurched violently. Lydia gritted her teeth as the motion drove her stomach into her throat, effectively cutting off her sentence. She drove on. “Life has more things to do than cry over your petty little worries, and there’s no use in things that are so obviously wrong. Drinking isn’t anything cool that other people look up to, and you don’t look even remotely pitiful when you’re hungover or puking at a sink, if pity is what you’re staging for. Maybe only that blind boyfriend of yours doesn’t see what the mess your empty life is in, but everyone with two eyes can tell what you’re prancing about.” She heard the echoes of her father, her mother, her sister, her brother in her words. Life is not a dream, Lydia. You have to reach for things, and meet life to its face.
The plane dipped again. She felt a rush of headiness, but didn’t know if it was from the motion or the venom she’d spit. There it is, I’m said it all now. No doubt it would be awkward later, but she would deal with later when it came, and perhaps Arianne would take her usual method of pretending nothing happened.
She found herself still leaning over her armrest, her eyes steadily leveled with the other girl’s. She pulled back. Arianne said nothing, just sat there like she was carved from stone. The buzzing of the wind was so loud Lydia couldn’t hear her own thoughts.
Then Arianne pushed back her hood, and laughed. “Great speaker.” She gave a bright grin. “Was that written out in your plans, too?”
Chapter 13 Arianne
Arianne slipped the gown over her head. She’d already tried ten ways of bundling up or smoothing out the thing, but truth was that it just wasn’t enough. It was the gown she put on at home, the normal one, not the other one she saved. Why didn’t I remember we were going to share a room? When Eliana was home, she would don the uniform, long sleeves, high neck, low hem, but alone it was just this, with loose sleeves not barely up to her forearms and a neckline cut low. She could have brought her sweater into the bathroom with her, at least.
If she sees, she sees. Not that she’s going to care. After the day, her initial contempt for Lydia had grown into a deeper dislike. She almost hoped she hadn’t come. Almost. Still better her than the house. Lydia had played meek when in the presence of her mother, the brown-eyed, brown-haired, soft matronly woman who smiled at Arianne and chided her daughter gently when Lydia snapped at her. Arianne had smiled, and said nothing.
To be true, she had wanted to leave Lydia Strayen by the time she spat at her, but thought the better of it. Lydia’s emotions were straightforward and easy to read, loud, clear, quick to anger and quick to forgive. She knows nothing of me, how can I blame her for it? Not her fault she’s a poor blind fool, or that she’s been coddled to be a little baby child. She could see it in the other girl’s eyes that she’d regretted her earlier words as she sneaked glances at Arianne, that the steam had gone as it had risen, but still held her former opinion towards her. Also, she knew that her glowering didn’t irritate Lydia half so much as her smiles, so she gave her much of that.
Arianne glanced in the mirror, grimaced. Nothing I can do about that. Thin pale pink marks ran across the hollow of her throat and collarbones and top of her ribs, and the silvery lines and dark marks on her arms would not have much place to be hid. She opened the door.
Lydia was already in her pajamas, a thick, blue-and-white fluffy thing that cinched at the waist, lying on her stomach on the bed with her wavy red hair touching her shoulders, her phone pressed to her ear as she talked to Martha. “I know,” she was saying, as she rolled over and pressed her face to the pillows. Her arms were tan and smooth and unscarred, her bare feet pedaling the air. “Of course. Worry a bit more about yourself. Yes. Yes. Bye. No, we’re not. Bye again. That’s good. Really? Oh, that would be really nice. Okay now, bye for real.”
Arianne had thought about snatching up her sweater and putting it on before Lydia turned around, but her bed was in front of hers. She walked over, trying to keep her back to the other girl. Lydia had just hung up and was staring at her.
Everyone stares at me. For a moment she felt the pale blue gaze of her mother instead of the clear green eyes of Lydia Strayen, and her skin pebbled. Would she try to cover herself as she was doing now if it were Eliana in that bed opposite her instead of Lydia? Or would she pull down her neckline and shove up her skirts and sleeves, and scream the words she’d always wanted to say? That had not happened, not once, even in the hottest summer days. Coward, weakling, inhuman, abomination.
Her felt rather than saw the other girl’s response as her eyes found her scars. Look at me there, get an eyeful. Here’s that simpering smirking prancing rich girl who drinks herself blind and wastes all her money. She closed her eyes as she remembered the words again, letting them eddy around her. Pitiful… despicable girl… no life… She turned around and sat down on the bed, met Lydia’s eyes squarely. “What? Fallen in love with me, have you?”
The green eyes were wide and horrified, and above all confused, pitying, shocked. Arianne hated that. She could take the despise and loathing, maybe even the disgust. But if the first words out of her mouth are “why did you do that to yourself”, I’ll slap her in the face for it. She took out her moisturizer and rubbed at her face, then slathered her arms and neck. It stung, but she didn’t mind.
Her phone rang and she turned her back on the other girl, slipped her legs under the quilt and the sweater over her head.
“Hi.” It was Tarra.
“Mmn-hmm,” she mumbled as she applied chapstick.
“Where are you now?”
“Hotel.” She pursed her lips and flipped open the mirror to have a look at her face. “I just had a shower. Probably going to sleep soon.”
“I was kind of worried that you would be asleep already when I called.”
“You got lucky, then.” It was eleven o’clock, not even remotely late for her. “We kind of wandered around for the night, really. I finished your book.”
She could hear his smile through the line. “My book?”
“Your story. Reread it, actually.”
“So?”
“I liked it. I liked the main character. Is she me? I didn’t know I did drugs.”
“She’s not you.”
“Yeah, and she has purple eyes and dark hair and a very handsome boyfriend.” She smiled and wondered what he would look like if he were right in front of her.
“You can’t blame me for adding what I was thinking about when I wrote.”
“Can you look in the mirror now?”
A pause. “Yes. Why?”
“Tell me if your face is pink or red.”
He laughed. “White with shock.”
“What happens next? She’s gone blind and is addicted to morphine. Are you trying to get me killed?”
“Arianne, that’s not you. She just sort of looks like you.”
“I know.” She remembered other girl in his story, the one with lilac eyes and a head full of dreams, a sweet girl child. “I’m the other one, right? The little girl.”
Another pause. “Yes.”
“She’s an orphan.”
“Yes.”
“And she has a guardian angel.”
He laughed again. “Now you’re making things up.”
“I am not. He turns up at all the weird places.”
“So you really did reread it.”
“Would I lie to you?”
A longer pause. “I was doubting if you’d really read it through.”
“No, it’s good, really. It’s just kind of jumbled up. The part when Illrya meets the wolf. And that other part…”
There was another reason she liked Tarra; he was the only other person she could talk to about the world of stories and poems and flying things who really knew what she was saying. They disagreed on many accounts, and Arianne had to admit his style of writing wasn’t her favorite, but at least he didn’t pretend to understand. Sometimes she could even pretend he knew everything about her and they were the two characters in their stories, burrowing under the ground of a gothic city.
“It’s getting late,” he said when half an hour had passed. “And I believe you are tormenting poor Lydia with our talk.”
Now there’s an interesting thought. “Okay. Night.”
“Sweet dreams.”
Arianne flipped off the lights, and waited.
Chapter 14 Lydia
What’s wrong with her? She should see a doctor.
She tried to listen for traces of something in the other girl’s voice that gave her away, some telltale edge of madness or a spark of pain, but her voice was as light and feathery as the stuffing in her pillows, as she laughed and chattered on. Oh, this nonsense, again. Wolves and other worlds and mythical figures and such. Maybe living in her head so much had deprived the girl of her ability to think normally.
She remembered seeing her at Martha’s, with that high collar that had puddled around her neck, and the roots of pink scars creeping up her throat, remembered the summer when the other girl had run in a loose long-sleeved shirt that had gotten splotched with sweat, and how the others had fawned over her afterwards. She remembered how her hand had dipped when she took something out and she’d tugged the sleeves lower, or nonchalantly sliding up her collar.
There are really people who do this to themselves. How stupid are they? Lydia always thought that people who slit their wrists did it only in movies when they attempted suicide. Suicide was cowardly, but why would anyone cut themselves if that wasn’t the goal? She remembered her middle school clinical health teacher telling the class a case where a boy used a pencil sharpener and rubber bands to slit his wrists over and over. She said that it was okay to ask for help. To tell someone. Arianne obviously hadn’t told anyone. She said that no one would judge us if we came out clean with our pain, whatever that meant. Lydia was judging her, certainly. It was just wrong.
Abruptly the lights were flipped off, and the small square of light came only from the other girl’s phone. Then that went black as well, and the room was washed in shades of gray and silver and black and white. Lydia could hear Arianne’s soft steady breathing. She made no move to lie down and go to sleep, only sat there propped up against the pillows, and Lydia was cross-legged on top of a jumble of bedding.
The air conditioner spat hot gusts of wind that ruffled her hair slightly. No one had drawn the curtains, so pale moonlight filtered in and bathed the carpet and white sheets in weak silver linings that shuddered to stay intact. Every time the other girl twitched, they would wobble, like reflections in a swaying puddle. Arianne looked strangely calm, her eyes blank and reflecting moonlight, cast down to her wrists, laid on the white bedsheets. Lydia wondered for a moment if all the scars would look silver in the moonlight, or if in this black and white and gray world would spring out in bursting red and purple and pink, like obscene worms burrowing under the thin covering of skin, waiting to crawl out. She felt sick. “I—”
“Don’t say it.” Arianne cut her off. There was no malice in the other girl’s voice, only a flat, thin edge. “That I’m wrong in doing it and you can’t imagine why. I know that’s what you think, but don’t say that. Or I swear, I will carry you and throw you out of this window, or push you off a mountain summit tomorrow.”
Lydia didn’t say anything. Arianne’s face was devoid of emotion as she turned her arms under the pale silvery light to look at herself. “I haven’t really looked much myself. Not such a pretty sight, that. I don’t blame you.” Lydia thought she could hear the smile in her words as she said, “You look like you need some smelling salts. Poor little Lydia. Never seen such a disgusting sight in real life, have you?” Her words cut, but her voice stayed flat. “Here, come over, take a good long full look at the cuts Arianne made to gain her pity and sympathy, cause that’s what she’s after, isn’t she?”
Lydia looked away. This is wrong, she thought, that’s all sick and wrong. She remembered hurtling those words at the other girl earlier, but couldn’t even remember the exact words she’d said. “Arianne, I’m—”
“If you want to say you’re sorry, shut up. My apologies if that wasn’t your intention.” She pulled her sleeves down again and turned away, the light stoking an unearthly profile of her face that glowed silver in the dark. “No? I thought so. I hate people telling me they’re sorry. Makes me feel petty when I don’t want to forgive them. Not you, though, I don’t really care about you.” She slid down beneath the sheets, pulling them up until they covered half her face, her back to Lydia. Her hair slid into a rivulet of shiny dark tresses that pooled around her head. In the silver glow, it could have passed as much for quicksilver as for blood.
Chapter 15 Arianne
The wind ruffled through Arianne’s hair, making it billow in a dark sheen around her shoulders. The air was filled to bursting with the scent of rain; the heavy, humid smell of thick fog and mud and freshly mown grass. The pine needles were soft under her steps, and Arianne almost felt content. How long has it been since I’ve left the city?
She remembered a blurry autumn, with red-gold leaves and snapped twigs, a brook dammed by fallen logs. Father was there, and I in his arms. She remembered being bounced up and down in his arms, even thrown up as she giggled and squealed, but there were always strong arms to catch her. There was always someone there for me, she remembered, until there wasn’t. Eliana was there too, her face a silvery shadow in her memories, always by her lover’s side, smiling up at him. We were so happy.
When had it all changed? She wondered. When father left us? When mother started drinking? Or was it before that, some subtle change that had been too small to notice and spread out far too quickly? Or was it me, as mother would always have me believe? When I grew up and got older, looked more and more like him?
The wind was blowing into her face, and she shut her eyes for a moment, the blurry outlines of Aaron’s face overlapping hers, the same stroke of nose and jaw, the same cobalt eyes and dark hair. Would everything still be like this had I not looked like this? Would I always feel her eyes on me wherever I went?
Eliana was far from her now; she’d left early in the morning, before her mother was awake, and hailed a taxi to take her to the airport, dozing through the early hours of dawn. But there were another pair of eyes on her now, green and wide and clear, Lydia’s furtive darting glances. Her mother had taken them to the foot of the mountain, and it was beautiful enough for her not want to leave. It seemed strange that there would be bars nestled somewhere near here that were the same as the place she lived, oddly tainted somehow, dirty.
She felt the other girl’s eyes, like she felt Eliana’s. Probing under the hems of her clothes, trying to catch a glimpse and shying away, horrified and fascinated. In the morning they had hardly spoke at all, and now Arianne was trying her best to pretend that she was alone.
“Arianne?” The other girl’s voice came from behind her, tentative.
She slowed her pace. And now it begins. “Yes?”
Lydia caught up to her, matching her pace. Wary. “I’m really sorry about what I said yesterday. About you. I mean, you don’t have to forgive me for it. I know I was mean about it and I wasn’t thinking before I talked.”
“You did think, believe me.”
“I… I didn’t know… I shouldn’t have said the first thing that I…”
Arianne turned to look at the other girl. “Would you still be saying this if you hadn’t seen the scars?”
“Yes. Yes, I…”
“No. You wouldn’t. Not one thing has changed about me since I stepped off that plane, Lydia. I’ve always been the same person.”
“No, but I…”
“But now you think I’m even more pitiful than I was, and you feel bad about yourself for making it worse.” When the other girl didn’t reply, she sighed. “I got used to it.”
“How long have you…” She stuttered. That look again. Why? The look seemed to shout. Why do you do that? With her voice directed to the muddy ground, no one would have thought this was the same girl whose eyes had flashed so maliciously as she snapped at Arianne to shut up. She’s afraid, poor dumb thing. Arianne felt the same stab of queer detachment that sometimes boiled up inside her when she watched Tarra to see how he would respond to her words. She wondered for a moment what they saw when they looked at her, all the faces she wore. Pretend, pretend, lie, lie, lie. Lie until your heart stops and your breaths go dead, and the last ounce of your bones has been burnt to ashes. Lie until you go sick with revulsion at yourself and don’t know who is staring into the mirror.
Lydia had finally leveled her gaze to meet her eyes. “I’m really sorry,” she repeated, “For whatever happened to you. But I really think you should tell someone about it, or you’ll never get over it.”
Arianne had to laugh. “You sound very experienced.”
The girl didn’t look away. “I may not know much, but I’m sure that saying it to someone will make it feel better. Anger goes deeper when you bottle it up.”
“Bumper sticker?”
“You should. No one would judge… No one would hate you for it. There’d be people who wanted to help.”
“I’m sure there would be.”
Lydia ducked under a low-hanging branch, though not quite quickly enough. The branch quivered, showering her with pine needles. She ran a hand over her unruly red hair, smearing it with droplets of water, and prattled on. “There are better ways to deal with whatever you’re going through.”
“Talking to you, perhaps? The wisest emotional counselor that ever lived, I’m sure.” To be sure, the other girl’s speeches had begun to bore her. She should write speeches for a living, they would pay her well for that. She wondered if Lydia really did write them down in her big book and rehearse them before speaking. The idea was so droll she laughed aloud. Does she stage a play for herself, in front of a child-bed lined up with soft fluffy toys?
“Not me. But there would be a lot of people, I’m sure. Have you ever talked to your parents about it?”
“Surprisingly, no.”
“You should,” the girl insisted. “They’ll help you.”
“I know they would.”
“Then why didn’t you even try? Nothing can be that bad. Life can be hard, I get it, but it’s hard for everyone. Solve your problems. Maybe you should stop running away. You just have to face it, and it’ll all get better, instead of running away and hurting yourself. That just wrong, Arianne. It’s wrong and sick and you really should stop.”
Arianne felt her body turning to stone again, the same way it had immobilized when she was on the plane as the other girl spat venom at her. This wasn’t really much of a difference, just differently phrased.
…has more things to do than cry over your petty little worries, and there’s no use in things that are so obviously wrong… wrong… wrong…
“Sure.”
“You’re not listening.” The girl looked ridiculous, with raindrops dripping off her hair and puffed up in a large beige-colored parka, the red of one sock showing under ankle-length boots. She looked like a little kid having a lollypop tantrum. If they weren’t hiking, Arianne was sure she would have put her hands on her hips and stamped her foot. “Why won’t you listen to sense?”
I’ve had enough of your precious good sense for today, thank you very much. Arianne didn’t answer. Your thoughts have not changed, no more than my desire to wring your neck and snap off that head filled with prancing ponies and sparkling glitter. We’re very much better off of this conversation. The gray roiling sky had morphed into a canopy of thin leaves patched with clumsy stitches of gray and white. Rain from the storm earlier was still dripping from the branches whenever the wind blew by. She pulled a leaf from a twig, making the branch shudder and pelt her hand and shoes with water. The wind had gotten colder, stinging. Arianne pulled her hood over her head.
The path opened up in front of her; muddy and gray, but dotted with patches of color all the same. There was that lark hopping among the spindly braches of a pine, and those brilliant red yew berries, and swirls of golden, brown, red, russet, green peeking out in the trees. The water collected in a pool in a crevice of a rock was as white as the sky above it. A hot pink backpack slipped in and out of sight in the far front of her vision. There was a nest of pale blue robin’s eggs in the thicket of emerald green bushes the same color of Eliana’s eyes, and a maple with some leaves on it that were as red as Lydia’s hair.
When the silence had stretched out long enough between them to fill the emptiness, the girl had to break into it again. Arianne groaned inwardly. Is this what it’s like to be lectured by mothers in normal families? She’d heard her friends at middle school arguing with their parents about small things, the most trivial matters: what they would have for dinner, their curfew, whether or not it was good to choose Biology over Chemistry, if they were warm enough at night. It was bizarre, a strange twisted version of what Eliana and Arianne would haggle over: where and when she’d been, what time she was at what place, the grades she was getting at school. And even stranger was how they were allowed to talk back—that they would purse their lips and roll their eyes and stamp their feet and yell and shout, and all the same be given a kiss before bed and breakfast the next morning.
“Well, don’t you have anything to say about all of it?” Lydia demanded. Her meekness had lasted for about half a day before she burnt it all off again.
“No.” No, mother.
“Why? I told you—”
“I don’t know.” I don’t know, mother.
Lydia rolled her eyes and groaned, all brashness back. “You’re impossible.”
Yes, mother. I am, I am, I am.
Chapter 16 Lydia
They peaked the summit at noon. The sky had cleared, leaving only dots of white fleecy clouds in the place of the gray mess that had dominated the sky earlier. The sun warmed her fingers as Lydia stretched out her hands.
“Really?” There was only the mildest interest in other girl’s voice. “Raymond Tullan?”
Her face heated. “What about it?”
“Well, you could do worse. Or better, for that matter.” Arianne smirked and leaned over to contemplate the view. “Pretty.”
The peak dropped beneath their feet, and a small town glittered like a jewel nestled in sand beneath the thick rise of hills. The faintest ghost of a rainbow could be seen overhanging it. Colors, everywhere colors. Red and indigo and blue and green and black and gold.
Arianne hadn’t said much about the thoughts that were nagging at Lydia the whole time. She’d been worried initially, but all her anxiety had burned into irritation at the other girl’s indifference. She doesn’t care, Lydia thought, frustrated, as she kicked at a rock. Why doesn’t she do something about it instead of shying away? Mom would have told me the same things. Why can’t she understand it? She even found herself wondering if Arianne had purposefully flaunted her scars to make Lydia feel guilty about shouting at her earlier. I would have, anyway. Her fights and little quarrels with everyone had always been solved with two days, be it her family or her friends or even people she didn’t like. Even her.
Lydia had tried to wheedle her into talking, but Arianne always answered in monotones or laughs. Lydia could feel last night’s memory burning off as the old contempt settled in, and whenever she turned around to look at her Arianne would raise her eyebrows and give her one of those infuriating smiles. Damn it, she’d thought, after prying for at least half an hour. It’s her life she throws away. She just doesn’t value the good things in life, and what can I do about that? It’s her fault if she dabbles in dreams and words rather than bread and gold. You could not eat a dream, no more than you could buy a living with poetry, but people chased after them all the same. Impractical, Dad dubbed them, one of the worst words that could crop up in their household. Everything they had, they were sure where it came from, where it would go, how to use and how to gain it.
Arianne had steered the conversation away from herself and back to Lydia. It was strange how much she told the other girl, who was almost a stranger to her. It wasn’t that she trusted Arianne to keep her secrets, more like that she knew her thoughts would be brushed off by the other girl with a flick of her hand and never come into her mind again. I know I’m too far below you for that. The words from yesterday came back to creep into her. The malice was gone, but the sting remained.
It was strange how much one could tell a stranger, sometimes far more than people one knew well. They wouldn’t care as much, and would have no worries of tangling up in her own life. Once this was all done, she and Arianne would go back to their separate lives. Well, I’ll go to mine, at least. She found herself speaking of her mother and father, of the first time she met Martha and the gold in Raymond’s hair, of that other boy she’d crushed on earlier and the way he would look at her out of the corner of his eye and smile, and of how she was jealous at eleven when she knew she would have to share her mother with another child but ended up loving Jack as much as the others did, of her sister’s tall athletic boyfriend who let Rosie cling onto his arm and would pick her up and twirl her around as she laughed, of the big white dog she would pet and hug and cry into when she was younger, of her plans to rise and rise until her life fit perfectly into her Book, of the piled up notebooks on neurosurgery and all the years she’d kept at it, of the creamy white pages and meticulous handwriting of The Book she printed. Arianne never talked like Ameri, who would gabber on about herself, or Delissa who would milk her for gossip until and after the last drop was spent, but she was not like Martha either, who would smile and comment and say the right things at the right times. Arianne just stared ahead, or looked around her like she found the whole affair boring, only stopping to glance back at her when she paused.
“Look, if my life is not exciting enough, I’ll shut up now.”
“‘Not exciting’ is good.”
Sometimes she would laugh at queer points in her narration, and Lydia would stop, embarrassed and annoyed, but then the other girl’s face would fall back into that impassive mask again, and Lydia would go on.
“He’s acceptable.”
Arianne smiled languidly. “Your ears disagree with you. I’ve got a name and color palette for it. It’s called ‘fish pink’.”
Lydia was pretty sure fishes were not pink. “Like…salmon?”
“Something like that.”
It was even stranger that Arianne would be the second person to hear about Raymond. She only told Martha, self-conscious and skirting whenever they came around to the topic. She suspected Martha knew, but never voiced it. Another reason she liked Martha. Last night her call had come to tell Lydia that things were going fine, and the operation had been successful. Thank god for that. Besides her empathy for her friend, Lydia had to admit there was a much more selfish reason for her relief: she was horrible at comforting others when they were upset, normally only able to sit there and nod and hand out tissues. It was easier with Martha, but only partially. A new thought, unbidden and uneasy, wormed into her mind: It’s the same with everyone, the same with Arianne. You can’t feel what she feels. But she shook the thought off by thinking that she was right in everything she had said today. It was what she had been taught since she could understand things, anyway.
She had to face another uncomfortable truth: Arianne wasn’t so bad when she wanted to try. Lydia was almost glad she had her beside her, instead of walking up the mountain alone. Glad, except for the other 90 percent of the time when I felt like I wanted to pry open her skull and yell into her brain. She’s immune to common sense. And here, away from Arianne’s make-up powders and fancy dresses and glasses of cocktails, she seemed almost normal… Except beneath the eye, where her scars still thrashed and burned. Lydia shuddered inwardly. Once they removed themselves from the clean fresh air and bright sunlight and put her in a black dress and thick mascara with glass of liquor and a thin lazy smile, Lydia knew all of these thoughts would be right out the window and she would go back to hating the other girl as much as she had earlier. Not helping to think of that now.
Her thoughts went back to Raymond. Every night she would toll out a little bit of time to think of him, even though she knew it was just a fantasy. I can keep my feelings in check, she told herself… But the easy smile and golden hair kept slipping into her thoughts without her knowing. Is this what it’s like to be caught unexpected, unplanned, unnoticed? She wondered, and the idea unsettled her. If so, perhaps it is better that he is too far away for me to touch.
The summit was cool and crisp and open. They lingered for a while, the sun warming them and dappling patterns across the ground. Tourists snapped pictures around them. There was a great cluster of vines and ivy dangling from the top of another peak not so far away, and whenever the breeze and sunlight caught it the shadows would ripple on the wall like wrinkles of water undulating in a pond. When a girl in a pretty patterned coat came over with baskets of strawberries, Arianne laughed and took a bunch and shared half with Lydia. Is this the Arianne that everyone else sees? She thought, as they fell into easy banter and small talk. With the sun touching her hair and an easy smile on her face, Arianne looked like a girl, not so different from Lydia and Martha and all the others. Despite herself, Lydia could not help liking the girl, smiling and warm and mild, but she knew she was the other creature too, eyes glittering with something that was not laughter, her skin slashed up a hundred times. She is a girl, but there is a monster inside. She shook the thought off. Maybe she had been talking too much with Arianne, that such a strange idea had entered the confines of her mind.
Chapter 17 Arianne
The room was dark, but the lights shone outside. White curves and flashes and dots covered the streets, and up there were those few glittering sparkles of stars. The world was cut cleanly into black and white. Black where I am. She had always woken in the darkness, felt she was more real somehow as the costumes peeled away and she was standing almost naked in the dark. The darkness will be my cover. The shadows are my birthright.
There was the mirror, too; steely gray and shimmering, with a blank, silent surface. Arianne stood before it, and saw herself: The white girl in the black shadows, covered in dark clothes, her eyes two black pits. Black and white, white and black.
Then the color burst with a bright flaring light, and the black dress burned into lilac and lavender, the eyes and hair shades of purple and violet. Her long lashes tore rainbow shadows across her cheekbones. The dress was thick and lacy and elaborate, with clasps and layers and buttons and zippers and pins, ruffles and laces and ribbons and pearls.
The first layer was dark indigo, with shades of purple light and dark building up and over, then layer upon layer, soft and hard, delicate and steely. There were pieces of velvet and strings of pearls, and patterns of frilly lace; but there was hard metal as well, claps upon scales, and beneath it all a rigid corset shining like fish scales at the bottom of a pond.
She began to tug it off, this girl in the mirror; first the lavender lacy frillings, then the deep plush velvet, and the sheer thin silk, lilac ribbons and pearls. It began to build at her feet, all the garments she had shed, a ribbon and a piece of lace at first, then the soft flutter of velvet, and a clatter of pearls. The first layer came off like a wisp of starlight, leaving the adornments around her ankles. Then came the ripping sound of fabric, and more silk and velvets puddled on the floor, and more, and more, and more. There were heavy sounds as well, as half a piece of metal scales dropped to the ground, and a band of steel fastened across her waist was opened and discarded, and the large sheen of metal that arced from the small of her back over one shoulder to cinch at her waist. Bracelets and necklaces like handcuffs and ties opened at her touch and joined the mounting platter around her feet, growing knee-deep, then up to her thighs. There was a bit of glass that wove around her ribs that shattered when she laid it on the small hill. All the things she’d shed, removed however carefully or roughly, were are shredded, torn, broken. The metal and glass had been cracked apart, the fabrics torn into pieces, the pearls collapsed from their strings and rolling outwards.
When she got to the final layer, she stopped. The corset clasped at her tightly, but it was not a corset. The scales covered her arms, her legs, her shoulders, thick in some places and thin in others. It’s armor, Arianne knew, and began to pry at the clasp around her throat. It all came down easily, like pulling petals off a rose. Off it went, baring her neck and her arms and her chest and her waist and her legs. When it was all over she looked up again, and she was naked but for the pile that had grown to her hips. I have thrown away my armor, she thought, looking and the pale pallid creature who shivered in the mirror. It was choking me and hurting me and dragging me down, but now I have thrown it all away, and there is nothing to keep the knives from me. She could not don it again; all the parts were shattered or broken. I’ve torn my armor, my only armor. I should have kept it, I should have. She bent down and picked a piece of velvet up. On the triangular piece of cloth there were words; memories. Mother, she knew when she saw the words, mother and father and Antony and Eriyan, and Lissanda and Quetin, all of them. She picked up another piece, and saw names. Memories and names of her old life were shielding her as well as weighing her, and she had torn them all apart. Now I have nothing to hide behind.
She raised her eyes again, and the girl in the mirror blinked once, long and slow. She saw the shadows rising behind her, swirling in the mists of time. You tore us, you burned us, threw us away, drowned us, left us, left ussss. The shadowy shades prowled around her, some beseeching, others laughing. Purple scars had leapt to life, crawling over her body like snakes. This is your new armor, they said, whispering. The one that you have chosen, you have built. The scars snaked up her arms and legs, wrapping around her waist and chest. You could have had us, but you choose it instead. They were growing into vines now, cold and hot at the same time, clasping her knees and ankles together, tightening around her throat and wrists. There were words on them, too, words carved deep with a knife and not with a pen. Occasionally there would be a scrap of something lighter and softer pushing against them, but they were too new, too raw. Lydia scrawled across one piece, Tarra on another, and Paxon on a third, and more and many, but they spiraled away too soon, fluttering, and around her the ghosts rose from the dead bodies of them she had disposed around her feet. When she looked up and saw herself, the girl was choking in the hold of fleshy vines, her fingers scrabbling at her throat, and all the garments piled around her had rose. When Arianne saw the girl blink again, her eyes had blended from purple to blue, and she was sinking.
She woke, gasping for air. Her hands shot to her throat and felt around, touched the ridges of her scars. She felt ugly, spoiled, filthy, disgusting, sick, repulsive. Abomination, the voices echoed again. Inhuman, abomination, all of you. Arianne lay with her eyes turned toward the ceiling, and somehow the voices calmed her. She was shuddering.
“You’re worthless,” she whispered softly. “You are nothing, nothing but a shadow of a better person. You are worthless, weightless, nothing, nothing at all.” The familiar dizziness and tranquility started to settle in, slowly. Her shudders stopped, and she tried to breathe more freely, wiping away the moisture at her face. That’s okay, that’s better, there. She turned around on her bed, the covers tangling in her legs.
“Arianne?” The other girl whispered in the darkness.
Lydia was awake, and looking at her, sitting up with her knees pulled up to her chest. Green eyes, blue eyes, purple eyes. It was the fifth night already, and she would be back soon. I was worried, that’s all, that’s all.
“Did I wake you?” She asked, trying to sit up.
“No. I couldn’t sleep, anyway.” Lydia hugged her knees closer. “I should have woken you earlier.”
“No, it’s okay.” They had these strangely peaceful moments of truce. When she is not trying to tell me what I should do, and when her pretty life doesn’t flaunt itself in my face, it’s not so bad. Much better than her house. Lydia seemed to like part of her, and Arianne could feel herself warming to the other girl if they put their lives behind them and pretended this was the only world there was. Walking through the hills and lakes and winding streets together, with a cup of hot chocolate in one hand, Arianne had almost believed that it was. She felt herself settle into a model of what the other girl liked, like she did with everyone. Pretend, and lie, until you don’t know what is real. There were moments when their own attributes showed, and the old anger and contempt would spark up again, but other times it was almost what could have passed for a normal life. The old itches always came at night. A creature of the dark. The shaking fits, the dreams. Lydia had given up making her to “talk” after the second day of persistent wheedling, though she still showed every intention of starting the topic again before Arianne cut her off, and Arianne had kept her tongue behind her teeth whenever some cruel comment made its way to the surface. She’d decided she could work with it, even if the other girl thought she was an attention-seeking fool and she thought Lydia was an empty-headed simpleton. Differences could be put away in the light of day, and things could be pleasant if they skirted around the rocks.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
So much about giving up her efforts. Arianne was too tired to feel irritated. “Not really.”
Lydia was silent. Good.
The moonlight stretched in. Arianne pushed herself into a half sitting position. The cuts at her legs throbbed with the tempo of her heart. She brought her hand to her neck again, trailed her fingers along her scars, one after the other. Across a collarbone, down a rib, puckered against the smooth soft skin at the hollow of her throat. Once you start, there’s no undoing it. Some scars last for life.
Chapter 18 Lydia
I couldn’t sleep, anyway.
Lydia had seldom had problems of the sort before, but for the past few nights she had tossed and turned, uneasy, as she listened to the other girl sleep, mumbling and twitching like an animal under sedative. The last night, she’d hugged her knees as she watched the darkness puddle around the room. Am I glad that this is going to end? She wondered, as she watched the lights draw white patterns outside the windows. She opened The Book, searching the pages for an answer, but it only told her what to do, never what to feel. The last entry had been two days ago. Lydia wasn’t even sure what to think. Everything had been so easy before, carefully slotted into pages and grids and sections. What do I write now? She asked herself, but her thoughts yielded no answers.
She always felt wrong and confused when she was with Arianne, sometimes even wondered if there really were two people inside of the same body, or more. The girl was playful and indulgent at times, then arrogant and mocking, then cold and tight-lipped. Lydia remembered the person she’d known before, whom she’d hated so much, leaning against a wall as she watched the others stage a play just for her with indolent eyes. She tried to fit that in with the flat monotones she’d spoken in the first night, or the laughing bright girl she’d come to know in the days to come. Then there was the trembling creature who woke gasping rapidly as she drew in her breaths in the middle of the night, as well. Which one was a mask, and which one was real? Lydia could not tell where one persona ended and the other began. She found herself wishing that things could be easier again, wishing that she could hate the other girl like she did before, wishing that all there was to her would be that face she’d learned to detest, or that Arianne would truly prove to be the girl Lydia had grown to like. Neither happened. She even felt herself growing secretive, answering her mother’s “I told you so” looks with bland smiles and vague replies. Oh, I guess she’s alright. She wanted to ask her mother about Arianne, about what to do, about the scars that crisscrossed her body, but was very much sure the other girl wouldn’t appreciate that. What if she kills herself someday because of it? It’ll be my fault. Will it?
The other girl’s gasps and twitches sent prickles up her skin in a way that made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Lydia wanted to shut her ears and look away, but felt her eyes drawn to it as the way they’d followed the scars on her skin. She couldn’t stop trying to sneak another peek, as though she would find the skin smooth and clean and unblemished. Sometimes Arianne would catch her at it, look up so fast she wouldn’t have time to glance away, and she would lower her gaze. Not polite of a girl to stare, the other girl had said once in her mocking tones. How would you know? She couldn’t help but mumbled, embarrassed and awkward. The cobalt eyes had held hers long enough that she looked away. Don’t you feel that? I can feel it well enough. Lydia didn’t believe her. It was one thing to know as other people were staring straight into your face, very much another for you to know when the eyes were behind you.
Every time her gaze sought out the faintest edge of a scar, she would think, wrong. The thought would sit in her stomach, cold and queasy, until she pushed it out of her mind. Maybe I was wrong too, she thought once, as they were walking down the cobblestone streets of a narrow ally, when I thought she did it all for attention. No one Lydia could understand would do anything like that for attention, but no one Lydia could understand would drink until she passed out either. That’s all wrong, all of it. No one would want themselves to feel bad. Why?
Her gaze turned back to the other bed. It’ll all end soon, she thought, and it’ll all be easier with her out of my life. She heard the other girl whisper, so soft Lydia wasn’t sure if she’d heard it. Arianne’s eyes were open and blank, staring up to the ceiling. Lydia wrapped her arms tighter around herself, scared to admit that she was scared. “Arianne?”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I couldn’t sleep, anyway. I should have woken you earlier.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” You should. I would. Anyone I knew would.
“Not really.”
Lydia watched the other girl trace her scars, her fingers trailing over the inside of a wrist, a rib, a forearm, the underside of an elbow. She felt sick again. Look away, look away, look away, and forget her. But the other part of her, the part in Jack and Rosie and Mom and Dad, the part that spoke her mind and pushed others to do the same, prodded at her to do something. If you have a problem, you should solve it. Everything can be solved, as long as you do it.
“Why are you like that?” She whispered, tried to make her voice calmer than she felt, tried to take the accusatory sting out of the words.
Arianne didn’t answer. Just when Lydia decided to turn away, the other girl looked up from her arms, and tugged the sleeves down again. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I won’t tell.” She felt like she was walking on a tightrope a million feet away above the drop. One slip and it is gone.
“I know.”
The silence stretched out. Arianne stared into the darkness. Her eyes were glassy, strangely bright, reflecting the little light from the night. The air conditioner hummed.
“We’ll be back tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“You can tell me,” she whispered.
The other girl looked away. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I know.” It was her turn to say it. She almost said, saying it out loud will make you feel better, but knew that Arianne hated words like those. Why? It’s always been right for me. She kept her mouth shut. In the day, she knew, she would never get another word out of the other girl. She’ll laugh at me and make a snide remark, and stare at me until I look away. Better during the night, in the dark.
The other girl didn’t look at Lydia. “Have you ever thought that it might feel good to be feel bad?” Her voice was barely a breath above a whisper. “That it might be so right to feel wrong, and feel steady only when the world is turned upside down?”
No, she thought. She didn’t answer.
“It feels better when it’s wrong. Have you ever felt that before? When you detach yourself from your body, so things happening to it don’t seem to reach you.” Her breaths were as soft as her words. “When you think, I just want to put this down, all of it, and you would set the world on fire and burn with it and it wouldn’t have mattered anything to you. When you think your life is too messy and disgusting for you to even look at, and you’re too tired to even get up and turn the lights on, and you just want to lie down and drown yourself. When you hate yourself for how much you’re feeling, and a cut can take it all out, you know?”
The shadowy eyes looked purple in the darkness, staring at nothing. “It’s better than drugs. Better than drink. You don’t feel a single thing. It takes everything out, and you can just lie down. The drinking, too. It feels good to be dizzy and blurred, but better to be sick. Everything is so clean, you can sit down on your knees, and as you’re puking you’ll feel, this is it, this is me, this is the thing that I am and the thing my life is. Then the quiet takes over, and you float away from your body, like it’s not you anymore.” Her hands lay flat and unmoving on the sheets, white upon white. “Everything falls into place, everything slows down and gets heavier, so much heavier and steadier. And you can whisper, you’re worthless, you’re nothing, nothing, nothing, and that feels good, too, dragging you down. It feels so good...” Her voice trailed off, and the room was quiet again for a second. “Like, when you’re not feeling it, you can’t understand. But then you just feel so much, feel like you’re dying to breathe, and then it all clicks and falls into place right there. You’ll just suddenly understand why… things that you always have despised, put down as sick and wrong… just have that sudden desire to just drink your life out, even if you have never even touched alcohol before, even if you have never ever gotten drunk before.
“You’ll suddenly just see why people like the feeling of chugging down all of that. You’re having hangovers and you’re keeling over a toilet and you’ll feel good. Like, you will be sick and tired and weak and clammy, but that’s what makes it right, that you have no power at all over this body. You’ll just understand why people will stick a knife to their wrists and push, and understand why they would say that it was beautiful, even though it was wrong. How all the tension would go out of you the second that blade cut into your skin, even though you said that it was crazy and stupid before. How you would instantly calm down, and it wouldn’t really be hurting you. You would not really be in your body… and the body will not really be you.
“It would be a sort of death. Well, death’s definition buy some accounts is when the spirit and the body leave each other, and I think that’s what happens when you go into that state of mind. Sure, when you wake up again you’ll feel even worse, but all the same it’ll feel right by doing the wrong things when you are scrambling and breathless and suffocating and dying of asphyxia. And you’ll think, I need this… I need something that will tell me I can calm down, but I can’t even think straight. And when you start, you just can’t stop because how impossibly good that feels…”
Lydia stared at her. Half of what the other girl had said had gone right over her head, like words in another language. What does she mean? “You shouldn’t hurt yourself,” she said at last, not knowing what to reply. “Tell your family. Your parents. Your friends. They would help you. I would.” Her words sounded awkward, clumsy.
“Friends aren’t always good to their companions. And parents aren’t always good for their children.”
“No one would hurt you because of it, Arianne. You shouldn’t hurt yourself. There are better ways to do it, better ways to live. There’ll always be something that’s good. When you have a problem, you should solve it instead of running away and… and cutting.”
The other girl’s head jerked up, and Arianne looked at her. “Damn you,” she snarled. “Damn you and your pretty little empty head. I don’t know why the hell I even bothered to tell you anything. Why do you act like you know everything about me? What do you know about my life, Lydia?” Her voice was dripping with malice. “You don’t know one damned thing about who I am and what it’s like to be me, so just shut up about your ideas on the world. Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.” The other girl’s breathing hitched there, and she looked like she was about to suffocate. Her eyes were silvery with unshed tears.
She’s crying, Lydia thought, incredulous. What did I say? “Arianne, I…”
“Stop. Just stop. Leave me alone. Don’t look at me like that.” Arianne turned her back to her. She’d curled her body so tight up it looked like a coil wound to burst. Her body trembled and heaved, but not a sound came from her lips. Lydia saw her hand clasping so hard at the sheets it was like to tear the thing apart, the fingers scrabbling wildly for a purchase. A small, choked sound escaped her, and suddenly she threw back the covers and banged the door behind her so violently it might have woken the whole corridor.
What did I do this time? Lydia stared at the rumpled sheets on the bed. What did I say? She felt sick, uneasy, guilty, even though she didn’t even understand what there was to be sorry for. What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with me?
Chapter 19 Arianne
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought as she slammed the door shut behind her, wiping furiously at her eyes. She wanted to scream. Who am I angry at? She wondered. Lydia or Eliana or myself? The whole damn world, probably. If she knew why she was so upset, she probably wouldn’t be so upset. Why am I like this? She ran up, up, up the stairs. Why did you even open your fat mouth, you should have known your words were wasted. Why did you tell her, even a part of it? She was crying now, crying so violently she couldn’t even breathe. Up, she ran, up the stairs, up, up, up.
No one knows, no one sees. You’re the weakest, dumbest thing that ever lived, why did you open your stupid mouth? And the look on her face, you should have seen it coming. Lydia had stared at her with a mixture of confusion and shock, eyes wide and mouth half-open. She looked like an idiot, but not such a big idiot as you. Stupid stupid stupid. Arianne hated the shock. It was worse than even that time Lydia saw her scars. I told her, this time. I should have known better.
No one ever saw her. They all looked at her, pitying and disbelieving and shocked and disgusted, and Arianne wished violently that all of the simpering fools could have but a single body, so she could wrap her hands around the throat and squeeze and see the life drain out of their eyes. Nothing was supposed to be like this. I’ve kept it down for days. Kept her stupid blabbering out of my head. And I’m going back tomorrow, back, back, back.
“I hate you,” she mumbled, childishly, and when the words were out she laughed at the absurdity of it all. She started sobbing again, crouching down on the ground and burying her head in her hands. Her head pounded and her temples throbbed. What’s the big deal? I don’t even care. She couldn’t breathe, so she started choking and coughing. I can’t keep in a few stupid tears, she thought, angry with herself all over again. I could have done that much, at least. She drew in shuddering choking breaths. The slap across the face came easy, once, then harder. Her sobbing began to slow, but she couldn’t stop. She raked her nails over her arms, feeling it when she scratched over a scar. I’m drowning.
She started to run again, faster and faster. Up up up. The stairs were black and icy cold, red lights from the cameras shining in the dark. Green exit signs glowed around her. When she came to the closed set of the doors she fumbled with the lock. Let me out, she thought, looking around frantically for a button, a key, something. The doors to the roof were locked and barred shut. “Let me out!” She screamed, aloud. “Just let me out let me out let me out let me out.” She pounded at the door with her fists, could feel the metal rattle beneath her hands and the gusts of wind coming through the door cracks. Her bare feet were so cold they felt numb, and her hands were red with pain, but she couldn’t feel them, no more than she could feel what she was thinking. She pounded harder.
She never knew when the anger went and the fear settled in. The stairs were dead black expect for all the blinking lights, like eyes all around her. A camera hung overhead with a circle of red shining dots. The neon green exit sign glowed on top of her head. In its dim glow, Arianne could see the signs stuck on the other side of the wall. Do not enter. Do not advance. Stop. She began to shake again, fumbling at the railings and trying to grope her way down. How far up did I go? Her own breathing, heavy and wet, echoed back at her. Every turn she made down, the same red and green lights greeted her. Her anger vaporized to fear, then panic. No, no, no, no, no. She made another turn and tried the door. Locked. Down again. Locked. Locked, locked, locked.
Someone’s going to rush out behind me and kill me now, she thought crazily. And I’m going to die here as afraid as I’ve ever been in my life. She forgot the fight, forgot her words, forgot her anger. She was trapped in the maze. It’s all going to end somewhere, she thought, as long as I keep going. When a door finally yielded she almost sobbed again with relief, but the corridor it opened to was empty and black and desolate. Shattered glass and dust coated the floor, and wooden boards were laid across the walls. She let the door bang shut behind her as she turned and ran down again. Her bare feet pattered against the hard icy floor. Lydia, she thought. Tarra, Antony, father, mother, someone. Down and down and down some more. Could it be possible that she was so far away from where she was? I’m going mad.
The door opened. The hotel rooms were silent, but the lights were on. She circled around, trying to find their room. She found the elevator and waited.
When the doors opened, Arianne saw herself in the mirrors. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her arms scratched until they bled. Half of her face was pink from where she’d slapped herself. Her hair was all a tangled mess, and her shins and knees and palms were covered with dirt and dust and grime from where she’d knelt. What was I thinking?
The fit had passed, leaving her spent, scared, frantic. The anger and rage and hate and adrenaline that had fueled her on so violently had spit her out. Had she let it pass on its own, she would have wanted to find the room empty so she could recollect herself; but the anger had been drowned by fear, and she was shaking so bad she could not even walk properly, desperate for a pair of arms.
Someone, she thought. Anyone. I’m so scared, so scared, scared of going back, of not going back, about someone seeing and no one caring, afraid of myself, afraid of all of you. Make it stop, make it all stop. She ran along the doors and found their room, found the door closed. She rapped on the door, hard.
When Lydia pulled it open, her eyes widened in surprise. Arianne pushed her hand over the other girl’s mouth and whispered, “Don’t say anything.”
She shoved the door shut behind her, and wrapped her arms tight around the other girl’s waist.
Chapter 20 Lydia
“Liddy!” Her brother squealed as he threw himself into her arms. Lydia laughed and spun him around. Pate came to lick Mom’s shoes, and Dad took the bags from her. Rosie smiled and gestured a welcome, talking on the phone. She inhaled the smells of pasta and cinnamon. The whole room was bathed in warm yellow light. Everything was as she remembered, and she felt almost giddy with relief. I’m missed this, she thought. Missed the small overstuffed sofa and the cluttered desk, missed the smells and lights of home.
When she was sitting at her desk again, she found she did not know what to write. The Book lay silent in front of her, unmoving and speechless, whereas before she always thought she could feel it telling her what to do. She filled in the pages for the next day, and left the last few days blank except for a few sentences about where she went. Lydia stared at it a bit longer, and closed the pages, fitting the clasps to their notches.
“Mom, I’m going out with Martha!” Lydia swung her coat to her shoulders and walked to the door.
“So soon?” Dad frowned. “You just got back.”
“I’ll be home before ten.”
Mom waved her off. “Come home soon, honey.”
Martha was waiting at the café when Lydia got there. “I’ve missed you,” she said as they embraced. Lydia smiled. “Six days, Martha. How’s your dad?”
“He’s already back home, actually. I don’t know what I was so worried about.” She pushed the doors open, and the warm air rushed to greet them. “I guess I was just paranoid after last time.”
“Anyone would be.” Lydia sat herself down on a sofa. The familiar sounds of the coffee machine whirring and glasses clinking and talk filled her ears. Everything’s falling into place now. She often came here with her friends after school, and the familiarity and routine pleased her. “Oh, this is so good.”
“What is?” Martha scooted next to her and they looked over the menu. “I’ll take hot chocolate.”
“All of this. Everything’s so nice. So… normal.”
“Was your trip that bad?” Martha smiled.
Lydia grimaced. “I haven’t really got to thinking about it.”
“Arianne’s not that bad, Lydia. Really.”
“I guess so. Martha, does she… tell you anything about herself?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A habit. A friend. Something.”
“Did you not talk to her at all after a week?” Martha sighed. “Typical.”
“No, we talked.”
“Why are you asking me, then?”
“I meant… anything personal?”
“That’s not really my place to say. I wouldn’t tell her about all your embarrassing experiences if she were asking me about you.” Martha smiled. “The pool?”
Lydia groaned. “We are never talking about that ever again. And I’ll kill you if you tell anyone.”
“That was kind of my point.”
“No, I’m just… I don’t really get how she thinks.”
“You can’t expect to understand everyone. Isn’t that what you say?”
“Well… yes, but only about people who don’t matter.” The words felt strange. Does she matter? She didn’t before.
Martha took the hot chocolate and passed Lydia’s cup to her. “Arianne just operates differently from you.”
“Do you know why?” Do you know why she cuts? Do you know if she cuts?
Martha looked at her. “You’ve taken up a sudden interest in the topic. What happened on your trip?”
She slammed the door in my face after calling me an idiot, and came back bleeding and crying. “It’s kind of complicated.” She wanted to just tell Martha and ask her what to do, but bit back her words. That’s not really my place to say.
“Okay.” Martha didn’t pry. “You could talk to her.”
“I tried.”
“Didn’t go well?”
“She laughed.”
“Oh.”
“No suggestions?”
“Maybe you could just… Slow down a bit?” Martha righted Lydia’s cup. “Careful there.”
“Thanks.” Lydia stared at her hands. She’d been looking forward to meeting with Martha, so she could tell her everything, like she always did, and Martha would put it right, so she would write her plans and leave clear-headed and sure about what to do. The feeling of not being able to tell Martha something was strange. We never had anything come between us. I told her everything… And she told me the parts that I didn’t brush off. Lydia was conscious that Martha had a life without her inside it, but had never cared. As long as she’s good to me, I’ll be good to her. Simple terms, simple principles. “It’s complicated.” She said again.
Martha smiled sympathetically. “It happens.”
Never to me. Lydia leaned her head against the other girl’s shoulder. “Forget about it. It’s not really important. Anything happen when I was away?”
“Oh… now that you bring it up, Devan Collings got together with Eva.”
Lydia sat up straight. “Really? Eva Jones? Oh my god, I can’t believe it.” She giggled. “And last time they said that Devan wasn’t ready to date anyone yet.”
Martha laughed. “I walked by them kissing on a bench.”
“When did this happen?” Lydia demanded.
“The day before yesterday…”
They fell back into the usual talk. This feels right, so normal. When they left clinging to another with laughter and sticky with chocolate, Lydia almost forgot the week before. Nothing has changed.
But when she turned the corner after waving a goodbye to Martha, she saw Raymond in front of her.
“Hi,” she said, catching up to him. She prayed her hair wasn’t sticking in a million directions.
“Oh, hey, Lydia.” He looked pleasantly surprised. “I thought you were out of town.”
You know that? “I got back this afternoon.” She tried to think of something clever to say, but found herself sneaking glances at his face instead.
“How was your trip?”
Why does everyone ask me that? “Oh...” She stuttered.
Raymond glanced at her and smiled. “Arianne Whitewood give you a bad time?”
Of course he would know. Everyone would know. “Not bad. I mean, not much.” They’d reached a crossroads. “You going left?”
“Right.”
“As in, right, right?”
“As in, not left.” He laughed.
“Oh. I’ll just…” She gestured to the side she was going.
“Yeah, okay.” He smiled. “Bye, Lydia.”
“Bye,” she mumbled.
When he was out of sight Lydia groaned and covered her face with her hands. Why am I such an idiot? Couldn’t find one single thing to say. When she started quickening her pace, she nearly tripped over a rock. At last he didn’t see that.
Chapter 21 Arianne
Purple, silver, pink
For have I nothing to think
Save for angels to drink
To pull me—Wings flapping—
Back, from the brink
And tell me that I
Am sinking;
Tell me that I
Lose nothing in drinking that drink;
The elixir that every and no thing would breach
To stop the chain of time
That snaps on link by link
To still
The shaking hand, the drawing of breath—
To stop
The spotted skin, the throbbing of heart—
And the very blood that runs through
This unworthy frame;
Black, as ink
February 2, Arianne’s book
Pax leaned back in her chair. “It’s sweet.”
“I didn’t remember when you’d found such a profound liking for mead.” Arianne sipped her own.
She wasn’t preparing to get herself drunk again today, and the mead was fine. When you’re not feeling it, you can’t understand, she’d told Lydia yesterday, and it was true. The sudden fits always descended from the outside, and occasionally she pleased herself by thinking that she was functional most of the time.
None of them have hurt me, not really. I’m okay, I’m strong. I can fix this, I can deal with it. Those were the “day” times, as she liked to call them, when she just put all of her problems to the back of her head and thought life wasn’t so bad, covered up her scars and her memories. The night before seemed like a bad dream, already fading quickly. When she put herself under the hot water and took some time to calm down, all of it seemed silly, shallow, not much of a big deal. It’s all okay now, now, now. Forget the past and forget the future.
She’d passed the rest of the journey in comfortable silence, blessedly unbroken. It was easy to steer Lydia off a topic for a while, but she always came back to it, stubborn and insistent. Thank god she stopped for once.
Pax brought her drinks to the restaurant after Arianne called her. Her suitcase was put next to the seats. Pax lounged in silence for a while, letting the sounds of clinking glasses and whirring machines and chatter fill the space, sipping at her glass. “How was the trip?” She asked at last.
“Not that bad. Was life without me cold and joyless?”
Pax snorted. “It was cold. Snowed the second day you were gone. Much better with you absent, though. They stopped trying to show off so much. And you always outdrink me when you’re here.”
Arianne grinned. “Not always. You remember the first few times?”
“Ahhh… Those were the better times. No extravagant speeches, no one challenging me and choosing the place for me. Just this little new girl.”
“When did I make speeches?”
“You don’t. They go over their heads trying to impress you though.”
“I get enough of it.”
“Must be horrible. Last time I dreamed I was you and Grandes was inviting me out for a lit party.” She shuddered.
“Does that even exist?”
“Maybe they serve books instead of wine.”
“I’ll pass if the books are picked by them.” Arianne liked books and poems and stories, and liked other people who shared her interest. That doesn’t mean I like people who pretend to like it for my sake. She knew all they saw was a money sign hanging over her head. Maybe my face too. But not my body, not my skin. Not that.
Pax crossed her legs. “Well, then you had to get drunk, and I would be the victim.” She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “After that you just got worse and worse, and someday I found the new girl was drinking more than I was.”
“Think on the bright side. I don’t get drunk that much again. Must be a delight for you.”
“A relief in some ways. I pity Tarra.”
“He’s not going to see me drunk again.”
“What, are you changing boyfriends again? I thought this one would last a bit longer.”
“I haven’t thanked you for covering up for me.”
“What?”
“The other night. He says you told him I was forced or something.”
“I didn’t.”
“You probably forgot. You weren’t much better off than I was, and I couldn’t remember a thing the next morning.”
“I definitely was ‘better off’ than you that time. You ever going to tell me?”
“Someday.”
Pax turned away slightly. There were new earrings studded in her ears; where there has been a long string of dangling chains last time, studs of metal drew their passage from her lobes to the top of her ears. A whorl of a tattoo peeked out from her collarbones. “That new?” Arianne asked, nodding at it.
“Yeah. Got it a few days ago.” Paxon’s marks on her body were the same as Arianne’s; beneath the surface. She never flaunted her tattoos, but underneath her clothes you would be hard-pressed to find a square of skin that wasn’t inked. Arianne appreciated it. The first time she’d shoved her sleeves up in the presence of the other girl, she’d looked her over, laughed, and lifted her shirt and turned her back to Arianne to give her a look. We’re all the same in our world, they’re all the same in theirs. Like draws to like.
Arianne thought that the saying “the world isn’t divided into black and white” was all wrong. She remembered her dream the night before, all the sharp ridges and clean-cut colors. It’s black, or it’s white. You understand, or you don’t.
Pax tipped her head to the side. “Thought as much.” Arianne could appreciate that too. She was sure Paxon had a rough idea of her problems, and she knew about the other girl’s, but they didn’t pry after prompting was rejected. Respect was due in their circle.
The sun was sinking when they left. Arianne felt her skin begin to pulse, the scratches she’d made yesterday stinging with the throbbing in her leg. Day going into night, white into black. She felt a little heady, even from the mead. Well, just as well if I’m going back now. “Call me if you need anything, okay?” The other girl asked.
“Sure.” Arianne smiled and waved her departure.
The house was a white crouching beast on the top of a rise of hills. Huge white pillars were thrust from the ground like bony white fingers clawing at the air, the outer walls all clean and polished to a white sheen. Dark windows were slapped onto the white marble like clean cut-out holes, the missing gaps from a child’s lost teeth. There had been a garden, once, she’d heard, but it had been long barren, though as neat and tidy as the rest of the house. Only grasses grew up from the ground. Green, Arianne counted, white, black. The sky was already purple and indigo and russet, like a bruise. Purple, blue, red, pink. She knocked, her suitcase lagging behind her.
Eliana opened the door. She had chosen white today, like some angel. White alpaca folds draped across her body and hid its outline, white gloves covering her hands. White slippers and a white ribbon in her hair. She was smiling, her blue eyes glowing in the fading light. She made to hug her, smelling of powder and perfume. “I’ve missed you so.”
“Mother.”
“Come in.” Eliana ushered her inside. “Are you cold? Your lips are so pale.” She’d even lit a row of white candles leading up to the counter, like an altar, where a meal for two had been set. “I’ve made dinner for you. You must be hungry. Are you tired from your trip?”
“A bit.” Arianne followed her mother in stiff, short steps. The suitcase hummed on the floor, clacking when it met a step.
“You should take better care of yourself.” Eliana fiddled with the zipper on her coat. Clack. Her body went dead. Her mother unzipped her coat and took it from her, setting it on the sofa. “You don’t have to wear so much inside. It’s warmer in here, in this house, in our home.” Her smile was fixed, like a mannequin’s. “Dear, do go clean yourself up. I’ve laid out your clothes for you. You must want to have a bath after your trip.”
“Yes, mother.” Her skin crawled, pulsing like warning signs. Her chest and arms and thighs had all caught fire. Clack.
“I’ll take your suitcase. Salla will come by tomorrow, wash up your clothes.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Go on now.” Eliana gave her a gentle push. “Don’t hurry, though. You mustn’t hurt yourself.”
When have I ever gotten injured because of a bath? She took her clothes off. The scars seemed more grotesque in the bright lights. I look like a pig waiting to be butchered, sliced up some already. Someone’s even put me under a nice cooking light. An uneasiness came over her, and she looked around her, listened for something. She heard her mother walking away from her room, then a bang as the suitcase was put on the ground and opened.
Her phone was in her pocket. She dialed the number as the water was filling up the tub, hoping the sound would mask her voice to her mother.
Tarra answered on the second ring. “This is early.”
“Tarra, do you have a second?” She tried to keep her voice normal.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“When are you coming back?” Tarra was out of the town for a few days.
“A few more days, I think. Why?”
“Nothing. I’ll come meet you when you get back, okay?”
A long pause. A click. Arianne could hear forks clicking and people talking in the background, and the scrape of a chair as he got up, then quiet as he extracted himself from company. “Arianne, is something wrong?”
“No, nothing. I just… I miss you.” The water was almost full. “Tarra, I have to go now.” She shut the line down, then climbed into the tub. Her heart was pounding. Why did I call him? He’ll ask me about it later, when he gets back. I should have called Pax, maybe even Lydia. She turned over in the water and started to type a text to the former, then heard the door of her bedroom open. She shut her phone and reached for the bubble wash.
Eliana walked around her room first, outside the bathroom. She heard pillows and covers being shifted, then the rustling of clothes. Minutes had passed before she knocked on the door of the bathroom, and Arianne had slathered the foam into the water so thickly it was deep enough to hide her skin. Hopefully. She slid down deeper into the water and covered her chest with her arms, turning them inward.
Her mother was carrying a large fluffy white towel. She set it down on the counter next to the tub, her eyes roaming the room. “I brought you a towel.”
I can see that. “Thank you, mother.”
She sat down on the rim of the tub. Arianne shrank back. “Are you sure the water’s warm enough? You’re still so pale.” She dipped in a hand, pulled it out.
“No, mother, I’m fine. I’m just tired.”
Eliana stood up and picked her clothes up. “We’ll have to wash these, too.”
“I can take them out, it’s okay.”
Eliana didn’t respond. Her eyes had found her daughter’s neck. Arianne’s breathing spiked, and tried to slide down deeper into the water. “What’s that? Are you hurt?” She leaned down. Arianne felt even more naked than she already was, like her skin was being stripped off of her.
“No, it’s nothing. I got bit and I scratched too hard. It’s really nothing, mother.”
Her mother sat down again, leaned over, pulled the drain. Arianne pulled it back up. She’d pushed her knees up as she struggled to slide down and hide her neck and chest, and she felt the stripes on her thighs beginning to glow hot, but they were long dead memories already, faint and silver. She won’t see.
Eliana looked at her, long and hard. Her pale eyes traced along her legs, flitting to her arms.
But she knows.
Eliana pulled away and walked out of the room without another word, her daughter’s clothes in her arms. The world had shrunk to the bubbles in the water. She watched them pop, one after another, and all she thought was, I should have put the phone under the sink. The best that could be said was that at least she’d remembered to turn it off. She was still too scared for what was to come to feel anything. Later the feelings will come.
The outfit Eliana had laid out for her was lying on the bed waiting for her with its arms laid peacefully over its chest. A white silk shirt with a collar. Faded blue jeans, a knitted V-necked purple sweater. When she pulled it all on, she looked in the mirror and a shiver ran down her spine. I’m father. Her eyes looked purple with the color of the clothes, and the looseness of it all blurred the outlines of her body. But most of all she remembered him, in his white shirt and dark jeans, with purple eyes and a small smile. She had long forgotten his face, though, but once she had rummaged through Eliana’s jewelry box to find the photos. No wonder she stares at me, she realized, ten at most. I’m father. Eliana didn’t like her calling Aaron that, but she said it in her mind all the same. Father, mother, daughter.
The candles lit a way to the table. Eliana was already seated at one end. She smiled for her daughter. Or does she smile for him? Arianne sat gingerly on the other side.
“I’ve missed you,” Eliana said. “You keep going away, but I knew you’d always be back.”
Maybe she’ll get over it, if I just stay quiet long enough. It was not as if it had not happened before. Once, though, only once, and also after Arianne had been away for a long time. She put me in clothes much too big for me and pressed a cup of wine on me. It was the first time she had drunk, timid and sipping, but it had burned so much she almost finished the bottle off after the night had ended. And how she hated to see the outcome. The next day Eliana had looked at her in a way that chilled her, and she left again. The next time Arianne saw her was a year later. I can handle this. I’ve handled it before. Soon it’ll be my birthday and I can go away, far away.
“Listen to me.” Eliana pressed a soft hand to hers, and Arianne jolted. “Hear me. I’ve told you time and time again that I love you. Stay with me.”
That you love me. Arianne felt dizzy. Maybe you did. She’d wanted, once, to hear those words from her mother’s lips, and wondered if some twisted god had heard her and granted her wishes.
“You always said I was beautiful,” her mother murmured. “Would you look at me now and tell me that? Or did I throw it all away for you?” She gazed into the flames of the candles, reflected in her eyes. “I thought nothing would ever change, but then I saw you, and you saw me, and nothing ever mattered again. Did you leave me because of it? Because I wasn’t pretty enough, anymore? Would you still have me, if I were still young, and beautiful? We can be young again, Aaron. I know the best years of my life have long been past me, but we can, if you were with me.”
Her voice trailed off. She raised her eyes to her daughter’s face, searching it hungrily. “You haven’t changed one bit since I first saw you,” she whispered. “I knew it, I could feel it. You must have, too. We were seventeen, and it was us against the world. Mother would have me marry that dreadful Neddan Bryce, but that day… I saw you were standing right there at the other side of the pool, with your dark hair and purple eyes and I was right across you. I remember still the dress I wore. Blue and white, silk and lace, a pretty thing, as pretty as I was. You looked at me just like that, and I raised my flowers to my lips, and you nodded once and blinked so slowly I thought my heart would burst.
“I live that over and over and over, Aaron. Every night. I wanted to forget you and leave you like you left me, but I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help coming back and back to you. Do you remember me? Do you think about me, too? You said I looked a porcelain doll the first time you met me, and the most beautiful thing you ever had. Would you forget so soon? It’s okay now, all of it. You’re back with me, you’re home.” Her voice trembled. “You get to be young forever, Aaron.” She raised a hand and traced the outline of Arianne’s face in the air, not quite touching her skin. “You’re beautiful, but I told you that already, did I? It’s okay if you want to wait. I can wait this time, as long as you want to. I wouldn’t mind being poor or hungry or anything, as long as I was with you.”
When she stood up, there were flowers in her hand, a bouquet as white as the rest of her. “Do you remember the first time I came to you? You were sitting on the ground in the shade of a tree, and your skin was dappled in the sunlight. When I sat down next to you I knew mother would say I’d ruined my best dress and scold me, but I knew I would never ever care again. I would throw it all away if I could have you, and I did. We could make it work, and set the world aflame.”
The blue eyes locked with the purple ones. “Come back to me, Aaron.” the intensity in her eyes burned. “Come on, now.” She tugged at Arianne, pulling her to her feet, and looked up at her.
The flowers, the dress, the candles, the dress, the dress, it’s a wedding dress. “Make me young again,” Eliana whispered. “Make me yours again. I’ll never want anything else in my life… Not again.”
Let me wake up. This is another dream, just another dream. Arianne’s scars pounded with her head. Just let it all end.
Arianne jerked back so violently the table shuddered. “No, mother.” She scrambled back. The scars were half-visible under her shirt. “Mother, stop, I’m not father, I’m not.” She knew that she should keep silent, keep quiet, keep still until it all passed and forget about it, but she was shaking so bad she couldn’t breathe or think. She was as scared as she was the night before, lost in the black stairs and blinking lights. My whole life I knew that if I just shut up and went along everything would just be forgotten, but somehow I’ve just never mastered it. “Mother…”
Eliana stared at her. The buttons on the top had been undone in her haste to scramble back, and the red and purple and silver all flashing like warning signs. Of an imposter. Eliana had dressed and dolled her up, but nothing could hide her skin. Stop, just make it stop, and I can go away and forget.
“You’re not him.” Eliana looked as though she were in a trance. “He was so beautiful. Had such smooth skin… And his hands, I always loved his hands.” Her gaze dropped down. Arianne’s nails were painted black.
“You’re not him,” she said again, and this time her voice was low and flat. “You ruined us. I thought he would love me when you came, but all you did was steal him from me and steal all my youth. And you don’t let me forget, never. You push me away when I try to love you.” Her mouth twisted. “Why can’t you just leave us? You were wrong. Wrong to be spawned, wrong for us. He would never have gone away had you not taken my life from me. I was never beautiful again after you.” Some of the candles had started to gutter, casting strange shadows around the room.
“Left me,” she whispered again. “When all I tried to do was love him.”
Eliana walked along the paths of the candles. The swaying, sputtering lights washed her in flickering shadows. She looked a ghost, a corpse queen in her white dress and white flowers. “He won’t again,” she murmured, as Arianne crept back. “He won’t. He won’t.”
Eliana looked up. “I forget myself, Arianne. It’s getting late, and you must be tired. Go to bed.”
“Yes, mother.” Her own voice was barely a whisper
Arianne turned the lock, even though she knew it was useless. She scrabbled at her clothes, pulling the outfit off, like she was pulling off another spirit stuck to her body. She stripped herself bare, and threw the clothes out of the window. Cold air bit and bit at her again, but wouldn’t numb her scars. Later, she thought. When she goes to sleep, I’ll be out of here. The last time anything like this had happened, Eliana had left the next day. I need my knife. But she knew it wouldn’t help now, when she was still too frantic, and would cut too deep.
Strange noises were pounding in her head. You shouldn’t hurt yourself. You mustn’t. Lydia’s stubborn words came back to bite her. Arianne laughed aloud. I’ll be mad before all of this is over. Screw “stronger than them”. I can’t deal with it, never have been able to.
She laid her arms over her eyes, tried to breathe, focusing on the pulse of her scars. One, two, three, four, five, six, she counted. If I focus, everything else will fade. The wind was raw on her skin. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Arianne fell asleep.
When she woke again the room was freezing in gray light. Morning had crept in on her, and the rain pattered softly outside. Bits of ice clattered in from her open window. She crept up, stepping around the puddles. Sleet and rain stroked her hands and her face as she was forcing the window shut. I’m leaving.
When she tried the door, it was barred shut from the outside.
Chapter 22 Lydia
7:00- 10:00
New proj: S-2 Chem
Todo: topic on SC
Start on rev.
11:00
*lunch out
New Goals planner
Finish S-2 plans
February 3, The White Book
The day was cold and dreary, with sleet and rain and gray skies. Lydia thought nothing had ever looked more beautiful. He agreed, she thought giddily, and pushed a pillow over her face. I asked him, and I said… and he said…Oh…
When she walked out of her room with a huge smile on her face, everyone looked at her. Rosie tutted as she prepared to go to work and Mom gave her a knowing look with a little smile. “Why’s everyone so happy?” Dad demanded. He was nursing a cup of coffee with his computer screen glowing brightly in front of him.
“Lydia’s going out on a date.” Jack said in a sing-song voice and wriggled his eyebrows. Mom laughed.
“It’s not a date. We’re just having lunch.” Is it?
“Yeah, she’s on a date.” Rosie bit her hairband between her teeth and quickly pulled her hair up.
Dad squinted. “Why did I not know about this? I want to know if my daughter has a boyfriend.”
“Dad!” Lydia’s face was hot. “We don’t even know each other!”
Rosie patted her sympathetically, but didn’t bother wiping off the smirk on her face. “I went through it.”
Lydia was still blushing a little when she finished her breakfast and went back to her room. Should I dress myself up, straighten my hair, something? She had gone through a dozen outfits by the time it was ten o’clock. At last she just pulled her hair back in a band and settled for a white coat. In truth, it was not very different from what she usually wore. It should suffice.
She’d called Raymond and asked him out, tripping over her words a little. He’d agreed. Well, what am I supposed to do now? The Book was silent again, so she drew her thoughts from her other cache of thought. Solve a problem when you meet it, and don’t be afraid.
She was hurrying out of the house with her head in the clouds and almost didn’t hear the ringing. “Honey, your phone.” Mom pointed to her pocket, where it was flashing bright lights.
“Oh. Oh, right.” She held the phone to her ear, hopping on one leg as she pulled on her shoes. “Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line was a boy’s, and for a second she almost thought it was Raymond. But the voice was lower, quieter, not someone she knew. “Is this Lydia Strayen?”
“Speaking.” She mouthed a goodbye to her parents and Jack and closed the door.
“Hi, Lydia, it’s Tarra.”
She stopped on the stairs. “Oh… Hi, Tarra. What is it?”
“Sorry to disturb you. I just wanted to ask… Is Arianne with you?”
“No.” She frowned. “Didn’t she go home yesterday?”
“Oh. I thought so. You haven’t seen her after that?”
“No. What’s wrong?”
“She isn’t answering my calls. I asked some of her friends and none of them have seen her.”
“Wait, do you mean she’s missing? She went home after we got back. Have you been there?”
“I’m not in town, and no one knows where she lives.” He sighed. “I thought, since she was with you on the trip, maybe… Well, thanks, Lydia. I just wanted to check.”
“Okay. Could you tell her to call me or something if you get in contact with her?”
“Of course. Thanks again, Lydia. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Lydia dialed Arianne’s number. Twelve long rings before the line went dead. Sorry, the other user is busy… There was no voicemail. Lydia tried to push down her anxiety. Maybe she’s just drunk, or something. There could be a lot of reasons why she isn’t answering our calls. She couldn’t help remembering the last night, then the scars on the other girl’s arms. She was still thinking about it when she got to the restaurant, but the thought got pushed out of her head when she saw him, leaning against a wall.
Raymond had his earphones on, his eyes closed and his hands shoved into his pockets. His lashes were a tangle of gold. Lydia walked over to his side. “Hi,” she said, a little breathlessly.
His eyes opened, and they were as green as her own. “Glad you came.” He smiled. “You look pretty today.”
“Thanks.” She said, a bit awkwardly. She felt like her brain had short-circuited. “Um, are we going inside?”
He held the door for her as she walked inside. “Did you bring books with you?” Raymond asked, eyeing her backpack. “I thought we were just having lunch.”
“No no, I wasn’t going to do work or anything. It’s just, uh, I carry my Book with me. To a lot of places.”
“I’ve heard about it.” He sat down opposite her. “Mind giving me a look?”
“Oh.” Lydia had never let anyone look in it, much less anyone she barely knew, no matter how much she liked him.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’m just curious.”
“Thanks. Uh, the Book is a planner and schedule sort of thing, but it’s just become sort of a bigger thing for me.”
“I know. It’s one of things that’s interesting about you.”
Lydia felt her brain go dead again, but he went on. “I don’t see a lot of girls who like medicine. Especially neurosurgery. It is neurosurgery, isn’t it?”
“A lot of girls like medicine,” She said, affronted. “And neurosurgery, for that matter. It’s interesting. Don’t you ever feel pulled to solve a problem when it’s there?”
“Yes?”
“I like medicine and surgery in particular because everything’s really rational and orderly, but also because every task is like a puzzle that you have to try. There’s no turning away. And neurosurgery is like the puzzle that has the smallest pieces. It calls for perfection.”
“I guess you could put it that way. Some people might say it’s too much of a burden, though.”
“That’s kind of the point.” Her tongue had loosened when she came back to the talk she was interested in, and she wondered too late if she’d said the wrong things. “I never came around to asking about you though.”
“What about me?”
“What you want. To do, I mean. In the future.”
“I’m not really sure about it. Maybe something about education, I think. I like teaching people and I like kids.” He laughed. “Right now, though, all I really like is basketball.”
Her mind flashed to a picture of him playing under the sun. “You’re really good at it. I watched the other day, that last time…”
The subject carried them halfway through lunch, and cut effortlessly into other topics. This isn’t so bad, Lydia thought, as he laughed. It’s not that hard. Far too soon, though, they were at the doors again. The rain had half-stopped into a light drizzle, and Raymond pulled his hood over his head as they walked together, his umbrella loose in his hand. “That was nice.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled. She focused on stepping over the puddles.
“Do you want to go somewhere else next time?”
“Oh, sure. Of course.” There’s a next time? They had reached the spot where they would be going in different directions again. “Um, see you next time, then.”
He smiled. “Bye, Lydia.”
It was evening when she remembered about Arianne.
Chapter 23 Arianne
Arianne turned the lock. Once. Twice. Three times. Clockwise and counter-clockwise and back again. The door rattled but didn’t open.
“Mother?” She pounded at the door. “Mother, let me out.”
The house was dead quiet, save for the wind and rain. She could not hear the footsteps that she usually woke to, nor the rustling of skirts. The rain pattered at her window, beating a steady rhythm. “Mother?” She tried to press an eye to the cracks of the door and look outside, but saw nothing except a sliver of light. All the candles had gone out.
She circled her room, trying to find something. My phone, where’s my phone? She remembered how Eliana had taken her coat and rummaged through her suitcase, then came to her bathroom and took her clothes away. The clock that was usually set on her desk had stopped at three in the morning, the batteries pulled out. When she opened her closet, all of her clothes were gone. Arianne looked out of the window. Such a long drop. She could see the clothes she’d flung out last night in her panic puddled at the foot of the house, soaked in rain and ice.
She was shivering as she crouched again to the door, trying it again. Could I just break it down? But she wasn’t strong enough to drag her table over here and shove the door down, and anyway it wasn’t a lock keeping the door shut. She could feel something pushing at it from the outside. It’s so cold. She wondered if Eliana would really just lock her inside her room and leave her to die. She’ll have to let me out sometime. Her mother’s fits always came in bursts and spasms. Once this one passes it’ll all be okay. I’ll forget this and go away, far, far away.
Her body didn’t agree with her thoughts. Her head was pounding so much she wasn’t sure if it was the sleet slamming at the window or just her delusion. Her hands shook and she was breathing much too fast, though from panic or cold she could not be sure. The scars on her body had lit up red hot and searing, winding around her legs up to her abdomen and arms. “Mother,” she whispered again, and rattled the door. Arianne wondered if Eliana would let her out sooner if she groveled and begged, or shove her in for a longer time. What if she’s left for good?
When the rain finally stopped she had curled up beneath the sheets, burning with fever and panic. The ghosts had crowded in around her. Eliana took her hand and smiled at her and whispered, “Don’t leave me.” Lydia Strayen frowned at her with disapproval, and said, “Maybe you should stop running away. I could help you.” Paxon clinked her glass to Arianne’s and watched her calmly as the ink on her skin devoured her face. Resme knelt in front of her and kissed her hand, then smiled up at her with the eyes of a wolf. Eriyan giggled and spun around in her pink gown. The cool gray eyes of Tarra Morband trailed from her feet to her neck, and ripped her body open from the seams of her scars. Antony led the way in front of her, but when she caught up to him his face had turned to Aaron’s, and she was looking into a mirror. Lissanda stroked her hair and whispered comforts, but Quetin hissed, “inhuman, abomination.” Arianne shuddered. “Stop,” she whispered. “Someone make them stop.”
Stop, she thought, but her mind was too blurry. Stop making me remember. It was too late, and the gates had opened.
She was four years old again, peering around her door. Her mother and father were sitting together on a couch, Eliana pressed against her lover, her arms around his torso. Eliana’s hair was pale gold, her frame as slight as a bird’s. Aaron had his eyes half closed, and was playing with her hair.
“Tell me you love me, Aaron,” she said, and her voice trembled.
Aaron gave her the same lazy smile that his daughter would master years later. “’Course I do.”
“Where are you going this time, then? You told me we would stay here.” Eliana looked up into his face. “You promised.”
“I’ll stay. That doesn’t mean I’ll be here every second, Eliana. I don’t want to argue about this again.”
“What about last time?” Eliana fretted. “I was so scared.”
“I came back. We have our daughter now, don’t we? Little Arianne.” He smiled, and shook his head a little. “My poor silly overwrought Eliana,” he said, and pressed his nose to her hair. “I love you, you know that.”
“I do,” her mother whispered, and clutched him tighter. “But when can we marry? You tell me time and time again—”
“Eliana,” Aaron cut her off, pulling back. “Why do we have to prove our love through a piece of paper? We have a daughter, and we’re together. A few words don’t mean that we belong together, this does.”
“Oh, well—yes, I suppose, but—Oh, Aaron, don’t you see how perfect it would be? It would just be us. Nothing else would matter, only us. We would show them that. And you would be mine and I would be yours…”
“I am yours.”
“You are, but—we would share things, then. I know how people talk about you living on me. When we marry, I could give everything to you. No one would talk again.”
“I don’t care about them.”
“Well, of course you don’t. But it would make me happy, Aaron. Truly.”
“Eliana, we’re barely old enough. Next year. Alright? I promise, I love you.” He turned away a little, and stretched out his legs. “Where’s Arianne?”
Eliana waved her hand. “In her room, I think. Aaron, I really want to talk about—” But her lover had stood up, and Arianne was running toward him.
The memories were sweet. So sweet, until they all burned down. Eliana would fuss over her and smile and coddle her, but mostly for her lover’s benefit. When they were alone, very occasionally she would look at Arianne with something that almost looked like resentment, though Arianne’s eyes had not learned to recognize it at the tender age of five. Most of all it was Aaron, with his smile and his strong arms that would pick her up and twirl her around as she laughed. He would let me ride on his shoulders, and tickle my neck. But he would leave, though, always, and she would be left on her own.
Her parents fought, sometimes, and Arianne would cry. Aaron would take her in his arms and comfort her, and sometimes Eliana, but more of the time she was just forgotten. When the fights ended on a good note, there would be time for her, but not always. On the bad days, though, when Aaron slammed the door and Eliana came back sobbing, Arianne would pull at her skirts and Eliana would slap her hand away. “You stole him”, she said once. “He isn’t mine anymore. You came between us.” Arianne had not been old enough to understand at the time, but the words had stuck to her as she grew up. Thief added itself to the chant of abomination, inhuman, liar, pretender in her head.
But there were other times also, when Eliana would hug her and cling to her, sobbing. She would cover me in kisses and hold me as we fell asleep. There were a few days when they just spent the days in sullen silences and baleful glares, too, and those were the days even Aaron would ignore her and brush her away after a curt, “Eliana, the girl’s crying again.”
When she was six, the day came when Aaron left and never came back. It had been a good day before, and Arianne had not understood why her mother was anxious. Aaron had been back for a few nights after his trip to somewhere before, and whispered words of love to them both. “I swear, Eliana,” she’d heard him say to her mother. “Swear that I love you. Forever. Forever. Yes.” And he had played with her for a while, and after that Eliana paid more attention, too. Everything seemed to be falling into place.
The next day when she came back from school, the house was quiet again. Eliana lay on her side, reading a book.
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?” When I could still call them that. They’re in their graves now, both of them.
Her mother sighed. “I don’t know. He’ll be back soon, he said.” She closed the book. “This is his.”
Nothing changed…for a while, at least. Eliana still cared for her, but her gaze had grown more and more distant, and at times Arianne would find her marooned in one of her silences, waiting at the door. She grew more impatient, too, and the first night Arianne saw her with the white pills in her hand she had shoved her daughter into her room and locked her inside. She let me out that time, after a day.
The memories were strange, twisted somehow. There seemed to be two people in her mother’s body, two sets of memories in Arianne’s head. There was the woman who would hold her and hush her gently, and stayed by her bedside as she grew sick, and hugged her when she got her achievements in school, kissed her after she stumbled and fell… But there was the other shadow too, who shoved her daughter away as she cried and glared at the girl while she sat silent, and locked her in her room as she took her drugs. Finally, there came one day when the latter won out, when Arianne came home to find Eliana crying with anger. “He’s left. I should have known he would. I was a fool for believing him… loved me, didn’t he? All he loved was my body and my money. He’ll never come back.”
“Who, mommy?”
Eliana threw the books Aaron had left on the ground. She looked at Arianne like she didn’t know who the girl was. “And he took nothing away. I’ll have to pay his debts. As usual.” Eliana’s eyes were flashing with anger and pain. “I thought you would keep him if I couldn’t, but you’re too useless to do even that. And now I’m stuck with you, it seems.”
“Momm—”
“Don’t call me that. Go away.” Eliana threw the door behind her, and came back with her walk lopsided and teetering. When she fell asleep, Arianne covered her with a blanket and crept away.
Chapter 24 Lydia
I’m crazy to think it. I’m crazy not to think it. Lydia remembered the scars, the words. Tarra saying, she isn’t answering my calls. “She’s not dead,” Lydia whispered to herself. “She didn’t kill herself.”
The doubt gnawed at her. She tossed and turned, trying to get to sleep. What if it’s true? What if something’s happened? Someone else would go after her if she was really missing, would they? All her friends, all those people. No one knows where she lives. Neither did Lydia. It wasn’t her responsibility. And only a day had passed, nothing could be concrete. Anything could have happened. Probably why no one had gone looking for her.
She remembered the girl who had shared her strawberries with her, the girl who had listened to all her secrets. The girl who laughed as they walked under glittering lights. The girl who had sobbed in her arms and spoke awash in moonlight. She trusted me, only a little. I tried, but it was a problem I couldn’t solve.
Lydia threw back the covers. She’s just a girl. She picked up the phone. How do I know where she lives? The place is huge, all I know is that it’s on the outskirts and is a big house.
“Hi. It’s Lydia. Lydia Strayen.”
“Did anything happen?” Tarra sounded tired.
“No, I just want to ask something. You’ve never been to her house?”
“No one goes there.”
“Could you find it? Search the web, something? Call the police?”
“I don’t think the police need to be involved if a girl doesn’t answer her calls for one day. Do you know anything… She said on her trip, maybe?”
“Not really.” Lydia bit her lip.
Tarra sighed. “Maybe I’m just overreacting. She could have just lost her phone. It’s just that she when she called me, that last day… when you came back. She sounded strange, and then cut off the line after a few seconds.”
“I don’t think you’re overreacting.”
“You’re the only person besides Paxon who says that. I actually called the school, asked for the address, but they said it was privacy and wouldn’t give it. They’d have to pull out all the records for that, and it’s break now anyway. She told me she’d go over, maybe drive around or something if Arianne still didn’t show up after tomorrow. Maybe you--”
Solve the problem. “I’ll go. Tomorrow.”
Chapter 25 Arianne
Arianne cupped her hands under the tap and brought the water to her mouth. At least I have water. All she wanted to do now was sleep, but even with the quilts it was too cold without the heating turned on, and for that she would have to go out to the grand room. The water was cool against her skin, though. She touched her forehead. The room is cold, but I’m burning up.
The sky was dark already. Arianne had slipped in and out of consciousness, getting up only occasionally to get a drink from the bathroom. Maybe it’s better if I’m sick. This way at least I won’t feel hungry for some time. Her mother still wasn’t home. Eliana was usually back before it got too late, but Arianne had no idea what time it was. The nights all looked the same, especially rainy nights. When she walked back to her bed, she had to keep a hand on the wall to keep herself from falling.
She wrapped the covers around her and lay down, curling up. They were smooth on her bare skin. “Arianne?” Antony whispered in the darkness.
No, no, ignore him, he’s nothing but a memory, nothing but a ghost. Arianne shoved the sheets around her ears. “Stop,” she groaned. “Let me go, please.” Her head hurt as much as her scars. “Arianne,” they said again, insistent. The calling pounded with the beat of her pain. Arianne, Arianne, Arianne. Her world was spinning. Arianne, Arianne.
She slipped again.
“Why are you crying, Arianne?” Lissanda leaned over her.
My mother left me, she wanted to say, she only comes back once a week. But she knew she couldn’t say that, or bad things would happen. “My father left us,” she mumbled instead. “I’m really sad that he’s gone.”
They were in third grade then, her and Lissanda and Quetin and Eriyan; girls, all of them, little girls with wide round eyes. It was the year when Eliana started pulling away from her, started taking the white powder she hoarded. Lissanda was a bright girl with brown skin and brown eyes, Quentin a pretty blonde little girl, and Eriyan with skin the color of porcelain, a simple headed girl with dreams of ponies and fairies. We were friends at first, the four of us.
“Oh.” Lissanda looked confused. “Well, he’ll be back, won’t he?”
“No. He’ll never come back. Mother says so.”
“Is he dead?” Quetin asked.
“I don’t know. He might be.” She looked at them, imploring. “I’m really scared. What do I do?”
“If he’s not dead, why are you scared?” Quentin asked. “He’ll be back soon.”
“No, he won’t.” Arianne whispered. “I’m just really, really scared…”
“Why?” Lissanda asked.
“I’ll be left on my own,” she mumbled. “And there’ll be no one for me.” She might have told them about the way her mother’s words slurred after a night shut up in her room and the way she would look and look and look at her, and sometimes talk to her in ways that she couldn’t understand, but didn’t know how to say it.
“You won’t be on your own,” Quetin said. “There’ll be other people to take care of you.”
“But I don’t know what to do. I…” She trailed off, unsure.
Lissanda patted her on the shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, you’ll see. We’ll help you.”
It will, she thought. Mother will be herself soon. It’ll be okay. It will.
It hadn’t got better when she turned twelve. She certainly hadn’t. She found her friends shying away from her, giving her strange looks and pointedly stopping the conversation when she joined the conversation. Whenever she tried to say something about herself, Quetin, who had always had the least patience, rolled her eyes openly and turned away, while Eriyan and Lissanda shifted in uncomfortable silence. I was needy and clingy and obsessive. I can’t blame them for distancing me.
Even so, the memory was bitter. When Quetin started stop talking to me, the rest of them all followed, even Lissanda. Even Eriyan. She was stranded in her silences. There had been teachers, counselors to talk to her, but she could never tell them everything, only a part of it. And they would look at me the same way Lissanda did, and tell me things would turn out fine. At first Arianne would try to protest, but after a while she just nodded and smiled. It was the first year she started cutting.
She might have done worse had she not met Antony. He was three or four years older than her, with a kind smile and soft eyes. He listened, and didn’t protest, but most of all he saw her, saw her scars and her bruises and her dreams. She met him only because she had to pair up with him on a project and the school had assigned the older students as mentors to the younger ones, but ended up saying too much, and he was so patient and gentle all of it came pouring out of her, all the hurts and silences and stares and loneliness, and that day he took her in his arms.
“I’ll take care of you, Arianne.”
She had read about falling in love; and perhaps this was everything it was supposed to be. At thirteen she was holding his hand as they walked through the streets, clinging to his arm, laughing as he licked the ice-cream drops off her melting cone. He would listen to her talk about her world of books and characters, the world that everyone scorned, especially Eliana.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading, mother.”
“Where did you find that?”
“In your room, mother. It was next to your bed. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have taken it…”
“Put it back. And don’t take my things again.”
Later she would find out all the books were Aaron’s, and her mother had been trying to go through them, find a whisper of her lover. Once she even tried to talk to Eliana about it, but her mother had turned away. “Aaron and his books,” she muttered. “You’re just like him. When he was reading I could never reach him. He had a world locked up in his skull, kept away from me. No. Don’t ever ask me about that again.”
Antony would listen to her talk of spirits and ghosts and dreams, of angels with wolf’s teeth and burning red eyes, read her poems and give her his. Soon she had told him everything, from the moment Aaron had left them to Eliana’s brooding silences. He would hold her if she cried, and kiss her tears away. I was fourteen. She thought often of going to live with Antony the next time Eliana left, but he would smile and say that his parents might mind. “I can be quiet,” she’d whispered.
“I know,” he would say. “I’m sorry, Arianne.”
He always told her that he loved her because of her mind. I was drowning, and he pulled me ashore. I was silent, and he prompted me to talk. I was scared, but he made me laugh again. It might have been very sweet, had it all been real. She told him everything, and might have given him even more that year, had she not found him in her room with a handful of her mother’s jewelry.
He was so scared that moment I saw him. Then he had pushed away, and ran from the house. It was the day Eliana came home, and dressed her up in Aaron’s clothes for the first time, and the first time Arianne tasted alcohol. It burned so much, and felt so good. It was strange how, the next morning when she was done being sick, the panic that rose in her was not for her lost life or love, but for how much Antony knew. They’ll all know now, everything I told him. She was so scared the next few days that she pretended she was sick as not to go to school. No one would contradict me, anyway. The rest of the year she had shut herself up and become a shadow in the back of the room, even though as far as she knew Antony had never told anyone yet, the knowledge of his knowledge was enough to drive her mad. Every day she would wake up wondering if everyone knew what she was.
At the end of the year, she had persuaded Eliana to let her move to the new town, and there her mother had bought the white house she came to live in up till now. The new demeanor came to her easy. As long as I sweep the past beneath me, it will never have happened. She had been twelve when the clingy, needy child started to cut, thirteen when the brave girl with a smile plastered to her face all the time lost her first kiss, and fourteen when she melted into another shadow among the walls. She was fifteen when the new girl made a new name for herself in the new school, started catching invitations and smiles from others, and lost her kisses by the tens. She was sixteen when she met Paxon and sixteen when she met Tarra.
What will I be next time? Arianne thought. She felt her body floating in spirals. Maybe I won’t live that long. She had to laugh, and the sound hurt.
Day and night had blurred together. Have I slept through one night, or two? Arianne saw her mother standing above her, clad in her wedding dress, and turned to face the walls. “You again,” she mumbled. “No, not again.” She’d had enough of her visitors in her room for a lifetime.
Eliana sat down on her bed and peeled back her covers. Arianne let her. She’ll go away soon, and l can have another dream, though perhaps not much better than this one.
Her mother’s eyes probed her scars. “You’ve always prided yourself on being strong, Arianne.”
She closed her eyes. Her mother’s voice came from far away. “You think you could pretend to me? All you want to do is be what I want. Just like I used to, for him. But we’re different, you see. I gave every part of me to Aaron, while you gave me only half.” She laughed a short, high little laugh. “Not so strong now, are you? Mother will let you out when you’ve learnt your lesson.”
Her fingers were cool against Arianne’s skin. “Do you remember that time when you were seven? You were burning with fever. I sat by you day and night, and scoured the world for your medicine. It was raining outside, a thunderstorm in the middle of summer, and I came back soaked and bedraggled. All for you, but you didn’t give me anything. I wanted to love you, but you did nothing right. You brought this upon yourself.”
“Do you know why I chose now?” Eliana leaned over her, forced her eyes open, flipped the lights on. “Look at me, Arianne. I want you to know. I want you to see me. I know you think you can run away once your birthday comes next year, just like he did. I let him leave once, fool that I was. I’ll never let him leave again. This time is different. I’ll let you out, yes… But never let you go.”
Her face loomed over Arianne’s, a pale white mask. Arianne squirmed back feebly. “Go away,” she whispered, with no strength in her voice. The sounds in her head were getting too loud, and she was shuddering with heat and cold.
Chapter 26 Lydia
“Stop here.”
Lydia climbed out of the car. It should be this, she thought, looking up at the white mansion. Does she live in that house alone? It sat on the crest of the rising hills, overlooking the city. The classic style of the building with its spirals and pillars contrasted starkly with the crammed apartments and glass-and-brick buildings around Lydia’s part of the town.
When she reached the doors, she stopped. Rain was pattering softly around her, masking any sounds inside. The blank white door stared at her, expressionless. What if I go inside, and find a body? Her heart hammered. Solve the problem. She knocked. Once, timid, then again, insistent. When the door opened she sighed with relief, but the woman standing in front of her wasn’t Arianne.
The woman was dressed all in white, giving off a thick scent of perfume. Her face was delicate and pale, but her body bulged and sagged beneath the white folds of her dress and her eyes were lined with a blankness that startled Lydia. “Hi… I’m sorry to disturb you. Is this Arianne’s house? Arianne Whitewood.”
“I’m her mother.”
Oh, thank god. “I’m her classmate. I was just wondering… She hasn’t been returning our calls. Is she at home?”
Arianne’s mother stared at her for a moment. “No,” she said at last. “I thought she was out for one of her… occasions.”
“She didn’t come back the day before yesterday? I was with her when we came back. From the trip.”
“She left last night.”
Last night. Nothing added up here. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Is there anything else?” She made to shut the door.
“No… Thank you.” The blank white door clicked shut.
When Lydia was walking back down, she looked back. A small square of light fell across the rain, but other than that the house was black and quiet and empty. That doesn’t mean anything. She circled back, looking up. Only one light from the window at the side was lit up. At the foot of the house under the single light, there was something strewn over the ground in a heap. For one mad second Lydia almost thought it was a corpse, but when she walked next to it it was just a pile of clothes, white and purple and black.
Arianne’s scars flashed before her eyes, slashing the white and green landscape up with brutal cuts of purple and silver. She saw the other girl’s lazy smile and how she raised a bottle to the air before downing it, laughing. A toast to all of you. She heard, Friends aren’t always good to their companions. And parents aren’t always good for their children. The house seemed desolate, dead, nothing like the palace she’d imagined. Tarra saying, It’s just that she when she called me, that last day… when you came back. She sounded strange, and then cut off the line after a few seconds. Her own thoughts came back to bite at her. What if she’s killed herself? The woman in white with her blank pale eyes saying, she left last night.
She bent down and picked the clothes up. Isn’t there something that can prove her, a mark, the size? It could have been Arianne’s, but it would have fit on her mother fairly well too. Under the single light above the shirt looked white, though soaked through with rain and brown and green stains, but there were thin russet marks on the sleeves.
Lydia turned back, and began to run. When the door opened again she found herself face to face with Arianne’s mother again. “What is it?” The woman asked. She didn’t sound irritated, but her tone had a dreamy, far off quality.
“Arianne’s in the house. She left her clothes under her room.”
“And who are you?”
Her skin crawled. “I’m Arianne’s classmate. Please, I think something went wrong here. I know that—”
“She’s not at home. She left a night ago.”
Lydia stared at her. No, she almost said, she’s been silent for two days. Her mind whirred. “Arianne—”
“She’s not here.” The woman’s voice remained vague. “Please don’t disturb me. Are you leaving now?”
“She told me everything about her.”
The pale eyes seemed to focus for the first time before they glazed over again. “What do you mean?”
“She told everyone. All of us. Everyone knows. About the things that happened to her.”
The woman laughed. “Arianne,” she said. Her words had went from vague to slurred. “It’s always Arianne, isn’t it? My little girl.”
Lydia felt like her eyes couldn’t focus. The face in front of her had blurred to a mist of blinking neon dots. “Everyone knows,” she said again. “And if anything happens to her—”
“Oh, nothing will happen to the darling girl. Such a precious little gem, everyone will love her.” The woman’s tone lilted. Lydia felt another rush of dizziness, heard her own thoughts shouting back to her: Everyone loves her. What does she have?
“Let me in.” Lydia pushed at the door. “I’m calling the police if you don’t let me in. Everyone knows what happened to her, they’re telling--”
“The girl was always a fast liar.” Arianne’s mother smiled through the haze Lydia’s vision had become. “But you’d have to be a child to believe what she says.”
“Are you letting me inside or not? I’m calling the police right now if you don’t, whatever Arianne said was true or not.” Whatever she said. She pushed inside. Top floor, she thought, remembering the light. The room at the end of the corridor was barred across with a firm metal bar. She could hear footsteps behind her, and her vision blurred again. Her breaths came in short fast puffs. When Arianne’s mother stepped up the top of the stairs, the woman was crying and laughing. “He’s not leaving me because of her again. Not again. No, no, no.” She laughed a high-pitched laugh and clutched at the railing. “It’s always her. I made her. When I see him coming back to me, it’s always her instead. She makes everything wrong. She’s not right, not even a human. She’s just something that went wrong. Abomination.”
The bar was locked into place at its two ends. Lydia fumbled with the clasps. If anything happens to me because of Arianne, I might just throttle her for it. The two locks had loosened, and she rotated the bar until it came loose enough to drop. Lydia pressed her back to the door. The woman’s face was nothing but a pile of shifting bright dots. “Listen,” she whispered. “If you do anything like this to her again, ever, I’ll call the police and see that you stay inside until your bones rot.” Her words were coming fast now, as fast as her breathing, words she would never be able to carry out and never knew why she said save for the anger that drove her on. “Leave the house. Now. Don’t come back to her here again. If you try anything to hurt her, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
There was the sound of laughter and sobbing until the laughter ceased completely. Lydia felt her head swimming. Nothing makes sense. I’m not making sense. “Do you understand me?”
She thought she heard a yes before she turned to push the door open. It yielded. The room was bathed in the light she’d seen from outside, the closet doors thrown open and a bowl of broth on the table. The girl was curled up beneath the sheets, her hair spread out in a dark mass over the pillow. “Arianne?” Lydia knelt by the bed. The other girl moaned and turned her head away, pulling the sheets up around her head. What’s wrong with her? “Arianne, it’s Lydia.”
When she wrenched the covers out of Arianne’s hands and pulled them down, she jerked them back up again. There was nothing underneath to cover the stripes on her body, and her skin was burning with heat. What do I do with her now? Take her to my home? Take her to the hospital? Stay with her here? She could not hear the sounds of Arianne’s mother outside the door, but she would still be here for a while, and the thought made her edgy. At least there’s no one at home for now. Everyone would be at work, except for Jack, who would hopefully be at some playmate’s home.
“Can you walk? Arianne, look at me.” Lydia drew her coat down and pulled it on over the other girl. It was cut long, so at least it covered her up to the knees, although it wouldn’t do much good for keeping her warm. She pulled the zipper up the front and hauled the other girl to her feet. Arianne mumbled and clutched at her and Lydia almost fell. Oh, this is going to go great. “Let’s get you out of this place.”
She managed to get the other girl to her apartment. She prayed no one was home. Please don’t let Mom or Dad be back home for some reason. Lydia shoved the key into the lock.
Chapter 27 Arianne
“Drink,” the other girl said, and pressed a cup of brown liquid into her hands. It smelled of herbs. “It’s for your fever.”
Arianne leaned back on the pillows. “Thanks.”
Lydia sighed. “At least you’re talking now. Arianne, I’m calling the police.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? Someone barred you up in your room and might have left you inside to die. You would have, with that fever.”
“No. Not now.”
“When, then? Arianne—”
“No.” She turned away. “When are your parents coming back?”
“You’re imprisoned in your own house, and that’s what you worry about?”
She closed her eyes. “Thanks. For pulling me out.”
“Thank me after I’ve called the police.”
“No, Lydia. Just… please. Not now. I’m tired.” Her words sounded far off. When the other girl started to answer, she had already slipped back to sleep.
When Arianne opened her eyes again, the room had slipped into blackness. She could hear sounds from outside the room, clinking forks and chatter, light leaking in from the door cracks. For a brief moment she wondered if Eliana had a visitor, then she remembered. What am I going to say? Do they even know there’s another person shoved into their home? Did Lydia tell them? Her fever had broken, but her arms trembled to hold her weight as she pushed herself up, and her mouth was dry and parched. As she sat up, she saw herself in the small mirror hanging above Lydia Strayen’s bed, in a long sleeved knit sweater pulled over a large T-shirt that came down to her knees.
She sat there for a moment with her knees pulled up under the coverlets, listening to the sounds outside. Lydia Strayen, she thought, incredulous. When she had heard the urgent knocking at the door, her first thought was of the police, then Tarra, before she remembered him not being in town. For a wild moment she even thought of Aaron, coming back after eleven years, and Pax, with her indigo hair dripping with rain. The faint sounds downstairs were difficult to decipher, though, but Arianne heard the sound of the door being closed well enough. Then came the commotion at her door. Stop talking, she’d thought, stop being so loud.
Lydia Strayen, with her mop of messy red hair and unflinching green eyes. The nerdy girl who walked around everywhere carrying a book under an arm, who would go into rants about the things she’d planned for herself. The girl who had endlessly, needlessly pried at Arianne during their trip, snapped at her and groaned and rolled her eyes and stamped her foot. The girl who held her as she ran down the stairs. The girl who studied nerve endings and spinal cords and cerebrovascular systems. The girl who had everything Arianne wanted and would never get, the girl who hated who Arianne was and all she represented, the girl bathed perpetually in daylight, not a day on the dark side. Her, it’s her who pulled me out of the house, her who came running after me. She saw the girl with that look, part annoyed, part confused, saying, solve your problems, like she could face the world with a swipe of her hand. Lydia, Arianne thought again. What am I to think?
The bed was warm and very soft, one that you could lie down and sink into. Lydia’s room was cluttered with books and markers and pens and pillows. What am I going to do now? She thought, but was too tired to care.
The door opened when the talking ceased, and Arianne shrank back from the light. Lydia closed the door behind her, pressing her back against it. “You better now?”
“A lot. Water would be nice though, thanks.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
Lydia sat on the rug next to her bed. Arianne sipped her water. “Is this where the questions start?”
“It’s not like you’ll answer any of them.”
“We could do it the other way round. Am I staying here?”
“Unless you want to get moved to a hospital cot, yes. I think your fever’s come down too much for that by now, though.” Lydia sighed and twisted to look at her. “I’ve never ever lied to my parents about anything before, and now I’m having it twice in a row because of you.”
“I’d love to hear the story.”
“Your door got stuck and you got sick. Your parents were out on vacation.”
“Expertise.”
“I think they actually believed it. Not so much with the rest of the story. I had to tell them I dragged you back here on instinct and you stayed, which I think even they had some doubts about.”
“Thanks,” Arianne said again. She cradled the cup to her chest. “Other than that, have you told anyone?”
“No,” the other girl muttered grudgingly.
“I’ll call my friends.”
“And tell them?”
“My phone got lost.”
“You’re a worse liar than I am.” Lydia paused. “Your mother’s gone.”
“I got used to it.”
“No, as in, I told her not to come back to you.”
Not come back to me. “She listened?”
“I would think so.”
Not come back to me. The thought was daunting and liberating at once, though Arianne doubted whether Eliana would be able to stay away for that long. I tried to leave you as you left me, but I kept coming back. Eliana couldn’t stay for much a time, but she couldn’t keep away for long either. “Okay,” She said at last.
“Arianne.” Lydia hesitated. “I’ll help you. We will. Tell them. Tell us. It’ll be okay.”
I would, Lydia had whispered the night Arianne had gone running up the stairs. Everything will be okay. We’ll help you, echoed Lissanda. Antony added in. I’ll take care of you. Eliana saying, all I wanted to do was love you, but you kept pushing me away. Aaron in the other room, swearing his undying love at midnight and fleeing at daybreak. “I know.” She looked down at her hands, setting the cup aside on the counter. Her fingers were pale white shadows on the green patterned quilt. It’s dark, she thought. It’s always dark when I wake up. The faint stems of light had cut a line between her and Lydia. And bright where she is. “I seem to recall you promising not to tell.”
“And I won’t, if you don’t want me to. But I really think you should want to.”
I used to. “My father left us when I was six. My mother… got a little bit unstable because of it. That, and the drugs.” It seemed so simple when she laid it out like that. Only two sentences.
“I’m sorry.”
Arianne smiled. “I know.”
“It’s not completely… unimaginable.” Lydia looked away. “I meant… People would understand.”
“Don’t, Lydia. Leave it with the two of us.” There was a tiredness chafing at her. The wrought panic of everyone discovering that had pounded at her for so many years had dulled into a steady routine. Liar, pretender. I’m just not enough for all of it.
“Arianne, why don’t you…” Lydia caught herself. “Maybe tell someone, anyone. You’d be free. You could have… fought back. Made things better for yourself... When I came to your house, I… I saw…”
“I can imagine.” The memories were pushing at the dam in her head. I don’t want to remember. I just want to forget. The dream of her peeling off all her armor came back to her. “I don’t really want to talk about it. Can I use your phone to make a few calls?”
“Morning.” Lydia’s mother smiled at her, like they were old acquaintances. Maybe she got used to it after the days we had to have breakfast together. “The place is a bit messy, but I hope you can stomach it.”
Arianne smiled timidly, looking down. “I’m really sorry about all of this trouble. My phone ran out of battery and… It was really good of Lydia to come looking for me. I’ll be back soon.” She could find another place to stay for a short while.
“She told me about the door.” Mrs. Strayen smiled sympathetically and leaned over to pat Arianne on her shoulder. “It must have been horrible. Thank god Lydia had the right instinct to go after you, or…” She shuddered. “It’s so cold, too. And the rain. I was so anxious when we saw you so sick—”
“Mom,” Lydia muttered. “She gets the idea.” She leaned across the table to grab an apple. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to work? Even Dad’s left for an hour already.”
“Are you so eager to get rid of me?” Mrs. Strayen laughed. “Well, I guess I should get Jack to Erin’s place, too.” She gave Arianne a quick hug. “Tell us if you need anything, alright, dear? And come over more often, if you’d like to. Lydia doesn’t have a lot of friends over… I think it’s her--”
“Mooom,” Lydia moaned. “Stop embarrassing me.”
Lydia’s brother was half-visible in his room, lying on his stomach with a big picture book spread out before him. “Wait two minutes,” he yelled back to his mother’s calling. Mrs. Strayen sighed. “It’s been a lot of two minutes.”
Arianne stepped awkwardly around the big white dog that was now weaving itself around Lydia. Lydia laughed. “Go on, he doesn’t bite. Not you, at least.”
She stretched out a hand tentatively. The dog sniffed her hand. The rasp of his tongue was rough and wet as the dog licked her fingers. Arianne repressed the urge to flinch. Lydia saw her expression and laughed. “Pate, here.” She stretched out her arms, and the dog turned away from the newcomer.
“Jackie, say good-bye to Arianne.” Mrs. Strayen lingered by the door. “I’ll be leaving now. It’s great to have you around, Arianne. Lydia, you be nice, okay?”
“’Bye,” the little boy mumbled dutifully from the door, tugging at his mother’s clothes. “Mommy, let’s go.”
“Bye, Mrs. Strayen. Thanks again.” Arianne smiled.
When the door had closed, Lydia sighed and plopped herself down on the sofa, throwing aside a coat from under her. “I never want to go through that again.”
“It was nice, actually.” Lydia’s home was the exact opposite of Arianne’s house: crowded, small, warm. Everyone here is the opposite of what I have. She felt like she was being pushed into a world too sure, too bright, too warm, too busy. An outsider. It’s only a few months away. And I can go somewhere else, forge a new identity. An unfamiliar jerk gnawed at her. Do I really want to leave?
Chapter 28 Lydia
…
*Reminders:
-School in a week (review and check)
-Check on A tomorrow
-Visit the hospital at night with M
-Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon
…
February 6, The White Book
Spring was eating away at the winter. It came over in a sudden jolt of warm air, gushing at the thin layer of ice lining the ponds and melting the sleet into water, filling the world with a humid, green texture. Small buds were pushing at the pale bark on the maple tree in front of their apartment. Lydia stretched out a hand.
It had been two days since Arianne left them and went back. Lydia had offered to stay, but Arianne just shook her head and smiled. I’ll be fine.
Will you? Lydia didn’t think much of the statement. She called the other girl once a day to make sure she was okay, but that didn’t hold much weight in its own right. She’ll be cutting up her skin whatever I say. The secret still rankled. Lydia kept coming back to it, trying to pick out signs, warnings, solutions, endings. Make it logical. Make it a problem that’s solvable. She’d initially felt guilty about thinking this way, wondered if it was insensible and callous, but when she let it slip Arianne had only smiled a little. That’s good.
Why? Lydia had asked.
It’s better than you feeling sorry about it.
Whatever that meant. Lydia had long given up trying to understand what was going on in the other girl’s head. But I still want to right it. She has to tell sometime. The pale empty eyes of the girl’s mother still haunted Lydia.
The day was cloudless and warm, warmer than all the days before. Her mind drifted. He said he’d meet me there. Raymond had asked her out for a walk the day before, and Lydia was happy to consent. Better than happy. When she’d bent over The Book and logged in the event, she’d felt like The Book had been tainted, somehow… But also fuller, better, brighter. More of me. She chided herself even as she smiled. It’s just a crush, it’s only that, nothing will come out of it. On the other hand, she heard, take what you want.
“Take what you want,” she whispered to herself, as she turned the corner. Raymond wasn’t there yet, so she leaned against the wall and waited, trying not to be too obvious as she looked around. He could have asked other people. He asked you. That’s good enough. They hardly knew each other, but there were those small stumbling moments, when Lydia dropped her books and he’d picked them up for her and smiled, or that day when they paired up as partners in the lab and laughed silently at Raymond’s impersonation of the teacher’s dull accent. And all the glances she’d snuck in the hallways, the times she’d stood in the crowd and watched as he played his games and once even handed him a bottle of water as he walked off the court. Everything is so right, she thought dreamily as she traced the outline of a brick in a wall. Someone had sprayed Henral and Dancy LOVE 4EVER over the walls in bright pink paint with a heart around the names. Everything is just clicking into place of what I’ve mapped, and some that I haven’t. She thought of Arianne. Well, almost everything, but she would fix it.
“Did I keep you waiting?”
“Oh.” Lydia turned. “No. Not for long.”
“Sorry about it.” When Raymond smiled, the sun turned his eyes gold-flecked. “Traffic was murder.”
“It’s okay.” She fell in side with him, trying to match their pace. “Where are we going?” We.
“Maybe somewhere with less people?” He grimaced as a cyclist swerved wildly to avoid a woman with a stroller who was also talking on the phone as she crossed the street, yelling profanities.
“That would be good.” It was not too far from the cluttered center of the town to the quieter districts. And only the two of us. “You never got around to telling me what happened after you tried cutting away the spinal cord.”
Raymond laughed. “On such a nice day,” he teased, “You want to talk biology?” He laughed again. “That is so you.”
Lydia remembered Ameri saying the same thing. “I couldn’t think of anything better,” she admitted. “Am I being boring?”
“No, you’re being you.”
When the noises had quieted a little behind them, Lydia found herself walking down a relatively quiet ally with trees on either side. Raymond kept up a steady pace. The cobblestones widened, until finally they were standing in front of a large roped off patch of grass and stones. A road wound out lazily before them, but there weren’t any cars. On the other side of the road there was thin lining of trees, and Lydia could see the stores and streets behind them. “Let’s stop here,” she said.
Raymond stepped over the rope into the patch of grass, balancing on the large rocks. He bent down and plucked a flower, twirled it around. Lydia sat down on the rope. It swayed but didn’t bend much, so she swung back and forth on it slightly. The air was warm and breezy, the sun a golden glint in the clear blue sky, Raymond smiling as he pulled petals off a flower. Lydia felt heady. It’s like a dream.
He snapped off a strand of foxtail, and tickled her neck. Lydia yelped and swatted him. “Hey!”
He laughed and ducked as she made to grasp the plant, then backed away. Lydia followed him through the sea of green, the grasses tickling at her fingers. Soon she was running, and had never felt more like a child.
She never saw the car.
“Lydia!” Raymond was yelling. “Lydia, stop!”
The world went upside down in a jolt of pain. Then she was burning, and everything went black.
Everything hurt.
The air was sharp with the smell of antiseptics. Lydia lay on her back on the hospital cot with a white sheet covering her, the room all white. Tubes were taped to her skin, linked up to machines and fluid bags. Her whole body seemed to be encased in plaster and bandages, a heavy clay cage that sent jolts of pain up her whenever she moved. Slowly the sounds flooded in from around her: the beeping of machines, someone talking, the soft whirring as a bed was raised to a sitting position. There were beds around her, twelve at most, hers closest to the door. A coat hung on an empty chair next to her bed, bags on the ground. She heard the talks and groans and whirs and beeps, but most of all she heard her own pain screaming back at her.
It was strange how she heard it more than felt it. The sounds weren’t supposed to exist. It was too loud around her. But she heard them all the same, heard the pulsing of her blood, red and hot and frantic as it ran through the flaming flesh and marrow, heard the explosions in her bones. Burning.
Lydia lay there with her eyes cast to the ceiling, then closed them after a while. So tired. She tried to remember what had happened, but couldn’t muster up more than a few images. The world had turned over and over and over again, a sickening flash and a jolt of pain, then the flames came to eat at her, and all she remembered were the screams.
She heard rustling next to her, and turned her head. Her mother stood there white as a ghost, with purple shadows under her eyes, and was staring at Lydia like she’d never seen her daughter before. Lydia tried for a smile, and her mother burst into tears.
Mom, don’t cry, Lydia wanted to say, but her throat was too raw. Her mother’s loud sobs echoed in the room, and she tried to muffle her crying in her sleeve, but only sobbed harder. Dad burst into the room, looking frantic. “What happened?”
He saw Lydia, and smiled, even as his eyes welled up. It can’t be that bad, Lydia thought. How long was I unconscious? “Oh my god,” Mom mumbled, then ran from the room. “Rose, Lydia’s awake.”
Her father sat on the chair, just looking at her. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but his lips moved soundlessly. Lydia wanted to turn away. He never let us see him cry. “Dad,” she whispered. “Don’t.”
He smiled tremulously, then leaned over and ran his hands over the air an inch from her skin, like he thought she might shatter if he touched her. He started a few times, and finally choked out, “She was praying… for you. We all were…”
Praying in a God you never believed in. Lydia managed a lopsided smile before her father turned away. Rosie ran in with her hair all messy and her clothes askew after her mother, who was still choking back tears. “I’m fine,” she mumbled. Her voice was rough and scratchy, and her throat hurt as bad as her body when she spoke.
“No… No, you’re not…” Mom was wiping frantically at her eyes. “We were so scared, we were all so so scared… You were all covered in blood…And-- I thought—When I saw you—I thought—” She broke down again. “I was so scared, even when… even when they told us—Oh, Lydia, I can’t believe—Oh, Lydia—” She looked as though she was going to wrap her daughter up in a hug, but contended herself by placing her hands on Lydia’s face and cradling her. “You’re so lucky, you know? You could have—you could have—”
“Alright, dear, cut the girl some slack.” Dad put his hands on Mom’s shoulders. His voice was still hoarse, but he was smiling ruefully. “I knew she’d make it. A fighter, our girl is.”
Rosie sat at the edge of her bed and petted Lydia’s hair, something she hadn’t done since Lydia was eight. Ow, she thought, you’re all going to suffocate me, I can feel that now. Her bed dipped were Rose sat and her leg bumped against the metal railing. Lydia swallowed back a groan. You’re all being silly, she thought, but she felt her own eyes wetting. “What…” she tried to mumble, but her mother’s hands were caressing her cheeks. “How long? What…”
“We can talk about that later,” Mom whispered. “Oh, baby girl, Lydia— They’ve all come to see you, once they heard, you know—Auntie Gwena and baby Wendy and your cousins and—we were all so scared—and your friends too—Ameri and Martha and Delissa—we all—we--”
“Dear, let Lydia breathe.” Dad was still smiling, though. “She can hear about the details later.”
The lights were too bright in her eyes. Lydia tried to shift a little, but her chest and back and stomach all screamed in protest. She let it be. “I want.” Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. “What happened?”
Her thoughts flashed back. “Raymond,” she whispered. “Is he…”
Mom pulled back and fussed with her bedsheets, straightening them. “He was here too, yesterday. And he brought you here. He’s fine, I told them I would tell them once you were fit enough to see visitors.”
“Tell me. What happened…”
Dad looked away. “We have all the time to talk when you’re stronger. Now, though, all you should focus on is getting better.” He kissed his daughter on the cheek.
Tell me. Tell me! Something was wrong with her. A lot of things were wrong with her, obviously, but there was something they seemed to be avoiding. What happened to me? She felt agitated. The pain was getting to her head. Am I just imagining things?
Rosie stroked her hair. “It’s all okay, Lydia,” she whispered. “It’s all going to be fine. Calm down, now. You’re with us, that’s all that matters.”
She was still trying to muster a reply when she fell asleep again.
Chapter 29 Arianne
I had nowhere else to go.
Arianne mounted the steps to her room. Three days since she left the place. There were a few places she could stay in, but not for long, and she would have to come back to get her clothes, at least. The house stared back at her. Nothing will hurt you here. It’s just a pile of rocks and metal, that’s all there is. But she flinched every time there was a sound.
When she reached the top floor, the place opened up again. She saw the metal bar still at her bedroom’s door, the door half open, light from the outside snagging on the ends. Should I feel very afraid? The door opened under her hand, and everything was as she left it. She covers rumpled, closet thrown open, window shut firmly. The air was stale and smelled of sickness. On the table, there was a bowl of clear broth that must have rested there for four days. Arianne saw her mother’s hand in that, though she could not remember Eliana coming in and bringing her food. I saw her too many times that day. She poured it down the drain.
“A few months,” she whispered to the sink. “And I’ll be eighteen.”
She had dreamed of the day, still let herself hold some hope. What will I do then? Arianne had always thought of going off to some nameless town so small no one would ever find her again. That was no more than a mere fantasy, but she would have to move, that much was sure. I’ve had enough of this place. She wondered who the house would go to.
Some small place by the sea, she thought. I could work in a bookstore, something like that. Some place with no name and no memory, like I will be.
Is that it? Arianne could hear Lydia’s voice as the other girl challenged her. Would you be happy? Would that be right?
As she sat down at the bed again, she reached for the box. It was right where she’d left it. When she started cutting it had always been to flee, to stop feeling, but she was already calm now. It dawned on her then that she could slit her wrists, deep, right then and not feel a thing. She turned over the blade. It had been a gift from Eriyan, at some souvenir shop she’d went to and bought for Arianne because it was pretty. Weak light trembled on the markings as she ran a thumb down the slim handle.
She thought of all the eyes. The knife gleamed in the dark. You’re wrong. It doesn’t feel better to stop. It feels worse. Worse to stay conscious. Worse to feel what you feel. She threw the blade back into its box, her skin untouched. I need a drink. When she reached the square Pax and Isla and a group of them were already there. Pax waved her over. “It’s been, what? Ten days?”
“Nine.”
“I suppose we’re getting drunk today?” Isla raised her eyes to Arianne. “Whenever you join us I have to get prepared for it.”
“I don’t get drunk all the time.” She felt slightly affronted, though not sure why.
Pax dragged a chair up and crossed her ankles over the back. “Isla, go on. Don’t let Arianne ruin the mood.” She smirked at Arianne. “Can you believe it? Isla actually wants to talk for a change.”
I could, very much. Isla didn’t normally mingle with them, but whenever they went to get a drink together it almost always started with Isla taking a few mouthfuls and starting to blubber.
Thankfully, the other girl missed the jab. That, or she doesn’t remember what she says once the alcohol gets to her head. “…So he just throws the bag down. Right there. Right at my feet! And he doesn’t even…”
Lisa laughed with Fressin, ignoring the conversation. Ash leaned back and took a long drag from her flask. Huanter picked at his clothes. Arianne just sat and looked at them. Is this what I’ve made? Or was I a just an addition?
“… heard Lydia Strayen…”
Arianne looked up sharply. “What?”
Ash laughed. “Oh, I forgot… You went on that trip with her, earlier.”
“What about her?”
“Well, I heard she was in an accident. Some such.” Ash waved her hand. “Very upsetting.”
Fressin made a soft noise in the back of his throat. Arianne stared at Ash. “What? When?”
Pax frowned. “I thought you already knew. Didn’t anyone tell you? It was just yesterday, I think. Or was it the day before?”
Her mind went strangely blank. “What happened?”
“Something with a car… It was just off the highway. I’m not really sure.” Ash was slouched in her chair, her eyes bright above her drink. She put the flask down.
Quetin came to chant in her head. Is he dead? “Was it serious? Where is she now?”
Lisa squinted. “I guess you’d have to call her family. I didn’t know you were close.”
Neither did I. “I’m leaving.”
“For her?” Isla snickered. “Booker.”
“You’re drunk.”
Pax pushed Isla down as she tried to get up. “I’m not. Lydia Strayen…” The girl laughed. Her cheeks were flushed red. “Maybe she’d planned it out, up to the last second when she got carted off to the hospital, with that--”
Arianne stood up so quickly the table rocked. “Shut your mouth.”
Her scars were flashing all over her body. She strode over to the other girl’s chair, her hands shaking. She fisted them. None of them were laughing now, all watching her. Pax got up and put a hand on Arianne’s shoulder and looked at the other girl. “Isla, that was a stupid thing to say. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Arianne shrugged Paxon off. Isla looked at her. She was sitting with a foot rested on a high metal bar under the table and another dangling an inch above the ground, her body leaning forward on a high chair with a bottle raised to her mouth. Her blond hair hung to her waist, an echo of a smile ghosting her lips. Standing up, Arianne was eye-to-eye with the girl. Isla looked away. Arianne grabbed the handle on the back of her chair and jerked it around so Isla faced her. “Apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” Isla muttered. Her drink had sloshed all over her clothes, her legs tangled up under the table. The wine slid down into her neck and dripped down her collar. “If that’s what you want. I’m sorry.”
Chapter 30 Arianne
Arianne waited at the door. Lydia’s family were all there, sitting in a row on those white metal seats outside the wards. She ran to them. “I’m so sorry, I’ve just heard—I came here straight away—where’s--?”
Mrs. Strayen smiled shakily and hugged her. “She’s fine,” Lydia’s mother whispered. “She’s better now. She woke this morning. Everything will be okay. Everything.” She was hugging Arianne so tight it seemed like she wanted to infuse her with the power of her own belief. “Do you want to go see her? She’s not awake at the moment, but--”
“Yes, of course. Where is she?”
When Arianne was led to the cot, she had to look twice before she confirmed it was Lydia Strayen. She looked smaller somehow, her eyes closed and her mouth half open, lying spread out on the bed with a white sheet over her. Half of her hair had been hacked and shorn away, stitches crisscrossing her scalp up to her forehead, and the other only part of her that was visible over the sheet were her arms, bandaged so thickly not a patch of skin showed up to where the hospital gown covered her. The needles had been taped to her neck instead of her forearms or the inside of her elbow, so it looked almost like she was floating, held aloft by the tubes. A leg peeked out from under the sheets, half covered in a cast.
“The doctors say it looks much worse than it really is,” Mrs. Strayen said, somewhat defensively. “I know she’ll be alright. It’s just a few broken bones and some burns, and… Well, nothing serious, she was so lucky to be…” She flinched. “I mean… She was so lucky that it was all it was,” Lydia’s mother finished clumsily.
Perhaps. Lydia was lucky to be alive, by the look of her. Though maybe not so lucky that it happened to her. “How did it happen?” Arianne asked.
“She was having a walk with a friend of hers—Raymond something, I think—They went all the way over to the highways over on the hills, and you know there aren’t really many cars there, no one goes there…” Mrs. Strayen shivered. “She wasn’t looking where she was going… And then this car was going so fast as well… She was so lucky it wasn’t anything worse than this…” She trailed into silence again. “I was so scared…”
Arianne looked away from the girl lying on the bed. She looked sick, dying, whatever her mother said. She saved me, and I wasn’t there when she almost died until two days after. Mrs. Strayen hugged her again. “It’s so good of you all to come over, Arianne,” she whispered to Arianne’s shoulder. Tears had welled up in her eyes. “I don’t think we could have dealt with it alone.”
The machines whispered around her. The other patients were mostly asleep, given the hour. Some others were awake, conversing in quiet voices with their family and friends or staring up at the ceiling. They didn’t look that bad, Arianne thought as she looked the others over. Some had heavy bandages over their heads, or were plastered up in casts, one in a wheelchair, but none were lashed to heavy machines or looked in a especially bad condition. Except for her. Maybe Lydia’s mother was right, and it was worse than it seemed. A nurse was rushing past the door with a metal cart, clanging loudly on the floor. Over beside the other cot, a doctor was checking a patient while taking quick notes. The blinking digits overhead read 11:00 pm. “I could stay with you for a while.” She would be leaving for the airport early next morning to meet Tarra when he came back, but would have a few hours, at least. And I don’t want to go back to the house.
“Oh.” Mrs. Strayen looked stricken. “Well, of course, I know Lydia would appreciate it, but it’s quite late, and you should be getting home…”
“No, it’s fine.” Arianne sat on the chair next to the doll on the cot. “I’ll stay for a while.”
Mrs. Strayen hugged her again, tightly. “Thank you, Arianne.”
She smiled tightly. “It’s nothing.”
When Lydia’s mother had left, she turned back to the girl. Is this really her? Arianne couldn’t help wondering again. She wanted to take her hand, but they were wrapped up in cloudy bandages. What should I say?
“Lydia,” Arianne whispered. She remembered how strong the other girl had seemed when she’d hauled Arianne to her feet and half-carried her out down the stairs that day when Lydia came to pull her out of the house. She called me, and I turned away. “Lydia, it’s Arianne.”
The other girl didn’t answer. Why should she? Arianne looked away again, not being able to bring herself to look at the other girl’s face. When all of this is done, she’ll have more scars than I do. Hopefully the doctors would be able to close the cuts neatly, and they wouldn’t show except for thin silvery lines. Those can fade, over time.
Arianne sat. The blinking digits read 12:00, then 1:00, then 2:00. Lydia’s father came in to check on her and nodded to Arianne and thanked her as well, asking if she wanted to leave. Arianne shook her head. Doctors strode in and out, timeless in their large white cloaks. A patient moaned and his friend soothed him. Lydia’s little brother threw a fit outside, and Arianne heard Mrs. Strayen hush him, and later she came in again to fuss over Lydia’s bedsheets and pillows and medicine, and left. 3:00. A doctor came in, walked to Lydia’s bedside, threw open the sheets, checked the fluids, looked at the machines, jotted down notes, and left. A nurse came later to replace the fluids with new bags, and left. Arianne looked at her hands, trying to ignore the itch in her skin. I should have cut. I shouldn’t have put the knife back into the box. The pain would draw me out. 4:00. She stared at the corner of the wall, where a spider was making a web. Anywhere but her face. Is this what she feels when she sees my skin? The thought sent another tingle up her arms.
At 5:00, Arianne was fighting to keep her eyes open. She pushed the chair back quietly and turned away. The family was dozing on their chairs, except for little Jack, who stared at Arianne with wide eyes. She put a finger to her lips and waved, and left.
She slept in the car, thankfully dreamless. When the car stopped the driver had to call her three times before she woke. Arianne paid him and clambered out. The sun touched the high metal roof of the terminal station, a weak wintery glow. The chill had come back, and she huddled in her coat. Terminal four. It’s four.
She saw Tarra with his head down, in a black coat pulled over his nose as he stared down into his phone screen. The position made Arianne slightly uncomfortable. That’s how I wear my clothes, to cover my neck. She saw his parents sitting next to him, so she waited around the corner instead of walking up. Tarra’s parents were both busy and were almost always out on some business trip or working late, but they would ask after him and talk to him and nag and laugh like any other normal person acted with their children when they were together. They are absent from his house, but not his life. She didn’t want to let them see her.
After a while Tarra got up and walked around to her, seeing her text. “Arianne?”
“Hi.” She suddenly felt bared, like her skin was on display, and looked away.
“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“One night.” She knew he was going to ask her where she was the days she wasn’t there, ask her about the call. “I was with Lydia.”
Tarra stilled. “Why?”
“In the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident.” Arianne looked away again. Her skin was screaming at her, so loudly she was sure he would be able to see the sirens flashing red under her shirt. Ridiculously, she felt her throat tighten. I’m not even sad. She bit her lip.
“What? Is it serious?” Tarra gripped her shoulders. “Arianne?” He tried to turn her face around, but she shook his hand off.
“It’s not that bad. Her mother said it was just some broken bones. Burns. It just looks…” Her voice was thick.
“Well, that’s not so bad, is it?” He was looking at her in a way she hoped she would never see on his face again, like he really was seeing her. “She’ll pull through.” He tried to turn her to face the light, gently, but she wrenched herself back. “Arianne, what is it? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Is there something you’re not telling me? Arianne felt furious at herself, humiliated. I’m going to make a scene here if I don’t hold it in. She thought of Lydia facing Eliana, of Pax nodding at her, of her own anger that had spilled over the edge just last night when she’d stormed out of the group she’d hidden herself in for so long. Everything’s unravelling, coming apart. I lied and pretended, but they’re seeing, and I can’t stop. She had the sudden urge to tell him the truth, to hurt him, to tell him the girl he loved was all a lie. She was so tired, so tired of having to slip on different masks for everyone. It’s been two years. Soon I’ll leave, and put this all behind me. Once she was gone, she could start something new, and leave this mess behind. I could make a mess of everything and go away. The words were almost on her lips, but she swallowed them.
“No,” she whispered. “Nothing.”
“Arianne, look at me.” His voice was very quiet, almost pleading.
She turned away, feeling like a spiteful little girl. That’s all there is. All I am. She wanted to turn back and laugh and tell him it was all a joke, and close the distance between them and pretend nothing had ever happened or changed. “I… She… She’ll be fine. I don’t know why I…”
“It’s okay.” He turned a little to look at her face, and whispered in her hair so softly she thought she’d imagined it. “Not to be okay.”
Chapter 31 Lydia
It was the third day when she finally had a visitor other than her parents. Martha ran in and almost hugged her, but Lydia shook her head. She ran her hand over Lydia’s shoulder. “Oh my god, Lydia.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled. “I was afraid it looked bad.”
Martha looked as if she was going to cry. Oh, not all of this again. Everyone was looking at her like they were about to cry. Is it the gratitude, or the fear, or just the pity? Lydia had been able to prop herself up on the bed and talk normally. They all told her how lucky she was, the doctors and her family and now Martha as well, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. Only two ribs and a leg and some cuts and burns. She didn’t think they were lying, but her family still glanced away when she probed further. I don’t think anything’s happened to my brain. Or maybe I’m already delusional and I don’t know it. She knew some patients with severe brain injury who had no idea of their condition. Lydia had looked into a mirror when her parents weren’t there, wheedled the nurse into giving her a look. Her hands were bandaged so tight she couldn’t hold anything, and the skin under them raw and painful, so she looked as the nurse held it before her face.
Well, at least I know what they see. Half of her scalp had been shorn, leaving stitches crisscrossing neatly. Her face was pale and wan, bloodless as a ghost’s. She’d been mostly asleep, so she had no idea what was going on inside her body or when they changed her bandages and tended to her. Mom told her a lot of her friends had been around, adding that Arianne had stayed the night before. Thank her for me, she’d said.
Lydia was grateful. The bones and bruises and scrapes and burns would heal, she supposed, and soon she would be back to normal. Even so, it seemed as if she couldn’t be grateful enough. Every single person who saw her noted how lucky she had been, and it didn’t seem right to say no.
Martha smiled. “We were so scared when we heard.”
“I know.” Another phrase she’d heard enough of, but she smiled back. “Like my new hair?”
“Oh—Lydia, that’s not funny.” Martha threw her a look. “It’s good enough that you’re in one piece.”
“I know.”
“How did it happen? Can I stay? To help?”
She winced. “I got stupid. That road just rarely has cars. And that’s what the driver thought. I presume.” She paused. “But you’ve had enough of the hospital, Martha. You don’t have to stick around. I’m awfully boring. All I do is sleep.”
Martha laughed. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” she answered semi-truthfully. Her muscles ached, but her skin and bones screamed in pain. “Whatever they’re giving me for the pain does alright. It doesn’t hurt that much unless I move a lot. Or someone hugs me.”
“I’ll be careful next time,” Martha promised.
“You were careful enough this time.” She rolled her eyes. “The first time Jack came in they almost had to call the doctors again.”
Martha smiled again, and looked at her. Lydia wanted her to stop. Stop staring. She wanted to make everything normal, but that was virtually impossible with her looking like this. She sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Martha asked, instantly cautious. “Do you need anything?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Really. Just talk to me like we’re at the café, at your place, at my home. I know it looks bad, but it doesn’t go deeper than the muscles and bones.”
Martha winced again as she looked at Lydia’s face. “But you…”
“I know.” Lydia wanted to just go back to what they were. Everyone’s acting like I’m dying. “I’m fine, Martha.” She almost sat up to prove it, then decided against it.
The other girl smiled again, tentative. “Heard you were on a date,” she ventured.
Lydia laughed. It hurt, but felt good. “I’ll get back to that.” Please just treat me like a normal human being.
When Martha left, she felt better. The later part, anyway, even though Martha had still stared at her when she knew Lydia wasn’t looking. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be better soon.
Mom bustled in. “Honey, are you tired? Do you want to get some rest?”
“No, I’m alright.”
She hovered, looking nervous. “It’s getting late, anyway.”
“Mom, I’m fine, and it’s nine o’clock.” Mom wouldn’t meet her eyes. Dad came up behind her. “Lydia, I think you should rest.”
“Why? Look, I’m fine. I could get up if I really wanted to—”
“No no, stay in your bed.” Dad laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s just that the doctors are coming to change your bandages. I thought it might hurt, and it would be better if you were unconscious.”
“That’s not better.”
Mom sighed. She sat down. “Lydia, honey, there are some things we haven’t told you.”
“Like?” Her breathing hitched.
Mom exchanged a glance with Dad. “You’re lucky to be alive, Lydia—”
“You’ve said that before. What is it?”
The nurse came in, pushing a cart full of bottles and bandages. Hydrogen Peroxide, alcohol, formaldehyde. No wonder Dad had said it would hurt. A few cuts and burns, is all. And I have the morphine.
“You can tell me, Mom.” Lydia held out her arms for the nurse. “And I can have the distraction from this.”
Dad winced, and looked away. Mom sat tight-lipped and stared at her arms.
“Tell me. I should know, whatever it is.”
But the bandages had come off, and she suddenly knew that they didn’t need to speak anymore.
The skin on her right arm had been burnt the worst, her right hand with it, then her left hand, and the burns on her left side were slighter. Not slight, though. It started somewhere around her elbows, getting worse when it neared her hands and wrists. A red, angry rash, becoming something that was much worse. The flesh and skin on her right hand had sloughed away, the skin on her wrists purple and pink and glistening scar tissue. Her left hand fared better, though not much. Deep cuts were sliced into the flesh and skin, cutting almost to the bone, the skin around red and puffy. Her wrist and arm on the left side were mostly just red rash, none of the scar tissue that marred the right. Even so the sight was grotesque and horrifying, but what scared Lydia more was that she couldn’t feel it, at least not as much as it was supposed to hurt. Her arms had stung and burned and itched, and she knew that they were burned, perhaps badly… But nothing could have prepared her for this. How much painkiller have they been giving me? Or is the tissue there half dead already?
As the gauze went around her again, Lydia turned to her parents. “You knew this?” Her voice shook.
Neither of them met her gaze. She looked down at the cloudy wrapping. Mom said, quietly, “You got skin grafts earlier, but they wouldn’t...”
“And you tell me today?” The sounds around her swelled to twice their noise. “But why didn’t you tell me? I’ll get more skin grafts, they can try again, and it can be patched up, right?”
Neither of them answered. Lydia hated them then, sitting with their heads bowed. They were never defeated, never looked defeated. “Look at me. What happened to me?” her voice was a whisper.
Mom cradled her face. Her voice was fierce and raw. “You’re lucky to be alive, that’s what. Nothing else matters. There are other ways.”
“Other ways to what?”
Dad stood up. “I’m very sorry, Lydia—”
“Just say it.”
“The doctors are afraid it was too late… That’s why they waited so long to see if they could—stabilize you before—but it was too--”
“But I’ll get better, won’t I? Burns heal. My bones and cuts will, too. Right?” Her voice sounded far away. She felt dizzy. “It’ll all be okay, they’ll fix me, it’s a problem but they can solve it.”
They just looked at her. Lydia looked back down to her hands. No, that’s not right. It was meant to be.
No, she thought, as the dark and painkillers claimed her. No, no, no, no, no.
Chapter 32 Arianne
Turn the sky upside down and the world falls down;
Turn my body up to down and it folds
Into a valentine heart you sold
I open my eyes and the sky crumples to gold
Touch the air and hear your heartbeat; Singing a eulogy
To the sweet sickly folds
Of the sky in the air; your hand in my hair,
Pulling out my tears
In long threads of beer
Fizzing, sparkling, bursting apart on the ground like
A ripe melon in the air;
That heart you sold in the dust of ages old
Splitting, tearing, splashing
Without flair, only fear
February 14, Arianne’s book
“You never got around to answering me.” Tarra’s voice was mild, but tense. “What happened after that day.”
“What day?” Arianne couldn’t look at him. They were sitting in front of a table, his laptop sitting on the surface, his story gleaming in dark bold letters.
“When you called me.” He typed some words, eyes not leaving the screen.
“I called you a lot of times.” She’d never been on the defensive, not with him. It was always he who smiled and nodded and looked away or looked at her. Never me. She sighed. “I was with Lydia.”
“After your trip?” His hands stilled on the keyboard.
“I stayed over. After the trip. Lost my phone. I’ve told you about it, I’m sorry I didn’t call you. It was nice at her house. I… forgot.”
“I know.” He turned back to his laptop. The glow was reflected in his eyes, turning them into gray orbs filled by lines of words. He stared at the screen, but didn’t seem to be seeing it. Just a few more weeks, a month, two. He’ll hold out. I’ll hold out. He will choose to believe what he wants to believe. She had no doubt that even Tarra must have some inkling of what was going on, but preferred to think that he wouldn’t carry his investigations out.
She leaned over, read the page. “I liked that part. It goes well with the whole setting. Why did you put it out?”
He stood up abruptly, slamming the laptop shut. “Arianne, I’m tired.”
“It’s not too late.” She didn’t understand. He just got here. “We still have time.”
Tarra’s voice was distant. “No, I’ll be going.” He turned and smiled at her, but the expression never touched his eyes.
“Can you come with me tomorrow? To the hospital.” She hadn’t been with Lydia for a day. It would be good to have someone with me.
He paused. “Why?”
“What, why?” Tarra wasn’t making sense today.
“Why do you want me to come? You never seemed to.”
She remembered all of his offerings to accompany to her house, to wherever she went at night. No, no, I’ll be fine, it’s too far, it’s late, I won’t be late, don’t worry. “I like you with me.”
Not a shadow of a blush crossed his skin. He sighed, looked away, ran a hand through his hair. “Strange. It seems I hadn’t picked up on that before.”
“I do,” she said. “I’m sorry about the earlier times. I was busy and—”
“I know.” He slid the laptop into his bag, walked to the door. What’s the matter with him today?
“Tarra—” She stood up.
“Oh, I’ll go with you.” He smiled thinly. His black hair was wet where he’d walked through the rain; the cold had come back again after a brief respite. “You send me the place.”
Arianne wanted to pull him back, cup his face in her hands and see the girl reflected in his eyes, confirm that she was still alive. Maybe she died, already. Somewhere. Sometime. She wanted him to look at her and smile that shy smile and blush, and hear him talk about his story, hear him laugh, kiss him until his ears turned red. Take one memory that’s sweet when I leave this town. Arianne stood behind him as he shook out his umbrella, scattering the ground with droplets. “Okay.”
He pushed open the door. The rain kissed her skin, cold as a knife’s bite. “Bye.” He gave her another cool smile over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”
Arianne circled the table. His cup was half full, not even cool yet. Well, that went great. She hadn’t really doubted that one day he would find out and pull away, but hadn’t understood how and when it happened. She heard Paxon’s laugh. I thought this one would last a little longer.
So did I.
When she got to the house, the rain was hot on her heels, splattering her ankles with droplets of mud. She pushed open the door and the wind rushed inside. When Arianne walked into the great room, she saw her mother waiting for her.
Eliana had a bottle in her hands. Her hair was lank and unkempt, her face drowned in the shadows. Arianne wanted to run back down the stairs, but her feet were rooted to the spot. “Mother,” she heard herself say, cool and steady and dead.
Eliana didn’t look up. She never drinks. It’s me who does the alcohol. She heard a sob and braced herself for the next words. “I’m sorry,” the woman who had been her mother whispered.
It’s okay, mother, Arianne almost said. “You’re always sorry.” Her words snapped out of her taut as a band.
Eliana didn’t look up. “I’m sorry,” she breathed again. In her hands the bottle clunked. “Why did I do those things? I wasn’t myself.”
“You don’t have a self.”
“Please.” Her voice was pleading now. “Please, Arianne.”
“I never had to. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you. I wanted to say sorry. I was wrong, Arianne. Please.”
“I’m not staying in the same house you’re in.”
Eliana covered her face with her hands. “I’m doing everything wrong.”
Arianne didn’t answer, so she went on. “I’m sorry, Arianne, really. It’ll never happen again. I… We can start over again. Clean. Another life for both of us.”
“You’ll have that life, but not with me.”
The woman who had been her mother sobbed harder. “I took a wrong turn, Arianne. I wanted to have him back. Everything was my mothers, only he was mine. I was happy. Arianne, I never meant to do those things.”
For a split second she heard the other woman, the one who would help her and care for her, the woman who was not much more than a girl who had nothing but money, youth, a desire to escape and an obsession for love. It was her that Arianne answered to, her that Arianne thought might come back again someday. But she was in her grave now, as dead as Aaron became when he slipped out the door in the dead of the night. The memories that stalked her were no more than remnants, the ghosts of spirits, corpses of people who might have been. No, mother, instinct bid her to whisper.
“I leave or you go.” Arianne turned for the stairs, then paused. She walked to her room and pulled out the box, and slid it into her bag.
“Arianne,” Eliana wept. “You can’t leave. You can’t. I made you, my blood is in your veins. You’ll never leave. You won’t.”
“My friend told you to leave. I’m telling you to leave. I never left you. You were the one who threw me away like trash.” She walked to the stairs, then ran.
She found herself walled up in a little ally between the trees, wedging her umbrella between the walls. Her back was pressed to the slick wet stone, the rain sliding down her neck. Her hands were shaking as she took the knife out and gave it a good long look. I threw it away last time. I can throw it away this time. Can I?
The blade bit, but she felt no pleasure, not like it was before. The blood ran down her sleeves with the rain, staining the white hem pink. She wiped the knife clean on her shirt and locked it back inside the box. It had been the first time she confronted Eliana, talked back to her since she was eight, instead of nodding and running. And what a treating I got that last time.
Unbidden, Lydia Strayen’s voice came back to claw at her again. Maybe it’s time you stopped running away. Arianne closed her eyes and saw her, the stitches in her skull, the cast and bandages of her body. But she’s broken now, as broken as I am, though her fissures are on the outside.
Fear was a strange feeling. It ate at you slowly, not like anger, which would quench you all a sudden and then spit you out again. Fear happened when you saw yourself; anger came when you turned away from the mirror. Fear thudded quietly from inside and ate you up alive, prompting you to seek help, while anger urged you on to do the reckless thing, to hurt yourself to stop feeling, and fear was death to anger. She remembered the night she ran up the stairs ready to claw her own face to bloody ribbons, and fled down with a pounding heart a frightened wounded animal. I sought out Lydia that day, she remembered. She was afraid now, not angry, not with herself or with Eliana. Once, she’d read in a book, an exchange:
Can a man still be brave if he is afraid?
That is the only time a man can be brave.
She shook the random memory off, shivered. What are you afraid of? Counselors and friends had all asked her. She remembered lying on her back on the carpet while Antony sat on the sofa.
What are you afraid of, Arianne?
My mother, she’d whispered. I’m afraid she’ll hurt me.
No, she thought. No, that was never it.
She saw Eliana again, broken and drunk and dripping and scared. She saw her in the mirror in her cheekbones, saw her when she raised a bottle to her lips or took a knife to the skin. I made you. My blood is in your veins.
That’s me, that’s what I would have become. I’m not scared of her hurting me.
I’m afraid of her being me.
Chapter 33 Lydia
Lydia looked up to the ceiling, blank and white and cold. If there really is a god none of us believed in, why did he arrange this for me? Yet if it was something she had done, what had she done to deserve what was happening to her now? Everything had been going on the way it should have been. Everything, then nothing.
She’d wanted to be would she could have been since she was no more than ten. I was always meant to work with a scalpel in one hand. What good was a surgeon who didn’t have hands?
You have hands. She did; things of bone, bloody deformed skeletal claws with glistening scar tissue and red inflamed flesh. Nothing that will be able to hold a knife. Nothing that will be able to save lives, or cut the tumor from brain tissue, sever the neurons and slice through the spinal base. The doctors had told her later that the skin would heal, leaving something as thick as leather and near as clumsy, or the scar tissue that would mold into something else just as hideous. I will never ever be able to hold a scalpel. I will never be what I should be, must be, can only be.
People came in to comfort her. Her family, her friends, and other people she’d never cared about much and cared even less about now. Mom and Dad and Rosie and Jack and Martha and Ameri and Delissa and Raymond, and more who she’d forgotten in a blink and a turn of her head. It was queer how little she cared about them, when previously almost all her thoughts had been on them. She had chafed under the cooing and fussing before, insisting that everything was okay and would get better, because it had been then; now she put a wall between herself and the world around her. All she needed to do was stare up or close her eyes, or turn her head away. They all seemed to understand, every single one of them, who smiled teary smiles and petted her. You don’t. It was almost funny how before she had thought that it could be put right, when she had searched endlessly, pried, haggled, asked for skin grafts and operations, and finally gave up. Arianne came to whisper in her ear: Not every problem can be solved, Lydia.
The days were always the worst. When she woke she would reach for her Book, lying by her bedside, then remember she couldn’t write, and every single word inside The Book was all gone and dead and burnt. Then someone would come to fuss over her, and she would smile and nod and play along on a good day and turn away and brood on a bad one. She had once loved the mornings, loved how the sun touched the sky and drew her into a new day that was all right, sure and equipped with weapons to face the world. I never even asked for a sword to fight with. All I wanted was a scalpel.
Now she hated how the sun tore shadows across the sky, painting the jagged skylines in bursts of red and gold. A new day. More days, until the end of time. Her time blurred together, as did the faces of the visitors around her. The sun seemed to rise, dragging herself and her torn ruined burnt hands and dreams with her, over and over and over and over again, a million times a day. The doctors and nurses would come in and feel her skin, change her bandages, adjust the fluids, look over the casts. What’s the point? Everything I could have been is dead already. Her life seemed to stretch out in two directions; one that she found in The Book and had known for years, and the other… Every day as she watched the sun rise and the lights blink she would think, it’s a dream, all a dream, but then the pain would go into her head again. They’d been cutting off the painkillers, when she wanted them the most.
Even worse than the dreaming was the hope. Sometimes she felt it crop up inside her again, an echo of the person that she was, yelling at her to do something. I tried. I tried so hard. She had looked through every article, asked every doctor, fought and argued and wept, and watched their eyes go from resigned to pitying to unbearable, watched the scar tissue creep up over her skin like a ghastly plague. It’s all dead now, gone and burnt and dead, dead, dead.
Her mother came to talk to her daily, concern creasing her brow. She told her daughter how lucky she was to be with them, that everything would be alright, and that they would find a way out of it. Lydia just closed her eyes. The pain that she knew she’d disappointed her, disappointed all of them, burned hot and heavy and hard and ate her raw… but not half so bad as the flames tearing up her arms.
She remembered Dad saying, she was praying for you. Lydia had never prayed, not once in her lifetime, but she stared at the sun creeping up the skyline and fumbled in the semi-darkness, trying to muster words. The garbled speech that came out of her was not likely to arouse any god, real or no. She gave up after the third time. They were never her gods… But who was she now? They were not the other girl’s gods, that girl who still left a whisper in her body and thrived in the big white book next to her, as silent and solid as a tombstone. The other girl had loved that once, loved how it brought her steadiness and easiness and peace, but all it brought Lydia was anger and resentment. Many a night she woke with her heart pounding and flames creeping up her arms, and listened to The Book that had once been her religion taunt her. She’s gone now, girl, and nothing you try is going to bring her back. What was she without the belief she had? She who had been sure of everything she said and did, and knew all the reasons of her existence.
Am I only a container now? She wondered more than once. An empty container, a body whose best part of the soul had already left her… But even that was hard to account for. The stitches were gone, and when she looked in the mirror she saw the pale pink thin scar stretched over her bared scalp that only had short bristly hair growing back like the first tentative buds pushing out of the ground at the first rush of spring wind. Another snow, and they die. The winter had come back, beating the brief respite of spring, and the rain woke her on the days the sun did not. With only half of her hair shorn, she looked ridiculous. Wouldn’t have been better if it was all gone. The swelling in her face had gone down some as well, but the bruises and cuts remained. Her skin was sickly pale, although she doubted it was from the injuries. The other girl would have healed by now. She would have risen to meet it and struck it and flaunted her scars and laughed and returned to her old life triumphant, regardless of the gaze of other people. But the other girl was dead now, and it was Lydia occupying the remnants of her torn burnt broken body, and Lydia could feel the gazes and stares much more than the other girl.
I can feel it, Arianne breathed a ghostly whisper. Lydia had been trying to glimpse her scars as she covered herself, and Arianne had looked up and stared at her. I thought she was bluffing.
Arianne hadn’t been lying, though. Lydia could feel the eyes, all probing and flitting and staring, like ants crawling over her skin, and whereas the other girl who’d died would have laughed it off, maybe even flaunted herself, Lydia withdrew deeper and covered herself more. Half her body was still in bandages and casts.
What is that name, anyway? She had answered to Lydia Strayen since she’d been able to talk, perhaps even before that. But it was the other girl who had answered, not the pale sick burnt ungrateful thing that now lurked beneath the surface. Do I still answer for it now? What was I, what am I? Was I only a pile of plans and grids and papers? Or was I more than that? What is left of me when I take away my Book and the life it had?
She’d tried to talk with people at first, tried to get it out. They all looked at her like she was mad. “Only focus on getting better,” they would say. “Everything will work out on its own.”
Is this how it’s working out? Lydia didn’t think much of it. She had not even needed to think so much about useless matters like this before; all she had needed was to dissect and analyze it, and map it out, then do it. I could control the world then, with a pen and a grid and a layout of plans. I wanted to control more, with a scalpel in my hand, but the world spat in my face at that.
One day, when her mother came in with the usual careful, worried look on her face, Lydia had snapped.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
The look only deepened. Mom looked at her with a mixture of pity and worry. “Lydia, what’s wrong?”
She felt trapped, suffocating in her grave. The cast was too hard and the bandages too tight, her arms burning with anger and pain. Her leg and ribs should have hurt much more than her arms… and they had, when Lydia had not looked upon her own skin, not known that they were the ones that would never heal. Now it was her arms and hands screaming for her attention, her broken bones shoved into the background. “What do you think is wrong?”
“Lydia, honey.” Mom laid a hand on her brow, gently stroking back what remained of her hair. “I know you’re upset. But it won’t always be like this. A life is full of ups and downs. I understand you’re having a hard time—”
“What do you understand so much, Mom? What do you think I’m thinking? All of you. You all come in and tell me how incredibly lucky darling little poor Lydia has been—”
“You are lucky. You got hit by a car on the road and—”
“I’m not!” Sweat was pooling on her skin. “If I’d died I would have been luckier than this! I should have died back then, that time, neat and clean, instead of coming back in this—this—”
Her mother had paled. “Don’t talk like that, Lydia,” she whispered. “You’re not feeling well. You’re not yourself. Of course you were lucky—”
“I’m never ever going to feel well or be myself again. She died. Your precious darling brave daughter died when that car hit her and the oil and fire ate off her hands—I don’t—I’m not her.”
“Of course you’re her,” Mom was crying now. She kissed her daughter. “You’ll always be her, no matter what you look like.”
“This isn’t about a few scrapes and my hair getting hacked off.” Her head was spinning from the effort. “I’m not the same person anymore. Everything she has is gone, and I don’t know—” Stop crying, she wanted to scream to her mother. Stop making me feel guilty for hurting you. Stop looking at me like you’re afraid I’ll break. Stop thinking I’m pitiful and I’ve gone mad. Shout at me, match my temper, hit me, slap me—something—Who had told her the same things, when she had not been able to understand it?
Mom embraced her instead and called for the doctor. Lydia was lying on her side with tear tracks on her face when they got there. Mom looked as if she were on the verge of tears again.
Later, they asked her what she wanted. Nothing, she thought, and told them as much.
“Is there anyone you want to see? Talk to, maybe?”
No. You’re all the same.
That night as she lay on her back again, staring up at the ceiling and hearing the patient in the cot next to her exchange a weepy conversation with a pretty young woman that might have been his daughter or his girlfriend, she whispered, “Arianne. I need to see Arianne.”
Chapter 34 Lydia
When Lydia saw Arianne, she had to smile.
“What?” Arianne asked when she saw Lydia smirking.
“You almost look as bad as I do.” She snorted. “I take that back. Maybe not as much.” The other girl looked as though she hadn’t slept for days, her clothes soaked in patches from the rain. There were dark shadows under her eyes without anything to cover them up, and her eyes had a permanent tired, glazed look to them.
Arianne dragged the chair to her and draped herself over it, propping her legs on the lower edge of Lydia’s bed. “Well, you can’t expect everyone to look as cheery as you are.”
Lydia sighed. The bandages had come off last night, leaving her arms bare, though not her hands yet. She found herself hiding them under the sheets, although it hurt whenever she moved and they brushed against her skin. “Yeah. There’s that point.”
Arianne looked at her casts, raised her eyebrows. “That hurt?”
She grimaced. “When I move. I don’t really care about that.”
“Really? I hear you had quite the tantrum yesterday.” Arianne dragged the chair closer. “Don’t know why it surprises me.”
“It’s not about that.”
“I’m sure it’s because you find the hospital meals unfavorable.”
“My bones and face will heal. This won’t.” She drew her arms out.
There was a moment of stillness, then Arianne laughed. “Oh god, Lydia, I’m so sorry… But look at the two of us… Scarred and burned. You’ll look worse than I do.” She laughed again.
There was a queer sense of relief and easiness, the tension draining out of her. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Not gasping and saying you’re sorry.”
There was a pause as the smile slid off the other girl’s face, turned brooding. “I get that.”
“I didn’t really want to see anyone. Else, I mean.”
“I know how you enjoy my company.”
The absurdity of it all made her laugh, although it hurt. I actually do. How did that ever happen? “I think I sort of understand what you said earlier. About not being able to feel it when you’re outside.”
Arianne made a little jerk of her head. “What happened to the faith in life? The problem-solving mantra? This?” She nodded at The Book, shut and silent and untouched.
Lydia’s throat got tight then. “They don’t belong to me anymore.” She looked away. “They’re all gone now.” She had picked it up, but leafing through The Book with Martha’s help only felt like gazing at another person’s life through smoky glass, and also something that had to be pressed up on her. She remembered Martha saying, do you remember this? You were so happy then, and quickly glancing up at her to gauge her reaction, like Lydia would suddenly just get the old feeling back.
“I have to say, I’m surprised.” Arianne leaned back on the back legs of the chair, tilting it. “Welcome to the club.”
“They all want to drag me back into it.” Lydia looked at her arms. It was strange not having to tuck them behind her veil. “Like it’s just this. Or it’s a temporary thing.”
“Is this about the surgeon thing?”
“Not exactly.”
Arianne didn’t say anything for a moment. It was so good for someone not to cry or pity her or chide her. Lydia felt equal parts smothered and ignored. They all asked how she was feeling and if she was all right or if she needed anything, but whenever she talked about what she was actually thinking they would all wave it off. No, that’s fine, it’ll pass. As long as you’re okay, things will get better. She had the feeling that it would wear off over time, that there was only so long a time others would give you to grieve and break and mope around. They’ll allow me to have pain, but not to feel it.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not now.”
They were silent again. “I saw my mother yesterday,” The other girl said suddenly. She was staring out the window.
“What?” Lydia almost sat up. “When? Where? What happened?”
“In the house.” Arianne glanced behind her. She let the chair stand back on its four feet again. “I left.”
“You left?”
“You didn’t expect me to stay there, did you?”
“She should have left. I told her to leave.”
“My mother has never been one to do what she’s told. Quite like me, in that way.” Arianne sighed. “I guess I’m like her in a lot of ways.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You can’t stop what you’re given.”
Lydia forgot about herself for a second, and if only for that she was grateful. “Arianne—”
The other girl laughed. “There goes that voice again. I’d have thought this was enough for you.” She nodded to the cards on her table. “They all tell you it’ll get better, if you can just get over it, right?”
Mom poked her head around the door. “Lydia, your friends have come to visit you.”
“I’ll be leaving,” Arianne said, and made to get up.
Interaction with anyone from her old life made her feel like screaming. She remembered the puzzled look in their faces. “Something’s happened to you,” they would say, and she would want to shout, yes, yes, something’s happened to me. And they would always ask, what’s wrong? Then came the condolences, but none of them would really be listening.
Arianne saw the look on her face, and laughed. “Feeling bad?” She leaned close. “Well, just wait—It’ll all get worse.” She nodded toward the drip that had been taped to her left elbow, and lowered her voice. “I’d be grateful for that, if I were you.”
Chapter 35 Arianne
She found Tarra waiting just outside the door, his face expressionless. She wondered if he’d heard her words, then decided she didn’t care anymore. I’m being reckless. With him. With everyone. Her words with Lydia wouldn’t have been the best optimistic pep talk either, but she’d seen the other girl’s eyes and knew what that look meant. She’s coming over to us now. No pets on the back would solve it.
Mostly, though, it was probably just the night before. Eliana had always brought out the worst in her. Arianne had to admit that, after knowing Lydia’s life wasn’t in danger, she had taken a guilty savage delight in seeing the innocence unraveled. She who would take on the world if she could, and told me to just get better. Well, she’s having her share of the cake now. She understood having your identity taken away, and how it broke you, and the detachment from the world after that. She wouldn’t have wanted my pity anyway. Arianne thought of how Paxon had laughed when she’d pulled up her sleeves and the relief she’d felt then, had seen it mirrored in Lydia’s eyes.
Even so, it was reckless. And wrong. The guilt crept up on her, overwhelming the spite. She doesn’t deserve it.
“What was that about?” Tarra’s voice was strained. He had led her to an empty corridor, a small space at the end of a long walk. The white walls pressed in on either side of them.
“What?”
“‘It’ll all just get worse?’”
“I didn’t know you were eavesdropping.”
“I didn’t need to. You were speaking loud enough, with the mother there too. What’s she going to think?”
His questioning sounded so much like Lydia that Arianne almost answered with a smirk and a rebuff. She bit her lip and looked away instead. She was tired. Tired of the lying, tired of the deceit. Tired of having to feel the weight chafe at her. The words came out of her. “Don’t I have permission to say that?”
“What permission?”
“I’ve had enough of this life to say bad things about it.” Her voice shook, only slightly. “No one’s ever been good to me.”
Tarra was silent again, in one of those pauses that sent her heart thumping and made her wonder if this was the time he would tell her what he knew. His voice was clipped and flat when he spoke. “I was good to you.”
“You thought you were.” Arianne was tired of lying. Let him see the scars. Let him see the monster. “But I’m not her, Tarra. You love a pretty helpless innocent girl that lives only in your dreams, but I made her up. I was never what you thought I was.” Her breath caught in her throat, and she heard the old beat starting to pulse under her skin, almost soothing in its familiarity. Inhuman, abomination, liar, pretender. “We both closed our eyes and ears to the world and chose to believe our fantasies, but they can’t be anything more than that. I’m not a little girl, Tarra, at least not in the way you think I am. I don’t have a protector, and I never could have one.” She thought of the girl-child in his stories, the girl she would have liked to be. “I’m not as good or as innocent or as sweet and loving as she is. I’m—” Wrong, she thought, and almost said. Wrong to be born, wrong to be spawned. Eliana’s words echoed. She isn’t even a human. She felt a surge of relief as she said it all, stripping off the armor, getting it all out, like the first drop of blood her knife drew when her hands shook and her heart thumped. I threw away my memories, now I’m throwing away my deceit, peeling off my skin. She felt released, cleansed… and something that was not relief, a panic building up in the back of her head. Suddenly part of her wanted to take it all back, take her words that cut into the stony faced stranger so close to her and give her back the boy she knew, of the firm gentle words and smiles. Their fingers were still laced, but she had never felt so distant from him.
Tarra just looked at her. She wished she could know what he was thinking. Arianne had always thought that she could read him, that he’d worn his heart on his sleeve and she could see him, that strange detached feeling she got when she looked to see how he reacted to her words. She could not read him now, nor in his silences and pauses. His eyes were cool gray mirrors, blank, and as still and dead as her own when she held herself back.
All he said was, “Is that all?”
Arianne felt as if someone was choking off her throat. I can’t answer that. Where was his shock, where was his dismay and anger and wounded pride? She had expected all of those things, but nothing like what was happening now.
Tarra sighed and looked away from her face, the expression mirroring the one he’d worn yesterday when he’d pulled away. “That’s what you think, right?” Some of his pain and anger had crept through the curt barrier of his words, and she could hear his voice shake. “Well, I guess it was both of us.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Yes, we did shut ourselves to the truth and choose to believe our fantasies… But they weren’t anything the other was thinking, was it, Arianne?” The hand around hers tightened until it almost hurt. “Do you think I really swallowed every single thing you told me? Did I seem that much a fool to you? No, don’t answer that, maybe I was. Did you think I never knew where you went night after night and how you’d come back after you drank your life out on the table? Did you think I never knew about what went on in your house? Did you think I never knew about this?” His hand shifted, and his fingers brushed against the ridges of her scars, the first one closest to her hand at the end of her wrist.
Arianne flinched impulsively, but couldn’t pull her hand back. She had never been scared of him, ever since she’d met him two years ago, but she was scared now, scared that she couldn’t read his face or his eyes, scared of the words coming off his tongue, scared of the hand that had scraped her scars.
“We were both feeding each other lies, Arianne. And thought that we were so clever… Thought we played the other like an instrument, right?” His voice was raw now, but his body was rigid as a board next to hers. “I knew you because of your mother, Arianne. The first night we met, remember? I was late, coming to that party, and happened to be walking through that small dark alleyway… And there was this girl standing there half a head taller than the woman before her, but cowering all the same, with her head bent low. I heard what she said, saw what she did. It wasn’t for me to meddle with your affairs, but I saw you right where I was ten minutes later at the center of a ring of people looking as perfect and whole as a princess. I wanted to ask you later about it, but you played the part of what you thought I wanted to see so seamlessly I was having trouble believing you were the same person, and then I never got around to it. Call me a fool or a coward or whatever you want for it, but I was drawn to you, wanted to be good to you the more I knew you, and I knew what you wanted me to think, so I went along with it. I always thought I would come around to asking you, but you backed off the subject whenever I even came close. I thought you would tell me, someday, and I could be patient for a while, wait until you trusted me.” The anger had drained out of his voice, turned it flat again, and his face was brooding, eyes hooded and shadowed.
“It’s been two years, Arianne. Tell me I haven’t given you space, played your game. Tell me I haven’t prompted you, asked you, told you to take me with you and tell me what was going on in your head. You would come to me after days of sounding distant with your eyes dark and a broken smile on your face, and whenever I asked you anything you would find some way to gloss it over, say I’m fine, it’s nothing, don’t worry, and every single time I would tell myself that this would be the day, but I would be too much of a coward to face it. That night when Paxon called me and I took you home I thought this time it would finally have to do, but you said no.” His gaze went past her. “You said my name, and said that I couldn’t find out or I would leave you, or you would leave me because you wouldn’t be able to face me after that. And you never said anything else about me, to me, when you were so drunk so couldn’t do anything else than whisper broken words and weep and be sick. I heard your mother’s name and your friends and your past lovers and you called to them over and over and over, but for me all you had was ‘He can’t know’. I told myself that I could still give you time, that we could try again, and anyway that night when I was changing your clothes for you I saw the scars and balked again. I always knew you were hurt, broken in some way, knew that something had gone not in the right way, and I did like the other part of you… The girl you showed me, who could still dream and hope and laugh and write stories and tell jokes and feel love. It wasn’t just a show for me. I thought if you would just come clean to me, talk to me, tell us, the scars would fade and so would the wrongs, and we would find some way to get you out of the mess you were born into.”
The silence dragged. Arianne could hear the soft thudding of her own heart, but she felt as if all the blood had drained from her brain. Tarra looked back at her, saw the way she trembled. “It was like that the other day, you know, when you called me and sounded so scared.” His smile was pained. “Do I scare you, Arianne? You always seem to be at war with yourself. Sometimes I’m just a pet that you like and you see every thought in my head, or so you think, but other times I scare you, don’t I? Because you’re afraid I’ll know what you are.” He sounded distant again. “I was scared, too, that time, and when I called you over and over and you never answered I asked everyone you knew where you were, and Lydia Strayen told me you were in that house with your mother. I might have come back then, if she had not gone looking for you. I dared to hope again… You asked me for help before everything went wrong, and you would have to explain things, but I got more from Lydia than from your mouth. When you came to meet me the day I came back, and when I thought again that this would be the time, you just turned away and told me it was nothing again. And yesterday… What did you say this time? At Lydia’s, weren’t you, those three days you didn’t return my calls? Even if something like that happened to you and you wouldn’t trust me enough just to tell me something, anything. If you’d just told me you were in your own house and shut your mouth after that, I would have waited…But you didn’t give me even that.”
He looked at her again, shook his hand free from hers to tilt her face up so he could see her eyes. “There it is,” he whispered. “There’s the look.” Her let his hand fall, and smiled a tired smile. “I’ve seen it on your face over and over again when you thought I wasn’t paying attention, guarding me from your secrets. Well, you can keep them from now on, and you won’t have to be scared again.”
Tarra turned away, and Arianne listened to his footfalls, watched his back recede from sight until he turned a corner. She knew she should go after him, pull him back, tell him that she would try again and things would be better and could be fixed, but all she did was slide down to the ground and put her head on her knees.
Chapter 36 Lydia
Arianne looked as the bandages came off and things that had been her hands came out. She grimaced at the sight, but didn’t gasp. Lydia bit back a hiss as the new bandages came on.
When the nurse left, the metal cart clanging over the cracks on the floor, she looked down at her hands and felt sick all over again. The skin was getting better day by day, if the clumsy thick leathery glove that had started to grow out of the fire and blood the accident had left was any idea of better. How lucky I am, she tried to make herself think again, but couldn’t muster the strength. At least the burns didn’t get infected, or I would have to get my hands sawed off.
Her left was not burnt half as badly as her right, and the bandages had come off it, leaving only her right still wrapped up, but there were those cuts slicing across her fingers from where she’d put out her hands and met some piece of sharp glass or metal. At least… She’d been to the other ward on the third floor the other day, seen the patients who had it much worse than her, few as they were, with the burns covering their faces and torsos and legs, in the small rom that had bars outside the windows like a prison cell, filled with the moans of the patients lying on the beds. That could have happened to me. Would I have minded more if it was my face that looked like this, or my hands?
“I’m sorry about what I said the other day.” Arianne was staring out the window at the far end of the room. A dim golden glow bathed the room, touching the empty and occupied beds, sketching glowing outlines of the white sheets and painting gleaming dots on the metal bars that danced as the wind ruffled the few leaves outside and shifted the light. “About nothing getting better.”
“It wasn’t wrong.” Lydia tried to flex her fingers on her left hand and was met by a jolt of pain. She’d been taken off the fluids yesterday, replaced by small white pills that she should only take when the pain was too bad. She left them on the little table by her bedside, not wanting to give in. It was almost as if she thought that if she didn’t admit it, time would bend back for her and she would find a way out of it. “I’m getting to that.”
The other girl was silent, staring out into the weak sunset again. “That’s what I thought.” She looked down to her hands. “Maybe you were right, the whole time.”
“About what?”
“Believing in the right things, or something along those lines. Believing that there would be something good even if life was messed up.” She was completely serious.
“Did my mother set you up to do this?”
Arianne didn’t smile. “I came up with it myself.”
Lydia looked at her, disbelieving. “You of all people are starting to talk about things like this?” She’d had enough pity to last a lifetime, but Arianne’s was too much to bear. Even she’s going to tell me that everything will get better. What could it be, except for pity and kindness? She was sick of pity and kindness. There’s nothing left of me anymore.
“I never thought I’d be saying this.” Arianne watched her face, unflinching. “Maybe there are good things, if you let yourself see them.” Her voice was musing. “It’s like that time when I saw you standing outside my door and I almost hoped that I was hallucinating, so I wouldn’t have to believe that it was little Lydia Strayen coming to pull me from Eliana. So I wouldn’t have to believe that things could be right again.”
Lydia had never heard Arianne call her mother by name; it had always been her or my mother. The other words slipped from her mind, like the time she had stared, not understanding, as the other girl sat in the silvery moonlight a hundred years ago and spoke words without meaning.
Those were becoming clearer, though, as she watched her skin grow thick and taut day by day. There was one night, when she just wanted to rip her skin off her body and be done with all of it, wanted to slice the festering weeping wounds off herself, run away and distance herself from the thing that she had become.
The feeling had been reckless, heady, and she knew at the moment that if someone was hurting her she would have urged it on, knowing that nothing could come of her anyway. I’m thinking all the things I’ve hated and despised before, she’d realized, as she was staring at the white pills on the desk, lying next to The Book. She wondered what it would feel like to pour the whole bottle down her throat and sleep for a thousand years, and even the thought of those people she’d loved couldn’t still her. It would hurt them, wouldn’t it? They would understand then, feel what I feel.
But she’d stopped, knowing that she would regret it when the feeling passed. It had awed her almost as much as it scared her, and every time she felt it, a dull throb in the back of her head, she would hear Arianne again. Have you ever thought that it might feel good to be feel bad, right to be wrong? So your body wouldn’t really be yours anymore. It came over her in whispers, not really even the big things, like when the nurse came to peel off her bandages, or when she’d fought with her father the other day. It came, always, unnoticed, unprepared, when she suddenly woke and felt the pressure of a scalpel pressed between her fingers again, or when Jack had staged a play just to make her feel better but she couldn’t, or when she saw The Book fall open at a page she’d written once about college applications, or when the hem of her bandages caught as she was trying to sit up in the bed. She would want to break something then, so much, when she had tried to fix everything before, because she knew that this would not be solved by her just wanting to solve it. The words came back to bite her, taunting. Solve the problem.
“Stop trying to make me better. Stop trying to make me whole.” She could feel heat pressing up behind her eyes and hated herself for it. “I’m never going to be again.”
“I wasn’t.”
“What, then? What are you trying to say?”
“That you have a choice.”
“Like you did?”
Arianne fell silent again at that. She pushed back her chair. Before she left, she looked back and smiled thinly. “Happy birthday, Lydia.”
She’d forgotten.
Then she saw them, all waiting by the door, with tentative smiles and shining eyes. Martha hugged her lightly and left a package beside her, Ameri smiled and gave her a thick book on medicine, then apologized for Delissa for not being there. Mom kissed her cheek and assured her in a whisper that she would a better birthday once she was better. Jack balanced an awkward conjunction of a model of her he had made on the table beside her, which lit up in white and green when he pressed a button. When the cake came, it was in the shape of a white book, and she blew the candles out lightly as they sang quietly not to disturb the other patients, but half the room had joined in by the time they were finished. People came around, clad in casts and bandages, to congratulate her. The cake had to be fed to her, and she had smears of white cream on her face by the time she’d had a few bites, after which it was whisked away quickly by Rosie, declaring that her health wasn’t suited for high sugar levels. The nurse poked her head around the door to see what the commotion was about. Lydia tried to smile, knew she should, but the clamp on her breathing again made her choke. I should have been happy. When she looked around at all the smiling faces around her, hopeful, eager, careful, the burst of pain and guilt she had not allowed herself to feel snapped open again.
Eighteen, Lydia thought, looking up to the white ceiling, later that day when things had quieted. Can that be? She had become an adult overnight. Whatever her age, she felt more a little girl than ever, trapped in a body that wasn’t hers, frightened and hurt. When she thought of Lydia Strayen again, would the word woman replace child? But that didn’t matter, anymore, not as much; for, overlaying the letters, whichever they were, would always be cripple.
Lydia closed her eyes again, but their faces seemed to be branded into the inside of her eyelids. She wanted to hate them, close the light and hope out, but the dam broke and she was drowning in the depths of her own feelings.
For the first time since the accident, she opened The Book and began to look through it, trying to find an answer, some spark that would bring to life that girl inside of her and call her back, to meet life and its quarrels. I owe it to them to try. She owes it to them to try. She even asked for her notebooks, and had them piled up beside her bed, but every time she opened them she found her eyes wandering aimlessly over the pages and glassing over after only a short while of reading her own words, so she reached for The Book first instead.
The room was strangely serene, as the sun and shadows dappled the floor and fell across the creamy white pages in her hands. Over on the other cot, a woman was smiling fondly at her daughter, while the bed next to hers was empty, a book left half open on the pillow. At the other end of the room, an old man in a wheelchair was slowly getting pushed around, the sun touching his silver hair.
Everything looked so peaceful, as the sun sank and sank, even here in the hospital. She looked back down. The cover was blank, smooth. She unclasped the fastenings clumsily, using her knuckles to tip the first page back. Her own handwriting from three years back stared at her through slanting black letters and the mist of time.
This book is Lydia Strayen’s property, her fourteen-year-old hand had scrawled in looping cursive, bold and steady and sure. Beneath the letters, uncharacteristically neat writing marked line after line in small tidy words. She saw the final, detailed, if not childish plan again: An apartment right next to the second hospital. She had even added, seventh floor. Lydia remembered a day she’d been there to see, looking up the brick walls, gravel crunching beneath her feet and a sweet breeze in her hair. Ivy had been creeping up the walls then, splashing red and white with hues of green and yellow. The top floors were the seventh floors, with a roof on top and slanting glass panels catching the light. I thought my life was beginning, then, but it had already half ended.
She had written, wait for me, and at the time anything put down on the thick white pages was a promise and a wish, better than any magic spell. It all came true… Until it didn’t. The school and subjects were all there as well, on the front page of he first year: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, the grades she would have to get slotted neatly next to the colleges she would like to go to, year after year after year. There were scraps and photos, too, come off of textbooks and newspapers, with circles and lines and margins. A flimsy piece of paper with pictures of diagrams peeked up through two passages talking about a patient. And everywhere plans, plans written for the day and month and week and year, walled up in neat grids or overflowing the pages, when and what to do, how much, with whom, the little boxes all ticked and tucked away or crossed out and re-written. Pages and pages and more pages.
The dim glow faded and the sterile lights snapped brighter, and her mother came around to check on her, smiled when she saw Lydia turning the pages entranced. Doctors and nurses bustled in for their nightly examination, and Lydia was turned and prodded and rubbed and pricked. The visitors had cleared out, mostly, and the patient beside her had returned to his bed. Lydia didn’t see any of it; her eyes never left the page. She found the day where small notebooks added to the big white book, found the day she had been so happy when she reached another milestone, found the day when nothing had worked out but she had changed the writings to make a new plan. Then she was staring at long lapses and blank pages, on those days when she was on the trip with Arianne, and that last day, with the words, meeting with Raymond in the afternoon written in a quick flourish, the last “n” trailing a long flamboyant tail. The sky had turned dark, and it was no longer the world outside she saw but the room inside reflected in the glass.
Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon. It was strange how little she thought of him and how little she cared, when before she would stutter and trip over her words whenever he came near. He’d visited her thrice after the incident, but she had paid him no more attention than the others. He’s just a boy, a child. A normal, growing, healthy boy. She let the unhurt tips of her fingers trace the letters on the page. She thought of Arianne again, and the people she met with. Lydia felt uncomfortable with normal, whole people now, having to cover her arms and act to care about the same things they did. Like draws to like, she heard, and it was Arianne again, with all her cuts and scars and drinks, everything Lydia had despised before, her that she thought of the most, her that would give her any comfort or understanding.
Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon. Could she have known what would happen? Was it truly an accident, or had there been some sign, some inevitable clue she’d missed? Lydia flipped back the pages, searching for an answer again, but it was as silent as the time she’d tried to write something about Arianne. It’s made for plans and solutions, not feelings. Lydia had always felt that she could control things, her own life with The Book, and other lives with her scalpel. Staring at the blank pages of The Book laid out before her, for the first time she felt powerless, like there truly was something bigger and stronger, invisible and impenetrable, that controlled her life, a force that was out of her control and her knowledge.
She found herself coming back again and again to that day when she had crossed her plans all out when they hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped. Clean strike-through lines, cutting smaller boxes into the grids. Somehow she thought that if there was an answer, it lay here, not in the neat gleaming plans of her past.
Chapter 37 Arianne
And If I were wrong?
February 17, Arianne’s book
“Nothing for today?” Pax asked. She was leaning against the rails beside the river; her short hair fluttered around her face like indigo cloud. Light flashed on the metal around her neck and in her hair.
“I thought we could try to converse some without a drink between us.” Arianne shielded her eyes from the glare reflecting off the water. “And perhaps not in the middle of the night.”
“That’s new.” Pax eyed her. “Well, what is it, then? Spit it out.”
“Why are you always under the impression that I just wanted to tell you something?”
“When have you ever called me out when you were perfectly well?”
Arianne had to smile. “Good point.” She joined the older girl by the railing. Behind them, a long walk stretched out, flanked on the opposite side by a green lawn and a row of trees, though a thin covering of them; she could see easily to the plaza between the spaces between the trees. Laughter and chatter floated through the air to reach her. She could see children playing at roller-skates and skateboards and bikes, and on the wide walk behind them passerby talked and laughed. In front, the river stretched out far and wide, the buildings on the opposite side gleaming glass and steel and granite, the water itself glittering in the light despite being slightly murky, like a pale golden ribbon stretching out upon itself. A boat rolled past, churning up flowers of white spray. Spring is in the air. “Did I ever tell you about Eliana?”
Pax turned her eyes from the river, wary. “Your mother? Why?”
“A lot of reasons.” She paused, trying to find words. “How much did you know?”
The other girl tipped her head to the right, still wary. “The basics, I would say.”
The bracelet on her wrist had been Eliana’s; Arianne undid the clasps and turned it over in her hands. She gave it to me, said that it was lucky, that I would need it one day. It had been the earlier times, and one of Eliana’s better days, or rather one of her apologizing days. “It was better when she was younger. When I was little.” She balled the chain into a clump in her fist. “She was fleeing from her life. She was--”
Pax waited. Arianne turned the chain over, then fisted it again. “I can’t do this. I can’t talk about her.”
The other girl didn’t push her. Pax drummed her fingers on the railing, making a brassy clanging sound as the rings on her fingers struck metal. She listened to the beat. One, two, one, two, one, two. Finally, the other girl said, “I thought I’d stop. The drinking. And the tattoos.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Maybe I will.”
Arianne glanced at her newest, the ink curling above below her collarbone. Pax felt her gaze and shifted a little, letting her collar cover it. “It doesn’t come all at once.”
Pax was probably five or six years older than Arianne, but she never knew the other girl’s exact age, and always saw her as a girl, more like herself than the others. She thought of the last few weeks, months, really, when the other girl started coming in lapses and starts to their gatherings instead of frequently, and mostly just sat and watched, while the quick growth of the ink on her skin had slowed. I thought that was just because there wasn’t much space left on her skin. I should know. Pax was more of a sentimentalist than Arianne was; she inked pictures or words instead of lines on her skin that would last forever, a blade, a word, a mountain, a drop of water. She supposed they all had their meanings and memories, though she had never asked. When Pax had first shown her the skin on her back, there had been flames eating at her spine. It was almost two years ago. She was as irrational as I was. “Why?”
The other girl shrugged, squinting across the water. Her jacket flapped noisily behind her. “Why did I choose to start all of this in the first place?” She paused, pondering her answer. “Do you ever feel, sometimes, like you’ve been pulled out of it suddenly and the realization of what you are just hits you? Like, this is really my life, this is really my body, and I’m really doing this. And whatever you’re doing doesn’t seem right, anymore.”
“It never was.”
“No, but…” Pax rapped on the railing, a quick tap-tap-tap, as if trying to hear the right words in its reverberation. “It felt good. But then it doesn’t.”
The look on Isla’s face flashed before her, the revulsion she’d felt when she knew what she was doing and who she was with. The slick, cold, oily feeling sinking in her stomach when she slid down onto her heels and watched Tarra walk away. “Yes.”
“That’s sort of become a longtime thing for me.” Pax turned a ring on her middle finger. “I want to try something new, you know? Something else.” She pulled back a sleeve, just slightly, and touched the curve of a hand inked to her forearm. “Do you even remember what it was like before you began to… just give in?”
“It was harder.”
“Yeah. That’s why I said ‘give in’. It felt… richer, right? And not in a good sense.” The sleeve went down again. “I don’t really mean to leave everything completely. I don’t think I’d have the strength to do that, anyway. It’s just… I think I’ve spent enough time on this side. I started younger than even you did, do you know? I was fourteen.” She sighed. “I want to have something that I can turn back to when I die. You do feel pleasure in this life, but it comes to fast and leaves too swiftly, with that sort of sharp edge that makes it too hard to recall anything that’s not all flimsy and shallow. And I wonder… Is this all there is? I mean, I can’t say I regret anything. Might have did something worse without it. But it’s starting to get a bit too flat, too repetitive for me, more like an addiction than a choice. And I used to think, so what? But I can’t say that anymore. Maybe you just get to it when you get to it.”
The bracelet was knotted around Arianne’s fingers. It went slack, then wound around her forefinger and middle finger, once and twice and back again. A woman with a child in her arms bent down near her feet to pick a wildflower that was growing out of the cracks in the stone and gave it to her husband. Arianne stared at her hands. “Maybe I’m getting to it now.”
Pax gave a little half smile. Arianne saw the question in her face, and wanted to turn away from it. She was in third grade again, pouring out her heart to strangers. But Pax isn’t Quetin.
“I was with Tarra yesterday.” She said finally. “He knew.”
Pax was still, her elbows on the railing, a toe of a boot scuffing the ground. “Ah.”
“You knew.” Arianne turned to stare at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What would you have done if I did?” The other girl didn’t flinch from her gaze. “You didn’t want to know, otherwise you would have taken the hints. And it was just a hunch, anyway.”
He has to know sometime. The words stung. I was the blind one. She felt tired, with a completeness that overwhelmed her, and the familiar desire to flee. The chain was chafing her skin. She let it unravel, dangled it above the water. Everything seemed so clear now, in hindsight. For a moment she couldn’t speak, as the strange fumbling anger flooded her again. For him, for her, for myself. Why did everything happen this way?
“And?” Pax prompted, after a long silence.
“He walked out. Can’t say I blame him.” Her skin glowed red hot. “Judge me.”
“Not my place to do so.”
Arianne bit her lip. “I should have followed him. Done something.” The words were foreign on her tongue; for a moment Lydia Strayen’s wide green eyes flashed before her. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
“That there can be something good?”
“Yes.”
“That happens.” The other girl tapped the railing again, using her knuckles this time. Clang clang clang. “It’s what pushed me. To want to stop.”
The thin silvery chain coiled up and uncoiled. “I’ve held on to that all my life, or at least a big enough part to make it my belief of the world. If someone takes that out, everything is wrong.” Wrong to be right.
She could not feel the girl who ran away from everything, but neither the sure steadiness Lydia must have had before her dreams burned to dust. Where am I, then? Stuck somewhere, in the middle. Had all of this happened two months ago, she would have left the town without a second thought. It’s not just him. It’s everything. This just pushed me over the edge. She looked at the other girl. “No words of wisdom?”
“Do you remember how you saw everything is cut black and white?”
“Yes?”
“It’s not really hard to be completely in the dark. Or the light. Because there aren’t really choices you have to make and you don’t really need to struggle. I think we’re just…” Pax pulled at her necklace. “Teetering over the edge.” She sounded as if she were musing over the words for herself rather than Arianne. “We’re not too old. Had a taste of both.” She paused. “Maybe it’s time to make a choice.”
“For what?”
“What we choose to believe in. Even if it’s really on the black side. What you think doesn’t go with what you feel.”
Teetering over the edge. A knife suspended over her skin. Arianne frowned. “I do believe in clean slates. In starting over.” Masks and lives.
“No, it’s not like that.” Pax rubbed the newest tattoo. “Like I said: It’s easier to stay where you are. The time comes when the time comes, and you choose whether or not to… board the train, as it is. I don’t think it’s leaving things behind. More like… Moving on with them.” She laughed, but her eyes looked sad. “Now I sound like an old person handing out life suggestions.”
Teetering over the edge. The bracelet dangled on the tips of her fingers. The last time I saw Eliana was the first time I really saw her. Let go of any fanciful dreams. She let it drop, the silver shadow sinking quick into the depths of the river.
Chapter 38 Arianne
Maybe it’s time you stopped running away.
Arianne mounted the steps, one and two and three. Eliana was gone, taking all of her things with her. Her room was empty, the bed and walls all bare, the floor clean and gleaming. Nothing was left except the furniture. She wondered if Salla would still come back, if Eliana was gone. Arianne stood at the door for a moment, then moved on. A bottle, half empty, stood on the table. She put it in a bag, then went to the fridge and cabinets and took out all of them, putting them inside the sack, then knotted the opening and put it at the top of the stairs.
Her own room had been cleaned up too, she saw, the table wiped and the bedsheets neatly folded. The bar holding her door shut was gone, too; but the marks it left on either side of the doorframe were not. Arianne closed the door behind her, and reached into the drawers to pull out the stacks of paper. Crossed out lines and jumbled words, some letters of the alphabet strung together, that’s all, she tried to think, but she touched the last page from only a few days ago and stashed it safely back in the drawers again. Maybe it’s time you stopped running away. She had been with Lydia a few more times after the first, a broken rag doll. She had been a puppet, dancing on the strings she wove for herself, now they’ve snapped, and she will have to walk alone. She wondered when the girl she was had snapped. You have a choice, Arianne had told Lydia.
She hated it when her own advice applied to herself.
The room had not much of her possession that was important; some clothes and the little black box were all. What have I come back for, this time? Arianne wanted to tell herself that it was to make an end to things, clean it up, but some part of her had felt wrong when she saw the house without Eliana’s shadow, when she had almost grown used to it again. I still want to run to her, almost as much as I want to run away from her. So many masks she had worn, now, one face for one person, one way to act for one setting. She had played the small child, the popular girl, the forgotten shadow, the ghost in the dark, and much and more, but always daughter, daughter, daughter. Is she truly gone?
Arianne could not muster triumph, only relief, and a confusion at the emptiness inside her, like a great part of her had been pulled down and crumbled to dust. How do I act, when she is not to see? What do I say, when she is not to hear? What should I fear or hope, when she is not waiting for me? She had feared Eliana, hated her sometimes, wept bitter tears and cut and drank, had hoped sometimes for her to be gone forever, but now that Eliana had left she wondered what was left of her one she was left. Who was she, if not her mother’s daughter? My blood is in your veins. Where did she stand, how did she act? All her actions had been a response to how other people acted toward her or what they wanted from her, like pieces of a huge puzzle put together to make the girl they called Arianne Whitewood. Did the pieces belong to her, truly, or to the people they’d been made to please? When they broke, what was left of her? Aaron was gone, Antony was gone, Quetin and Lissanda and Eriyan were all silent, Grandes and his group she would no longer want to go back to, nor the one with Resme and Isla. Pax was no longer the same person as she had met two years ago, and Lydia was not the girl she knew from months ago, and Tarra…
But most of all it was Eliana, Eliana with her lilted laughter and uneven words and pale blue eyes, Eliana and the time she would let Arianne crawl into her bed and hold her close, when she was not as unstable and still held out to the hope that Arianne could accomplish what she herself could not. Every part of Arianne had come apart.
She took the sack of bottles, along with some of Eliana’s and her own possessions that were left, and threw them out, but when she wanted to drop the knife and its box along with them her fingers would not part. Arianne remembered the first time, when she sat with her back pressed t the door and was sobbing so hard. It had not really been some big deal, she recalled; but it had hit her hard, harder than the neglect and cruel glances and whispers and snickers at school, or the empty silence she came home to every day. Sometimes all the feelings would stay down when the big blows came, and she thought herself strong enough to cope with whatever life threw at her, only to crop up in tiny things, the wrong color of a pen, a single glance or a word, a website that would not upload. The single dollop had shone on the blade of the knife, and that had felt so good that she couldn’t stop.
Wrong, she thought. Wrong, sick, filthy. Yet she could not let it go. She saw the new tattoo hovering Paxon’s skin. It doesn’t come all at once.
Arianne grasped the hilt, and laid it back in the box. Someday, perhaps. But not now, not today. I’m not ready yet.
When Tarra saw who was standing at the door, he looked like he had half a mind to close the door in Arianne’s face. “Arianne.” There was an edge to her name that she seldom heard. “What is it?”
She realized that she had no idea what to say. I’ve heard enough “I’m sorry”s in my life to never want to hear another apology again. Nor did she want to say it; two words with no weight and no promise, or only a broken one. She said them anyway, at a loss for better words. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
She fumbled. “Everything. I shouldn’t have—”
“Did it really have to come to this?” He was accessing her the way he’d looked her the day she went to the airport to meet him, cool eyes, and silent. “I know enough of what you’re going to say. Save it.”
Her mind searched for the answers. What does he want? What should I give, how should I act? But there was no more hiding left for her, the moment she’d chosen to come here, a decision she was starting to regret sorely. “Eliana left the other day.”
“Your mother?”
Arianne had not acknowledged her as that since the day she’d left the room with Lydia. She nodded.
He was waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, he said, “Good, then. Is that all?”
She recalled all the times she had brushed off her words, spoken to him, watched him as if above him, indifferent. She could not drag that feeling from anywhere within her now, nor watch him the way she had grown accustomed to; her gaze fell somewhere on the ground. “I can change,” She said finally. “Things can change.”
She could feel his gaze on her face. “That’s what I thought.” He sighed. “Save yourself some dignity, Arianne, it’s what you’ve worked so hard to keep.”
“No, I—” She stopped again, wanting to tell him about Lydia and Eliana and Paxon, about everything that had changed, but the words would not come to her. They sounded whiney, begging, a child trying to make excuses and begging for forgiveness. Eliana’s words. I’m so sorry. Arianne knew whatever she did or said, she would never be able to look at Tarra again and not hear his words from the other day and see the look in his eyes, knew that the steely, guarded tone edging his voice would not fade anytime soon, if it did at all, that she would never be able to forget and pretend nothing happened. If I turn away right now, I might still be able to. Spare myself some dignity. But she was done with running away, had grown sick of the identities that never went past her skin, sick of the panic that filled her when she looked into the past. This is my chance at trying to fix anything. The first, and perhaps the last. “I forgot how to trust someone.”
A long silence. Arianne felt the wind lifting her shirt, and resisted the urge to tug it closer to her skin. Tarra still had a hand on the doorknob. “You will fix that.” A pause. “Not me.” When she looked up again, his gaze had lifted from her face to settle somewhere in the distance. “I thought I could. But I’m not important in what you have or what you want or how you choose and what you believe. Oh, I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said, when Arianne tried to protest. “I mean it literally. Only you can fix your problems, whatever they are. I can’t. The choice is yours, and I’m not your medicine or your savior or your tool, so don’t look at me to save you.”
He stopped again, and saw that strange expression she sometimes caught when he thought she wasn’t looking again, faraway and silent. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s really possible. For you, or anyone, to really heal after wrongs, no matter their severity.” His gaze settled back to her arms and wrists. “If a scar is there, does it mean that the hurt is gone? Or just that it’ll leave a mark forever?” His tone was as mild as always, but there was a calm tiredness to it that had not been there before. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re really capable of growing up, Arianne.”
“I couldn’t throw the knife away,” She said suddenly. She did not understand why this was the first statement to pop out of her mouth, when she could have said better things.
“What?”
“Last night. When I went back. I threw away all her things. And some of mine.” The cut on her forearm from a few days before flared briefly. “I couldn’t throw away the knife.” Is that okay? She wanted to ask, but knew that he would give her no answers. It was Eliana’s voice again. It’s never been okay. But it was much worse to be conscious instead of numbing the feelings… Though she had learned the hard way that unconsciousness would bring her bigger consequences than hangovers and scars. I was blind to the world.
Tarra closed the door behind him and leaned against it. Arianne saw the tag at his throat, his shirt turned inside out, and wondered what time it was. I should have taken a watch, at least. “You’ll get to it when you’re ready.”
She saw Pax and her tattoos again. “Maybe.”
He turned away a little, so all she could see was the side of his face. “You will.”
It was the most she would get of him, she knew. When Arianne was walking away, she thought she could feel his gaze at her back, and didn’t dare look back to make sure.
Yes. I will, I will, I will.
Chapter 38 Lydia
That night she could not sleep, looking up into the lights. The hospital always had the lights on, no matter the time. Very soon she would be back, perhaps just tomorrow. The idea unsettled Lydia, even though the hospital was where everything was abnormal. By rights, things should get back to normal when she went back home and got back to her old life.
Why am I crying? Everything will be better once I get back. Everything will go back to what it was. It was with a pressure that she tried to reassure herself; she knew of all the eyes that were waiting, watching. I have to get better, get back, and soon. Lydia knew that, yet the pain pulsed anew at the thought.
She pushed the button on the side of bed and raised herself up to a half-sitting position, quietly, and reached for The Book again. The answer is in The Book.
She traced a fingertip lightly across the edge of the cover, then opened the clasps and looked down at the bold letters again. Lydia Strayen’s property.
“Yes,” she whispered aloud. “Yes, it was.” But she’s not coming back.
She took the corner of the first page between the fingers of her left hand, trying not to bend the cuts too much, and drew it back slowly, not letting go. The page ripped open cleanly at the leather-bound spine, with a soft tearing sound. She brushed it off, meaning to let it land on the floor, but it settled between her legs instead, in the tangle of sheets and flesh and cement. She let it stay where it was. The second page was harder, ripping open at the middle and leaving a long gash slicing halfway down the paper. She shifted, and tugged at the base; it case loose at the seams. Then went the third page, and the fourth. My future, my past. Her skin throbbed with pain as she ripped and tore and tugged, but she went on all the same. When the edge of the page bumped against the cuts, her eyes watered with pain, but she just pulled back and kept going. I deserve pain, I was made for it, born out of flame and debris and filthy oil.
A page and a page and another. Twenty, twenty-one. She ripped away everything that had been that girl’s, her control, her life, her sense of world, her identity, her name. It all got harder as she went along, the pages getting stuck at the shafts of paper that jutted from the spine where the ripping had not been so neat. Hundred and eight, hundred and nine, ten, eleven. She held the book down by her elbow and pulled again. A tear splashed down into the page, but it felt good. Two hundred and three. A page had a smear of blood marring the perfect letters on it as it settled to its place with the others. Her ribs ached with the tempo of her heart. Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon.
The final page tore back, but still a small half of blank pages remained. Lydia took the leather cover, and wrenched it back and forth until it came clean off, scattering the pages like white down over her body. She closed her eyes with the leather cover pressed to her chest.
The days and nights blurred together.
She had given up on trying to get back, trying to be right. Every morning she opened her eyes, turned, and closed them again. People rushed around her, all left, right, front, back, and she shut them all out, answering in blank looks and silences. The only world she felt was the stabbing pain that had started to cease day by day, and on one day she woke up to find herself in her own bed in her own room. She had tried to sit up, but couldn’t do that without the beds in the hospital that could raise her, so she had to turn over and push herself into a half-kneeling position on one knee. Nothing was changed in her room, everything in its place, but there was a wheelchair in the middle of the floor, and a bottle of pills on the drawers. She swallowed one, and after a few minutes another when she felt the unconsciousness not coming fast enough, even though she knew she should only take one at a time. Mom had only found out four days after, when she took the bottle and found it half empty already.
“What did you do?” There was real anger in her mother’s voice now, a harshness Lydia seldom had heard directed at her. “Why did you do that, Lydia? Talk to me!”
Her hands were folded in her lap, quiet. Her mother strode back and forth across the cramped length of Lydia’s room. The notebooks were still exactly where she’d left them. Even in her anger, her mother avoided them, stepping over the binders and notes, careful where she put her feet. “You can’t ignore everything and everyone forever, Lydia. We’ve been very considerate, and we know what you’re going through is hard. We really do. But we can’t coddle you forever.” She stopped, and looked at her daughter, motionless with her eyes staring straight ahead. “Lydia, you know how it works. Be strong and live it through. You can. We all know you can. But you’ve thrown that all away, and you’re hurting everyone.” Her voice sharpened. “Where’s your courage, Lydia?”
If you want her so much, go back and get her. Lydia just wanted to close her eyes and shut her ears, felt suffocated by the onslaught of words, pressured, squeezed. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how to get better, or that she should. I’m so tired, that’s all. Let me breathe, let me breathe, let me breathe.
“Lydia.” Mom knelt in front of her, forcing her to make eye contact. Her voice had softened. “If you have some problems coping, would you like to see a therapist? A doctor? They can help you. You can tell us.”
Help me become right again. Lydia shook her head, silent. When she was alone again, she half opened her eyes, reached for the pills, swallowed one, though there was no water to go down with it. The hard bitterness stuck in her throat, and she swallowed again, forcefully. Soon, soon, soon. The sweet painlessness stole over her like a cool liquid sheen, erasing her feelings.
Later that day, when she sat on the hills, she fumbled again for the bottle, and found it was almost empty, only a few pills left rattling in the container. What will I do when it’s gone? She wondered, and the thought made her want to weep.
The hills were glowing dully, lines etched in gold curving over the skyline, when Lydia thought that she should go back. It was an empty place, and barren, though unquiet. The wind whipped around the grasses and her head, filling her ears with the sounds of rushing water and wind. In the height of summers the grass would grow to be almost the height of her wheelchair, but now only tufts and uneven patches of green dotted the muddy turf, so she had a good view of what was below her. A single tree rose next to her, probably planted by someone before her, stretching bare branches upwards. It had not been easy getting herself up here, even with Rosie’s help, who had come with her wordlessly and left her when Lydia stayed silent. The hills sloped ever so slightly, but rose up high, and the ground was uneven, the journey up long and tiring with her skin not yet fully healed, the wheels chafing her hands. Lydia looked across the city; she could see it vaguely nestled in the center of the surrounding hills, and on the highest crest she saw the speck of white that marked Arianne’s home.
She sat in her wheelchair and covered her arms with a scarf, and sat with her head laid back to stare into the gray-white sky. Lydia should have been in school by now; the new term had started a while ago. But there was no going back now, no fitting back in, and neither was there anything in front of her. She knew that this was the point where, sooner or later, everything would end.
When Lydia heard footsteps, crunching a little on the dead piles of grass on the narrow path, she closed her eyes and waited. Yet when they stopped, she did not feel the pressure pressing onto the handles of her wheelchair, nor heard the careful honeyed tones or disappointed angry words people had been throwing her way. There was another light rustle, then something pushing to the side of her wheels, and the sound of someone sitting down beside her. Arianne. The other girl had leaned against the side of Lydia’s chair, a thick jacket slung over an arm, leaving her arms bare to the elbows. Lydia found herself staring again, though instead of the horror and grotesque fascination there was hunger in its place. This is how I feel, she thought as she marked a particularly long scar running from the other girl’s wrist to upper arm, silvery and pale. Good to be wrong.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Your mother told me.” Arianne glanced around. “Where’s that book of yours?”
“You wouldn’t be asking unless you knew.”
Arianne crossed her ankles. “Be better to hear it from you.”
“It was the last part of me.”
“So you could start over?”
“So I could die.”
The other girl didn’t flinch. “Do you know what I think?”
“That I’m right in thinking that.”
“You’re not. I think you need a drink… But you’re not getting that.” Arianne smirked and produced a flask from a pocket, and drank a small swallow.
“Give me that.”
“Oh no you don’t.” Arianne tucked the flask back into its pocket. “Not much good that’s going to do you, either. It doesn’t even have alcohol in it.” Her eyes floated to the bottle wedged between Lydia’s arms. “Not half as strong as whatever that is.”
“It’s painkiller.”
“Sure it is.” Arianne sighed. “Does it work the way you want it to?”
“Well enough.”
“Well.” Arianne twisted to look at her, not turning away from her wounds and casts. Her eyes seemed lighter than Lydia had remember, more blue than purple now, but her skin was as bloodless as ever, a pale sheet against the writhing green lives that thrashed around them. “So this is it, then?” There was no anger or tenderness in her question, only a slightly mocking, almost taunting edge; yet Lydia knew the glint in those eyes, knew how they would dip and sway and look away, to hide what was inside.
“I told you already.”
As if on cue to her thoughts, Arianne glanced away. “Was that all you were, Lydia?” Her voice dropped low. “Some plans and words?”
The words cut her, much harder than any of the condolences or chidings, perhaps because she knew they were true. She had come to detest the person that she once was, almost as much as she wanted to be her again, without doubt, without fear, without anger… But without that, she had been missing some other things too, things that went deeper, cut harder. She had thought she could control the world, move it to her will, and fix anything that happened; but she had flaunted herself too surely, and destiny had dismissed her with a lazy flick of its hand. The girl she had been for seventeen years built her life on the truths she believed, and mapped out a track that ran along every single turn. Not once, since the accident, had Lydia wondered if that really was all there was, if by ripping apart The Book she would really rip the life out of a body. And now I know. But was that all I was, a book?
Yet how could she be anything else? She had been so sure that this would be the one path she would take, like everything else had one answer; a problem, and a solution, a lock and a key, fitting cleanly into one another. She knew that this was her key, as sure as she knew that everything was attracted to the ground for the earth’s gravity. And now her answer was burnt, dead, broken, and the door would remain locked forever. “There’s no place for me here.” She felt quick heat push behind her eyes again. “What else can I do?”
“Go on. You have a family. Friends who love you.” Arianne plucked some weeds and began braiding the grasses together. “There’s much of the world you haven’t seen yet.” Her fingers halted, making a knot.
Lydia might have brushed the words off, had she not known whom they were coming from. “I can’t go back to what I was, Arianne. I can’t be right again. There was an answer to my life, and now it’s gone.”
“Like I did? There was never any answer to mine, as you put it.” Dark blue eyes met green. “Should I have died the moment I was born?”
She found herself fumbling. Arianne spared her an answer. “I thought I should have. A lot of times, really. And it is easier to do so.” The long strip of grass began braiding itself with another. “But sometimes life can shock you.”
“Nothing’s going to put me back to what I was.”
“I never said anything would. Why do you have to use your old ways to measure what you are now?” Arianne folded her arms, so that the scars disappeared again. “You could have hope that there is something better for you.” There was a low silence, as a bird settled on the bare branches of the birch tree next to them took flight. “You were everything I wanted to be and couldn’t be, had everything I wanted and would never get, but you never seemed to know it. That’s still there.”
Lydia was shocked for a second. “That’s what I thought.” She remembered seeing the other girl all dolled up in her luxuries and her beauty, and lavishing it all away. “That you had everything I wanted and you threw it all away.” A low hum started in her chest. Could that really be true? Could things not be lost, remain the same, even in this? “But I’m wrong, broken, crippled… Already.”
“Do you think I don’t know enough of that?” An old note of irritation had crept into the other girl’s voice. “They all say so. They all see that. But who are they to label what’s right and wrong for us? I always hated myself for feeling how much I feel and tried to kill the thing inside me that would think what I think. But why is broken wrong? Why is feeling what we feel wrong? Things have happened to all of us, and if the world around us doesn’t slow down enough, you have to make your own time. I never thought anything about you was wrong, Lydia. Not before and not now. You’re just doubting things, feeling things that you didn’t before, but all of us who have seen this side do. Who can say that we just have to get over it, that we have to heal in ten seconds and move on? Who can say that all our feelings, no matter how small they are, should be trashed and stowed away? But that doesn’t mean you have to give up on it.”
“It was never right to be wrong.”
“The things we do, perhaps.” Arianne laid the grasses on the ground. “But we all have a right to feel what we feel.”
Try, Lydia thought the next day, as she rubbed the sticky medicine into her palms again. Try for Mom, try for Martha, try for life. She let the world’s silence and brokenness soothe her. She had a fumbling sense of knowledge that, whatever her past had taught her, there was more than one answer to life, and the thought made her dizzy. It was what unsettled her about Arianne, even after she’d gotten to know the other girl better. I couldn’t give her an answer, no more than she could. They were both blind now, stumbling in the dark, trying the first path that came under their feet. But I had a light once.
If that was untrue, how many other things were? Uncertainty fogged her vision, made it hard to go forward. How many things did she know for certain? She began to wonder, then, if anything was really real in the world.
The stars were bleeding across the sky now, in a haze of purple. Dusk had started to settle, firmly and surely, and the sky had turned dark with its step, causing the hills to be thrown into darkness with the city shining up at her like a jewel. She could see the thin blade of the moon hanging low in the sky, and a few stars glistening through the haze of light that radiated from below her.
She saw her mother coming up the hill, walking in short, sure steps, turning the corners, her neck craned to look forward. Lydia turned her back to her, and listened for a while, heard how her steps quickened and quickened, until she was almost running, then slowed until she wandered as if in a daze. The barren landscape shifted until it was a blur of gray and white and green and brown, her and her mother the only two figures in it. She knew Mom was looking for her, knew that she was just coming to make sure she was alright, even though Lydia had disappointed her time and time again. But she could not bring herself to call to her, wanted to spite her, and sat silently as Mom turned to venture back, never turning around. The tears choked her.
“Mom?”
Her mother turned back, and walked to the place Lydia was sitting. Her eyes were bright with anxiety. “Oh,” She said, feigning casualness. “I just came by to see if you were okay here.” She paused, uncertain. “Do you want to go back home now?”
Lydia kept her gaze fixed on the collar of her mother’s coat, remembering a time, not too long ago, when she would hug her mother and rest her head against that spot. But she would be taller than her mother now, if she were able to stand up. Was it really that long ago? She couldn’t answer.
“Lydia?”
She pushed the wheelchair forward and wrapped her arms around her mother. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Chapter 39 Arianne
I think it was never true courage or strength that saved me; it was always more of a vanity, an obsession of what other people thought of me… It’s strange, for I fancy that I don’t care about their opinions anymore, and yet… I still pride myself that I am above them, all of them, in some way. The sufferers, who are the same as me—but all of us are sufferers or have been in some way sometimes; -- I know that they will understand, and perhaps will offer their pity… But I don’t want any more pity. Then the others, on the white side… What would they have thought if I did something to myself? That I was not strong enough, and think me a coward and a weakling. It truly is easier to stay where we are, what we are, and never change, and easier still to sink deep into the slumber that does not wake. And, in that sense, I suppose it would be a cowardly act to take one’s own life and give in.
The thing is that, however great my own pains, I still have a clinging to the world; if not for the people around me, then for myself. No one would remember me after I died; I would be erased from history, as if I had never been—and some part of me refuses to give others what they wanted by hurting me: or worse, to leave them not even satisfaction in my death. I still want to, in some way, exist and leave my mark in time—for, if I have not even that, have I been born just to feel pain? I believe myself more than that, that I have had more feelings, more dreams, more thoughts, more pains than those around me—It is indeed obscene pride and vanity that gives me what is here right now; that, carrying me through the urges, and the bright shocks of time when I see that there is truly something good in what I have, perhaps exactly where we thought, perhaps just waiting to be found, and that things can and do change in strange ways for the better.
Arianne’s book
The church was bathed in semi-darkness, silent save for the the soft murmurings of a group near the end of the building. The door creaked under her hand when Arianne pushed it open wider, and stepped in, searching. In the middle between the rows of chairs, a long slim table had been set up, with a few candles floating in their halos of light. At the edge closest to the corner of the church, she saw the soft woolen hood illuminated by the soft glow of a single candle, almost like a priest’s cowl. Arianne walked over, and stood by the girl.
Lydia had cut away the rest of hair, leaving her head bald, and covered it with a thick hood that enveloped her face and neck. The sleeves were long, covering her hands almost to the fingertips. Arianne might not have known her had they met on the street, save for the green pools of her eyes. She was positioned next to the candle in her wheelchair, and flipping through a thick book on religion that had been left on the table. Drawings of piety and devotion were marked between minuscule print, almost indiscernible in the shifting light of the candles.
Lydia acknowledged her presence with a nod and let the book close, moving on to the next volume. Arianne lingered to give the former book a long look. She had not believed in God particularly, but she had always believed in gods and spirits and ghosts and demons, things that went beyond the world before her. When she younger, she had written many random bits and pieces on angels, heavens and hells and the spaces in between, or other answers to the questions that had bubbled up in her. If she had stuck to her beliefs, perhaps it would have been different, but later she stopped thinking and drowned her pounding heart with blades and alcohol instead, mostly because she had not been able to bring herself to believe that there would be a god or a law that everything stuck to, and that there would still be so many sides of the world that it did not offer an explanation. Arianne held a finger next to the flames, letting her hand bathe in its golden light. She had made her own laws for herself, the black-white cut of the world; but now and then the angels and demons would crop up somewhere in that, too.
I never thought I’d see her anywhere like this, though. Lydia had always made it plain that she scorned beliefs in things that were unproved and improbable, preferring to stick to her large book and studies in science. Yet she tore up her old beliefs, and here she stands. Are all our principles as shaky? She knew that Lydia had turned on her old self because it was helpless in the face of her dilemma, and was still searching for an answer, but as the whole point of having a belief was to help the believer in times of need, Arianne didn’t see how she would find better solace here. It’s a truth she wants, not a theory, and she’ll never get that no matter which way she turns once she starts getting trapped in the dark side. Nothing is true here. Arianne knew how the doubt would creep in when things turned black; how she would look into the mirror and wonder what was staring back.
She joined Lydia, who had walked over to the side of the room between two benches. Colored glass panels caught the light and trapped half of it, leaving only weak milky light to touch the room within. Not many colors, either; green and blue and white were all. Lydia stood right before the light, barely not touching it. Arianne stood next to her.
The other girl spoke first. “Should I pray?”
“Do you believe?”
“I don’t know.” Lydia shook back her sleeves a little again. “If there really is this god, why did all of these things happen? Had I done something to deserve it? If not, though… How do I take matters into my hands again?” Her whispers were weak, almost frightened. “I always thought I could control my life. I could find answers to everything, be sure of everything. But what if what I believed for my whole life, what I have been raised and taught on is all wrong? What if they’re right, and there really is some supernatural power that is too big for me to even grasp?”
Arianne thought of her conversation with Pax, by the riverside. I didn’t want to believe that there could be anything good again, after telling myself that things would always get worse. “You can choose what you choose to believe in. And make that your truth.” The words were limp on her tongue; she did not have enough devotion behind them to enforce herself. What does that mean, really?
“Which one, then? The world is full of religions.” Lydia reached her hands out to the light, letting a square of green light fall over the leathery scarred skin on her right. “I’ve been over all of them. I tore up The Book, but I can’t find anything to replace it. Was that even wrong? What if my former beliefs were all right, and now I’m just making a mess of myself? Can I even go back if I wanted to?” Her voice shook. “We stand in a church, but there are many and more beliefs to what we are, temples and altars and chapels and more and more, all with worshipers and followers. Maybe science was a religion, also. But which one is really real? There has to be one answer, one truth.” She paused, and shook her head. “I was going to say a solution. Maybe in some ways it is. Nothing is right it all was before.”
“You’ll find a way out of it.” Arianne looked up at the engravings on the window. Could I bring myself to believe that I belonged to this god and his world? She heard Tarra again. You will fix that. Not me. “All of us have to, once we start to struggle.”
“But what if I don’t? What if I wasn’t meant to get ‘out’?” Lydia tucked her hands in their sleeves again. “I always answered questions before. Now I can’t ask enough of them.”
Arianne was thinking of Eliana again. Is she the way a mother should be? If not, how did she escape the bonds of all of this if it is true? When she dies, will I meet her in some hell? The thought sickened her. Lydia was looking at her. “I thought if I upheld every single law in every way of thought, that would be right… right? But they all contradict each other. No matter what I do, I’m always violating one law for obeying another. Whatever I do, I’ll always do something wrong. People look to religion to save themselves from doubt and anchor their beliefs, but it just makes me doubt more.”
“I never thought that there was a ‘right’ place in the world. Not for me.”
“I did.”
“I know you did. But now you’re tangled up as I am, as all of us are.”
The other girl hesitated. “I know what you were saying. That night.”
“About what?”
“Feeling the wrong things.”
“Ah.” Arianne looked her up and down. “I’d figured that out. Says enough that you ripped your book up. Feel better about it?”
Lydia smiled a crooked smile. “No.” She paused. “It took away what I was before.”
“I know.” The dream of shedding her armor came to her again.
“When I was doing it… It did feel right. To shred everything that I was, so that it would never catch up on me anymore. And to… free myself. From whatever I was feeling. But I know it’s wrong. How can I do something that I know is wrong?” Her voice sharpened with doubt again. “I hated what I was feeling, and hated that hatred even more. Why doesn’t anyone else see?”
“See?”
“All of the feelings come from doubt, right? You get angry when you doubt yourself, and you turn on yourself for that. What’s wrong with me in feeling the wrong things? Why do I have what I have and lose what I have lost? That’s all doubt. But they never seem to see it, not like we do.”
“You certainly didn’t.” Arianne had to push down a sense of amusement, when she recalled what Lydia was like when they first met.
“Was I wrong in that, then? Or in what I am now?”
“I can’t answer that.”
The girl sank into brooding silence. Arianne felt a strange twinge of familiarity. These are the questions I was trapped in when I first started cutting, when I first started. She didn’t wonder about all of it as much in the recent years… Until lately, with everything that had happened. She was stuck in the white, and I in the black. Now we’re both on the edge, and all the doubts come up to eat us. She could not pick up her knife and cut with the old easiness, like it was a sure thing to do, but neither could she throw the blade away once and for all. But the blade never brought the old quietness back to her the way it used to, fading far too quickly and leaving her with a thick sense of guilt; she only felt worse after the oblivion, yet she could not keep herself from going back again.
“It doesn’t come all at once.” Arianne tried to speak the way Pax had. “But something will come.”
Lydia gave her a sidelong look and snorted. “Why do I feel like our places have been reversed?” She sighed. “Arianne Whitewood, giving me reassurance, while I say all the crazy weird things.”
“I have my moments. Don’t look to me for longtime advice, though, it doesn’t last.” There had been small stretches of time, even in her worst days, when she thought herself strong enough and good enough to deal with everything. Courage is doubly precious in the face of pain. “Can I give you some advice?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t do anything to hurt yourself.”
“This just gets stranger and stranger.”
“I’m only saying it because I’m sure you’ll pull out of it sooner than I do, and when that happens you’ll regret it. And once you start, you can’t stop.”
Lydia’s eyes flitted to her scars again. “Okay.” She hesitated. “What stopped you? From going over?”
She didn’t have to ask to know what Lydia meant. “Pride.” Save yourself some dignity, Arianne, it’s what you’ve worked so hard to keep. She hadn’t seen Tarra after that day, but hadn’t moved out of the house and went away as she’d thought originally. It was only two days to her birthday.
“I’ve thrown away most of that.”
“Can’t help you on that.” Arianne gazed upwards. The ceiling was carved into a dome, layer upon layer of stone. No drawings, no inspections, all pale white ripples of stone. “You’ll find it on your own.” We all have to. “Does this help?”
Lydia followed her gaze. “It gives me something to do.”
“But it doesn’t really make you feel better?”
“What does that word even mean?”
Arianne laughed. “Never thought that would come from you.”
“Same here.” Lydia smiled. “Maybe it is better, in some ways. To not be good. As long as you’re still trying in some ways.” Her hands twitched. “The struggle is harder.”
Paxon’s voice. It feels richer, and not in the good sense. “Yes.”
“No, but when you lose something… And when you’re not…” She trailed off. “Wholly on the black side, as you would put it. There are those moments that make you grateful for everything, because you start to wonder and think and struggle about everything and that makes you doubt everything, like they’ll be gone in an instant. And earlier… Everything went so smoothly. It was good, the good things, but not in the same way.”
“Courage is doubly precious in the face of pain.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.” Lydia pushed her wheelchair awkwardly along the aisle. “Maybe there is still hope for both of us.”
Chapter 50 Lydia
First Entry
March 17
Sometimes I find I’m coming to see that hope isn’t a choice, not truly. When we suffocate and drown, it’s the only thing that has even a slim chance of saving who we are; the desperation with which we pitch ourselves into, the blind faith of everything becoming something normal, is the only way to survive… Or we fall headlong down that chasm I’ve just had only a peek into. Sooner or later, we must all be forced to believe in something good, not because we want to, but because it’s the only way up… For if it’s not, what is our answer then? The doubt will eat us up alive.
So we have to trust that, at last, there will be something out there for what we are.
Yesterday I met Martha again. Perhaps Arianne was right; I feel as if there’s a glass window between the two of us now. She’s good, but she doesn’t see, not the way we do; for her hope is still something that comes easy, like breath and air… But for everything I have, I know I’ll never be whole again.
I know I’ll be able to be happy. Fall in love. Have kids, go to work. And I know that things will work out for me someway. But I’ll never really be a child again; I’ll never be able to stop doubting things, or worrying about the future, or agonizing over the past. I’ll never ever be able to have what I did. She just told me that things would become better, but that wasn’t what I meant.
How could I explain that, I was not meaning one thing or two or three, nor the quick shallow flights of happiness or despair, but something larger and deeper? I know things will find another way, but my road was burnt and dead, and after the child had died the adult was born: Mom and Dad and Rosie and Martha and everyone will leave me, one after another, one way or another, or I will have to leave them sometime, inevitably; and I will never be able to trust the life I had so surely, as I had done before.
I guess it’s just that things have happened to me, and whatever I do I’ll never scrub away the stain. They will have to leave their marks, until the day I die and maybe beyond that, altering who I am and what I will become, that my life had been pushed off an old track and onto a new one… But perhaps Arianne was right, and change does not necessarily equal wrong, and that there might truly be more than a single answer to life, or perhaps none.
A hundred gods, a thousand religions. If there were so many beliefs to the eternal questions that humans ask, how could it be that hers had but one direction?
I know I’ll never be certain of what anything is again; never hold a scalpel… I had changed forever; and I’ll never be able to change it back. That was never the path to take, or I would have destroyed myself in the attempt. I guess I almost had.
Whatever I do, Martha will always have something that I won’t, and that this me now, with the mending bones and burnt skin, would always have something that the old Lydia and Martha did not, either. Martha will never see what I see, or really feel what I feel.
But things will be alright. Perhaps some paths are meant to be walked alone, in silence, and in mourning or pain or joy. The absence and loneliness of the universe, of all our puny beings well up in a moment: a sudden swift knowledge that, if I died right there and then, the world would not stop for me, and the meekness and the frailty of my power, no matter in what form, is not even a speck in the lives of those in the world that surround me. I can’t change what they see or make them understand, no more than I can change the world.
But I will find it within myself to love them, I think, to see the world, really see it, and not just with the empty courage to make it mine; I believe, with the conviction of those who don’t have the other choice.
We will struggle to stay afloat, and some of the days the suffocation will get the better of us. But she’ll stay through. I’ll stay through. And perhaps one day we will be able to look in the mirror and see a world that isn’t altered.
Truth be told, I’m sick of it. Sick of the empty thrusts to be better. Sick of trying to sit up. Sick of rubbing medicine on my skin like it’ll ever be something normal. Sick of trying to write a first entry that’s good and sees hope. But when the blackness rises I always see her, and I know we’ll not be alone even if we’re apart. And yes, we all have a right to feel what we feel and be what we are.
It was never a crime for us to sink… The breathlessness and doubt has become a part of who we are, how we think, what we do, and in that we’ll always be able to see something more.
So we carry on in our pursuits, living one day after another, until the day comes when the white arms of that other world come to embrace us.
We’ll be alright.
Lydia’s book
The Sinking(Huiru)
The Sinking
Chapter 1 Lydia
Jan. 15
7:15-10:00
Hmk. Sch.
Todo:
Reading: HWD (p78)
10:10-12:00
Notes sort No.11
Hmk finish
Meet with M 15:00
13:00. 18:00
2 points- aft. T
Notes x 2 sort N
*R: tom. Bring S.
January 15, The White Book
“Lydia, honey?” Her mother called down the hall. “Could you take Pate outside today?”
“It was my turn yesterday,” she yelled back, without turning from her notebook and its scribbles. “Let Jake take him today. Or Rosie.”
She could hear her mother’s footsteps down the hall, and the creak of her door as it opened with a bit of effort, pushing against a mountain of books, papers and clothes scattered over the floor. Her mother grimaced as she stepped gingerly over the notebooks strewn all over the floor. “How do you even find anything?”
“I have a gift for rummaging in trash. Perhaps not so much right now.” She chewed on the end of her pencil. “I can’t understand anything of what I wrote last year. Why didn’t I know I was going to need them later?”
Her mother peered over her shoulder. An unintelligible scrawl covered furled pages, smeared at places. She laughed. “Why don’t you start by cleaning your room? I thought you took pride in being—” She lifted her eyebrows—“organized.”
Lydia rolled her eyes. “Why do I have to take Pate again?”
“Rose is occupied at the moment, and Jake’s out with his friends.”
“What you mean is, Rosie is on a date, and Jake is downstairs playing in the sandbox. He could play there with Pate. They all like Pate.”
“Honey, it was you who wanted a dog in the first place, and I hardly think Jake would be safe running around the neighborhood by himself.”
Lydia gave in. “Wait till I’m finished with this page. Ten minutes.”
Her mother patted her hair. “Thanks.” She leaned over again to decipher her handwriting. “What is this one on?”
“Nerve endings.”
Her mother made a face. “Fascinating.”
“Glad you think so.” She squinted. “Is that an A or a P?”
“I think it’s an M, actually.”
Lydia groaned and ran her fingers through her hair, smoothing out a tangle. “I thought I could get this done today. Now it’s going to mess everything up.”
“One day won’t disrupt your holy schedule. Remember to take Pate later, ‘kay?”
“Mmn-Hmm”, she mumbled distractedly. After a while she gave up, threw the notebook to join its peers on the floor next to her bed, and got up to find Pate. Even outside her room, the house was cluttered and messy, but Lydia liked that. It wasn’t messy in a dirty way, just in a homey way. Coats and sweaters were strewn over a small but overstuffed sofa in the middle of the living room, while pillows lay on the floor under the TV set, no doubt courtesy of Jack and his playmates. Notebooks, pencils, the computer, textbooks and novels alike were cluttered on the reading table, which also served as the dining table. The sound of sizzling oil and a pungent smell of chicken and rosemary wafted by from the kitchen, her mother outlined against the last rays of the sun with a large cooking spoon in her hand. Rosie’s door was cracked half open, an array of hot pink bottles and baubles peeking out from behind its walls. Jack’s was wide open, toy cars and a train set laid on the middle of the floor. Lydia fumbled for her shoes, hopping as she pulled them on, and glanced at the mirror next to the door, raking her hand through her hair again. No point in that. Her hair was as messy as the house, had always been. A trait that she shared with Rosie and Dad, though not with Mom and Jack. Rosie had tamed her hair into a sleek pretty bun, though, with gels and mousses and hair straighteners, and Dad’s hair was thinning around the temples. Mom and Jack had brown hair, where she and Rosie taken after her father, a fiery red mass that refused to obey her. She snatched up a hair tie and made the best of it. “Pate, c’mere,” she called. “Mom, I’m leaving now!”
The big white Samoyed was lounging on its side at the foot of the sofa, but padded over quickly enough when she called. Lydia bent down to ruffle the fur behind its ears, and fastened the leash around his neck. His tongue rasped over her palm, and she laughed and rubbed his head.
The day was brisk and cool. Lydia jogged behind Pate, catching a glimpse of Jack having a great time with his little friends, squealing as he ran up a slide, his face smudged with dirt and laughter, his hair touched from brown to golden by the sun. She smiled to herself, thinking of Raymond and the way his hair shone spun gold even when it was dark. I’ll see him tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow.
Pate tugged on his leash, and she ran after him through a bright swirl of emerald green leaves.
Chapter 2 Arianne
From these gems at night
live a fiery soul of frights
And diamonds without sight
pull up to kiss the bright
January 15, Arianne’s book
The house was dark and empty when Arianne pushed open the door, but she was used to that, and it was past midnight anyway. She slung her bag over the back of a chair and fumbled for the light switch. Inside, the rooms were big and cavernous, with white walls and a large white carpet lolling on the heavy oaken floor. Floor to ceiling windows lined her right side, a long hallway at her left, and shelves of polished teak holding books behind clear glass panes. A large counter was set behind the carpet, with high chairs and a jug of water with five glasses on it. I don’t see why, she thought as she walked over to pour herself a glass. This place has never had more than two occupants at most, and it’s not likely we’ll ever have guests in this mausoleum of a house.
Dragging her bag behind her, she walked to her own room. A gust of cold air greeted her. A warmer welcome than any my dear mother would give me, I would very much think. Her room was big as well, a white bed splayed out with sheets neatly pulled out at the four corners and an immaculate desk. Her own bathroom was adjourned at the side, dark oak wood giving way to slick white marble tiles. She plopped the bag on her floor and kicked it to bar the door shut, not bothering to lock it. Everything was so clean and big and tidy when she came back, and emptier, always emptier. As much as I am. Arianne Whitewood was not what anyone would call clean or organized, but she was empty if anything. She lay back on her big white bed, and stared up at the big white ceiling. Her head was already beginning to pound. Maybe I shouldn’t have drunk that last glass. But then again, she had never been good at doing what she should do.
She sat up and switched on the desk lamp. Warm yellow light cascaded over her hands and caressed her skin. She pulled out the chair and took up a pen, leaning her head on her palm and gazing outside. The city lights had come out in a wash of neon and scarlet, radiant green and flashing whites. They snaked a glittering path up the highway, and wound down the narrow little road leading here. Others adorned the tops of skyscrapers further off, flickering and blinking. Neat yellow and white squares marked the windows of owners who were still up at this point of the night. She sighed and pulled out another sheet of paper.
From these gems at night / live a fiery soul of frights/ And diamonds without sight / pull up to kiss the bright. She crossed out the first line. Even that was as inhuman as this house: a ruler straight line crossing through slanting slender lines of cursive. Inhuman, she heard. Abomination. She crossed out the second line, then the rest.
She was up till she had finished her work. A paper every day, if only to fill out then scratch out. Then she drew herself a bath, and immersed herself up to the neck, sliding down until the water drowned her ears and the slight buzz of the bulb. Her hair floated out behind her. She wondered what her mother would think if it was her body she found floating here the come morning, with her skin as white as the house. Well, mostly, anyway. As she was soaping the scent of alcohol and smoke from her hair, she climbed out and threw up in time to get to the rim of the toilet. Water dripped from her skin, filling out in most unorderly puddles and globs on the white floor. Soap suds slid down her hair and followed the steady drip-drip-drip of water with satisfying plops. Her hands clutched the basin of the toilet and slithered off the smooth soapy surface. She threw up again. Probably good that it’s a weekend tomorrow, she thought, knowing the splitting headache that would most like appear the coming morning. Would I have stopped if it wasn’t? Maybe. Then she walked to the sink and rinsed her mouth clean, flushed the toilet, and climbed back into the tub, where she finished washing her hair out.
Chapter 3 Lydia
Lydia was piling up her books on the desk when she heard Martha. She could always hear Martha, which was strange because Martha was probably the least talkative of all her friends, and never loud when she voiced an opinion. She just sat next to Lydia, and listened, and smiled. Perhaps that was why she was so easy to hear; her quietness pervaded her.
“Hi,” she said, struggling to pull out another stack of books from her bag. The rest she shoved in her desk, but The Book stayed. Other people might have churches, or shrines, or gods and religions. She had her Book. It was 10 centimeters thick and almost twice as wide with white creamy pages, and filled with uncharacteristic tiny neat handwriting. Lydia had no belief in gods or ghosts, but she believed in the present, and the future. She had started logging entries in The Book three years ago, every nook and cranny in her life went into it. Nothing too personal, though, as she carried it everywhere and it would have been a horror if anybody chanced to look into it if she’d starting putting in her feelings. Even so, she guarded it zealously. Her Book was her future and her present and every minute in between, bordering on the religious. In it was everything that would happen and had happened to her; The Book had never failed her. It was more reliable than a person, and she felt very safe with it.
Martha eyed her opening the clasps that fastened all the pages together. She had gotten used to her obsession. Some others, less so, and Lydia knew a lot of people thought that she was a geek, but she didn’t really care. The only people that one should bother about were the people who took you for what you were, and if they didn’t like you, you didn’t have to please them. She could see them now, clustered at the center of the room, a tight knot of boys and girls, all talking empathetically with loud noises and a lot of hand gestures. Every now and then a loud swell of laughter would break over them. Lydia rolled her eyes, and Martha laughed at her expression. Ameri slid down into the chair next to them, grinning. “I thought you’d have gotten used to us by now.”
“I have. That doesn’t mean I have to cheer you on every day.”
Ameri was dark where Martha was light, heavier where Martha was slight, with a sturdier build and large expressive dark eyes and a tumble of bronze hair, a wide merry mouth and made for laughter and gossip. She jerked her head slightly to the other end of the room. “Took you some time. Seems like you still haven’t warmed up to them, though.”
She glanced at the other cluster of people. It was true. She had kept to her little circle of friends, enjoying their company, feeling comfortable and excluding the noise for a long while, but warmed up gradually after Ameri and Del urged her to. She found that they weren’t too bad, it was fun to be laughing over stupid things for a while, and even the people who eyed her and called her Booker every time they saw her would smile and welcome her if she wanted to be there. That she could at least understand, sometimes even join in when she was feeling like it, when they weren’t being obnoxious about anything or when her friends had joined in.
The other group at the back was less comprehensible, and secluded. While the first group was loud and brassy with great shouts of laughter, the other was all quiet and delicate, like an elegant tea party that only expensive people could attend. They were. Tarra Morband and Lancott Quint and Joyes Grande and their band, all dressed up in clothes that might have cost twenty times the price of her white T-shirt and faded jeans added up or more. Lydia had seen them a few times after school, leaving the campus together to go to some other place that suited them better. Once she overheard them, talking about spirits and poetry and music and such, Grande’s high musical voice raised ever so slightly as he commented on Shakespeare’s prose or something like that. Lydia thought that he looked like a statue more than a human, even though he was moving, his pale hair sliding over his cheekbones as he shook his head. In her world only ancient people spoke of such, and she had no love for things that didn’t concern where she was and where she was going. Why bother yourself with worries of spiritual babble and literature dreams when there was enough to worry about in the practical world? To live practically and in the present was the only way she knew and would ever know and understand.
In the loose ring of that group, Arianne Whitewood had positioned herself at the edge, not the center of the circle, and seldom spoke but to laugh, but Lydia knew that it was her who was the leader. They all looked at her after saying some seemingly witty remark and she would give her approval, just like that, with a little nod of her head or a small smile like she was the princess of some royal kingdom. Ameri had told her once that she lived in a palace-like house at the edge of the city, but that was only part of it. Arianne was the princess of what they valued, those “dreamers”, as they dubbed themselves, even though Lydia scarcely heard her talk about anything useful. And she was beautiful besides, with milk pale skin and cobalt blue eyes so dark they seemed purple, a waterfall of dark hair and a figure slender as a knife. Though, if Ameri could be believed, she drunk herself blind at nights with what Lydia’s mom would call “the wrong sort of friends”. Martha mingled with their group, but not her.
Lydia shook her head. “No, not really. I wouldn’t want to, anyway.”
Martha made a squirming motion. It made her uncomfortable when they even came close to criticizing her other friends. “Oh, don’t say that. They’re quite nice. I don’t you don’t like them, but maybe if you get to know them—”
“And have to wear a dress for the occasion? Not likely.”
Ameri laughed. “It is so like you to say that.”
“I mean it.”
“I know you do. It just makes it even more…ah… exclusive. Organized..”
Martha sighed. Lydia punched Ameri lightly on the arm. “That I know.”
Chapter 4 Arianne
She was leaving the campus when Tarra caught up with her.
“Hey,” he said, smiling, and made to take her hand.
She pulled away a little at first, but eased her fingers through his and leaned into him. “Hi. How was your day?”
“The average.” He glanced at her. “Nothing interesting without you with me though.”
She smiled a little, although secretly she thought his clumsiness was cumbersome. A lot of things about Tarra were clumsy, but she’d gotten used to it, and could put up with it and play the part when needed. “Well, that’s nice to hear.”
He raised his eyebrows in mock disapproval. “You’re happy that I’m not having a good time?”
“I’m happy that I interest you.”
He smiled a bit bashfully. You’d think he was a little girl with her first date by the way he blushes. She watched him detachedly; It was sometimes amusing to see the shade of pink he turned.
“Where are we going today?” Tarra pulled her closer to him as they crossed a road, gripping her hand tightly.
“Not today, I’m going straight home. My mother is coming back this afternoon.”
There was a long pause. “Okay,” he said at last. She knew he was disappointed. “Can I come over later or something? We’ve heard a lot about your house and no one’s seen it.”
No one will ever see it. “No,” she replied. “I haven’t seen my mother in quite a long time and it would be nice to… catch up on things.”
Another pause, even longer. Arianne wondered if he had detected something, or he was just annoyed that she won’t spend more time with him. Probably the latter. Tarra had been with her long enough for her to realize that he took everything she gave and relished every drop of it. “See you tomorrow then.” He pulled her closer and kissed her hair. She wrapped her arms around his waist and rested her head at the base of his throat, then pulled away and smiled. “See you.”
Tarra was easy to stay with and easy to make happy. Sometimes Arianne felt herself liking the part she played when she was with him, liking to forget who she really was and accept a normal life that he would have wanted. His arms were steady and warm and safe, his smiles shy but clear, and in his eyes Arianne could see an image of herself that might have been. She liked that, and it was the reason she picked him out of all the grasping hands. She knew what other people said that she was with Tarra for, but that couldn’t have mattered less. She had never lacked for money, and Resme and his lot had been much prettier than her Tarra.
Her smile slid off her face when she turned around. How long had it been since I was last with her, living in the same house? Three months? Four?
The house was quiet when she pushed open the door, but her nerves rattled. I should have gone with Tarra. I should have gone with Pax. Should have gone with any of them rather than come back here.
She made her way to her room.
Eliana Cain had been a dazzling beauty in her youth, or so they said. Little or none of that youth or beauty remained in the woman who was silhouetted against her window. From a distance one could say that the echoes of her attractiveness still lingered in the lines of her legs and waist, but upon closer inspect her waist was choked by a corset and legs wrapped up in similar tights, making her flesh bulge at the ankles and hips. A dark blue cape-like dress was draped over her shoulders, and metal and jewels glittered in her bronze hair. Arianne took a deep breath and settled back against the door, letting her bag drop to the floor beside her.
“Arianne.”
Her mother called her without turning.
“Mother.” She breathed again.
“You didn’t call me.” Eliana turned, smiling faintly. She sounded vaguely disappointed. “I would have welcomed you home if you told me you were going to stay here, it’s been quite a long time.”
“Yes, mother.”
Against the bright light pouring in from the window, her mother’s face was thrown into darkness. People were always quite surprised to see how young she was, the face that didn’t fit the image of her body, untouched by the years that had weathered the rest of her. It was a small, delicate face stroked by fine outlines and marked by few lines, a girl’s face, or could have passed for one in the semi-light her features were bathed in. “Are you unhappy to see me?”
“No, mother.” Arianne said.
Eliana walked to the edge of the bed and motioned her to do the same. “You should have better manners,” she chided gently, and smiled a little. “You’re always so rude to me, it makes me wonder if you’re irritated by my presence. Just like—”
“I’m sorry, mother.”
Her soft hands fluttered aimlessly in her lap. “Salla told me that there was a mess in your room this morning when she came in to clean it. She said you must have had a bad time. Would you like to tell me about it?”
You would certainly like to hear anything about “me” and “a bad time”. Arianne sat down gingerly beside her mother. “No, it wasn’t a big deal. I’m sorry if I messed things up.”
Her mother sighed. “You disappoint me, Arianne. I thought we could have a better relationship this time. I thought we could make up.”
You think that every time.
“I wish you would tell me more about you. I could get to know you if you weren’t always pushing me away.”
I had a tongue once, before you cut it out.
“This house was made for you. You shouldn’t make yourself unhappy in it.”
Arianne bit down hard on her tongue. She felt like screaming. “I’ll leave when you want me to. Mother.”
When Eliana frowned, a crease appeared between her eyes. “I never wanted to make you go. Why do you always think the worst of me? You always want to hate me.”
Arianne opened her hands and closed them again. She felt an itch building along her arms and legs. “If you say so.”
Her mother sighed, and got up to leave. “I’ll be staying for a month this time. The money’s already on the counter.” As she leaned closer to look at her face, Arianne couldn’t help but flinch. Eliana studied her eyes, her face, and frowned again. “How is it that you look so young?”
“I am young.”
“Well, yes.” Eliana pulled back. “But I am, too. Yet you look more and more… Pretty. As pretty as I used to be.”
Arianne held her tongue. Her mother closed the door behind her as she left, leaving a trail of sweet perfume behind her. Arianne remained on the bed for a few minutes, then stood up and began to pace the room, over and over. She stuck her head out of the window and tried to make herself breathe big lungfuls of air. The thought that her mother might be right outside her door made her feel a pressure behind her eyes.
Chapter 5 Lydia
III. Day Rate – A-
Finished HWD. Summaries tomorrow (No.13). Almost done with the reviews (got to No.15 in the afternoon), soon put together in F. Upcoming break soon (Mrs L, Bio, third class). New plans & format see back
January 17, The White Book
Lydia printed another entry in The Book, careful not the smudge the ink. She was at home in her room, with the desk cleared out and the white book splayed wide on top. The first entry had been exactly three years ago, she saw. The Book was a part of her. At the end of the book the final large page was already filled in, stating that she would be 25, married, with a small apartment in the city close to the hospital she worked in as a neurosurgeon.
Every page brought her closer, and her plans never failed her. She had written three years ago that now she would be training for medicine at the school she was now, and she was. She had written a year ago the exact grades she would get at the end of her year. Except for Biology, in which she’d gotten a B+ instead of A-, it was almost the same. Her life was a well greased track that she could map out, and it would take her wherever she wanted to go as long as she planned and stuck to it.
To be sure, there were some emergencies. Raymond had certainly not been part of her plans, but it was nice to let her thoughts wander just a little in her spare time. It wasn’t like he was disrupting anything. Their lives barely touched one another’s. She liked to think about him though, with his gold hair touched alight in the sun as he ran around on the basketball court, and snuck glances at him when he passed in the corridors. This morning she had walked right past him as he ran down the stairs with a group of his friends, in those hideous white uniforms that somehow he made look quite presentable. He’d called to her, a blurred “Hey, Lydia,” before he was hustled down the steps, and she was standing there at the door of the lab with her face smudged with blood from pig’s liver they had to cut up and a pencil stuck in her hair. I must have looked stupid.
Her train of thought was disrupted when Jack came running into her room, dodging the books and clothes scattered around his feet. “Liddy,” he yelled, “Liddy come see.”
She closed her Book and followed him out, taking his little hand. She had to stoop a little to do so. Mom and Dad were already there, and Rosie too, looking a bit bored about it. All three were very much used to the routine by now. Very soon Jack would pull out the train set he’d been working on for a month, and they would watch him fail to make it run even though he would promise that it had been when they weren’t looking. Mom and Dad had told him they would buy him another only when he succeeded taming this one, which was very much unlikely considering that he was 6 and the train set was meant for ages 12+. As usual, he ran into his room and pulled out the pile of plastic and metal and wires that he’d linked and fit together. Lydia thought that it hardly looked a train anymore after being pulled apart and reassembled so many times. Jack bent over and tinkered with the mess of knobs and wires, put it on the train track, and lay on his stomach to adjust some more. “Look,” he insisted solemnly, as their attention drifted. Dad laughed. Jack pressed the big red button on top, and the train’s wheels began to spin.
A good start, although through experience Lydia thought that it would turn over, stop running, or fail to make a bend. The train went forward and completed a lap, then another. Jack squealed, and Mom bent down laughing to ruffle his hair. Dad sighed. “I guess we’ll just have to get him another one.” Rosie tickled him until he doubled up with giggles and flailed around on the floor. Pate padded in from the kitchen, attracted to the noise, and licked Jack’s face.
Jack was triumphant, or as triumphant as a six-year-old could look while lying on the ground under a big white dog. “I’m going to be an engineer,” he pronounced carefully. “And I can have another train set.”
“Oh god,” Rosie muttered. “He sounds just like Lydia.”
“I never wanted a train set.”
“You were talking about being a surgeon from age 9.”
“You were obsessed with being a reporter since I learned to talk.”
Mom laughed. “True enough.”
Rosie flicked her long hair over her shoulder. “And I got there.”
Dad glanced at his three children. “Runs in the family,” he claimed. “I like young kids who have a steady sense of life. Practical sense, not that nonsense that kids now like to babble about. This is how life—”
Lydia and Rosie groaned in unison. Jack joined in. “We get the idea, Dad,” Lydia said. “No need to bring it up every single day three thousand times.”
“Your father taught you well,” Mom chimed in. “Have some gratitude.”
The three children groaned again. Mom laughed and turned to Dad. “Well, I’ve done what I could. Maybe you should start buying that train set.”
Jack bounced up and down. “I want to pick, let me pick!”
“Dinner first,” Mom said firmly. “And Rosie, you do the dishes today. Lydia, come here, we have some good news for you.”
It turned out that her mom had a business trip, and could take Lydia with her. She had assured Lydia that she would be on work most of the day and wouldn’t hamper any of her “activities” and suggested she take a friend with her. Lydia had said yes then, and asked Martha, who readily agreed.
Martha came by half an hour later. They spent the day bent over her desk and curled over pillows on the floor, looking up places they’d want to go. Later that day, when she’d mapped out all the routes and time tables, they lay spread out out side by side on the bed, after Lydia had tickled Martha until she’d collapsed. She was still giggling as she thrashed around in the tangle of bedsheets, begging her to stop. Lydia withdrew her hands for half a second before Martha squeezed at her waist, sending them both half tumbling onto the floor amid shrieks of laughter. This is why I like Martha the most, Lydia thought giddily as she fought for her breath and Martha’s long brown hair fell into her face. She can stay serious when things have to be done, and doesn’t keep thing all formal-like after they’re finished. And she never laughs at me. Never. She understands me, like I know her.
Their trip would go through mountains and hills and rivers, meadows which Lydia had circled out and bubbling brooks that snaked across the hillsides. There would be the second day too, to walk through the city streets and glimpse the glittering neon lights. Mom had booked the hotel rooms so that they could have nights together in their own room, a sleepover of sorts, spending the nights devouring snacks and gossip. It will be perfect, Lydia thought dreamily, the vacation she’d always wanted, short though it was. No pressure, no other people I don’t like… A week almost completely to ourselves…
“It’ll be perfect,” she said, and at the same time Martha grinned and said, “This is going to be awesome,” and they fell back laughing again, this time half draped across the floor and legs still tangled up in the sheets and pillows on the bed.
Chapter 6 Arianne
For I see the moon
Waxing; and I feel the body I trap
Rising; For what do I have save for
Growing; and with growth is there not always
Dying? Rise, and trap and twist
In evil ways; for the growth is always
Savage, to choke the
Weaklings, to save the grappling
Upwards, that does not
Stop, pause, slow—hear me—
Stop, pause, slow—quiet me—
Stop, pause, slow—bury me—
Arianne’s book, January 21
I need out, Arianne thought blearily, out, out, out, out, out.
Three days with her mother and she already felt as if she were going to suffocate. So far nothing had happened, but that just set her more on edge, making her jumpy, restless. That, or maybe that was just not drinking enough. She didn’t want to appear to her mother like her life was a mess and refused the invitations to stay out late, even though one look might have told Eliana if she really was looking and she didn’t even know why it still mattered. Why do I even bother? Why do I even care? What does it matter to me? She’d bothered her whole life, short as it was. Bothered when she got those perfect grades in middle school, bothered when she pretended she didn’t drink when her mother was there, bothered when her mother had left the first time. Bothered when she swore not ever to come back again after a phone call. Bother, care, matter, matter, matter. Her whole life was a heap of jumbled matter. Pretend to mother that she had never messed her life up or needed her, pretend to everyone else that she was polished and perfect. Pretend to herself that everything was fine. Pretend to Tarra that she was just a little girl and pretend to Antony that she was all grown up and worldly. Pretender, liar, inhuman, abomination.
I’m not staying tonight. Not another night. But it was too late, too late already. They had asked her, all of them, called on her and she’d said no, and she was washed and dressed ready for sleep already. If I do any of that. After winter break had started she’d been at home for whole days, sharing meals and awkward conversations with her mother and locking herself in her room for the rest of the time. The worst were the nights. She would wake up cold and shivering in sweat and curse herself of making the clever decision when she decided to reject those invitations for the fourth time. Not for once she wondered at the little black box under the mattress of her bed. She’d stopped herself that night, turning over and over on the bed until she swung her legs off and padded barefoot to her desk to write feverish notes. The next day she woke and tore them up, throwing the pieces out of the window so they spiraled like pale white butterflies.
“Arianne?”
Her mother knocked at her door. Arianne flinched and shoved the box under her mattress again. “Yes? Come in.” She readjusted her position on the bed, hiking up the covers so they covered her bare legs, and tugged the sleeves lower and neckline higher.
Eliana pushed open the door and sat on her bedside. “What is it, mother?” Arianne asked. She prayed her voice didn’t shake. Her mother had had something, she saw; drugs, if not alcohol. Her pupils were dilated to the extent that Arianne could see clearly even in the half darkness of the bathroom light. The main light and the desk lamp were both turned off, only a sliver leaking in from the door that her mother had left half open, and a warm square of light from the bathroom where steam was still rising in pearly mists. Black pupils, in a sea of pale blue.
Eliana smiled slowly. “I just wanted to talk to you. My darling daughter. My Arianne.” Her voice had the slow, slurred telltale rhythm of her intoxication; she always spoke like this after drunk. Or drugged, most like. Her mother had always preferred drugs to drink. Probably why I like it the other way round.
She shrank back into her pillows. Why did I even let her in? I should have locked the door. I did lock the door. She saw the key hanging just beneath the handle of her door.
“What do you want to tell me, mother?”
Eliana said nothing, just looked at her. Arianne could tell that she was staring, as she had stared for all the years in the past. The first day she came back she’d looked into her face. How is it that you look so young?
“Daughter,” she said again, tasting the word. “How is it that you are my daughter, mine, yet you look nothing like me?”
“I look like you, mother. Here, in the cheekbones. They say I look like you, when you were…”
“Young.” Eliana turned away. The steam kissed her cheeks and jaw, blurred the outline of her face. “When I was young. How is it that everyone remembers that? They should see it. I am not even half to seventy, yet people presume to call me old.” Her gaze swung around to meet her daughter’s. “They do not call you old. You are a scant sixteen years younger than I, I could have been your sister. I was prettier than you. I was. I should be. Why? Tell me why, Arianne. You should know.”
Arianne did not speak. Her mother laughed, too loudly. She stood up, swayed a little, braced her hands on the windowsill, and she was again a mere black cardboard cut-out lined against the city lights. Arianne twitched under the covers. A fine sheen of sweat had covered her skin and she rubbed her palms against the sheets.
“I’m sorry, Arianne.” Her mother sighed. “That wasn’t right of me. I should have been kinder to you. I should have.”
“It’s okay,” she replied. The lobe of her throat was growing hot and she had an intense desire to flee.
“It’s never been okay.” Then she was there again, kneeling at her bedside, face to face with her. Her eyes gleamed in the dark. “People are always telling me what I should have done. You. Denise. Even Salla told me that I should come back more often, did you know? She’s a maid, a cleaning maid that scrubs our floors, and talks to me about what I should do. Should have done. ‘You should have come back more often, Ms Whitewood.’” Eliana stretched her voice until it was high and girlish. “‘I think Arianne is lonely at times.’ You, lonely. Lonely in an extravagant house. Lonely with all my money!” Her voice fell to a whisper. “Should have. Should have. You all tell me that. Aaron. Aaron most of all.”
Eliana laughed again. It was lilting, drunken. She laughed until she had to hold herself and clutch at the boards of the bed. “It was so…so…funny. He told me what to do, he did! And when he left, what did I say? ‘You should have stayed longer.’ Thought he wasn’t running, did I? I was a fool. I was a fool. Fool for believing him. Fool for making you. I never wanted you… Never… I shouldn’t have. There.” A smile twisted her lips. “What shouldn’t I have done, Arianne? Tell me. Tell mother.” She clasped her hand. “Tell your darling mother, your dear mother… Mother, I presumed to be! And thought that it was right! My mother was all the great, everyone said, she did perfectly, till her pretty little slip of a daughter despoiled herself, didn’t she?” She hiccoughed herself back from laughter. “That put an end to it. That stopped it. I shut them up, didn’t I?” A glazed look had come into her eyes. “Should have… should have… Should have been like my mother…like my father…like Denise, later… Like anyone but me.”
The room had gone deathly quiet. Arianne could hear the sound of her mother’s hiccoughs and her own ragged breathing. Make her stop, she pleaded silently, but there was no one to hear, there had never been anyone to hear. Make her stop. Her hand was still tightly grasped in Eliana’s. “Mother,” she whispered. Her voice shook. She hated herself like this, hated that she still was the wide-eyed five-year-old who saw Eliana shut the door behind her and tried to push against her, reach for her. “Mother, stop, you’re hurting me.”
Eliana didn’t move. Her eyes were trained on Arianne’s face. Just as the silence dragged on long enough for Arianne to start squirming, Eliana abruptly let go and stood up. “That was… Ill done of me, Arianne. I’m sorry.” Her voice had turned crisp, cool, formal. “That won’t happen again. Please forgive me.”
She turned away and slammed the door shut behind her, and there was a rattle as she yanked the key from its lock. A few minutes had gone by before Arianne started to tremble, and grabbed a fistful of bedding to stuff into her mouth. She screamed. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought, as she slapped her face hard. Stop crying, stop crying, stop stop stop. Just stop. She slapped herself again. The pain drew her out of it more quickly, and it always felt as if there were another disciplining her, someone stronger than her, steely and implacable, that she could hide behind and give herself up to. If she would start feeling, then Arianne would stop, and the burden would be on her, that other girl, the better, stronger one, with no such tender weakness. She screamed again into the wad of bedsheets, and began to tremble violently. Then she began scratching herself with her nails, fiercely, as if her whole skin was a costume she would peel off. Would that I could.
She didn’t sleep. When she was sure her mother had gone to bed, she hurriedly smeared makeup on, slipped into a heavy overcoat over a flimsy dress and shut the door quietly behind her, then began to run from the house so fast she tripped twice till she got to the road. It was almost midnight, and there were few cars on the streets, much less in her corner of the city. She began to run again.
Chapter 7 Arianne
“Hey.”
Pax looked around, surprised. “Thought you weren’t coming.”
“I changed my mind.” Arianne smirked. “No place for me today, I take it?” It was not too late for a place like this, no time was ever too late. The night was all the same, and for that alone Arianne loved the place. Pink and purple lights pulsed around the floor, and the music was so loud it hurt her ears. Good.
“No, no, there’s enough space.” Pax grabbed a tall chair and dragged it over. “You can sit here.”
Arianne draped herself on it. Her left heel clacked against the floor. Pax raised her eyebrows. “Aren’t you cold? It’s freezing out there.”
“I’m hot enough for all of us.” Arianne grinned and flagged down the nearest waiter. After she got her drink, she leaned back speculatively and looked around her. “Ah, but don’t let me spoil the fun. Keep going.” She grabbed the remains of Paxon’s drink and downed it, leaving a smear of lipstick darker than the former marks. The mead was icy cold, but warm well enough going down, and cloying sweet. She raised her eyebrows. “You’re having mead?”
Pax flushed pink, made even more so as a red light passed over her face. Arianne was arbitrarily reminded of Tarra, blushing as she kissed him. I’d probably kiss him now if he were here. If anyone were here, actually. She cast a glance around the group, and took that back. Lancot, Grandes, Resme, their lot. My lot. I made them. They would never even have come here if not for me. She turned away. I’d sooner kiss Pax than those three, though.
“Pax was in the mood for something different.” Resme slung an arm around Paxon’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze. “Something sweeter for the night, eh?”
Pax laughed and threw his arm off good-naturedly. “Nothing sweet for you.”
“I can make that work. You’d be surprised.”
Arianne knocked over her tall glass to shatter on the floor, effectively stopping the conversation. “Sorry,” She yelped as she bent to retrieve the pieces, but Lisa waved her off. “Don’ bother yourself Ann, letddit be.” She was in matching outfits with Pax, high stockings, long red skirt. Her words slurred much more than Pax, though, and her eyes were dully unfocused. She laughed when Arianne picked up an ice cube and slid it into the back of her shirt, making her squeal and laugh harder. Then she raised her cup and clinked it loudly against Arianne’s second glass, the drink inside slopping messily off the sides and sloshing onto the floor. “Drink. We’ve missed you.”
Arianne gulped her gin down. It was sticky and thick, clinging to the back of her throat. When she spoke she could feel it still lingering on her lips. “I’ve been away for three days is all, Lisa. And we never went out every day.”
Resme smiled at her. “Three nights,” he corrected in his silky voice, “And the absence of such beauty is well noted. Three nights can prove as long as three years.”
From where exactly does he get the impression that he’s a smooth talker? Arianne felt like splashing the rest of her thick icy drink in his face. Instead she raised the glass to her lips and drank.
It was all as she remembered; bad jokes and drunken laughing, a pull at a skirt and a turn on the dance floor, loud beating music that pounded to her pulse. Soon she felt herself joining in, laughing and shoving as the drink got her in its comforting grip. That’s good, she thought hazily, that’s good, that’s good, that’s so good. She finished a glass, then two, and two more. Ice stuck in her throat and brightly colored liquid sloshed down her sleeve. She took whatever was put in her hand, and then some that weren’t. I haven’t drunk this much since half a year ago, she thought, but then half a year ago was the last time her mother came back. It was always the worst the first few days; then she got used to it, learned to turn it down. Pity I haven’t got used to it once and for all. After a while she had to go to the bathroom and empty her stomach, and when she looked at the mirror the face was a stranger’s. Her eyes were wild with excitement and cheeks flushed prettily red. Most of the lipstick had been smeared off, though her front teeth were varying shades of red. She fumbled around in her pocket for a reapply. Panic clenched her for an instant. I’ll have to go back. Then panic transferred her to the warmth, and she was floating again.
It was well past midnight when most of them had left. Pax had stayed, and Lisa. After some particularly bad jokes, Lisa kissed them sloppily on their cheeks and left, leaving the place to Paxon and Arianne.
“So,” Pax said, “You ever going to tell me what’s happened?”
“Nothing happened.” Arianne reached for her glass, successfully knocking it over. She quickly righted it and pushed her mouth to the electric blue drops that were sliding down the outer wall.
Pax grabbed the glass and held it away. “I think that’s pretty much enough for you.”
“You think?” She made to call the waitress again.
“Do you even know what you’re drinking?”
“Some cocktail. I think. Some very blue cocktail.”
“No, she doesn’t want anything,” Pax told the waitress as she came over. “Go away.”
“You know, you’re really annoying at times.”
“I have a knack for it.”
Arianne took an almost empty glass and turned it over. The last few drops warmed her tongue. Sweet as kisses, she thought giddily. She had half a mind to call Tarra, then remembered it was probably around two in the morning.
“Come on. Arianne, you’re not going through the leftovers Remse left.”
“These aren’t his.”
“No, they’re mine. But stop. Really. What happened?”
“I told you. Nothing happened.”
“Didn’t see you drinking yourself to death last time.”
“I’m fine, Pax. Don’t worry so much.”
“Does this have anything to do with the fact that your mom’s come back recently?”
“Don’t overreact.” She lifted her head and stared at her blurrily. “How did you even know that?”
“Your boyfriend told me.”
“I’m going to kill Tarra someday. He’s invading my privacy. Has he been spying on me?”
“He told me because I asked him why you weren’t coming with us last week, and he said that you told him.”
“Oh yeah, right. I remember now. He’s still invading my privacy.”
“Actually, I called him earlier so he could pick you up.”
“Pax, it must be 2 o’clock. You always make bad jokes after you’ve had too much to drink.”
“I’ve had too much to drink?”
“Yeah.”
“I have a suggestion for you. How about you go to the bathroom now and clean yourself up so you’ll puke into a toilet and not all over your boyfriend?”
“I know he’ll love that welcome.”
“How does he put up with you if you throw up on him every few days?”
“I’m not drunk.”
“Or you could just lie down here.”
Tarra slid an arm under her arms and dragged her to her feet. “Thanks, Paxon,” he muttered with some effort. “For calling me. What happened?”
“You’ll have to ask her. Maybe wait till tomorrow though.”
“I’m not drunk,” Arianne mumbled.
“Yeah, I think I’ll wait till tomorrow.” He dragged her outside and sat her on a bench. “Bye, Paxon. Thanks again.”
The girl tucked her blue hair behind her ear and grinned. “You’ll take that back after she pukes all over you. I’d suggest you take off anything that’s worth much, now.”
Tarra took his coat off and draped it over Arianne’s legs, and pulled her closer to him. The touch made her blink and look up. “Pax, that is not funny.”
She blinked again. She thought that she was pressed against Tarra’s shoulder, his coat over her legs. Maybe I did get a bit drunk. She rubbed at her eyes. Nothing changed.
“Oh, god, no.” She pushed away quickly, but that made her head spin. “No, no, no, no, no, no.”
Tarra glanced down at her. “Are we entering the delirium stage now?”
He can’t see me like this. The wind bit at her skin, and she shuddered, bringing a trickle of rationality into her head. Her mother’s voice crept in then, the vicious snarling tone and the hysterical laughter, and above her Eliana Whitewood stood, whispering. Should have, Arianne. You should never have been born.
It didn’t really matter, she had never really loved Tarra, never really loved anyone really, and Tarra had never known her other than the innocent beautiful girl-child, the real her had never mattered. Nothing mattered. Only the dream, the dream that she could construct another world for herself, that fairytale world that might have been, and now crumbling all around her. She threw up once on the bench, then another time on the car when he told the driver to stop and hauled her out so she could splatter the sewage lids with some more sewage, and another in the car when the motion was too much for her and Tarra couldn’t get the door open fast enough. She did ruin his clothes and much of his pants for that matter, and the driver glanced back nervously. Then, stupidly, she began to cry.
“We’ll get you back home soon,” he murmured. “It’s okay.”
“No,” she said. “No, I’m not going to that house. Please. Stop. Stop. Stop, make it stop, make it all stop. Please.” What have I done? I didn’t need to come out, it wasn’t that bad, it was just that it had been so long and I’d forgotten. I should have stayed inside and everything would have never happened, this is all wrong, wrong, wrong.
Then she passed out.
Chapter 8 Lydia
I. Next day R & Ts
Packing and preparations tomorrow night (See checklist on back), Meet with M in the morning
Special reminders
Last notebook left, sort the old books in the afternoon tomorrow, new SN coming soon
7:15- 9:20
Hmk, sch (B)
Todo:Start on TSD (p10)
10:00
J’s present (5 days e)
Sch Hmk + notes
*Leaving Jan. 27 7:00!!!!!!
January 25, The White Book
Lydia flinched; she’d been expecting Martha, but when she reached the apartment, it was Arianne who opened the door for her. The girl was wrapped up in a thick white sweater with a high collar that she’d turned inside-out and pulled up so high it enveloped her entire neck. Her face was powdered with paint, lips red, lashes black. “Oh, hi, Lydia. Martha’s been waiting for you.”
I know. “Hi, Arianne.” She walked into Martha’s room. She’d been in this apartment so many times she knew it as well as her own. It was a lot like hers, even, though much bigger and not as cluttered. She found Martha sitting on the rug at the foot of her bed, clutching a mug. Her long brown hair stroked her hands. She looked up and smiled a bit tremulously. “I’m sorry I’m being so stupid, it’s probably nothing.”
“You’re not stupid.” Lydia sat herself down next to Martha and took her hand. “It’s normal. Anyone would want to stay next to their family if their dad was having surgery, I definitely would even if I had to cancel a hundred trips with my best friend. No offense there.”
Martha’s father had been hospitalized for a while now, but Lydia had always known that it was a minor thing, something to do with his liver. Originally he would have been back home by now, but Martha told her that there was to be another operation moved to the next day. Lydia refrained from asking what sort of operation it was; it would do Martha little good to hear her talk on about all the risks.
Martha laughed shakily. “I’ve been worrying so much. The doctors all say it isn’t that much of a big deal and he’ll definitely be fine, but they said that last time too and something went wrong, and I’m so worried right now. When mom told me this morning I was really freaking out, it was so nice of Arianne to come over.”
Lydia gave a non-committal mumble. Truthfully, she was a bit chafed to know that Arianne would be the first person Martha would call up instead of her. She glanced at the mug in her hands. Hot chocolate. At least Arianne hadn’t tried to introduce Martha to the wonders of drinking. Yet.
They spent the next hour talking with Martha, and at the end of it she seemed considerably more relaxed. “Lydia, you should take someone else to go with you. Ameri, maybe, or Del. I’ll make up for it next time, really.”
“You’ve got nothing to make up for, it’s completely normal. And having some time to myself will be good anyway.” She liked Ameri and Delissa well enough, but mostly just at school.
“Wait,” Arianne said. “You were supposed to go out together?”
“Day after next, actually. But I’ll be fine on my own, it’ll still be fun. A lot more privacy. Though there’ll be that empty bed next to mine, I wonder if Mom will be able to cancel the rooms this late.” She smiled at Martha.
“I could go with you.”
“What?”
“I mean… I could pay for the tickets by myself, and everything. We wouldn’t have to stay in the same room. If you mind, I mean.”
Martha looked up expectantly. Lydia quickly groomed her features into one of pondering concentration instead of obvious refusal. “Oh…right. I could think about that.”
“That’s perfect, Arianne.” Martha looked at Lydia, beseeching her. “You would get to know each other better too, and Lydia won’t have to run the streets by herself. And it would make me feel better.”
I’d do pretty well on myself. Martha knew about her dislike for Arianne, and most like the feeling was mutual. Why would she ask that? We aren’t even close. “Well… I’d love to go with Arianne, obviously. But don’t you want one of us to keep you company?”
“No, no, I’ll have to be at the hospital the next few days, and mom and grandma will be there too. It’s fine, you two can have fun.”
“We two” are not going to have fun. “Oh. Okay. That would be nice.” She would agree for now; when Martha wasn’t there she could cut things off with Arianne.
Arianne looked over to her and gave a little, almost apologetic half-smile. She’d pulled down the collar and it pooled at the base of her throat. Lydia thought she could see red scratches peeking over the rim, but wasn’t certain, and Arianne nonchalantly tugged her collar up again. “I’m sure Lydia and I will have a great time, Martha. Don’t worry. We won’t argue.”
No, because you are not coming with me.
The sky was dark when they left the apartment, as Martha’s mother had returned. Lydia hugged Martha goodbye. “Promise you’ll call every night, okay?”
“Of course.”
They were well out of the house and down the road when Lydia turned on Arianne. “Whose idea was that?”
“Mine.” Arianne gave her a lazy smile. Lydia hated that smile, hated the way the other girl never took anything seriously. “Sorry if you’re uncomfortable with me padding after with you on the streets of your beautiful city and messing up your pretty plans, but I won’t bother you, and we won’t have to share a room. You could just leave on your own, I won’t mind. And I’ll play the part well enough for your mother. It is your mother who’s coming with us, is it?”
“Why do you even want to stay with me?”
“I never said I did.”
“Then don’t ruin it!” She knew she sounded like a whiney little girl, but couldn’t bring herself to stay calm. “I was supposed to go with Martha! And it’s fine that she can’t come, but why you?” She didn’t care about offending the other girl; most likely they wouldn’t cross paths again, and Arianne wouldn’t rebuke her in front of Martha, no more than she would.
Arianne raised her eyebrows. “It seems like I’m not on the top of the list of your favorite people.”
“Did you do this just to annoy me?”
“No, I did it because I saw no cause in wasting a perfectly good ticket and a hotel room.”
“Which you will pay for!”
“That I will. I won’t spend your money, you have my word on that.”
“Is this about showing off how rich you are, then? Do it with someone else, my family is too poor for that sort of thing.”
Arianne said nothing. Lydia was starting to regret her words, but she had never been one to think before she spoke. They were standing on the sidewalk, the other girl a few inches taller than she was, especially in those heels of hers. In the dim light of a streetlamp, her eyes looked more black than blue, the dark circles under them as prominent as eyeholes in a skull. “Look, Lydia.” Her voice was cooler now, steely. The smile had left her lips. “I don’t value my precious alone time with you, if that’s what you’re worrying about. You don’t like me, and I respect that. I’ll stay out of your way. I’ll have my own room, bring my own food if you want to.” She raised a hand as Lydia opened her mouth to object. “And you promised Martha.” She smiled a little again, not showing her teeth.
The last jab was just unfair. Lydia stood there with wind eddying around her, making her pull her coat around her more tightly. It won’t be so different. Only when Mom is around. “Don’t drink anything except water if you’re there.”
“Why not? It’s not like you’ll be there. Though I’ll be more than happy to introduce you if you’re willing.”
“What do you think my mom is going to think when you come back half drunk in the middle of the night covered in your own vomit?”
“It won’t come to that.”
“That’s not what I heard last week.”
“What happened last week stays in last week. It won’t happen again.”
Lydia crossed her arms. “You agreed to make things easier for me. Just do it. I have no idea why your parents don’t care about you banging around the night who knows where with a couple of drunks, but some of us have lives, if that’s what you’re wondering about. You are not drinking anything except water the next week. Or you just stay at your fancy house and leave me alone.”
Lydia turned, and stormed home.
Chapter 9 Arianne
Arianne stretched her legs out on the pavement, letting the sun warm her skin. The wind was still cold, but the sun’s rays still warmed what they touched. She pinned her hair up and slid her hands out of her sleeves, flexing her fingers.
Pax sat next to her. She’d dyed her hair indigo yesterday, in the place of the dark blue it used to be, and new rings bumped against each other hanging on her ears. Her metal bracelets tinked softly as she ran a hand through her hair. “Arianne, he’s bound to find out sometime. You should just tell him, better than if he learns from someone else who twists the details.”
“Maybe next time.”
“I still can’t believe he said nothing after you threw up on him. Didn’t he even ask?”
“Why do you keep on coming back to that detail?”
Paxon laughed. “Well, your choice, then.” She turned around so her back rested against Arianne’s side, hefting her legs so they dangled over the park bench.
“I’m leaving on a trip with Lydia Strayen tomorrow.”
Pax twisted to look at her. “Her? Why?”
Arianne shrugged. “Get away. For some time, at least. Though truth be told, she was not high up on the list of people I’d like to spend time with.”
“So true. You should have come with me on a trip, if my parents didn’t hate you so much. Lydia Strayen probably has obsessive tendencies. She carries that huge tome of hers everywhere she goes and jots down everything in it. Don’t get on her bad side, she’ll probably write it down and kill you ten years later in your sleep.”
Arianne laughed. “I already did.”
“I fear for your well-being.”
The topic ended there. Arianne felt strange how easy this seemed, a conversation, three or four sentences, and it was all done. She wasn’t old enough to fly away on her own, and couldn’t stay with her friends too long. Lydia’s trip was like a god-send, though perhaps not the most pleasurable experience possible. She remembered how the other girl’s eyes had slit in the dark, narrowing to glittering green chips. I have no idea why your parents don’t care about you banging around the night who knows where with a couple of drunks, but some of us have lives, if that’s what you’re wondering about. Her words had cut, more than Arianne let on. She imagined grabbing the girl by her collar and dragging her so close she would see the chasm in Arianne’s eyes, as she ripped the life out of the other girl, the life she should have had.
…no idea why your parents don’t care about you…
She leaned back on the bench and let Paxon’s words wash over her. It felt good in the sun, bundled up safely in heavy coats and leggings. A leaf spiraled down to her, and she caught it in her fingers and twirled it around.
A fair puzzlement, that. I’ve had my share of wondering.
Her thoughts drifted. She felt Paxon’s back pressed against her shoulder and arm, jolting as she pushed at the bench’s armrest with a boot, so they swayed with the motion. She wondered how it would be if it were Tarra next to her, with her hooking a leg over a knee and kicking at the bench.
She had woken on the sofa in his room with knives clattering around in her skull. Tarra had his back to her, sitting at his desk. There was a quiet buzz of the heating, and the smell of coffee and toasted bread lingered in the air, though the usually pleasant scents set her stomach turning. Why am I here? She’d thought, too tired to sit up, though she’d been grateful. Thank god he didn’t take me back. Eliana would have been on the drugs coming down at that time had they gone back to her house, and Arianne would most likely be faced with hours of motherly education. She grimaced. My sweet mother, the perfect talker. Eliana had never been one to really lay hands on her, had only once slapped her hand lightly with a ruler one time when she was very young, and that other time. Mostly she just talked. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me. Arianne would very much prefer to have her bones broken.
She’d been laid on the sofa on her side, a blanket drawn over her, and in a sweater and a coat both much too big for her. She watched Tarra at his desk for a while. He had been typing at his keyboard, the blue screen shining in the dark. It had already been light outside, well into the morning judging from the sticky golden light that leaked in from between the curtains, but he’d drawn the blinds over the windows and closed the door. She felt oddly serene, wondering how long it would take for him to piece his puzzle together and start rummaging around in her past. Soon he’ll know, and there’ll be nothing I can do about it. Perhaps she had betrayed herself on the long drive home, saying things she should have kept to herself, and that was why he hadn’t put her back in her house.
There was a loud clink as a spoon clattered to the floor. Arianne winced loudly. Tarra turned and sat down next to her. “You look horrible.”
“Ever romantic,” she mumbled. “Lying me down on the sofa instead of the bed was a great idea, too.” Her back and neck ached.
“I was afraid you’d take it as an insult.” He brushed the hair from her forehead. “It’s great to have you talk in straight sentences again, by the way. Do you want some food?”
Her stomach turned. “Later.”
“I thought so.” He didn’t say more.
“Why am I here?”
“You were so drunk you couldn’t remember your house’s address, and I forgot to ask Paxton. My parents weren’t home, anyway.”
Thank god for that. She didn’t even remember being asked for it. “Oh. Sorry.”
“Do you want to call your parents? They’ll be worrying.” His voice was careful.
“No, it’s fine. I’ll be back later. Thanks for the stay.” So he didn’t know anything. Yet. There was a queer, dizzying rush of relief. “Are you going to ask why I got drunk?”
He turned away, and she couldn’t see his expression. “Paxton told me,” he said, his voice still calm and neutral.
Her stomach turned again, even though she was pretty sure Pax wouldn’t give her away. There was a long pause, long enough for her nerves to start fraying.
“Said they dragged you into it. Remse, and such. You could have called me earlier, you know.”
The relief returned, and she silently thanked Pax. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
“To be sure. You don’t drink much, do you?” There was the slightest edge to his voice, although she might have imagined it. “A couple of glasses and you puke your guts out.”
What lies have Pax been feeding him? Anyone who’d seen her would have known at one glance that it hadn’t been “a couple of glasses”. For all he knew, the nights she spent out with Pax were in some café, poring over books. “It was… stronger than I imagined.”
“Okay. Just don’t do that again, alright? Next time it happens you call me earlier. Promise me that.” He still faced the windows, away from her.
“I promise,” she’d whispered.
He’d sat her up then, and gave her back her clothes that he’d washed. “Do you want to go back now? I could come with you.”
Again. The thought was almost tempting that she could have someone else at her side in the house other than Eliana, but Tarra could not be allowed to see. Only in his eyes can I see the person I want to be, and that mirror will shatter the second he sees me. “No, I can manage. But thank you for taking me here. Can you turn around for a minute?”
She’d dressed, buttoning the coat up to the top. She’d thought she caught the flush of pink creeping up his neck, and smiled to herself.
Chapter 10 Lydia
“It’s just wrong, Mom,” Lydia groused as she was going over her fourth round of complaining. “I don’t want to spend time with her!” I said yes to Martha. Why didn’t I agree to take Del, or Ameri? I shouldn’t have said yes.
Her mother perched on a stool next to her feet. “I still don’t understand why you hate her so much. She seemed like a nice girl. Very quiet, very polite. Good manners. And she has very good grades, too.”
“Martha is polite and quiet. Not Arianne.”
“Lydia, don’t be so stubborn. You always take the longest time to warm up to strangers. You hated Martha at first, don’t you remember? Said she was the ‘weird girl’ from the other town who stole all your friends. And you never take what other people give you. You remember how long it took you to try sushi? Then you loved it. And don’t get me started on all the books I gave you that you declined at first.”
Lydia’s cheeks heated. It was true, she always pushed people away at first, clasping on to old beliefs. New things were unanticipated, therefore unplanned, and bewildering. “But Mooom,” she whined, “Arianne is different! I really don’t like her, and I won’t ever like her. It’s not right.”
“Tell me one thing she’s done that makes you hate her so much.”
“She hangs out with a bunch of rich kids, and she wears a lot of makeup, and dresses like she’s 26. She goes to bars at night and still acts superior just because she’s popular and people think she’s pretty and rich and has good grades, and likes to talk poetry and literature. She doesn’t like me and she laughs at my book. She laughs at everything and acts like life is a joke.”
“So she’s doing good at school, has a lot of friends, likes reading, is a bit mature, goes out for a drink once in a while, and isn’t the biggest fan of your obsessive planning.”
“Mom! It’s not once in a while, and she hates me!”
“I’m sure a lot of people would if you carry that attitude towards them. Can’t you just put down those colored spectacles for a while? I think spending time with her would be good for you, teach you some respect, actually.”
“Mother.” Lydia dragged out the word until it sounded pompous and formal. “Mother, she goes out in the middle of the night, wearing nothing on but tights and a dress in the middle of winter, and gets herself so drunk she couldn’t even remember her home address. You want me to learn from her?”
“And from whom does this enchanting story come from?”
“It’s not a story! It’s the truth! Ameri says so, and so does Delissa.”
“From what you’ve told me of them, I sincerely doubt this story’s level of reality. What does Martha think?”
“Martha likes her,” Lydia admits begrudgingly, “But for the life of me I can’t see why. But Martha likes everyone, mom. You can’t take her account.”
“Martha has a talent of seeing the good in people, a talent you lack very much, from what I see. The only problem I’m seeing is that the 17-year-old girl likes to get herself a drink from time to time. While not behavior I would encourage you on, I’m not going to be prudish here. I did, at her age, and I remember that time when you came home with a bottle of wine in your hand.”
“Which I drank one swallow of.”
“Lydia, you’re being irrational. Arianne is a nice girl, and it would be a delight to have her come along. Don’t make this hard for yourself. You like Martha, but that doesn’t mean you should shut your eyes to every other person.”
“Fine.” Lydia muttered. They’d been over this many times already and she knew the battle was lost. “Do I have to sleep in a room with her, though? She said she would pay for her own. I could stay with you.”
“You’re going to isolate the poor girl who is your classmate and knows no one else on this trip to a place she’s never been before—”
Lydia threw her hands in the air. She felt like shouting. “She said so! If she agrees, I don’t see why you have to make such a big fuss about it! Arianne is just fine with being on her own, thank you very much! She lives on her own, in that big rambling mansion of hers at the outskirts of town. She’ll be just fine for five nights living in a safe, clean, private hotel room, mom!”
“Calm down, Lydia.” Her mother frowned. “If you act like you hate her so much, of course she would pick up on that and offer to stay on her own, but that doesn’t mean she wants to. She’s been alone for so long every day. And anyway, we’ve already booked the rooms, and I wouldn’t want to waste her money.”
“She has no shortage of money, dearest mother.”
“That doesn’t mean we’ll have to swindle her. It’s wasting money to order another room when she could have paid half if she stays with you.”
“Swindle her?” The idea was so absurd she almost choked. “The money is not coming to us! And she doesn’t care about saving money, mom, can’t you hear me? The girl is rich!”
“For one who hates her so much, you seem to know an awful lot about her.”
Lydia groaned, and put her head in her hands.
Chapter 11 Arianne
They all say go to the
White wall;
That all springs from in
Creation; who shuts out the angels
That rise from the
Skyline
Above that lining of jagged glass
Broken portraits that spin
From beneath my ragged limp
To graze the fires of hells
And let me stay pinned, to this
White wall;
Implacable, pure as a dream, that weeps
infinite tears as I shut
my eyes to the black
Sky, to kiss the lowly winds that touch
My ankles, in their pursuit
To erase their sins
Live their lives in a hush
January 26, Arianne’s book
“Mother.” Arianne stood at the doorstep, wavering. Eliana stood inside in a white silk blouse and a long black skirt. The warm air rushed outside, bathing Arianne in equal parts of heat and cold. “Sorry I’m late. I was in a classmate’s home.”
Eliana’s hands fluttered. She smelled of perfume and powder. The pale blue eyes searched her face, her clothes. “I didn’t hear you leave, Arianne. Why didn’t you at least leave a note?”
“I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you.” The words were bitter on her tongue, though no heavier than the lie had been. Who am I kidding? A blind person could see through them. “Mother, could I come in? It’s cold outside.”
“Oh, oh, yes… Of course, it’s not kind of me to leave you standing out there.” Eliana opened the door wider, but didn’t step back, so Arianne still wavered on the doorstep. There was a click-click-click as Eliana’s nails tapped on the door frame. Blue nails, as pale as her eyes. Her hands were the only part of her that seemed the same age as her face. There was a long moment, until Eliana said, with some irritation, “Come on in now, Arianne. Don’t be shy.”
Is she even more drunk than I am? “Mother.”
“Yes?”
“Mother, I can’t go in.”
Eliana stepped back, looking confused. “Oh, I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay,” she mumbled, shedding her coat and walking to her room. She wanted nothing more than to draw the blinds and fall asleep again. The light was too bright. Her room was colder than the rest of the house, a window open, the door closed. She found herself wishing for the sofa and sweater she’d abandoned.
After a while, Eliana knocked on the door. Arianne flinched. Her mother peeked in, carrying a saucer and a cup of coffee. “Arianne? Mother made you some tea.”
That’s coffee. She took the cup. “Thanks.” She made no move to touch it; her appetite was in no means back. The first time she was back, Eliana was mercifully out, and she’d cleaned herself up and left for Martha’s, returning only when she thought Eliana had been asleep, then left early the next day with Pax. This time she wasn’t so lucky.
Her mother hovered. “Is it too hot?” She fretted. “Or too sweet, perhaps?”
Arianne put the cup to her lips and sipped. The taste was thick and cloying, but she smiled thinly. “It’s alright.”
“I wanted to take care of you, but you kept running off.” Eliana’s eyes were watery with hurt. “I haven’t seen you for three days.”
“I was here. I was just busy.”
Her mother leaned against her desk. “Why?”
Not this again. “I don’t know, mother. My classmate invited me to go on a trip with her the next week, by the way.”
Her attention snapped up. “Who asked you? When? You can’t be running off by yourself.”
“I’m not. Lydia Strayen, her mother will come with us. It’s only a few days. We’ll leave tomorrow.” She kept her answers short and clipped.
“You’re not leaving.”
“Mother, I’ve done the tickets. And the rooms.” Lydia had conveyed to her somewhat grudgingly that they would be staying together, at her mother’s bequest. Mother’s bequest.
“No. No. You’re not leaving.” Pale blue eyes drilled into her. “You’re not. You’re not.”
“I am.”
“I’ve always wanted to be good to you, Arianne. Why do you keep pushing me away?”
Her temples throbbed. “Like a few nights ago? Mother?” It was not like her to rebuke Eliana, and she regretted the words instantly. She wanted to pull the words back into her mouth, the way a fisherman does with his string.
“I wasn’t myself. I apologized. You knew that. But I was good to you, even though you hated me. I took you to the hospital that year, you remember? I was by your bedside day and night, as tired as you were. I was scared for you. I paid your fees and gave you a house, and come back to see you… I talked to your teachers about you, Arianne. But you never seem to feel it.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Do you?”
“No, mother.”
Eliana always had those reoccurring, strange bouts of remembrance when she professed to love her. I was good to you, she would say. I was, I was. I loved you, I wanted you to be good, but you pushed me away. I’m sorry for that one time, that second time and third time and fourth time I misbehaved, but I apologized.
And always the stares. She would glance at her when she was eating, when she was sleeping, when she was in the shower, when she was reading, walking, talking. Always Arianne could feel those eyes, the pale blue gaze, on her face, between her shoulder blades, at her throat, on her arms. She seldom spoke of it, but she knew what Eliana always thought when she looked at her and sank into her brooding silences. Why is it that you look more and more like him? Why is it that you look so young?
“You’re not leaving me.” Eliana said.
“No,” Arianne replied. “You are.”
“I never left. He left. Why did you leave?” And there it was again, that look of seeing past her, through her, into another face. Eliana’s voice shook. “Why did you leave me, why did you go away, we had a sweet little girl and you loved her, you liked her, you would stay for her, you said so.”
I can’t have this again. “Mother, I am not father.”
Eliana prattled on, oblivious. “You told me. You told me so, and you broke your promise. Why? I did everything, everything for you. I gave you everything you needed. I gave you the child, the little baby, and you stayed for her, and you left, and you won. You had everything I gave you, and I was left with her.”
It’s better during the day, Arianne tried to reassure herself. During the day you can just look away and forget. It’s harder during the nights, in the dark. Now you can just forget, and you’ll be far away tomorrow.
The temperature had dropped by the time Arianne heard her mother close her door, a few rooms down the hall. She breathed freely. She had just finished showering, and she was clean, the room filled with pine-scented steam. The box was stashed safely beneath her mattress. She pulled it out and locked the bathroom door behind her, then sat down on the marble floor, flipping open the black box. A pretty knife with a dainty blade and a slim supple lead-colored handle lay inside, with a pair of pincers, alcohol swabs, tape, and a pack of cotton pads. She stared at the kit. It always began with a sick, nauseating sense of excitement and panic that made her want to hit something or cry very loudly. Her head pounded; her nerves were raw, her hands shook.
She took the knife in her right hand and hiked up her nightgown. Silvery lines crisscrossed her skin. Her wrists and forearms and the skin above her elbows all still had angry red welts on them, but her thighs had been left alone long enough to seem clean. The blade of the knife was cool against her skin, and the moment it bit down she felt the tension drain out of her like a tranquilizer shot, like the blood beginning to creep down onto the floor was poison and she had been cleansed of it. Her head cleared, and her breathing became steadier. It’s okay, it’s all okay now. Everything’s going to be fine. She took a cotton pad and began to swab off the blood, pressing the pad to the cut. Then when the bleeding had half stopped she took another and used the tape to hold it firmly in place. The cut hadn’t been deep enough to be in need of bandaging, really, but the routine calmed her, made her feel cooler and steadier. She got on her hands and knees and mopped up the blood on the floor and threw the cotton pads in the toilet, then flushed. There we go, there we are. It’s all okay now. She stepped out of her clothes and discarded them in a corner, then fell into bed, pulling cool white sheets above her head.
Chapter 12 Lydia
And she gets the good seat, too? Arianne had tucked herself into the window seat, her head turned to rest against the cabin walls. Lydia squeezed into the seat next to her. She was being petty over details, but everything annoyed her at this point. Lydia took her notebooks out. Arianne looked at her for a while, then laughed. “You’re seriously doing work on a vacation?”
“Unlike some of us, I have a life.”
“Those words again. What about it?” She leaned back, tucked her legs in next to her.
“That’s none of your business.” Lydia didn’t turn around.
“It’s going to be three hours. Don’t tell me we’ll just sit through it doing nothing. Come on, Lydia, let’s talk.”
“You’re the only one who’s doing nothing.” Arianne had that small, lazy smile that Lydia hated again. She wanted to reach over and scratch it off her face. Why can you do nothing and still have everything, then take it for granted? Why do I have to reach for everything, that you have and throw out of the window like trash?
“That can change. Put that book of yours down and turn around.”
“This is not The Book. This is just a book. And don’t even start comparing yourself with Martha.”
“Ah, forgive me for my faults. I’m sorry that I’ve dishonored your holy book. An easy mistake, that. One book looks very much like another.”
“If you’d even paid the least bit attention to me instead of going through fourth-hand jokes, you’d know that The Book looks nothing like the other books. What happened to not bothering me?”
“Are you angry about me not paying enough attention to you?”
“I know I’m too far below you for that. Has anyone told you you talk too much?”
“I’m in a good mood today, it happens.”
No one would have known that by looking at you, Lydia thought viciously. The other girl looked nothing but average without her makeup, her lips too pale, her eyes not as full, hair not even combed through, the shadows under her eyes more prominent. Everything she has is fake. “Then leave me in peace. You said you’d keep your mouth shut.”
“How rude of you.” That smile again. “It’s amusing to talk to you sometimes, though. Very interesting things I can find.”
I’ll be the laughingstock of the whole school when I get back, I’m sure. Lydia didn’t reply. After a while Arianne sighed and pulled her hood over her head, turning away to look out of the window, and at last Lydia could work in peace.
When she felt the plane dive, the sky was awash in crimson. She glanced over to look outside, trying not to be too obvious as she craned her neck a little. Arianne had her eyes closed, her face half hidden in shadow. Lydia leaned over. Pink and blue colors swirled around each other on a palette of white, and where the blue met the green of the mountains red and orange bloomed in bizarre flowers, intertwining around each other. Sharp juts of rock hid the sun, but its glow bathed the sky.
“Pretty, isn’t it?”
Lydia jerked back. The other girl’s cobalt eyes were watching her beneath heavy lids. They opened wider at her response as she laughed. “Am I so terrifying?”
The words were at her lips before she could stop them. All her anger spilled over; the disappointment at not having Martha next to her, the frustration that it was Arianne, the maddening lilt of her words and that slow little smile and irritating laugh, the resentment at her mother for thinking she knew everything, the regret that she’d ever agreed to this. It was supposed to be perfect, we were going to be so happy. It’s all ruined, it’s her, it’s her. If she were not in a plane cabin, she would have been shouting. Her voice was a hiss. “No. You wouldn’t scare a dog. I just find you pitiful. You have everything and you still just wallow around in your despicable self-pity, throwing everything away, and still think you’re all high and mighty because people who have nothing better to do kiss up to you and pretend they like you. Well, I don’t know what Martha ever saw in you, because you’re just a little girl who acts all fancy but broken and expects everyone to fawn over you.” Her chest was heaving. “I don’t care about what you think or what you do, if you ever do anything that isn’t just simper and smirk and wait for everything to be handed to you on a platter. Just leave me--”
The plane lurched violently. Lydia gritted her teeth as the motion drove her stomach into her throat, effectively cutting off her sentence. She drove on. “Life has more things to do than cry over your petty little worries, and there’s no use in things that are so obviously wrong. Drinking isn’t anything cool that other people look up to, and you don’t look even remotely pitiful when you’re hungover or puking at a sink, if pity is what you’re staging for. Maybe only that blind boyfriend of yours doesn’t see what the mess your empty life is in, but everyone with two eyes can tell what you’re prancing about.” She heard the echoes of her father, her mother, her sister, her brother in her words. Life is not a dream, Lydia. You have to reach for things, and meet life to its face.
The plane dipped again. She felt a rush of headiness, but didn’t know if it was from the motion or the venom she’d spit. There it is, I’m said it all now. No doubt it would be awkward later, but she would deal with later when it came, and perhaps Arianne would take her usual method of pretending nothing happened.
She found herself still leaning over her armrest, her eyes steadily leveled with the other girl’s. She pulled back. Arianne said nothing, just sat there like she was carved from stone. The buzzing of the wind was so loud Lydia couldn’t hear her own thoughts.
Then Arianne pushed back her hood, and laughed. “Great speaker.” She gave a bright grin. “Was that written out in your plans, too?”
Chapter 13 Arianne
Arianne slipped the gown over her head. She’d already tried ten ways of bundling up or smoothing out the thing, but truth was that it just wasn’t enough. It was the gown she put on at home, the normal one, not the other one she saved. Why didn’t I remember we were going to share a room? When Eliana was home, she would don the uniform, long sleeves, high neck, low hem, but alone it was just this, with loose sleeves not barely up to her forearms and a neckline cut low. She could have brought her sweater into the bathroom with her, at least.
If she sees, she sees. Not that she’s going to care. After the day, her initial contempt for Lydia had grown into a deeper dislike. She almost hoped she hadn’t come. Almost. Still better her than the house. Lydia had played meek when in the presence of her mother, the brown-eyed, brown-haired, soft matronly woman who smiled at Arianne and chided her daughter gently when Lydia snapped at her. Arianne had smiled, and said nothing.
To be true, she had wanted to leave Lydia Strayen by the time she spat at her, but thought the better of it. Lydia’s emotions were straightforward and easy to read, loud, clear, quick to anger and quick to forgive. She knows nothing of me, how can I blame her for it? Not her fault she’s a poor blind fool, or that she’s been coddled to be a little baby child. She could see it in the other girl’s eyes that she’d regretted her earlier words as she sneaked glances at Arianne, that the steam had gone as it had risen, but still held her former opinion towards her. Also, she knew that her glowering didn’t irritate Lydia half so much as her smiles, so she gave her much of that.
Arianne glanced in the mirror, grimaced. Nothing I can do about that. Thin pale pink marks ran across the hollow of her throat and collarbones and top of her ribs, and the silvery lines and dark marks on her arms would not have much place to be hid. She opened the door.
Lydia was already in her pajamas, a thick, blue-and-white fluffy thing that cinched at the waist, lying on her stomach on the bed with her wavy red hair touching her shoulders, her phone pressed to her ear as she talked to Martha. “I know,” she was saying, as she rolled over and pressed her face to the pillows. Her arms were tan and smooth and unscarred, her bare feet pedaling the air. “Of course. Worry a bit more about yourself. Yes. Yes. Bye. No, we’re not. Bye again. That’s good. Really? Oh, that would be really nice. Okay now, bye for real.”
Arianne had thought about snatching up her sweater and putting it on before Lydia turned around, but her bed was in front of hers. She walked over, trying to keep her back to the other girl. Lydia had just hung up and was staring at her.
Everyone stares at me. For a moment she felt the pale blue gaze of her mother instead of the clear green eyes of Lydia Strayen, and her skin pebbled. Would she try to cover herself as she was doing now if it were Eliana in that bed opposite her instead of Lydia? Or would she pull down her neckline and shove up her skirts and sleeves, and scream the words she’d always wanted to say? That had not happened, not once, even in the hottest summer days. Coward, weakling, inhuman, abomination.
Her felt rather than saw the other girl’s response as her eyes found her scars. Look at me there, get an eyeful. Here’s that simpering smirking prancing rich girl who drinks herself blind and wastes all her money. She closed her eyes as she remembered the words again, letting them eddy around her. Pitiful… despicable girl… no life… She turned around and sat down on the bed, met Lydia’s eyes squarely. “What? Fallen in love with me, have you?”
The green eyes were wide and horrified, and above all confused, pitying, shocked. Arianne hated that. She could take the despise and loathing, maybe even the disgust. But if the first words out of her mouth are “why did you do that to yourself”, I’ll slap her in the face for it. She took out her moisturizer and rubbed at her face, then slathered her arms and neck. It stung, but she didn’t mind.
Her phone rang and she turned her back on the other girl, slipped her legs under the quilt and the sweater over her head.
“Hi.” It was Tarra.
“Mmn-hmm,” she mumbled as she applied chapstick.
“Where are you now?”
“Hotel.” She pursed her lips and flipped open the mirror to have a look at her face. “I just had a shower. Probably going to sleep soon.”
“I was kind of worried that you would be asleep already when I called.”
“You got lucky, then.” It was eleven o’clock, not even remotely late for her. “We kind of wandered around for the night, really. I finished your book.”
She could hear his smile through the line. “My book?”
“Your story. Reread it, actually.”
“So?”
“I liked it. I liked the main character. Is she me? I didn’t know I did drugs.”
“She’s not you.”
“Yeah, and she has purple eyes and dark hair and a very handsome boyfriend.” She smiled and wondered what he would look like if he were right in front of her.
“You can’t blame me for adding what I was thinking about when I wrote.”
“Can you look in the mirror now?”
A pause. “Yes. Why?”
“Tell me if your face is pink or red.”
He laughed. “White with shock.”
“What happens next? She’s gone blind and is addicted to morphine. Are you trying to get me killed?”
“Arianne, that’s not you. She just sort of looks like you.”
“I know.” She remembered other girl in his story, the one with lilac eyes and a head full of dreams, a sweet girl child. “I’m the other one, right? The little girl.”
Another pause. “Yes.”
“She’s an orphan.”
“Yes.”
“And she has a guardian angel.”
He laughed again. “Now you’re making things up.”
“I am not. He turns up at all the weird places.”
“So you really did reread it.”
“Would I lie to you?”
A longer pause. “I was doubting if you’d really read it through.”
“No, it’s good, really. It’s just kind of jumbled up. The part when Illrya meets the wolf. And that other part…”
There was another reason she liked Tarra; he was the only other person she could talk to about the world of stories and poems and flying things who really knew what she was saying. They disagreed on many accounts, and Arianne had to admit his style of writing wasn’t her favorite, but at least he didn’t pretend to understand. Sometimes she could even pretend he knew everything about her and they were the two characters in their stories, burrowing under the ground of a gothic city.
“It’s getting late,” he said when half an hour had passed. “And I believe you are tormenting poor Lydia with our talk.”
Now there’s an interesting thought. “Okay. Night.”
“Sweet dreams.”
Arianne flipped off the lights, and waited.
Chapter 14 Lydia
What’s wrong with her? She should see a doctor.
She tried to listen for traces of something in the other girl’s voice that gave her away, some telltale edge of madness or a spark of pain, but her voice was as light and feathery as the stuffing in her pillows, as she laughed and chattered on. Oh, this nonsense, again. Wolves and other worlds and mythical figures and such. Maybe living in her head so much had deprived the girl of her ability to think normally.
She remembered seeing her at Martha’s, with that high collar that had puddled around her neck, and the roots of pink scars creeping up her throat, remembered the summer when the other girl had run in a loose long-sleeved shirt that had gotten splotched with sweat, and how the others had fawned over her afterwards. She remembered how her hand had dipped when she took something out and she’d tugged the sleeves lower, or nonchalantly sliding up her collar.
There are really people who do this to themselves. How stupid are they? Lydia always thought that people who slit their wrists did it only in movies when they attempted suicide. Suicide was cowardly, but why would anyone cut themselves if that wasn’t the goal? She remembered her middle school clinical health teacher telling the class a case where a boy used a pencil sharpener and rubber bands to slit his wrists over and over. She said that it was okay to ask for help. To tell someone. Arianne obviously hadn’t told anyone. She said that no one would judge us if we came out clean with our pain, whatever that meant. Lydia was judging her, certainly. It was just wrong.
Abruptly the lights were flipped off, and the small square of light came only from the other girl’s phone. Then that went black as well, and the room was washed in shades of gray and silver and black and white. Lydia could hear Arianne’s soft steady breathing. She made no move to lie down and go to sleep, only sat there propped up against the pillows, and Lydia was cross-legged on top of a jumble of bedding.
The air conditioner spat hot gusts of wind that ruffled her hair slightly. No one had drawn the curtains, so pale moonlight filtered in and bathed the carpet and white sheets in weak silver linings that shuddered to stay intact. Every time the other girl twitched, they would wobble, like reflections in a swaying puddle. Arianne looked strangely calm, her eyes blank and reflecting moonlight, cast down to her wrists, laid on the white bedsheets. Lydia wondered for a moment if all the scars would look silver in the moonlight, or if in this black and white and gray world would spring out in bursting red and purple and pink, like obscene worms burrowing under the thin covering of skin, waiting to crawl out. She felt sick. “I—”
“Don’t say it.” Arianne cut her off. There was no malice in the other girl’s voice, only a flat, thin edge. “That I’m wrong in doing it and you can’t imagine why. I know that’s what you think, but don’t say that. Or I swear, I will carry you and throw you out of this window, or push you off a mountain summit tomorrow.”
Lydia didn’t say anything. Arianne’s face was devoid of emotion as she turned her arms under the pale silvery light to look at herself. “I haven’t really looked much myself. Not such a pretty sight, that. I don’t blame you.” Lydia thought she could hear the smile in her words as she said, “You look like you need some smelling salts. Poor little Lydia. Never seen such a disgusting sight in real life, have you?” Her words cut, but her voice stayed flat. “Here, come over, take a good long full look at the cuts Arianne made to gain her pity and sympathy, cause that’s what she’s after, isn’t she?”
Lydia looked away. This is wrong, she thought, that’s all sick and wrong. She remembered hurtling those words at the other girl earlier, but couldn’t even remember the exact words she’d said. “Arianne, I’m—”
“If you want to say you’re sorry, shut up. My apologies if that wasn’t your intention.” She pulled her sleeves down again and turned away, the light stoking an unearthly profile of her face that glowed silver in the dark. “No? I thought so. I hate people telling me they’re sorry. Makes me feel petty when I don’t want to forgive them. Not you, though, I don’t really care about you.” She slid down beneath the sheets, pulling them up until they covered half her face, her back to Lydia. Her hair slid into a rivulet of shiny dark tresses that pooled around her head. In the silver glow, it could have passed as much for quicksilver as for blood.
Chapter 15 Arianne
The wind ruffled through Arianne’s hair, making it billow in a dark sheen around her shoulders. The air was filled to bursting with the scent of rain; the heavy, humid smell of thick fog and mud and freshly mown grass. The pine needles were soft under her steps, and Arianne almost felt content. How long has it been since I’ve left the city?
She remembered a blurry autumn, with red-gold leaves and snapped twigs, a brook dammed by fallen logs. Father was there, and I in his arms. She remembered being bounced up and down in his arms, even thrown up as she giggled and squealed, but there were always strong arms to catch her. There was always someone there for me, she remembered, until there wasn’t. Eliana was there too, her face a silvery shadow in her memories, always by her lover’s side, smiling up at him. We were so happy.
When had it all changed? She wondered. When father left us? When mother started drinking? Or was it before that, some subtle change that had been too small to notice and spread out far too quickly? Or was it me, as mother would always have me believe? When I grew up and got older, looked more and more like him?
The wind was blowing into her face, and she shut her eyes for a moment, the blurry outlines of Aaron’s face overlapping hers, the same stroke of nose and jaw, the same cobalt eyes and dark hair. Would everything still be like this had I not looked like this? Would I always feel her eyes on me wherever I went?
Eliana was far from her now; she’d left early in the morning, before her mother was awake, and hailed a taxi to take her to the airport, dozing through the early hours of dawn. But there were another pair of eyes on her now, green and wide and clear, Lydia’s furtive darting glances. Her mother had taken them to the foot of the mountain, and it was beautiful enough for her not want to leave. It seemed strange that there would be bars nestled somewhere near here that were the same as the place she lived, oddly tainted somehow, dirty.
She felt the other girl’s eyes, like she felt Eliana’s. Probing under the hems of her clothes, trying to catch a glimpse and shying away, horrified and fascinated. In the morning they had hardly spoke at all, and now Arianne was trying her best to pretend that she was alone.
“Arianne?” The other girl’s voice came from behind her, tentative.
She slowed her pace. And now it begins. “Yes?”
Lydia caught up to her, matching her pace. Wary. “I’m really sorry about what I said yesterday. About you. I mean, you don’t have to forgive me for it. I know I was mean about it and I wasn’t thinking before I talked.”
“You did think, believe me.”
“I… I didn’t know… I shouldn’t have said the first thing that I…”
Arianne turned to look at the other girl. “Would you still be saying this if you hadn’t seen the scars?”
“Yes. Yes, I…”
“No. You wouldn’t. Not one thing has changed about me since I stepped off that plane, Lydia. I’ve always been the same person.”
“No, but I…”
“But now you think I’m even more pitiful than I was, and you feel bad about yourself for making it worse.” When the other girl didn’t reply, she sighed. “I got used to it.”
“How long have you…” She stuttered. That look again. Why? The look seemed to shout. Why do you do that? With her voice directed to the muddy ground, no one would have thought this was the same girl whose eyes had flashed so maliciously as she snapped at Arianne to shut up. She’s afraid, poor dumb thing. Arianne felt the same stab of queer detachment that sometimes boiled up inside her when she watched Tarra to see how he would respond to her words. She wondered for a moment what they saw when they looked at her, all the faces she wore. Pretend, pretend, lie, lie, lie. Lie until your heart stops and your breaths go dead, and the last ounce of your bones has been burnt to ashes. Lie until you go sick with revulsion at yourself and don’t know who is staring into the mirror.
Lydia had finally leveled her gaze to meet her eyes. “I’m really sorry,” she repeated, “For whatever happened to you. But I really think you should tell someone about it, or you’ll never get over it.”
Arianne had to laugh. “You sound very experienced.”
The girl didn’t look away. “I may not know much, but I’m sure that saying it to someone will make it feel better. Anger goes deeper when you bottle it up.”
“Bumper sticker?”
“You should. No one would judge… No one would hate you for it. There’d be people who wanted to help.”
“I’m sure there would be.”
Lydia ducked under a low-hanging branch, though not quite quickly enough. The branch quivered, showering her with pine needles. She ran a hand over her unruly red hair, smearing it with droplets of water, and prattled on. “There are better ways to deal with whatever you’re going through.”
“Talking to you, perhaps? The wisest emotional counselor that ever lived, I’m sure.” To be sure, the other girl’s speeches had begun to bore her. She should write speeches for a living, they would pay her well for that. She wondered if Lydia really did write them down in her big book and rehearse them before speaking. The idea was so droll she laughed aloud. Does she stage a play for herself, in front of a child-bed lined up with soft fluffy toys?
“Not me. But there would be a lot of people, I’m sure. Have you ever talked to your parents about it?”
“Surprisingly, no.”
“You should,” the girl insisted. “They’ll help you.”
“I know they would.”
“Then why didn’t you even try? Nothing can be that bad. Life can be hard, I get it, but it’s hard for everyone. Solve your problems. Maybe you should stop running away. You just have to face it, and it’ll all get better, instead of running away and hurting yourself. That just wrong, Arianne. It’s wrong and sick and you really should stop.”
Arianne felt her body turning to stone again, the same way it had immobilized when she was on the plane as the other girl spat venom at her. This wasn’t really much of a difference, just differently phrased.
…has more things to do than cry over your petty little worries, and there’s no use in things that are so obviously wrong… wrong… wrong…
“Sure.”
“You’re not listening.” The girl looked ridiculous, with raindrops dripping off her hair and puffed up in a large beige-colored parka, the red of one sock showing under ankle-length boots. She looked like a little kid having a lollypop tantrum. If they weren’t hiking, Arianne was sure she would have put her hands on her hips and stamped her foot. “Why won’t you listen to sense?”
I’ve had enough of your precious good sense for today, thank you very much. Arianne didn’t answer. Your thoughts have not changed, no more than my desire to wring your neck and snap off that head filled with prancing ponies and sparkling glitter. We’re very much better off of this conversation. The gray roiling sky had morphed into a canopy of thin leaves patched with clumsy stitches of gray and white. Rain from the storm earlier was still dripping from the branches whenever the wind blew by. She pulled a leaf from a twig, making the branch shudder and pelt her hand and shoes with water. The wind had gotten colder, stinging. Arianne pulled her hood over her head.
The path opened up in front of her; muddy and gray, but dotted with patches of color all the same. There was that lark hopping among the spindly braches of a pine, and those brilliant red yew berries, and swirls of golden, brown, red, russet, green peeking out in the trees. The water collected in a pool in a crevice of a rock was as white as the sky above it. A hot pink backpack slipped in and out of sight in the far front of her vision. There was a nest of pale blue robin’s eggs in the thicket of emerald green bushes the same color of Eliana’s eyes, and a maple with some leaves on it that were as red as Lydia’s hair.
When the silence had stretched out long enough between them to fill the emptiness, the girl had to break into it again. Arianne groaned inwardly. Is this what it’s like to be lectured by mothers in normal families? She’d heard her friends at middle school arguing with their parents about small things, the most trivial matters: what they would have for dinner, their curfew, whether or not it was good to choose Biology over Chemistry, if they were warm enough at night. It was bizarre, a strange twisted version of what Eliana and Arianne would haggle over: where and when she’d been, what time she was at what place, the grades she was getting at school. And even stranger was how they were allowed to talk back—that they would purse their lips and roll their eyes and stamp their feet and yell and shout, and all the same be given a kiss before bed and breakfast the next morning.
“Well, don’t you have anything to say about all of it?” Lydia demanded. Her meekness had lasted for about half a day before she burnt it all off again.
“No.” No, mother.
“Why? I told you—”
“I don’t know.” I don’t know, mother.
Lydia rolled her eyes and groaned, all brashness back. “You’re impossible.”
Yes, mother. I am, I am, I am.
Chapter 16 Lydia
They peaked the summit at noon. The sky had cleared, leaving only dots of white fleecy clouds in the place of the gray mess that had dominated the sky earlier. The sun warmed her fingers as Lydia stretched out her hands.
“Really?” There was only the mildest interest in other girl’s voice. “Raymond Tullan?”
Her face heated. “What about it?”
“Well, you could do worse. Or better, for that matter.” Arianne smirked and leaned over to contemplate the view. “Pretty.”
The peak dropped beneath their feet, and a small town glittered like a jewel nestled in sand beneath the thick rise of hills. The faintest ghost of a rainbow could be seen overhanging it. Colors, everywhere colors. Red and indigo and blue and green and black and gold.
Arianne hadn’t said much about the thoughts that were nagging at Lydia the whole time. She’d been worried initially, but all her anxiety had burned into irritation at the other girl’s indifference. She doesn’t care, Lydia thought, frustrated, as she kicked at a rock. Why doesn’t she do something about it instead of shying away? Mom would have told me the same things. Why can’t she understand it? She even found herself wondering if Arianne had purposefully flaunted her scars to make Lydia feel guilty about shouting at her earlier. I would have, anyway. Her fights and little quarrels with everyone had always been solved with two days, be it her family or her friends or even people she didn’t like. Even her.
Lydia had tried to wheedle her into talking, but Arianne always answered in monotones or laughs. Lydia could feel last night’s memory burning off as the old contempt settled in, and whenever she turned around to look at her Arianne would raise her eyebrows and give her one of those infuriating smiles. Damn it, she’d thought, after prying for at least half an hour. It’s her life she throws away. She just doesn’t value the good things in life, and what can I do about that? It’s her fault if she dabbles in dreams and words rather than bread and gold. You could not eat a dream, no more than you could buy a living with poetry, but people chased after them all the same. Impractical, Dad dubbed them, one of the worst words that could crop up in their household. Everything they had, they were sure where it came from, where it would go, how to use and how to gain it.
Arianne had steered the conversation away from herself and back to Lydia. It was strange how much she told the other girl, who was almost a stranger to her. It wasn’t that she trusted Arianne to keep her secrets, more like that she knew her thoughts would be brushed off by the other girl with a flick of her hand and never come into her mind again. I know I’m too far below you for that. The words from yesterday came back to creep into her. The malice was gone, but the sting remained.
It was strange how much one could tell a stranger, sometimes far more than people one knew well. They wouldn’t care as much, and would have no worries of tangling up in her own life. Once this was all done, she and Arianne would go back to their separate lives. Well, I’ll go to mine, at least. She found herself speaking of her mother and father, of the first time she met Martha and the gold in Raymond’s hair, of that other boy she’d crushed on earlier and the way he would look at her out of the corner of his eye and smile, and of how she was jealous at eleven when she knew she would have to share her mother with another child but ended up loving Jack as much as the others did, of her sister’s tall athletic boyfriend who let Rosie cling onto his arm and would pick her up and twirl her around as she laughed, of the big white dog she would pet and hug and cry into when she was younger, of her plans to rise and rise until her life fit perfectly into her Book, of the piled up notebooks on neurosurgery and all the years she’d kept at it, of the creamy white pages and meticulous handwriting of The Book she printed. Arianne never talked like Ameri, who would gabber on about herself, or Delissa who would milk her for gossip until and after the last drop was spent, but she was not like Martha either, who would smile and comment and say the right things at the right times. Arianne just stared ahead, or looked around her like she found the whole affair boring, only stopping to glance back at her when she paused.
“Look, if my life is not exciting enough, I’ll shut up now.”
“‘Not exciting’ is good.”
Sometimes she would laugh at queer points in her narration, and Lydia would stop, embarrassed and annoyed, but then the other girl’s face would fall back into that impassive mask again, and Lydia would go on.
“He’s acceptable.”
Arianne smiled languidly. “Your ears disagree with you. I’ve got a name and color palette for it. It’s called ‘fish pink’.”
Lydia was pretty sure fishes were not pink. “Like…salmon?”
“Something like that.”
It was even stranger that Arianne would be the second person to hear about Raymond. She only told Martha, self-conscious and skirting whenever they came around to the topic. She suspected Martha knew, but never voiced it. Another reason she liked Martha. Last night her call had come to tell Lydia that things were going fine, and the operation had been successful. Thank god for that. Besides her empathy for her friend, Lydia had to admit there was a much more selfish reason for her relief: she was horrible at comforting others when they were upset, normally only able to sit there and nod and hand out tissues. It was easier with Martha, but only partially. A new thought, unbidden and uneasy, wormed into her mind: It’s the same with everyone, the same with Arianne. You can’t feel what she feels. But she shook the thought off by thinking that she was right in everything she had said today. It was what she had been taught since she could understand things, anyway.
She had to face another uncomfortable truth: Arianne wasn’t so bad when she wanted to try. Lydia was almost glad she had her beside her, instead of walking up the mountain alone. Glad, except for the other 90 percent of the time when I felt like I wanted to pry open her skull and yell into her brain. She’s immune to common sense. And here, away from Arianne’s make-up powders and fancy dresses and glasses of cocktails, she seemed almost normal… Except beneath the eye, where her scars still thrashed and burned. Lydia shuddered inwardly. Once they removed themselves from the clean fresh air and bright sunlight and put her in a black dress and thick mascara with glass of liquor and a thin lazy smile, Lydia knew all of these thoughts would be right out the window and she would go back to hating the other girl as much as she had earlier. Not helping to think of that now.
Her thoughts went back to Raymond. Every night she would toll out a little bit of time to think of him, even though she knew it was just a fantasy. I can keep my feelings in check, she told herself… But the easy smile and golden hair kept slipping into her thoughts without her knowing. Is this what it’s like to be caught unexpected, unplanned, unnoticed? She wondered, and the idea unsettled her. If so, perhaps it is better that he is too far away for me to touch.
The summit was cool and crisp and open. They lingered for a while, the sun warming them and dappling patterns across the ground. Tourists snapped pictures around them. There was a great cluster of vines and ivy dangling from the top of another peak not so far away, and whenever the breeze and sunlight caught it the shadows would ripple on the wall like wrinkles of water undulating in a pond. When a girl in a pretty patterned coat came over with baskets of strawberries, Arianne laughed and took a bunch and shared half with Lydia. Is this the Arianne that everyone else sees? She thought, as they fell into easy banter and small talk. With the sun touching her hair and an easy smile on her face, Arianne looked like a girl, not so different from Lydia and Martha and all the others. Despite herself, Lydia could not help liking the girl, smiling and warm and mild, but she knew she was the other creature too, eyes glittering with something that was not laughter, her skin slashed up a hundred times. She is a girl, but there is a monster inside. She shook the thought off. Maybe she had been talking too much with Arianne, that such a strange idea had entered the confines of her mind.
Chapter 17 Arianne
The room was dark, but the lights shone outside. White curves and flashes and dots covered the streets, and up there were those few glittering sparkles of stars. The world was cut cleanly into black and white. Black where I am. She had always woken in the darkness, felt she was more real somehow as the costumes peeled away and she was standing almost naked in the dark. The darkness will be my cover. The shadows are my birthright.
There was the mirror, too; steely gray and shimmering, with a blank, silent surface. Arianne stood before it, and saw herself: The white girl in the black shadows, covered in dark clothes, her eyes two black pits. Black and white, white and black.
Then the color burst with a bright flaring light, and the black dress burned into lilac and lavender, the eyes and hair shades of purple and violet. Her long lashes tore rainbow shadows across her cheekbones. The dress was thick and lacy and elaborate, with clasps and layers and buttons and zippers and pins, ruffles and laces and ribbons and pearls.
The first layer was dark indigo, with shades of purple light and dark building up and over, then layer upon layer, soft and hard, delicate and steely. There were pieces of velvet and strings of pearls, and patterns of frilly lace; but there was hard metal as well, claps upon scales, and beneath it all a rigid corset shining like fish scales at the bottom of a pond.
She began to tug it off, this girl in the mirror; first the lavender lacy frillings, then the deep plush velvet, and the sheer thin silk, lilac ribbons and pearls. It began to build at her feet, all the garments she had shed, a ribbon and a piece of lace at first, then the soft flutter of velvet, and a clatter of pearls. The first layer came off like a wisp of starlight, leaving the adornments around her ankles. Then came the ripping sound of fabric, and more silk and velvets puddled on the floor, and more, and more, and more. There were heavy sounds as well, as half a piece of metal scales dropped to the ground, and a band of steel fastened across her waist was opened and discarded, and the large sheen of metal that arced from the small of her back over one shoulder to cinch at her waist. Bracelets and necklaces like handcuffs and ties opened at her touch and joined the mounting platter around her feet, growing knee-deep, then up to her thighs. There was a bit of glass that wove around her ribs that shattered when she laid it on the small hill. All the things she’d shed, removed however carefully or roughly, were are shredded, torn, broken. The metal and glass had been cracked apart, the fabrics torn into pieces, the pearls collapsed from their strings and rolling outwards.
When she got to the final layer, she stopped. The corset clasped at her tightly, but it was not a corset. The scales covered her arms, her legs, her shoulders, thick in some places and thin in others. It’s armor, Arianne knew, and began to pry at the clasp around her throat. It all came down easily, like pulling petals off a rose. Off it went, baring her neck and her arms and her chest and her waist and her legs. When it was all over she looked up again, and she was naked but for the pile that had grown to her hips. I have thrown away my armor, she thought, looking and the pale pallid creature who shivered in the mirror. It was choking me and hurting me and dragging me down, but now I have thrown it all away, and there is nothing to keep the knives from me. She could not don it again; all the parts were shattered or broken. I’ve torn my armor, my only armor. I should have kept it, I should have. She bent down and picked a piece of velvet up. On the triangular piece of cloth there were words; memories. Mother, she knew when she saw the words, mother and father and Antony and Eriyan, and Lissanda and Quetin, all of them. She picked up another piece, and saw names. Memories and names of her old life were shielding her as well as weighing her, and she had torn them all apart. Now I have nothing to hide behind.
She raised her eyes again, and the girl in the mirror blinked once, long and slow. She saw the shadows rising behind her, swirling in the mists of time. You tore us, you burned us, threw us away, drowned us, left us, left ussss. The shadowy shades prowled around her, some beseeching, others laughing. Purple scars had leapt to life, crawling over her body like snakes. This is your new armor, they said, whispering. The one that you have chosen, you have built. The scars snaked up her arms and legs, wrapping around her waist and chest. You could have had us, but you choose it instead. They were growing into vines now, cold and hot at the same time, clasping her knees and ankles together, tightening around her throat and wrists. There were words on them, too, words carved deep with a knife and not with a pen. Occasionally there would be a scrap of something lighter and softer pushing against them, but they were too new, too raw. Lydia scrawled across one piece, Tarra on another, and Paxon on a third, and more and many, but they spiraled away too soon, fluttering, and around her the ghosts rose from the dead bodies of them she had disposed around her feet. When she looked up and saw herself, the girl was choking in the hold of fleshy vines, her fingers scrabbling at her throat, and all the garments piled around her had rose. When Arianne saw the girl blink again, her eyes had blended from purple to blue, and she was sinking.
She woke, gasping for air. Her hands shot to her throat and felt around, touched the ridges of her scars. She felt ugly, spoiled, filthy, disgusting, sick, repulsive. Abomination, the voices echoed again. Inhuman, abomination, all of you. Arianne lay with her eyes turned toward the ceiling, and somehow the voices calmed her. She was shuddering.
“You’re worthless,” she whispered softly. “You are nothing, nothing but a shadow of a better person. You are worthless, weightless, nothing, nothing at all.” The familiar dizziness and tranquility started to settle in, slowly. Her shudders stopped, and she tried to breathe more freely, wiping away the moisture at her face. That’s okay, that’s better, there. She turned around on her bed, the covers tangling in her legs.
“Arianne?” The other girl whispered in the darkness.
Lydia was awake, and looking at her, sitting up with her knees pulled up to her chest. Green eyes, blue eyes, purple eyes. It was the fifth night already, and she would be back soon. I was worried, that’s all, that’s all.
“Did I wake you?” She asked, trying to sit up.
“No. I couldn’t sleep, anyway.” Lydia hugged her knees closer. “I should have woken you earlier.”
“No, it’s okay.” They had these strangely peaceful moments of truce. When she is not trying to tell me what I should do, and when her pretty life doesn’t flaunt itself in my face, it’s not so bad. Much better than her house. Lydia seemed to like part of her, and Arianne could feel herself warming to the other girl if they put their lives behind them and pretended this was the only world there was. Walking through the hills and lakes and winding streets together, with a cup of hot chocolate in one hand, Arianne had almost believed that it was. She felt herself settle into a model of what the other girl liked, like she did with everyone. Pretend, and lie, until you don’t know what is real. There were moments when their own attributes showed, and the old anger and contempt would spark up again, but other times it was almost what could have passed for a normal life. The old itches always came at night. A creature of the dark. The shaking fits, the dreams. Lydia had given up making her to “talk” after the second day of persistent wheedling, though she still showed every intention of starting the topic again before Arianne cut her off, and Arianne had kept her tongue behind her teeth whenever some cruel comment made its way to the surface. She’d decided she could work with it, even if the other girl thought she was an attention-seeking fool and she thought Lydia was an empty-headed simpleton. Differences could be put away in the light of day, and things could be pleasant if they skirted around the rocks.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
So much about giving up her efforts. Arianne was too tired to feel irritated. “Not really.”
Lydia was silent. Good.
The moonlight stretched in. Arianne pushed herself into a half sitting position. The cuts at her legs throbbed with the tempo of her heart. She brought her hand to her neck again, trailed her fingers along her scars, one after the other. Across a collarbone, down a rib, puckered against the smooth soft skin at the hollow of her throat. Once you start, there’s no undoing it. Some scars last for life.
Chapter 18 Lydia
I couldn’t sleep, anyway.
Lydia had seldom had problems of the sort before, but for the past few nights she had tossed and turned, uneasy, as she listened to the other girl sleep, mumbling and twitching like an animal under sedative. The last night, she’d hugged her knees as she watched the darkness puddle around the room. Am I glad that this is going to end? She wondered, as she watched the lights draw white patterns outside the windows. She opened The Book, searching the pages for an answer, but it only told her what to do, never what to feel. The last entry had been two days ago. Lydia wasn’t even sure what to think. Everything had been so easy before, carefully slotted into pages and grids and sections. What do I write now? She asked herself, but her thoughts yielded no answers.
She always felt wrong and confused when she was with Arianne, sometimes even wondered if there really were two people inside of the same body, or more. The girl was playful and indulgent at times, then arrogant and mocking, then cold and tight-lipped. Lydia remembered the person she’d known before, whom she’d hated so much, leaning against a wall as she watched the others stage a play just for her with indolent eyes. She tried to fit that in with the flat monotones she’d spoken in the first night, or the laughing bright girl she’d come to know in the days to come. Then there was the trembling creature who woke gasping rapidly as she drew in her breaths in the middle of the night, as well. Which one was a mask, and which one was real? Lydia could not tell where one persona ended and the other began. She found herself wishing that things could be easier again, wishing that she could hate the other girl like she did before, wishing that all there was to her would be that face she’d learned to detest, or that Arianne would truly prove to be the girl Lydia had grown to like. Neither happened. She even felt herself growing secretive, answering her mother’s “I told you so” looks with bland smiles and vague replies. Oh, I guess she’s alright. She wanted to ask her mother about Arianne, about what to do, about the scars that crisscrossed her body, but was very much sure the other girl wouldn’t appreciate that. What if she kills herself someday because of it? It’ll be my fault. Will it?
The other girl’s gasps and twitches sent prickles up her skin in a way that made the hairs rise on the back of her neck. Lydia wanted to shut her ears and look away, but felt her eyes drawn to it as the way they’d followed the scars on her skin. She couldn’t stop trying to sneak another peek, as though she would find the skin smooth and clean and unblemished. Sometimes Arianne would catch her at it, look up so fast she wouldn’t have time to glance away, and she would lower her gaze. Not polite of a girl to stare, the other girl had said once in her mocking tones. How would you know? She couldn’t help but mumbled, embarrassed and awkward. The cobalt eyes had held hers long enough that she looked away. Don’t you feel that? I can feel it well enough. Lydia didn’t believe her. It was one thing to know as other people were staring straight into your face, very much another for you to know when the eyes were behind you.
Every time her gaze sought out the faintest edge of a scar, she would think, wrong. The thought would sit in her stomach, cold and queasy, until she pushed it out of her mind. Maybe I was wrong too, she thought once, as they were walking down the cobblestone streets of a narrow ally, when I thought she did it all for attention. No one Lydia could understand would do anything like that for attention, but no one Lydia could understand would drink until she passed out either. That’s all wrong, all of it. No one would want themselves to feel bad. Why?
Her gaze turned back to the other bed. It’ll all end soon, she thought, and it’ll all be easier with her out of my life. She heard the other girl whisper, so soft Lydia wasn’t sure if she’d heard it. Arianne’s eyes were open and blank, staring up to the ceiling. Lydia wrapped her arms tighter around herself, scared to admit that she was scared. “Arianne?”
“Did I wake you?”
“No. I couldn’t sleep, anyway. I should have woken you earlier.”
“No, it’s okay.”
“Do you want to talk about it?” You should. I would. Anyone I knew would.
“Not really.”
Lydia watched the other girl trace her scars, her fingers trailing over the inside of a wrist, a rib, a forearm, the underside of an elbow. She felt sick again. Look away, look away, look away, and forget her. But the other part of her, the part in Jack and Rosie and Mom and Dad, the part that spoke her mind and pushed others to do the same, prodded at her to do something. If you have a problem, you should solve it. Everything can be solved, as long as you do it.
“Why are you like that?” She whispered, tried to make her voice calmer than she felt, tried to take the accusatory sting out of the words.
Arianne didn’t answer. Just when Lydia decided to turn away, the other girl looked up from her arms, and tugged the sleeves down again. “It doesn’t matter.”
“I won’t tell.” She felt like she was walking on a tightrope a million feet away above the drop. One slip and it is gone.
“I know.”
The silence stretched out. Arianne stared into the darkness. Her eyes were glassy, strangely bright, reflecting the little light from the night. The air conditioner hummed.
“We’ll be back tomorrow.”
“I know.”
“You can tell me,” she whispered.
The other girl looked away. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I know.” It was her turn to say it. She almost said, saying it out loud will make you feel better, but knew that Arianne hated words like those. Why? It’s always been right for me. She kept her mouth shut. In the day, she knew, she would never get another word out of the other girl. She’ll laugh at me and make a snide remark, and stare at me until I look away. Better during the night, in the dark.
The other girl didn’t look at Lydia. “Have you ever thought that it might feel good to be feel bad?” Her voice was barely a breath above a whisper. “That it might be so right to feel wrong, and feel steady only when the world is turned upside down?”
No, she thought. She didn’t answer.
“It feels better when it’s wrong. Have you ever felt that before? When you detach yourself from your body, so things happening to it don’t seem to reach you.” Her breaths were as soft as her words. “When you think, I just want to put this down, all of it, and you would set the world on fire and burn with it and it wouldn’t have mattered anything to you. When you think your life is too messy and disgusting for you to even look at, and you’re too tired to even get up and turn the lights on, and you just want to lie down and drown yourself. When you hate yourself for how much you’re feeling, and a cut can take it all out, you know?”
The shadowy eyes looked purple in the darkness, staring at nothing. “It’s better than drugs. Better than drink. You don’t feel a single thing. It takes everything out, and you can just lie down. The drinking, too. It feels good to be dizzy and blurred, but better to be sick. Everything is so clean, you can sit down on your knees, and as you’re puking you’ll feel, this is it, this is me, this is the thing that I am and the thing my life is. Then the quiet takes over, and you float away from your body, like it’s not you anymore.” Her hands lay flat and unmoving on the sheets, white upon white. “Everything falls into place, everything slows down and gets heavier, so much heavier and steadier. And you can whisper, you’re worthless, you’re nothing, nothing, nothing, and that feels good, too, dragging you down. It feels so good...” Her voice trailed off, and the room was quiet again for a second. “Like, when you’re not feeling it, you can’t understand. But then you just feel so much, feel like you’re dying to breathe, and then it all clicks and falls into place right there. You’ll just suddenly understand why… things that you always have despised, put down as sick and wrong… just have that sudden desire to just drink your life out, even if you have never even touched alcohol before, even if you have never ever gotten drunk before.
“You’ll suddenly just see why people like the feeling of chugging down all of that. You’re having hangovers and you’re keeling over a toilet and you’ll feel good. Like, you will be sick and tired and weak and clammy, but that’s what makes it right, that you have no power at all over this body. You’ll just understand why people will stick a knife to their wrists and push, and understand why they would say that it was beautiful, even though it was wrong. How all the tension would go out of you the second that blade cut into your skin, even though you said that it was crazy and stupid before. How you would instantly calm down, and it wouldn’t really be hurting you. You would not really be in your body… and the body will not really be you.
“It would be a sort of death. Well, death’s definition buy some accounts is when the spirit and the body leave each other, and I think that’s what happens when you go into that state of mind. Sure, when you wake up again you’ll feel even worse, but all the same it’ll feel right by doing the wrong things when you are scrambling and breathless and suffocating and dying of asphyxia. And you’ll think, I need this… I need something that will tell me I can calm down, but I can’t even think straight. And when you start, you just can’t stop because how impossibly good that feels…”
Lydia stared at her. Half of what the other girl had said had gone right over her head, like words in another language. What does she mean? “You shouldn’t hurt yourself,” she said at last, not knowing what to reply. “Tell your family. Your parents. Your friends. They would help you. I would.” Her words sounded awkward, clumsy.
“Friends aren’t always good to their companions. And parents aren’t always good for their children.”
“No one would hurt you because of it, Arianne. You shouldn’t hurt yourself. There are better ways to do it, better ways to live. There’ll always be something that’s good. When you have a problem, you should solve it instead of running away and… and cutting.”
The other girl’s head jerked up, and Arianne looked at her. “Damn you,” she snarled. “Damn you and your pretty little empty head. I don’t know why the hell I even bothered to tell you anything. Why do you act like you know everything about me? What do you know about my life, Lydia?” Her voice was dripping with malice. “You don’t know one damned thing about who I am and what it’s like to be me, so just shut up about your ideas on the world. Don’t tell me what I should or shouldn’t do.” The other girl’s breathing hitched there, and she looked like she was about to suffocate. Her eyes were silvery with unshed tears.
She’s crying, Lydia thought, incredulous. What did I say? “Arianne, I…”
“Stop. Just stop. Leave me alone. Don’t look at me like that.” Arianne turned her back to her. She’d curled her body so tight up it looked like a coil wound to burst. Her body trembled and heaved, but not a sound came from her lips. Lydia saw her hand clasping so hard at the sheets it was like to tear the thing apart, the fingers scrabbling wildly for a purchase. A small, choked sound escaped her, and suddenly she threw back the covers and banged the door behind her so violently it might have woken the whole corridor.
What did I do this time? Lydia stared at the rumpled sheets on the bed. What did I say? She felt sick, uneasy, guilty, even though she didn’t even understand what there was to be sorry for. What’s wrong with her? What’s wrong with me?
Chapter 19 Arianne
Stupid, stupid, stupid, she thought as she slammed the door shut behind her, wiping furiously at her eyes. She wanted to scream. Who am I angry at? She wondered. Lydia or Eliana or myself? The whole damn world, probably. If she knew why she was so upset, she probably wouldn’t be so upset. Why am I like this? She ran up, up, up the stairs. Why did you even open your fat mouth, you should have known your words were wasted. Why did you tell her, even a part of it? She was crying now, crying so violently she couldn’t even breathe. Up, she ran, up the stairs, up, up, up.
No one knows, no one sees. You’re the weakest, dumbest thing that ever lived, why did you open your stupid mouth? And the look on her face, you should have seen it coming. Lydia had stared at her with a mixture of confusion and shock, eyes wide and mouth half-open. She looked like an idiot, but not such a big idiot as you. Stupid stupid stupid. Arianne hated the shock. It was worse than even that time Lydia saw her scars. I told her, this time. I should have known better.
No one ever saw her. They all looked at her, pitying and disbelieving and shocked and disgusted, and Arianne wished violently that all of the simpering fools could have but a single body, so she could wrap her hands around the throat and squeeze and see the life drain out of their eyes. Nothing was supposed to be like this. I’ve kept it down for days. Kept her stupid blabbering out of my head. And I’m going back tomorrow, back, back, back.
“I hate you,” she mumbled, childishly, and when the words were out she laughed at the absurdity of it all. She started sobbing again, crouching down on the ground and burying her head in her hands. Her head pounded and her temples throbbed. What’s the big deal? I don’t even care. She couldn’t breathe, so she started choking and coughing. I can’t keep in a few stupid tears, she thought, angry with herself all over again. I could have done that much, at least. She drew in shuddering choking breaths. The slap across the face came easy, once, then harder. Her sobbing began to slow, but she couldn’t stop. She raked her nails over her arms, feeling it when she scratched over a scar. I’m drowning.
She started to run again, faster and faster. Up up up. The stairs were black and icy cold, red lights from the cameras shining in the dark. Green exit signs glowed around her. When she came to the closed set of the doors she fumbled with the lock. Let me out, she thought, looking around frantically for a button, a key, something. The doors to the roof were locked and barred shut. “Let me out!” She screamed, aloud. “Just let me out let me out let me out let me out.” She pounded at the door with her fists, could feel the metal rattle beneath her hands and the gusts of wind coming through the door cracks. Her bare feet were so cold they felt numb, and her hands were red with pain, but she couldn’t feel them, no more than she could feel what she was thinking. She pounded harder.
She never knew when the anger went and the fear settled in. The stairs were dead black expect for all the blinking lights, like eyes all around her. A camera hung overhead with a circle of red shining dots. The neon green exit sign glowed on top of her head. In its dim glow, Arianne could see the signs stuck on the other side of the wall. Do not enter. Do not advance. Stop. She began to shake again, fumbling at the railings and trying to grope her way down. How far up did I go? Her own breathing, heavy and wet, echoed back at her. Every turn she made down, the same red and green lights greeted her. Her anger vaporized to fear, then panic. No, no, no, no, no. She made another turn and tried the door. Locked. Down again. Locked. Locked, locked, locked.
Someone’s going to rush out behind me and kill me now, she thought crazily. And I’m going to die here as afraid as I’ve ever been in my life. She forgot the fight, forgot her words, forgot her anger. She was trapped in the maze. It’s all going to end somewhere, she thought, as long as I keep going. When a door finally yielded she almost sobbed again with relief, but the corridor it opened to was empty and black and desolate. Shattered glass and dust coated the floor, and wooden boards were laid across the walls. She let the door bang shut behind her as she turned and ran down again. Her bare feet pattered against the hard icy floor. Lydia, she thought. Tarra, Antony, father, mother, someone. Down and down and down some more. Could it be possible that she was so far away from where she was? I’m going mad.
The door opened. The hotel rooms were silent, but the lights were on. She circled around, trying to find their room. She found the elevator and waited.
When the doors opened, Arianne saw herself in the mirrors. Her eyes were red and swollen from crying, her arms scratched until they bled. Half of her face was pink from where she’d slapped herself. Her hair was all a tangled mess, and her shins and knees and palms were covered with dirt and dust and grime from where she’d knelt. What was I thinking?
The fit had passed, leaving her spent, scared, frantic. The anger and rage and hate and adrenaline that had fueled her on so violently had spit her out. Had she let it pass on its own, she would have wanted to find the room empty so she could recollect herself; but the anger had been drowned by fear, and she was shaking so bad she could not even walk properly, desperate for a pair of arms.
Someone, she thought. Anyone. I’m so scared, so scared, scared of going back, of not going back, about someone seeing and no one caring, afraid of myself, afraid of all of you. Make it stop, make it all stop. She ran along the doors and found their room, found the door closed. She rapped on the door, hard.
When Lydia pulled it open, her eyes widened in surprise. Arianne pushed her hand over the other girl’s mouth and whispered, “Don’t say anything.”
She shoved the door shut behind her, and wrapped her arms tight around the other girl’s waist.
Chapter 20 Lydia
“Liddy!” Her brother squealed as he threw himself into her arms. Lydia laughed and spun him around. Pate came to lick Mom’s shoes, and Dad took the bags from her. Rosie smiled and gestured a welcome, talking on the phone. She inhaled the smells of pasta and cinnamon. The whole room was bathed in warm yellow light. Everything was as she remembered, and she felt almost giddy with relief. I’m missed this, she thought. Missed the small overstuffed sofa and the cluttered desk, missed the smells and lights of home.
When she was sitting at her desk again, she found she did not know what to write. The Book lay silent in front of her, unmoving and speechless, whereas before she always thought she could feel it telling her what to do. She filled in the pages for the next day, and left the last few days blank except for a few sentences about where she went. Lydia stared at it a bit longer, and closed the pages, fitting the clasps to their notches.
“Mom, I’m going out with Martha!” Lydia swung her coat to her shoulders and walked to the door.
“So soon?” Dad frowned. “You just got back.”
“I’ll be home before ten.”
Mom waved her off. “Come home soon, honey.”
Martha was waiting at the café when Lydia got there. “I’ve missed you,” she said as they embraced. Lydia smiled. “Six days, Martha. How’s your dad?”
“He’s already back home, actually. I don’t know what I was so worried about.” She pushed the doors open, and the warm air rushed to greet them. “I guess I was just paranoid after last time.”
“Anyone would be.” Lydia sat herself down on a sofa. The familiar sounds of the coffee machine whirring and glasses clinking and talk filled her ears. Everything’s falling into place now. She often came here with her friends after school, and the familiarity and routine pleased her. “Oh, this is so good.”
“What is?” Martha scooted next to her and they looked over the menu. “I’ll take hot chocolate.”
“All of this. Everything’s so nice. So… normal.”
“Was your trip that bad?” Martha smiled.
Lydia grimaced. “I haven’t really got to thinking about it.”
“Arianne’s not that bad, Lydia. Really.”
“I guess so. Martha, does she… tell you anything about herself?”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know. A habit. A friend. Something.”
“Did you not talk to her at all after a week?” Martha sighed. “Typical.”
“No, we talked.”
“Why are you asking me, then?”
“I meant… anything personal?”
“That’s not really my place to say. I wouldn’t tell her about all your embarrassing experiences if she were asking me about you.” Martha smiled. “The pool?”
Lydia groaned. “We are never talking about that ever again. And I’ll kill you if you tell anyone.”
“That was kind of my point.”
“No, I’m just… I don’t really get how she thinks.”
“You can’t expect to understand everyone. Isn’t that what you say?”
“Well… yes, but only about people who don’t matter.” The words felt strange. Does she matter? She didn’t before.
Martha took the hot chocolate and passed Lydia’s cup to her. “Arianne just operates differently from you.”
“Do you know why?” Do you know why she cuts? Do you know if she cuts?
Martha looked at her. “You’ve taken up a sudden interest in the topic. What happened on your trip?”
She slammed the door in my face after calling me an idiot, and came back bleeding and crying. “It’s kind of complicated.” She wanted to just tell Martha and ask her what to do, but bit back her words. That’s not really my place to say.
“Okay.” Martha didn’t pry. “You could talk to her.”
“I tried.”
“Didn’t go well?”
“She laughed.”
“Oh.”
“No suggestions?”
“Maybe you could just… Slow down a bit?” Martha righted Lydia’s cup. “Careful there.”
“Thanks.” Lydia stared at her hands. She’d been looking forward to meeting with Martha, so she could tell her everything, like she always did, and Martha would put it right, so she would write her plans and leave clear-headed and sure about what to do. The feeling of not being able to tell Martha something was strange. We never had anything come between us. I told her everything… And she told me the parts that I didn’t brush off. Lydia was conscious that Martha had a life without her inside it, but had never cared. As long as she’s good to me, I’ll be good to her. Simple terms, simple principles. “It’s complicated.” She said again.
Martha smiled sympathetically. “It happens.”
Never to me. Lydia leaned her head against the other girl’s shoulder. “Forget about it. It’s not really important. Anything happen when I was away?”
“Oh… now that you bring it up, Devan Collings got together with Eva.”
Lydia sat up straight. “Really? Eva Jones? Oh my god, I can’t believe it.” She giggled. “And last time they said that Devan wasn’t ready to date anyone yet.”
Martha laughed. “I walked by them kissing on a bench.”
“When did this happen?” Lydia demanded.
“The day before yesterday…”
They fell back into the usual talk. This feels right, so normal. When they left clinging to another with laughter and sticky with chocolate, Lydia almost forgot the week before. Nothing has changed.
But when she turned the corner after waving a goodbye to Martha, she saw Raymond in front of her.
“Hi,” she said, catching up to him. She prayed her hair wasn’t sticking in a million directions.
“Oh, hey, Lydia.” He looked pleasantly surprised. “I thought you were out of town.”
You know that? “I got back this afternoon.” She tried to think of something clever to say, but found herself sneaking glances at his face instead.
“How was your trip?”
Why does everyone ask me that? “Oh...” She stuttered.
Raymond glanced at her and smiled. “Arianne Whitewood give you a bad time?”
Of course he would know. Everyone would know. “Not bad. I mean, not much.” They’d reached a crossroads. “You going left?”
“Right.”
“As in, right, right?”
“As in, not left.” He laughed.
“Oh. I’ll just…” She gestured to the side she was going.
“Yeah, okay.” He smiled. “Bye, Lydia.”
“Bye,” she mumbled.
When he was out of sight Lydia groaned and covered her face with her hands. Why am I such an idiot? Couldn’t find one single thing to say. When she started quickening her pace, she nearly tripped over a rock. At last he didn’t see that.
Chapter 21 Arianne
Purple, silver, pink
For have I nothing to think
Save for angels to drink
To pull me—Wings flapping—
Back, from the brink
And tell me that I
Am sinking;
Tell me that I
Lose nothing in drinking that drink;
The elixir that every and no thing would breach
To stop the chain of time
That snaps on link by link
To still
The shaking hand, the drawing of breath—
To stop
The spotted skin, the throbbing of heart—
And the very blood that runs through
This unworthy frame;
Black, as ink
February 2, Arianne’s book
Pax leaned back in her chair. “It’s sweet.”
“I didn’t remember when you’d found such a profound liking for mead.” Arianne sipped her own.
She wasn’t preparing to get herself drunk again today, and the mead was fine. When you’re not feeling it, you can’t understand, she’d told Lydia yesterday, and it was true. The sudden fits always descended from the outside, and occasionally she pleased herself by thinking that she was functional most of the time.
None of them have hurt me, not really. I’m okay, I’m strong. I can fix this, I can deal with it. Those were the “day” times, as she liked to call them, when she just put all of her problems to the back of her head and thought life wasn’t so bad, covered up her scars and her memories. The night before seemed like a bad dream, already fading quickly. When she put herself under the hot water and took some time to calm down, all of it seemed silly, shallow, not much of a big deal. It’s all okay now, now, now. Forget the past and forget the future.
She’d passed the rest of the journey in comfortable silence, blessedly unbroken. It was easy to steer Lydia off a topic for a while, but she always came back to it, stubborn and insistent. Thank god she stopped for once.
Pax brought her drinks to the restaurant after Arianne called her. Her suitcase was put next to the seats. Pax lounged in silence for a while, letting the sounds of clinking glasses and whirring machines and chatter fill the space, sipping at her glass. “How was the trip?” She asked at last.
“Not that bad. Was life without me cold and joyless?”
Pax snorted. “It was cold. Snowed the second day you were gone. Much better with you absent, though. They stopped trying to show off so much. And you always outdrink me when you’re here.”
Arianne grinned. “Not always. You remember the first few times?”
“Ahhh… Those were the better times. No extravagant speeches, no one challenging me and choosing the place for me. Just this little new girl.”
“When did I make speeches?”
“You don’t. They go over their heads trying to impress you though.”
“I get enough of it.”
“Must be horrible. Last time I dreamed I was you and Grandes was inviting me out for a lit party.” She shuddered.
“Does that even exist?”
“Maybe they serve books instead of wine.”
“I’ll pass if the books are picked by them.” Arianne liked books and poems and stories, and liked other people who shared her interest. That doesn’t mean I like people who pretend to like it for my sake. She knew all they saw was a money sign hanging over her head. Maybe my face too. But not my body, not my skin. Not that.
Pax crossed her legs. “Well, then you had to get drunk, and I would be the victim.” She heaved an exaggerated sigh. “After that you just got worse and worse, and someday I found the new girl was drinking more than I was.”
“Think on the bright side. I don’t get drunk that much again. Must be a delight for you.”
“A relief in some ways. I pity Tarra.”
“He’s not going to see me drunk again.”
“What, are you changing boyfriends again? I thought this one would last a bit longer.”
“I haven’t thanked you for covering up for me.”
“What?”
“The other night. He says you told him I was forced or something.”
“I didn’t.”
“You probably forgot. You weren’t much better off than I was, and I couldn’t remember a thing the next morning.”
“I definitely was ‘better off’ than you that time. You ever going to tell me?”
“Someday.”
Pax turned away slightly. There were new earrings studded in her ears; where there has been a long string of dangling chains last time, studs of metal drew their passage from her lobes to the top of her ears. A whorl of a tattoo peeked out from her collarbones. “That new?” Arianne asked, nodding at it.
“Yeah. Got it a few days ago.” Paxon’s marks on her body were the same as Arianne’s; beneath the surface. She never flaunted her tattoos, but underneath her clothes you would be hard-pressed to find a square of skin that wasn’t inked. Arianne appreciated it. The first time she’d shoved her sleeves up in the presence of the other girl, she’d looked her over, laughed, and lifted her shirt and turned her back to Arianne to give her a look. We’re all the same in our world, they’re all the same in theirs. Like draws to like.
Arianne thought that the saying “the world isn’t divided into black and white” was all wrong. She remembered her dream the night before, all the sharp ridges and clean-cut colors. It’s black, or it’s white. You understand, or you don’t.
Pax tipped her head to the side. “Thought as much.” Arianne could appreciate that too. She was sure Paxon had a rough idea of her problems, and she knew about the other girl’s, but they didn’t pry after prompting was rejected. Respect was due in their circle.
The sun was sinking when they left. Arianne felt her skin begin to pulse, the scratches she’d made yesterday stinging with the throbbing in her leg. Day going into night, white into black. She felt a little heady, even from the mead. Well, just as well if I’m going back now. “Call me if you need anything, okay?” The other girl asked.
“Sure.” Arianne smiled and waved her departure.
The house was a white crouching beast on the top of a rise of hills. Huge white pillars were thrust from the ground like bony white fingers clawing at the air, the outer walls all clean and polished to a white sheen. Dark windows were slapped onto the white marble like clean cut-out holes, the missing gaps from a child’s lost teeth. There had been a garden, once, she’d heard, but it had been long barren, though as neat and tidy as the rest of the house. Only grasses grew up from the ground. Green, Arianne counted, white, black. The sky was already purple and indigo and russet, like a bruise. Purple, blue, red, pink. She knocked, her suitcase lagging behind her.
Eliana opened the door. She had chosen white today, like some angel. White alpaca folds draped across her body and hid its outline, white gloves covering her hands. White slippers and a white ribbon in her hair. She was smiling, her blue eyes glowing in the fading light. She made to hug her, smelling of powder and perfume. “I’ve missed you so.”
“Mother.”
“Come in.” Eliana ushered her inside. “Are you cold? Your lips are so pale.” She’d even lit a row of white candles leading up to the counter, like an altar, where a meal for two had been set. “I’ve made dinner for you. You must be hungry. Are you tired from your trip?”
“A bit.” Arianne followed her mother in stiff, short steps. The suitcase hummed on the floor, clacking when it met a step.
“You should take better care of yourself.” Eliana fiddled with the zipper on her coat. Clack. Her body went dead. Her mother unzipped her coat and took it from her, setting it on the sofa. “You don’t have to wear so much inside. It’s warmer in here, in this house, in our home.” Her smile was fixed, like a mannequin’s. “Dear, do go clean yourself up. I’ve laid out your clothes for you. You must want to have a bath after your trip.”
“Yes, mother.” Her skin crawled, pulsing like warning signs. Her chest and arms and thighs had all caught fire. Clack.
“I’ll take your suitcase. Salla will come by tomorrow, wash up your clothes.”
“Yes, mother.”
“Go on now.” Eliana gave her a gentle push. “Don’t hurry, though. You mustn’t hurt yourself.”
When have I ever gotten injured because of a bath? She took her clothes off. The scars seemed more grotesque in the bright lights. I look like a pig waiting to be butchered, sliced up some already. Someone’s even put me under a nice cooking light. An uneasiness came over her, and she looked around her, listened for something. She heard her mother walking away from her room, then a bang as the suitcase was put on the ground and opened.
Her phone was in her pocket. She dialed the number as the water was filling up the tub, hoping the sound would mask her voice to her mother.
Tarra answered on the second ring. “This is early.”
“Tarra, do you have a second?” She tried to keep her voice normal.
“Yeah. What’s up?”
“When are you coming back?” Tarra was out of the town for a few days.
“A few more days, I think. Why?”
“Nothing. I’ll come meet you when you get back, okay?”
A long pause. A click. Arianne could hear forks clicking and people talking in the background, and the scrape of a chair as he got up, then quiet as he extracted himself from company. “Arianne, is something wrong?”
“No, nothing. I just… I miss you.” The water was almost full. “Tarra, I have to go now.” She shut the line down, then climbed into the tub. Her heart was pounding. Why did I call him? He’ll ask me about it later, when he gets back. I should have called Pax, maybe even Lydia. She turned over in the water and started to type a text to the former, then heard the door of her bedroom open. She shut her phone and reached for the bubble wash.
Eliana walked around her room first, outside the bathroom. She heard pillows and covers being shifted, then the rustling of clothes. Minutes had passed before she knocked on the door of the bathroom, and Arianne had slathered the foam into the water so thickly it was deep enough to hide her skin. Hopefully. She slid down deeper into the water and covered her chest with her arms, turning them inward.
Her mother was carrying a large fluffy white towel. She set it down on the counter next to the tub, her eyes roaming the room. “I brought you a towel.”
I can see that. “Thank you, mother.”
She sat down on the rim of the tub. Arianne shrank back. “Are you sure the water’s warm enough? You’re still so pale.” She dipped in a hand, pulled it out.
“No, mother, I’m fine. I’m just tired.”
Eliana stood up and picked her clothes up. “We’ll have to wash these, too.”
“I can take them out, it’s okay.”
Eliana didn’t respond. Her eyes had found her daughter’s neck. Arianne’s breathing spiked, and tried to slide down deeper into the water. “What’s that? Are you hurt?” She leaned down. Arianne felt even more naked than she already was, like her skin was being stripped off of her.
“No, it’s nothing. I got bit and I scratched too hard. It’s really nothing, mother.”
Her mother sat down again, leaned over, pulled the drain. Arianne pulled it back up. She’d pushed her knees up as she struggled to slide down and hide her neck and chest, and she felt the stripes on her thighs beginning to glow hot, but they were long dead memories already, faint and silver. She won’t see.
Eliana looked at her, long and hard. Her pale eyes traced along her legs, flitting to her arms.
But she knows.
Eliana pulled away and walked out of the room without another word, her daughter’s clothes in her arms. The world had shrunk to the bubbles in the water. She watched them pop, one after another, and all she thought was, I should have put the phone under the sink. The best that could be said was that at least she’d remembered to turn it off. She was still too scared for what was to come to feel anything. Later the feelings will come.
The outfit Eliana had laid out for her was lying on the bed waiting for her with its arms laid peacefully over its chest. A white silk shirt with a collar. Faded blue jeans, a knitted V-necked purple sweater. When she pulled it all on, she looked in the mirror and a shiver ran down her spine. I’m father. Her eyes looked purple with the color of the clothes, and the looseness of it all blurred the outlines of her body. But most of all she remembered him, in his white shirt and dark jeans, with purple eyes and a small smile. She had long forgotten his face, though, but once she had rummaged through Eliana’s jewelry box to find the photos. No wonder she stares at me, she realized, ten at most. I’m father. Eliana didn’t like her calling Aaron that, but she said it in her mind all the same. Father, mother, daughter.
The candles lit a way to the table. Eliana was already seated at one end. She smiled for her daughter. Or does she smile for him? Arianne sat gingerly on the other side.
“I’ve missed you,” Eliana said. “You keep going away, but I knew you’d always be back.”
Maybe she’ll get over it, if I just stay quiet long enough. It was not as if it had not happened before. Once, though, only once, and also after Arianne had been away for a long time. She put me in clothes much too big for me and pressed a cup of wine on me. It was the first time she had drunk, timid and sipping, but it had burned so much she almost finished the bottle off after the night had ended. And how she hated to see the outcome. The next day Eliana had looked at her in a way that chilled her, and she left again. The next time Arianne saw her was a year later. I can handle this. I’ve handled it before. Soon it’ll be my birthday and I can go away, far away.
“Listen to me.” Eliana pressed a soft hand to hers, and Arianne jolted. “Hear me. I’ve told you time and time again that I love you. Stay with me.”
That you love me. Arianne felt dizzy. Maybe you did. She’d wanted, once, to hear those words from her mother’s lips, and wondered if some twisted god had heard her and granted her wishes.
“You always said I was beautiful,” her mother murmured. “Would you look at me now and tell me that? Or did I throw it all away for you?” She gazed into the flames of the candles, reflected in her eyes. “I thought nothing would ever change, but then I saw you, and you saw me, and nothing ever mattered again. Did you leave me because of it? Because I wasn’t pretty enough, anymore? Would you still have me, if I were still young, and beautiful? We can be young again, Aaron. I know the best years of my life have long been past me, but we can, if you were with me.”
Her voice trailed off. She raised her eyes to her daughter’s face, searching it hungrily. “You haven’t changed one bit since I first saw you,” she whispered. “I knew it, I could feel it. You must have, too. We were seventeen, and it was us against the world. Mother would have me marry that dreadful Neddan Bryce, but that day… I saw you were standing right there at the other side of the pool, with your dark hair and purple eyes and I was right across you. I remember still the dress I wore. Blue and white, silk and lace, a pretty thing, as pretty as I was. You looked at me just like that, and I raised my flowers to my lips, and you nodded once and blinked so slowly I thought my heart would burst.
“I live that over and over and over, Aaron. Every night. I wanted to forget you and leave you like you left me, but I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t help coming back and back to you. Do you remember me? Do you think about me, too? You said I looked a porcelain doll the first time you met me, and the most beautiful thing you ever had. Would you forget so soon? It’s okay now, all of it. You’re back with me, you’re home.” Her voice trembled. “You get to be young forever, Aaron.” She raised a hand and traced the outline of Arianne’s face in the air, not quite touching her skin. “You’re beautiful, but I told you that already, did I? It’s okay if you want to wait. I can wait this time, as long as you want to. I wouldn’t mind being poor or hungry or anything, as long as I was with you.”
When she stood up, there were flowers in her hand, a bouquet as white as the rest of her. “Do you remember the first time I came to you? You were sitting on the ground in the shade of a tree, and your skin was dappled in the sunlight. When I sat down next to you I knew mother would say I’d ruined my best dress and scold me, but I knew I would never ever care again. I would throw it all away if I could have you, and I did. We could make it work, and set the world aflame.”
The blue eyes locked with the purple ones. “Come back to me, Aaron.” the intensity in her eyes burned. “Come on, now.” She tugged at Arianne, pulling her to her feet, and looked up at her.
The flowers, the dress, the candles, the dress, the dress, it’s a wedding dress. “Make me young again,” Eliana whispered. “Make me yours again. I’ll never want anything else in my life… Not again.”
Let me wake up. This is another dream, just another dream. Arianne’s scars pounded with her head. Just let it all end.
Arianne jerked back so violently the table shuddered. “No, mother.” She scrambled back. The scars were half-visible under her shirt. “Mother, stop, I’m not father, I’m not.” She knew that she should keep silent, keep quiet, keep still until it all passed and forget about it, but she was shaking so bad she couldn’t breathe or think. She was as scared as she was the night before, lost in the black stairs and blinking lights. My whole life I knew that if I just shut up and went along everything would just be forgotten, but somehow I’ve just never mastered it. “Mother…”
Eliana stared at her. The buttons on the top had been undone in her haste to scramble back, and the red and purple and silver all flashing like warning signs. Of an imposter. Eliana had dressed and dolled her up, but nothing could hide her skin. Stop, just make it stop, and I can go away and forget.
“You’re not him.” Eliana looked as though she were in a trance. “He was so beautiful. Had such smooth skin… And his hands, I always loved his hands.” Her gaze dropped down. Arianne’s nails were painted black.
“You’re not him,” she said again, and this time her voice was low and flat. “You ruined us. I thought he would love me when you came, but all you did was steal him from me and steal all my youth. And you don’t let me forget, never. You push me away when I try to love you.” Her mouth twisted. “Why can’t you just leave us? You were wrong. Wrong to be spawned, wrong for us. He would never have gone away had you not taken my life from me. I was never beautiful again after you.” Some of the candles had started to gutter, casting strange shadows around the room.
“Left me,” she whispered again. “When all I tried to do was love him.”
Eliana walked along the paths of the candles. The swaying, sputtering lights washed her in flickering shadows. She looked a ghost, a corpse queen in her white dress and white flowers. “He won’t again,” she murmured, as Arianne crept back. “He won’t. He won’t.”
Eliana looked up. “I forget myself, Arianne. It’s getting late, and you must be tired. Go to bed.”
“Yes, mother.” Her own voice was barely a whisper
Arianne turned the lock, even though she knew it was useless. She scrabbled at her clothes, pulling the outfit off, like she was pulling off another spirit stuck to her body. She stripped herself bare, and threw the clothes out of the window. Cold air bit and bit at her again, but wouldn’t numb her scars. Later, she thought. When she goes to sleep, I’ll be out of here. The last time anything like this had happened, Eliana had left the next day. I need my knife. But she knew it wouldn’t help now, when she was still too frantic, and would cut too deep.
Strange noises were pounding in her head. You shouldn’t hurt yourself. You mustn’t. Lydia’s stubborn words came back to bite her. Arianne laughed aloud. I’ll be mad before all of this is over. Screw “stronger than them”. I can’t deal with it, never have been able to.
She laid her arms over her eyes, tried to breathe, focusing on the pulse of her scars. One, two, three, four, five, six, she counted. If I focus, everything else will fade. The wind was raw on her skin. Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three. Arianne fell asleep.
When she woke again the room was freezing in gray light. Morning had crept in on her, and the rain pattered softly outside. Bits of ice clattered in from her open window. She crept up, stepping around the puddles. Sleet and rain stroked her hands and her face as she was forcing the window shut. I’m leaving.
When she tried the door, it was barred shut from the outside.
Chapter 22 Lydia
7:00- 10:00
New proj: S-2 Chem
Todo: topic on SC
Start on rev.
11:00
*lunch out
New Goals planner
Finish S-2 plans
February 3, The White Book
The day was cold and dreary, with sleet and rain and gray skies. Lydia thought nothing had ever looked more beautiful. He agreed, she thought giddily, and pushed a pillow over her face. I asked him, and I said… and he said…Oh…
When she walked out of her room with a huge smile on her face, everyone looked at her. Rosie tutted as she prepared to go to work and Mom gave her a knowing look with a little smile. “Why’s everyone so happy?” Dad demanded. He was nursing a cup of coffee with his computer screen glowing brightly in front of him.
“Lydia’s going out on a date.” Jack said in a sing-song voice and wriggled his eyebrows. Mom laughed.
“It’s not a date. We’re just having lunch.” Is it?
“Yeah, she’s on a date.” Rosie bit her hairband between her teeth and quickly pulled her hair up.
Dad squinted. “Why did I not know about this? I want to know if my daughter has a boyfriend.”
“Dad!” Lydia’s face was hot. “We don’t even know each other!”
Rosie patted her sympathetically, but didn’t bother wiping off the smirk on her face. “I went through it.”
Lydia was still blushing a little when she finished her breakfast and went back to her room. Should I dress myself up, straighten my hair, something? She had gone through a dozen outfits by the time it was ten o’clock. At last she just pulled her hair back in a band and settled for a white coat. In truth, it was not very different from what she usually wore. It should suffice.
She’d called Raymond and asked him out, tripping over her words a little. He’d agreed. Well, what am I supposed to do now? The Book was silent again, so she drew her thoughts from her other cache of thought. Solve a problem when you meet it, and don’t be afraid.
She was hurrying out of the house with her head in the clouds and almost didn’t hear the ringing. “Honey, your phone.” Mom pointed to her pocket, where it was flashing bright lights.
“Oh. Oh, right.” She held the phone to her ear, hopping on one leg as she pulled on her shoes. “Hello?”
The voice on the other end of the line was a boy’s, and for a second she almost thought it was Raymond. But the voice was lower, quieter, not someone she knew. “Is this Lydia Strayen?”
“Speaking.” She mouthed a goodbye to her parents and Jack and closed the door.
“Hi, Lydia, it’s Tarra.”
She stopped on the stairs. “Oh… Hi, Tarra. What is it?”
“Sorry to disturb you. I just wanted to ask… Is Arianne with you?”
“No.” She frowned. “Didn’t she go home yesterday?”
“Oh. I thought so. You haven’t seen her after that?”
“No. What’s wrong?”
“She isn’t answering my calls. I asked some of her friends and none of them have seen her.”
“Wait, do you mean she’s missing? She went home after we got back. Have you been there?”
“I’m not in town, and no one knows where she lives.” He sighed. “I thought, since she was with you on the trip, maybe… Well, thanks, Lydia. I just wanted to check.”
“Okay. Could you tell her to call me or something if you get in contact with her?”
“Of course. Thanks again, Lydia. Bye.”
“Bye.”
Lydia dialed Arianne’s number. Twelve long rings before the line went dead. Sorry, the other user is busy… There was no voicemail. Lydia tried to push down her anxiety. Maybe she’s just drunk, or something. There could be a lot of reasons why she isn’t answering our calls. She couldn’t help remembering the last night, then the scars on the other girl’s arms. She was still thinking about it when she got to the restaurant, but the thought got pushed out of her head when she saw him, leaning against a wall.
Raymond had his earphones on, his eyes closed and his hands shoved into his pockets. His lashes were a tangle of gold. Lydia walked over to his side. “Hi,” she said, a little breathlessly.
His eyes opened, and they were as green as her own. “Glad you came.” He smiled. “You look pretty today.”
“Thanks.” She said, a bit awkwardly. She felt like her brain had short-circuited. “Um, are we going inside?”
He held the door for her as she walked inside. “Did you bring books with you?” Raymond asked, eyeing her backpack. “I thought we were just having lunch.”
“No no, I wasn’t going to do work or anything. It’s just, uh, I carry my Book with me. To a lot of places.”
“I’ve heard about it.” He sat down opposite her. “Mind giving me a look?”
“Oh.” Lydia had never let anyone look in it, much less anyone she barely knew, no matter how much she liked him.
“You don’t have to if you don’t want to,” he said. “I’m just curious.”
“Thanks. Uh, the Book is a planner and schedule sort of thing, but it’s just become sort of a bigger thing for me.”
“I know. It’s one of things that’s interesting about you.”
Lydia felt her brain go dead again, but he went on. “I don’t see a lot of girls who like medicine. Especially neurosurgery. It is neurosurgery, isn’t it?”
“A lot of girls like medicine,” She said, affronted. “And neurosurgery, for that matter. It’s interesting. Don’t you ever feel pulled to solve a problem when it’s there?”
“Yes?”
“I like medicine and surgery in particular because everything’s really rational and orderly, but also because every task is like a puzzle that you have to try. There’s no turning away. And neurosurgery is like the puzzle that has the smallest pieces. It calls for perfection.”
“I guess you could put it that way. Some people might say it’s too much of a burden, though.”
“That’s kind of the point.” Her tongue had loosened when she came back to the talk she was interested in, and she wondered too late if she’d said the wrong things. “I never came around to asking about you though.”
“What about me?”
“What you want. To do, I mean. In the future.”
“I’m not really sure about it. Maybe something about education, I think. I like teaching people and I like kids.” He laughed. “Right now, though, all I really like is basketball.”
Her mind flashed to a picture of him playing under the sun. “You’re really good at it. I watched the other day, that last time…”
The subject carried them halfway through lunch, and cut effortlessly into other topics. This isn’t so bad, Lydia thought, as he laughed. It’s not that hard. Far too soon, though, they were at the doors again. The rain had half-stopped into a light drizzle, and Raymond pulled his hood over his head as they walked together, his umbrella loose in his hand. “That was nice.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled. She focused on stepping over the puddles.
“Do you want to go somewhere else next time?”
“Oh, sure. Of course.” There’s a next time? They had reached the spot where they would be going in different directions again. “Um, see you next time, then.”
He smiled. “Bye, Lydia.”
It was evening when she remembered about Arianne.
Chapter 23 Arianne
Arianne turned the lock. Once. Twice. Three times. Clockwise and counter-clockwise and back again. The door rattled but didn’t open.
“Mother?” She pounded at the door. “Mother, let me out.”
The house was dead quiet, save for the wind and rain. She could not hear the footsteps that she usually woke to, nor the rustling of skirts. The rain pattered at her window, beating a steady rhythm. “Mother?” She tried to press an eye to the cracks of the door and look outside, but saw nothing except a sliver of light. All the candles had gone out.
She circled her room, trying to find something. My phone, where’s my phone? She remembered how Eliana had taken her coat and rummaged through her suitcase, then came to her bathroom and took her clothes away. The clock that was usually set on her desk had stopped at three in the morning, the batteries pulled out. When she opened her closet, all of her clothes were gone. Arianne looked out of the window. Such a long drop. She could see the clothes she’d flung out last night in her panic puddled at the foot of the house, soaked in rain and ice.
She was shivering as she crouched again to the door, trying it again. Could I just break it down? But she wasn’t strong enough to drag her table over here and shove the door down, and anyway it wasn’t a lock keeping the door shut. She could feel something pushing at it from the outside. It’s so cold. She wondered if Eliana would really just lock her inside her room and leave her to die. She’ll have to let me out sometime. Her mother’s fits always came in bursts and spasms. Once this one passes it’ll all be okay. I’ll forget this and go away, far, far away.
Her body didn’t agree with her thoughts. Her head was pounding so much she wasn’t sure if it was the sleet slamming at the window or just her delusion. Her hands shook and she was breathing much too fast, though from panic or cold she could not be sure. The scars on her body had lit up red hot and searing, winding around her legs up to her abdomen and arms. “Mother,” she whispered again, and rattled the door. Arianne wondered if Eliana would let her out sooner if she groveled and begged, or shove her in for a longer time. What if she’s left for good?
When the rain finally stopped she had curled up beneath the sheets, burning with fever and panic. The ghosts had crowded in around her. Eliana took her hand and smiled at her and whispered, “Don’t leave me.” Lydia Strayen frowned at her with disapproval, and said, “Maybe you should stop running away. I could help you.” Paxon clinked her glass to Arianne’s and watched her calmly as the ink on her skin devoured her face. Resme knelt in front of her and kissed her hand, then smiled up at her with the eyes of a wolf. Eriyan giggled and spun around in her pink gown. The cool gray eyes of Tarra Morband trailed from her feet to her neck, and ripped her body open from the seams of her scars. Antony led the way in front of her, but when she caught up to him his face had turned to Aaron’s, and she was looking into a mirror. Lissanda stroked her hair and whispered comforts, but Quetin hissed, “inhuman, abomination.” Arianne shuddered. “Stop,” she whispered. “Someone make them stop.”
Stop, she thought, but her mind was too blurry. Stop making me remember. It was too late, and the gates had opened.
She was four years old again, peering around her door. Her mother and father were sitting together on a couch, Eliana pressed against her lover, her arms around his torso. Eliana’s hair was pale gold, her frame as slight as a bird’s. Aaron had his eyes half closed, and was playing with her hair.
“Tell me you love me, Aaron,” she said, and her voice trembled.
Aaron gave her the same lazy smile that his daughter would master years later. “’Course I do.”
“Where are you going this time, then? You told me we would stay here.” Eliana looked up into his face. “You promised.”
“I’ll stay. That doesn’t mean I’ll be here every second, Eliana. I don’t want to argue about this again.”
“What about last time?” Eliana fretted. “I was so scared.”
“I came back. We have our daughter now, don’t we? Little Arianne.” He smiled, and shook his head a little. “My poor silly overwrought Eliana,” he said, and pressed his nose to her hair. “I love you, you know that.”
“I do,” her mother whispered, and clutched him tighter. “But when can we marry? You tell me time and time again—”
“Eliana,” Aaron cut her off, pulling back. “Why do we have to prove our love through a piece of paper? We have a daughter, and we’re together. A few words don’t mean that we belong together, this does.”
“Oh, well—yes, I suppose, but—Oh, Aaron, don’t you see how perfect it would be? It would just be us. Nothing else would matter, only us. We would show them that. And you would be mine and I would be yours…”
“I am yours.”
“You are, but—we would share things, then. I know how people talk about you living on me. When we marry, I could give everything to you. No one would talk again.”
“I don’t care about them.”
“Well, of course you don’t. But it would make me happy, Aaron. Truly.”
“Eliana, we’re barely old enough. Next year. Alright? I promise, I love you.” He turned away a little, and stretched out his legs. “Where’s Arianne?”
Eliana waved her hand. “In her room, I think. Aaron, I really want to talk about—” But her lover had stood up, and Arianne was running toward him.
The memories were sweet. So sweet, until they all burned down. Eliana would fuss over her and smile and coddle her, but mostly for her lover’s benefit. When they were alone, very occasionally she would look at Arianne with something that almost looked like resentment, though Arianne’s eyes had not learned to recognize it at the tender age of five. Most of all it was Aaron, with his smile and his strong arms that would pick her up and twirl her around as she laughed. He would let me ride on his shoulders, and tickle my neck. But he would leave, though, always, and she would be left on her own.
Her parents fought, sometimes, and Arianne would cry. Aaron would take her in his arms and comfort her, and sometimes Eliana, but more of the time she was just forgotten. When the fights ended on a good note, there would be time for her, but not always. On the bad days, though, when Aaron slammed the door and Eliana came back sobbing, Arianne would pull at her skirts and Eliana would slap her hand away. “You stole him”, she said once. “He isn’t mine anymore. You came between us.” Arianne had not been old enough to understand at the time, but the words had stuck to her as she grew up. Thief added itself to the chant of abomination, inhuman, liar, pretender in her head.
But there were other times also, when Eliana would hug her and cling to her, sobbing. She would cover me in kisses and hold me as we fell asleep. There were a few days when they just spent the days in sullen silences and baleful glares, too, and those were the days even Aaron would ignore her and brush her away after a curt, “Eliana, the girl’s crying again.”
When she was six, the day came when Aaron left and never came back. It had been a good day before, and Arianne had not understood why her mother was anxious. Aaron had been back for a few nights after his trip to somewhere before, and whispered words of love to them both. “I swear, Eliana,” she’d heard him say to her mother. “Swear that I love you. Forever. Forever. Yes.” And he had played with her for a while, and after that Eliana paid more attention, too. Everything seemed to be falling into place.
The next day when she came back from school, the house was quiet again. Eliana lay on her side, reading a book.
“Mommy, where’s Daddy?” When I could still call them that. They’re in their graves now, both of them.
Her mother sighed. “I don’t know. He’ll be back soon, he said.” She closed the book. “This is his.”
Nothing changed…for a while, at least. Eliana still cared for her, but her gaze had grown more and more distant, and at times Arianne would find her marooned in one of her silences, waiting at the door. She grew more impatient, too, and the first night Arianne saw her with the white pills in her hand she had shoved her daughter into her room and locked her inside. She let me out that time, after a day.
The memories were strange, twisted somehow. There seemed to be two people in her mother’s body, two sets of memories in Arianne’s head. There was the woman who would hold her and hush her gently, and stayed by her bedside as she grew sick, and hugged her when she got her achievements in school, kissed her after she stumbled and fell… But there was the other shadow too, who shoved her daughter away as she cried and glared at the girl while she sat silent, and locked her in her room as she took her drugs. Finally, there came one day when the latter won out, when Arianne came home to find Eliana crying with anger. “He’s left. I should have known he would. I was a fool for believing him… loved me, didn’t he? All he loved was my body and my money. He’ll never come back.”
“Who, mommy?”
Eliana threw the books Aaron had left on the ground. She looked at Arianne like she didn’t know who the girl was. “And he took nothing away. I’ll have to pay his debts. As usual.” Eliana’s eyes were flashing with anger and pain. “I thought you would keep him if I couldn’t, but you’re too useless to do even that. And now I’m stuck with you, it seems.”
“Momm—”
“Don’t call me that. Go away.” Eliana threw the door behind her, and came back with her walk lopsided and teetering. When she fell asleep, Arianne covered her with a blanket and crept away.
Chapter 24 Lydia
I’m crazy to think it. I’m crazy not to think it. Lydia remembered the scars, the words. Tarra saying, she isn’t answering my calls. “She’s not dead,” Lydia whispered to herself. “She didn’t kill herself.”
The doubt gnawed at her. She tossed and turned, trying to get to sleep. What if it’s true? What if something’s happened? Someone else would go after her if she was really missing, would they? All her friends, all those people. No one knows where she lives. Neither did Lydia. It wasn’t her responsibility. And only a day had passed, nothing could be concrete. Anything could have happened. Probably why no one had gone looking for her.
She remembered the girl who had shared her strawberries with her, the girl who had listened to all her secrets. The girl who laughed as they walked under glittering lights. The girl who had sobbed in her arms and spoke awash in moonlight. She trusted me, only a little. I tried, but it was a problem I couldn’t solve.
Lydia threw back the covers. She’s just a girl. She picked up the phone. How do I know where she lives? The place is huge, all I know is that it’s on the outskirts and is a big house.
“Hi. It’s Lydia. Lydia Strayen.”
“Did anything happen?” Tarra sounded tired.
“No, I just want to ask something. You’ve never been to her house?”
“No one goes there.”
“Could you find it? Search the web, something? Call the police?”
“I don’t think the police need to be involved if a girl doesn’t answer her calls for one day. Do you know anything… She said on her trip, maybe?”
“Not really.” Lydia bit her lip.
Tarra sighed. “Maybe I’m just overreacting. She could have just lost her phone. It’s just that she when she called me, that last day… when you came back. She sounded strange, and then cut off the line after a few seconds.”
“I don’t think you’re overreacting.”
“You’re the only person besides Paxon who says that. I actually called the school, asked for the address, but they said it was privacy and wouldn’t give it. They’d have to pull out all the records for that, and it’s break now anyway. She told me she’d go over, maybe drive around or something if Arianne still didn’t show up after tomorrow. Maybe you--”
Solve the problem. “I’ll go. Tomorrow.”
Chapter 25 Arianne
Arianne cupped her hands under the tap and brought the water to her mouth. At least I have water. All she wanted to do now was sleep, but even with the quilts it was too cold without the heating turned on, and for that she would have to go out to the grand room. The water was cool against her skin, though. She touched her forehead. The room is cold, but I’m burning up.
The sky was dark already. Arianne had slipped in and out of consciousness, getting up only occasionally to get a drink from the bathroom. Maybe it’s better if I’m sick. This way at least I won’t feel hungry for some time. Her mother still wasn’t home. Eliana was usually back before it got too late, but Arianne had no idea what time it was. The nights all looked the same, especially rainy nights. When she walked back to her bed, she had to keep a hand on the wall to keep herself from falling.
She wrapped the covers around her and lay down, curling up. They were smooth on her bare skin. “Arianne?” Antony whispered in the darkness.
No, no, ignore him, he’s nothing but a memory, nothing but a ghost. Arianne shoved the sheets around her ears. “Stop,” she groaned. “Let me go, please.” Her head hurt as much as her scars. “Arianne,” they said again, insistent. The calling pounded with the beat of her pain. Arianne, Arianne, Arianne. Her world was spinning. Arianne, Arianne.
She slipped again.
“Why are you crying, Arianne?” Lissanda leaned over her.
My mother left me, she wanted to say, she only comes back once a week. But she knew she couldn’t say that, or bad things would happen. “My father left us,” she mumbled instead. “I’m really sad that he’s gone.”
They were in third grade then, her and Lissanda and Quetin and Eriyan; girls, all of them, little girls with wide round eyes. It was the year when Eliana started pulling away from her, started taking the white powder she hoarded. Lissanda was a bright girl with brown skin and brown eyes, Quentin a pretty blonde little girl, and Eriyan with skin the color of porcelain, a simple headed girl with dreams of ponies and fairies. We were friends at first, the four of us.
“Oh.” Lissanda looked confused. “Well, he’ll be back, won’t he?”
“No. He’ll never come back. Mother says so.”
“Is he dead?” Quetin asked.
“I don’t know. He might be.” She looked at them, imploring. “I’m really scared. What do I do?”
“If he’s not dead, why are you scared?” Quentin asked. “He’ll be back soon.”
“No, he won’t.” Arianne whispered. “I’m just really, really scared…”
“Why?” Lissanda asked.
“I’ll be left on my own,” she mumbled. “And there’ll be no one for me.” She might have told them about the way her mother’s words slurred after a night shut up in her room and the way she would look and look and look at her, and sometimes talk to her in ways that she couldn’t understand, but didn’t know how to say it.
“You won’t be on your own,” Quetin said. “There’ll be other people to take care of you.”
“But I don’t know what to do. I…” She trailed off, unsure.
Lissanda patted her on the shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, you’ll see. We’ll help you.”
It will, she thought. Mother will be herself soon. It’ll be okay. It will.
It hadn’t got better when she turned twelve. She certainly hadn’t. She found her friends shying away from her, giving her strange looks and pointedly stopping the conversation when she joined the conversation. Whenever she tried to say something about herself, Quetin, who had always had the least patience, rolled her eyes openly and turned away, while Eriyan and Lissanda shifted in uncomfortable silence. I was needy and clingy and obsessive. I can’t blame them for distancing me.
Even so, the memory was bitter. When Quetin started stop talking to me, the rest of them all followed, even Lissanda. Even Eriyan. She was stranded in her silences. There had been teachers, counselors to talk to her, but she could never tell them everything, only a part of it. And they would look at me the same way Lissanda did, and tell me things would turn out fine. At first Arianne would try to protest, but after a while she just nodded and smiled. It was the first year she started cutting.
She might have done worse had she not met Antony. He was three or four years older than her, with a kind smile and soft eyes. He listened, and didn’t protest, but most of all he saw her, saw her scars and her bruises and her dreams. She met him only because she had to pair up with him on a project and the school had assigned the older students as mentors to the younger ones, but ended up saying too much, and he was so patient and gentle all of it came pouring out of her, all the hurts and silences and stares and loneliness, and that day he took her in his arms.
“I’ll take care of you, Arianne.”
She had read about falling in love; and perhaps this was everything it was supposed to be. At thirteen she was holding his hand as they walked through the streets, clinging to his arm, laughing as he licked the ice-cream drops off her melting cone. He would listen to her talk about her world of books and characters, the world that everyone scorned, especially Eliana.
“What are you doing?”
“Reading, mother.”
“Where did you find that?”
“In your room, mother. It was next to your bed. I’m sorry if I shouldn’t have taken it…”
“Put it back. And don’t take my things again.”
Later she would find out all the books were Aaron’s, and her mother had been trying to go through them, find a whisper of her lover. Once she even tried to talk to Eliana about it, but her mother had turned away. “Aaron and his books,” she muttered. “You’re just like him. When he was reading I could never reach him. He had a world locked up in his skull, kept away from me. No. Don’t ever ask me about that again.”
Antony would listen to her talk of spirits and ghosts and dreams, of angels with wolf’s teeth and burning red eyes, read her poems and give her his. Soon she had told him everything, from the moment Aaron had left them to Eliana’s brooding silences. He would hold her if she cried, and kiss her tears away. I was fourteen. She thought often of going to live with Antony the next time Eliana left, but he would smile and say that his parents might mind. “I can be quiet,” she’d whispered.
“I know,” he would say. “I’m sorry, Arianne.”
He always told her that he loved her because of her mind. I was drowning, and he pulled me ashore. I was silent, and he prompted me to talk. I was scared, but he made me laugh again. It might have been very sweet, had it all been real. She told him everything, and might have given him even more that year, had she not found him in her room with a handful of her mother’s jewelry.
He was so scared that moment I saw him. Then he had pushed away, and ran from the house. It was the day Eliana came home, and dressed her up in Aaron’s clothes for the first time, and the first time Arianne tasted alcohol. It burned so much, and felt so good. It was strange how, the next morning when she was done being sick, the panic that rose in her was not for her lost life or love, but for how much Antony knew. They’ll all know now, everything I told him. She was so scared the next few days that she pretended she was sick as not to go to school. No one would contradict me, anyway. The rest of the year she had shut herself up and become a shadow in the back of the room, even though as far as she knew Antony had never told anyone yet, the knowledge of his knowledge was enough to drive her mad. Every day she would wake up wondering if everyone knew what she was.
At the end of the year, she had persuaded Eliana to let her move to the new town, and there her mother had bought the white house she came to live in up till now. The new demeanor came to her easy. As long as I sweep the past beneath me, it will never have happened. She had been twelve when the clingy, needy child started to cut, thirteen when the brave girl with a smile plastered to her face all the time lost her first kiss, and fourteen when she melted into another shadow among the walls. She was fifteen when the new girl made a new name for herself in the new school, started catching invitations and smiles from others, and lost her kisses by the tens. She was sixteen when she met Paxon and sixteen when she met Tarra.
What will I be next time? Arianne thought. She felt her body floating in spirals. Maybe I won’t live that long. She had to laugh, and the sound hurt.
Day and night had blurred together. Have I slept through one night, or two? Arianne saw her mother standing above her, clad in her wedding dress, and turned to face the walls. “You again,” she mumbled. “No, not again.” She’d had enough of her visitors in her room for a lifetime.
Eliana sat down on her bed and peeled back her covers. Arianne let her. She’ll go away soon, and l can have another dream, though perhaps not much better than this one.
Her mother’s eyes probed her scars. “You’ve always prided yourself on being strong, Arianne.”
She closed her eyes. Her mother’s voice came from far away. “You think you could pretend to me? All you want to do is be what I want. Just like I used to, for him. But we’re different, you see. I gave every part of me to Aaron, while you gave me only half.” She laughed a short, high little laugh. “Not so strong now, are you? Mother will let you out when you’ve learnt your lesson.”
Her fingers were cool against Arianne’s skin. “Do you remember that time when you were seven? You were burning with fever. I sat by you day and night, and scoured the world for your medicine. It was raining outside, a thunderstorm in the middle of summer, and I came back soaked and bedraggled. All for you, but you didn’t give me anything. I wanted to love you, but you did nothing right. You brought this upon yourself.”
“Do you know why I chose now?” Eliana leaned over her, forced her eyes open, flipped the lights on. “Look at me, Arianne. I want you to know. I want you to see me. I know you think you can run away once your birthday comes next year, just like he did. I let him leave once, fool that I was. I’ll never let him leave again. This time is different. I’ll let you out, yes… But never let you go.”
Her face loomed over Arianne’s, a pale white mask. Arianne squirmed back feebly. “Go away,” she whispered, with no strength in her voice. The sounds in her head were getting too loud, and she was shuddering with heat and cold.
Chapter 26 Lydia
“Stop here.”
Lydia climbed out of the car. It should be this, she thought, looking up at the white mansion. Does she live in that house alone? It sat on the crest of the rising hills, overlooking the city. The classic style of the building with its spirals and pillars contrasted starkly with the crammed apartments and glass-and-brick buildings around Lydia’s part of the town.
When she reached the doors, she stopped. Rain was pattering softly around her, masking any sounds inside. The blank white door stared at her, expressionless. What if I go inside, and find a body? Her heart hammered. Solve the problem. She knocked. Once, timid, then again, insistent. When the door opened she sighed with relief, but the woman standing in front of her wasn’t Arianne.
The woman was dressed all in white, giving off a thick scent of perfume. Her face was delicate and pale, but her body bulged and sagged beneath the white folds of her dress and her eyes were lined with a blankness that startled Lydia. “Hi… I’m sorry to disturb you. Is this Arianne’s house? Arianne Whitewood.”
“I’m her mother.”
Oh, thank god. “I’m her classmate. I was just wondering… She hasn’t been returning our calls. Is she at home?”
Arianne’s mother stared at her for a moment. “No,” she said at last. “I thought she was out for one of her… occasions.”
“She didn’t come back the day before yesterday? I was with her when we came back. From the trip.”
“She left last night.”
Last night. Nothing added up here. “Are you sure?”
“Yes. Is there anything else?” She made to shut the door.
“No… Thank you.” The blank white door clicked shut.
When Lydia was walking back down, she looked back. A small square of light fell across the rain, but other than that the house was black and quiet and empty. That doesn’t mean anything. She circled back, looking up. Only one light from the window at the side was lit up. At the foot of the house under the single light, there was something strewn over the ground in a heap. For one mad second Lydia almost thought it was a corpse, but when she walked next to it it was just a pile of clothes, white and purple and black.
Arianne’s scars flashed before her eyes, slashing the white and green landscape up with brutal cuts of purple and silver. She saw the other girl’s lazy smile and how she raised a bottle to the air before downing it, laughing. A toast to all of you. She heard, Friends aren’t always good to their companions. And parents aren’t always good for their children. The house seemed desolate, dead, nothing like the palace she’d imagined. Tarra saying, It’s just that she when she called me, that last day… when you came back. She sounded strange, and then cut off the line after a few seconds. Her own thoughts came back to bite at her. What if she’s killed herself? The woman in white with her blank pale eyes saying, she left last night.
She bent down and picked the clothes up. Isn’t there something that can prove her, a mark, the size? It could have been Arianne’s, but it would have fit on her mother fairly well too. Under the single light above the shirt looked white, though soaked through with rain and brown and green stains, but there were thin russet marks on the sleeves.
Lydia turned back, and began to run. When the door opened again she found herself face to face with Arianne’s mother again. “What is it?” The woman asked. She didn’t sound irritated, but her tone had a dreamy, far off quality.
“Arianne’s in the house. She left her clothes under her room.”
“And who are you?”
Her skin crawled. “I’m Arianne’s classmate. Please, I think something went wrong here. I know that—”
“She’s not at home. She left a night ago.”
Lydia stared at her. No, she almost said, she’s been silent for two days. Her mind whirred. “Arianne—”
“She’s not here.” The woman’s voice remained vague. “Please don’t disturb me. Are you leaving now?”
“She told me everything about her.”
The pale eyes seemed to focus for the first time before they glazed over again. “What do you mean?”
“She told everyone. All of us. Everyone knows. About the things that happened to her.”
The woman laughed. “Arianne,” she said. Her words had went from vague to slurred. “It’s always Arianne, isn’t it? My little girl.”
Lydia felt like her eyes couldn’t focus. The face in front of her had blurred to a mist of blinking neon dots. “Everyone knows,” she said again. “And if anything happens to her—”
“Oh, nothing will happen to the darling girl. Such a precious little gem, everyone will love her.” The woman’s tone lilted. Lydia felt another rush of dizziness, heard her own thoughts shouting back to her: Everyone loves her. What does she have?
“Let me in.” Lydia pushed at the door. “I’m calling the police if you don’t let me in. Everyone knows what happened to her, they’re telling--”
“The girl was always a fast liar.” Arianne’s mother smiled through the haze Lydia’s vision had become. “But you’d have to be a child to believe what she says.”
“Are you letting me inside or not? I’m calling the police right now if you don’t, whatever Arianne said was true or not.” Whatever she said. She pushed inside. Top floor, she thought, remembering the light. The room at the end of the corridor was barred across with a firm metal bar. She could hear footsteps behind her, and her vision blurred again. Her breaths came in short fast puffs. When Arianne’s mother stepped up the top of the stairs, the woman was crying and laughing. “He’s not leaving me because of her again. Not again. No, no, no.” She laughed a high-pitched laugh and clutched at the railing. “It’s always her. I made her. When I see him coming back to me, it’s always her instead. She makes everything wrong. She’s not right, not even a human. She’s just something that went wrong. Abomination.”
The bar was locked into place at its two ends. Lydia fumbled with the clasps. If anything happens to me because of Arianne, I might just throttle her for it. The two locks had loosened, and she rotated the bar until it came loose enough to drop. Lydia pressed her back to the door. The woman’s face was nothing but a pile of shifting bright dots. “Listen,” she whispered. “If you do anything like this to her again, ever, I’ll call the police and see that you stay inside until your bones rot.” Her words were coming fast now, as fast as her breathing, words she would never be able to carry out and never knew why she said save for the anger that drove her on. “Leave the house. Now. Don’t come back to her here again. If you try anything to hurt her, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
There was the sound of laughter and sobbing until the laughter ceased completely. Lydia felt her head swimming. Nothing makes sense. I’m not making sense. “Do you understand me?”
She thought she heard a yes before she turned to push the door open. It yielded. The room was bathed in the light she’d seen from outside, the closet doors thrown open and a bowl of broth on the table. The girl was curled up beneath the sheets, her hair spread out in a dark mass over the pillow. “Arianne?” Lydia knelt by the bed. The other girl moaned and turned her head away, pulling the sheets up around her head. What’s wrong with her? “Arianne, it’s Lydia.”
When she wrenched the covers out of Arianne’s hands and pulled them down, she jerked them back up again. There was nothing underneath to cover the stripes on her body, and her skin was burning with heat. What do I do with her now? Take her to my home? Take her to the hospital? Stay with her here? She could not hear the sounds of Arianne’s mother outside the door, but she would still be here for a while, and the thought made her edgy. At least there’s no one at home for now. Everyone would be at work, except for Jack, who would hopefully be at some playmate’s home.
“Can you walk? Arianne, look at me.” Lydia drew her coat down and pulled it on over the other girl. It was cut long, so at least it covered her up to the knees, although it wouldn’t do much good for keeping her warm. She pulled the zipper up the front and hauled the other girl to her feet. Arianne mumbled and clutched at her and Lydia almost fell. Oh, this is going to go great. “Let’s get you out of this place.”
She managed to get the other girl to her apartment. She prayed no one was home. Please don’t let Mom or Dad be back home for some reason. Lydia shoved the key into the lock.
Chapter 27 Arianne
“Drink,” the other girl said, and pressed a cup of brown liquid into her hands. It smelled of herbs. “It’s for your fever.”
Arianne leaned back on the pillows. “Thanks.”
Lydia sighed. “At least you’re talking now. Arianne, I’m calling the police.”
“No.”
“What do you mean, no? Someone barred you up in your room and might have left you inside to die. You would have, with that fever.”
“No. Not now.”
“When, then? Arianne—”
“No.” She turned away. “When are your parents coming back?”
“You’re imprisoned in your own house, and that’s what you worry about?”
She closed her eyes. “Thanks. For pulling me out.”
“Thank me after I’ve called the police.”
“No, Lydia. Just… please. Not now. I’m tired.” Her words sounded far off. When the other girl started to answer, she had already slipped back to sleep.
When Arianne opened her eyes again, the room had slipped into blackness. She could hear sounds from outside the room, clinking forks and chatter, light leaking in from the door cracks. For a brief moment she wondered if Eliana had a visitor, then she remembered. What am I going to say? Do they even know there’s another person shoved into their home? Did Lydia tell them? Her fever had broken, but her arms trembled to hold her weight as she pushed herself up, and her mouth was dry and parched. As she sat up, she saw herself in the small mirror hanging above Lydia Strayen’s bed, in a long sleeved knit sweater pulled over a large T-shirt that came down to her knees.
She sat there for a moment with her knees pulled up under the coverlets, listening to the sounds outside. Lydia Strayen, she thought, incredulous. When she had heard the urgent knocking at the door, her first thought was of the police, then Tarra, before she remembered him not being in town. For a wild moment she even thought of Aaron, coming back after eleven years, and Pax, with her indigo hair dripping with rain. The faint sounds downstairs were difficult to decipher, though, but Arianne heard the sound of the door being closed well enough. Then came the commotion at her door. Stop talking, she’d thought, stop being so loud.
Lydia Strayen, with her mop of messy red hair and unflinching green eyes. The nerdy girl who walked around everywhere carrying a book under an arm, who would go into rants about the things she’d planned for herself. The girl who had endlessly, needlessly pried at Arianne during their trip, snapped at her and groaned and rolled her eyes and stamped her foot. The girl who held her as she ran down the stairs. The girl who studied nerve endings and spinal cords and cerebrovascular systems. The girl who had everything Arianne wanted and would never get, the girl who hated who Arianne was and all she represented, the girl bathed perpetually in daylight, not a day on the dark side. Her, it’s her who pulled me out of the house, her who came running after me. She saw the girl with that look, part annoyed, part confused, saying, solve your problems, like she could face the world with a swipe of her hand. Lydia, Arianne thought again. What am I to think?
The bed was warm and very soft, one that you could lie down and sink into. Lydia’s room was cluttered with books and markers and pens and pillows. What am I going to do now? She thought, but was too tired to care.
The door opened when the talking ceased, and Arianne shrank back from the light. Lydia closed the door behind her, pressing her back against it. “You better now?”
“A lot. Water would be nice though, thanks.”
“I’ll get it for you.”
Lydia sat on the rug next to her bed. Arianne sipped her water. “Is this where the questions start?”
“It’s not like you’ll answer any of them.”
“We could do it the other way round. Am I staying here?”
“Unless you want to get moved to a hospital cot, yes. I think your fever’s come down too much for that by now, though.” Lydia sighed and twisted to look at her. “I’ve never ever lied to my parents about anything before, and now I’m having it twice in a row because of you.”
“I’d love to hear the story.”
“Your door got stuck and you got sick. Your parents were out on vacation.”
“Expertise.”
“I think they actually believed it. Not so much with the rest of the story. I had to tell them I dragged you back here on instinct and you stayed, which I think even they had some doubts about.”
“Thanks,” Arianne said again. She cradled the cup to her chest. “Other than that, have you told anyone?”
“No,” the other girl muttered grudgingly.
“I’ll call my friends.”
“And tell them?”
“My phone got lost.”
“You’re a worse liar than I am.” Lydia paused. “Your mother’s gone.”
“I got used to it.”
“No, as in, I told her not to come back to you.”
Not come back to me. “She listened?”
“I would think so.”
Not come back to me. The thought was daunting and liberating at once, though Arianne doubted whether Eliana would be able to stay away for that long. I tried to leave you as you left me, but I kept coming back. Eliana couldn’t stay for much a time, but she couldn’t keep away for long either. “Okay,” She said at last.
“Arianne.” Lydia hesitated. “I’ll help you. We will. Tell them. Tell us. It’ll be okay.”
I would, Lydia had whispered the night Arianne had gone running up the stairs. Everything will be okay. We’ll help you, echoed Lissanda. Antony added in. I’ll take care of you. Eliana saying, all I wanted to do was love you, but you kept pushing me away. Aaron in the other room, swearing his undying love at midnight and fleeing at daybreak. “I know.” She looked down at her hands, setting the cup aside on the counter. Her fingers were pale white shadows on the green patterned quilt. It’s dark, she thought. It’s always dark when I wake up. The faint stems of light had cut a line between her and Lydia. And bright where she is. “I seem to recall you promising not to tell.”
“And I won’t, if you don’t want me to. But I really think you should want to.”
I used to. “My father left us when I was six. My mother… got a little bit unstable because of it. That, and the drugs.” It seemed so simple when she laid it out like that. Only two sentences.
“I’m sorry.”
Arianne smiled. “I know.”
“It’s not completely… unimaginable.” Lydia looked away. “I meant… People would understand.”
“Don’t, Lydia. Leave it with the two of us.” There was a tiredness chafing at her. The wrought panic of everyone discovering that had pounded at her for so many years had dulled into a steady routine. Liar, pretender. I’m just not enough for all of it.
“Arianne, why don’t you…” Lydia caught herself. “Maybe tell someone, anyone. You’d be free. You could have… fought back. Made things better for yourself... When I came to your house, I… I saw…”
“I can imagine.” The memories were pushing at the dam in her head. I don’t want to remember. I just want to forget. The dream of her peeling off all her armor came back to her. “I don’t really want to talk about it. Can I use your phone to make a few calls?”
“Morning.” Lydia’s mother smiled at her, like they were old acquaintances. Maybe she got used to it after the days we had to have breakfast together. “The place is a bit messy, but I hope you can stomach it.”
Arianne smiled timidly, looking down. “I’m really sorry about all of this trouble. My phone ran out of battery and… It was really good of Lydia to come looking for me. I’ll be back soon.” She could find another place to stay for a short while.
“She told me about the door.” Mrs. Strayen smiled sympathetically and leaned over to pat Arianne on her shoulder. “It must have been horrible. Thank god Lydia had the right instinct to go after you, or…” She shuddered. “It’s so cold, too. And the rain. I was so anxious when we saw you so sick—”
“Mom,” Lydia muttered. “She gets the idea.” She leaned across the table to grab an apple. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to work? Even Dad’s left for an hour already.”
“Are you so eager to get rid of me?” Mrs. Strayen laughed. “Well, I guess I should get Jack to Erin’s place, too.” She gave Arianne a quick hug. “Tell us if you need anything, alright, dear? And come over more often, if you’d like to. Lydia doesn’t have a lot of friends over… I think it’s her--”
“Mooom,” Lydia moaned. “Stop embarrassing me.”
Lydia’s brother was half-visible in his room, lying on his stomach with a big picture book spread out before him. “Wait two minutes,” he yelled back to his mother’s calling. Mrs. Strayen sighed. “It’s been a lot of two minutes.”
Arianne stepped awkwardly around the big white dog that was now weaving itself around Lydia. Lydia laughed. “Go on, he doesn’t bite. Not you, at least.”
She stretched out a hand tentatively. The dog sniffed her hand. The rasp of his tongue was rough and wet as the dog licked her fingers. Arianne repressed the urge to flinch. Lydia saw her expression and laughed. “Pate, here.” She stretched out her arms, and the dog turned away from the newcomer.
“Jackie, say good-bye to Arianne.” Mrs. Strayen lingered by the door. “I’ll be leaving now. It’s great to have you around, Arianne. Lydia, you be nice, okay?”
“’Bye,” the little boy mumbled dutifully from the door, tugging at his mother’s clothes. “Mommy, let’s go.”
“Bye, Mrs. Strayen. Thanks again.” Arianne smiled.
When the door had closed, Lydia sighed and plopped herself down on the sofa, throwing aside a coat from under her. “I never want to go through that again.”
“It was nice, actually.” Lydia’s home was the exact opposite of Arianne’s house: crowded, small, warm. Everyone here is the opposite of what I have. She felt like she was being pushed into a world too sure, too bright, too warm, too busy. An outsider. It’s only a few months away. And I can go somewhere else, forge a new identity. An unfamiliar jerk gnawed at her. Do I really want to leave?
Chapter 28 Lydia
…
*Reminders:
-School in a week (review and check)
-Check on A tomorrow
-Visit the hospital at night with M
-Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon
…
February 6, The White Book
Spring was eating away at the winter. It came over in a sudden jolt of warm air, gushing at the thin layer of ice lining the ponds and melting the sleet into water, filling the world with a humid, green texture. Small buds were pushing at the pale bark on the maple tree in front of their apartment. Lydia stretched out a hand.
It had been two days since Arianne left them and went back. Lydia had offered to stay, but Arianne just shook her head and smiled. I’ll be fine.
Will you? Lydia didn’t think much of the statement. She called the other girl once a day to make sure she was okay, but that didn’t hold much weight in its own right. She’ll be cutting up her skin whatever I say. The secret still rankled. Lydia kept coming back to it, trying to pick out signs, warnings, solutions, endings. Make it logical. Make it a problem that’s solvable. She’d initially felt guilty about thinking this way, wondered if it was insensible and callous, but when she let it slip Arianne had only smiled a little. That’s good.
Why? Lydia had asked.
It’s better than you feeling sorry about it.
Whatever that meant. Lydia had long given up trying to understand what was going on in the other girl’s head. But I still want to right it. She has to tell sometime. The pale empty eyes of the girl’s mother still haunted Lydia.
The day was cloudless and warm, warmer than all the days before. Her mind drifted. He said he’d meet me there. Raymond had asked her out for a walk the day before, and Lydia was happy to consent. Better than happy. When she’d bent over The Book and logged in the event, she’d felt like The Book had been tainted, somehow… But also fuller, better, brighter. More of me. She chided herself even as she smiled. It’s just a crush, it’s only that, nothing will come out of it. On the other hand, she heard, take what you want.
“Take what you want,” she whispered to herself, as she turned the corner. Raymond wasn’t there yet, so she leaned against the wall and waited, trying not to be too obvious as she looked around. He could have asked other people. He asked you. That’s good enough. They hardly knew each other, but there were those small stumbling moments, when Lydia dropped her books and he’d picked them up for her and smiled, or that day when they paired up as partners in the lab and laughed silently at Raymond’s impersonation of the teacher’s dull accent. And all the glances she’d snuck in the hallways, the times she’d stood in the crowd and watched as he played his games and once even handed him a bottle of water as he walked off the court. Everything is so right, she thought dreamily as she traced the outline of a brick in a wall. Someone had sprayed Henral and Dancy LOVE 4EVER over the walls in bright pink paint with a heart around the names. Everything is just clicking into place of what I’ve mapped, and some that I haven’t. She thought of Arianne. Well, almost everything, but she would fix it.
“Did I keep you waiting?”
“Oh.” Lydia turned. “No. Not for long.”
“Sorry about it.” When Raymond smiled, the sun turned his eyes gold-flecked. “Traffic was murder.”
“It’s okay.” She fell in side with him, trying to match their pace. “Where are we going?” We.
“Maybe somewhere with less people?” He grimaced as a cyclist swerved wildly to avoid a woman with a stroller who was also talking on the phone as she crossed the street, yelling profanities.
“That would be good.” It was not too far from the cluttered center of the town to the quieter districts. And only the two of us. “You never got around to telling me what happened after you tried cutting away the spinal cord.”
Raymond laughed. “On such a nice day,” he teased, “You want to talk biology?” He laughed again. “That is so you.”
Lydia remembered Ameri saying the same thing. “I couldn’t think of anything better,” she admitted. “Am I being boring?”
“No, you’re being you.”
When the noises had quieted a little behind them, Lydia found herself walking down a relatively quiet ally with trees on either side. Raymond kept up a steady pace. The cobblestones widened, until finally they were standing in front of a large roped off patch of grass and stones. A road wound out lazily before them, but there weren’t any cars. On the other side of the road there was thin lining of trees, and Lydia could see the stores and streets behind them. “Let’s stop here,” she said.
Raymond stepped over the rope into the patch of grass, balancing on the large rocks. He bent down and plucked a flower, twirled it around. Lydia sat down on the rope. It swayed but didn’t bend much, so she swung back and forth on it slightly. The air was warm and breezy, the sun a golden glint in the clear blue sky, Raymond smiling as he pulled petals off a flower. Lydia felt heady. It’s like a dream.
He snapped off a strand of foxtail, and tickled her neck. Lydia yelped and swatted him. “Hey!”
He laughed and ducked as she made to grasp the plant, then backed away. Lydia followed him through the sea of green, the grasses tickling at her fingers. Soon she was running, and had never felt more like a child.
She never saw the car.
“Lydia!” Raymond was yelling. “Lydia, stop!”
The world went upside down in a jolt of pain. Then she was burning, and everything went black.
Everything hurt.
The air was sharp with the smell of antiseptics. Lydia lay on her back on the hospital cot with a white sheet covering her, the room all white. Tubes were taped to her skin, linked up to machines and fluid bags. Her whole body seemed to be encased in plaster and bandages, a heavy clay cage that sent jolts of pain up her whenever she moved. Slowly the sounds flooded in from around her: the beeping of machines, someone talking, the soft whirring as a bed was raised to a sitting position. There were beds around her, twelve at most, hers closest to the door. A coat hung on an empty chair next to her bed, bags on the ground. She heard the talks and groans and whirs and beeps, but most of all she heard her own pain screaming back at her.
It was strange how she heard it more than felt it. The sounds weren’t supposed to exist. It was too loud around her. But she heard them all the same, heard the pulsing of her blood, red and hot and frantic as it ran through the flaming flesh and marrow, heard the explosions in her bones. Burning.
Lydia lay there with her eyes cast to the ceiling, then closed them after a while. So tired. She tried to remember what had happened, but couldn’t muster up more than a few images. The world had turned over and over and over again, a sickening flash and a jolt of pain, then the flames came to eat at her, and all she remembered were the screams.
She heard rustling next to her, and turned her head. Her mother stood there white as a ghost, with purple shadows under her eyes, and was staring at Lydia like she’d never seen her daughter before. Lydia tried for a smile, and her mother burst into tears.
Mom, don’t cry, Lydia wanted to say, but her throat was too raw. Her mother’s loud sobs echoed in the room, and she tried to muffle her crying in her sleeve, but only sobbed harder. Dad burst into the room, looking frantic. “What happened?”
He saw Lydia, and smiled, even as his eyes welled up. It can’t be that bad, Lydia thought. How long was I unconscious? “Oh my god,” Mom mumbled, then ran from the room. “Rose, Lydia’s awake.”
Her father sat on the chair, just looking at her. He looked as though he wanted to say something, but his lips moved soundlessly. Lydia wanted to turn away. He never let us see him cry. “Dad,” she whispered. “Don’t.”
He smiled tremulously, then leaned over and ran his hands over the air an inch from her skin, like he thought she might shatter if he touched her. He started a few times, and finally choked out, “She was praying… for you. We all were…”
Praying in a God you never believed in. Lydia managed a lopsided smile before her father turned away. Rosie ran in with her hair all messy and her clothes askew after her mother, who was still choking back tears. “I’m fine,” she mumbled. Her voice was rough and scratchy, and her throat hurt as bad as her body when she spoke.
“No… No, you’re not…” Mom was wiping frantically at her eyes. “We were so scared, we were all so so scared… You were all covered in blood…And-- I thought—When I saw you—I thought—” She broke down again. “I was so scared, even when… even when they told us—Oh, Lydia, I can’t believe—Oh, Lydia—” She looked as though she was going to wrap her daughter up in a hug, but contended herself by placing her hands on Lydia’s face and cradling her. “You’re so lucky, you know? You could have—you could have—”
“Alright, dear, cut the girl some slack.” Dad put his hands on Mom’s shoulders. His voice was still hoarse, but he was smiling ruefully. “I knew she’d make it. A fighter, our girl is.”
Rosie sat at the edge of her bed and petted Lydia’s hair, something she hadn’t done since Lydia was eight. Ow, she thought, you’re all going to suffocate me, I can feel that now. Her bed dipped were Rose sat and her leg bumped against the metal railing. Lydia swallowed back a groan. You’re all being silly, she thought, but she felt her own eyes wetting. “What…” she tried to mumble, but her mother’s hands were caressing her cheeks. “How long? What…”
“We can talk about that later,” Mom whispered. “Oh, baby girl, Lydia— They’ve all come to see you, once they heard, you know—Auntie Gwena and baby Wendy and your cousins and—we were all so scared—and your friends too—Ameri and Martha and Delissa—we all—we--”
“Dear, let Lydia breathe.” Dad was still smiling, though. “She can hear about the details later.”
The lights were too bright in her eyes. Lydia tried to shift a little, but her chest and back and stomach all screamed in protest. She let it be. “I want.” Her tongue felt heavy in her mouth. “What happened?”
Her thoughts flashed back. “Raymond,” she whispered. “Is he…”
Mom pulled back and fussed with her bedsheets, straightening them. “He was here too, yesterday. And he brought you here. He’s fine, I told them I would tell them once you were fit enough to see visitors.”
“Tell me. What happened…”
Dad looked away. “We have all the time to talk when you’re stronger. Now, though, all you should focus on is getting better.” He kissed his daughter on the cheek.
Tell me. Tell me! Something was wrong with her. A lot of things were wrong with her, obviously, but there was something they seemed to be avoiding. What happened to me? She felt agitated. The pain was getting to her head. Am I just imagining things?
Rosie stroked her hair. “It’s all okay, Lydia,” she whispered. “It’s all going to be fine. Calm down, now. You’re with us, that’s all that matters.”
She was still trying to muster a reply when she fell asleep again.
Chapter 29 Arianne
I had nowhere else to go.
Arianne mounted the steps to her room. Three days since she left the place. There were a few places she could stay in, but not for long, and she would have to come back to get her clothes, at least. The house stared back at her. Nothing will hurt you here. It’s just a pile of rocks and metal, that’s all there is. But she flinched every time there was a sound.
When she reached the top floor, the place opened up again. She saw the metal bar still at her bedroom’s door, the door half open, light from the outside snagging on the ends. Should I feel very afraid? The door opened under her hand, and everything was as she left it. She covers rumpled, closet thrown open, window shut firmly. The air was stale and smelled of sickness. On the table, there was a bowl of clear broth that must have rested there for four days. Arianne saw her mother’s hand in that, though she could not remember Eliana coming in and bringing her food. I saw her too many times that day. She poured it down the drain.
“A few months,” she whispered to the sink. “And I’ll be eighteen.”
She had dreamed of the day, still let herself hold some hope. What will I do then? Arianne had always thought of going off to some nameless town so small no one would ever find her again. That was no more than a mere fantasy, but she would have to move, that much was sure. I’ve had enough of this place. She wondered who the house would go to.
Some small place by the sea, she thought. I could work in a bookstore, something like that. Some place with no name and no memory, like I will be.
Is that it? Arianne could hear Lydia’s voice as the other girl challenged her. Would you be happy? Would that be right?
As she sat down at the bed again, she reached for the box. It was right where she’d left it. When she started cutting it had always been to flee, to stop feeling, but she was already calm now. It dawned on her then that she could slit her wrists, deep, right then and not feel a thing. She turned over the blade. It had been a gift from Eriyan, at some souvenir shop she’d went to and bought for Arianne because it was pretty. Weak light trembled on the markings as she ran a thumb down the slim handle.
She thought of all the eyes. The knife gleamed in the dark. You’re wrong. It doesn’t feel better to stop. It feels worse. Worse to stay conscious. Worse to feel what you feel. She threw the blade back into its box, her skin untouched. I need a drink. When she reached the square Pax and Isla and a group of them were already there. Pax waved her over. “It’s been, what? Ten days?”
“Nine.”
“I suppose we’re getting drunk today?” Isla raised her eyes to Arianne. “Whenever you join us I have to get prepared for it.”
“I don’t get drunk all the time.” She felt slightly affronted, though not sure why.
Pax dragged a chair up and crossed her ankles over the back. “Isla, go on. Don’t let Arianne ruin the mood.” She smirked at Arianne. “Can you believe it? Isla actually wants to talk for a change.”
I could, very much. Isla didn’t normally mingle with them, but whenever they went to get a drink together it almost always started with Isla taking a few mouthfuls and starting to blubber.
Thankfully, the other girl missed the jab. That, or she doesn’t remember what she says once the alcohol gets to her head. “…So he just throws the bag down. Right there. Right at my feet! And he doesn’t even…”
Lisa laughed with Fressin, ignoring the conversation. Ash leaned back and took a long drag from her flask. Huanter picked at his clothes. Arianne just sat and looked at them. Is this what I’ve made? Or was I a just an addition?
“… heard Lydia Strayen…”
Arianne looked up sharply. “What?”
Ash laughed. “Oh, I forgot… You went on that trip with her, earlier.”
“What about her?”
“Well, I heard she was in an accident. Some such.” Ash waved her hand. “Very upsetting.”
Fressin made a soft noise in the back of his throat. Arianne stared at Ash. “What? When?”
Pax frowned. “I thought you already knew. Didn’t anyone tell you? It was just yesterday, I think. Or was it the day before?”
Her mind went strangely blank. “What happened?”
“Something with a car… It was just off the highway. I’m not really sure.” Ash was slouched in her chair, her eyes bright above her drink. She put the flask down.
Quetin came to chant in her head. Is he dead? “Was it serious? Where is she now?”
Lisa squinted. “I guess you’d have to call her family. I didn’t know you were close.”
Neither did I. “I’m leaving.”
“For her?” Isla snickered. “Booker.”
“You’re drunk.”
Pax pushed Isla down as she tried to get up. “I’m not. Lydia Strayen…” The girl laughed. Her cheeks were flushed red. “Maybe she’d planned it out, up to the last second when she got carted off to the hospital, with that--”
Arianne stood up so quickly the table rocked. “Shut your mouth.”
Her scars were flashing all over her body. She strode over to the other girl’s chair, her hands shaking. She fisted them. None of them were laughing now, all watching her. Pax got up and put a hand on Arianne’s shoulder and looked at the other girl. “Isla, that was a stupid thing to say. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Arianne shrugged Paxon off. Isla looked at her. She was sitting with a foot rested on a high metal bar under the table and another dangling an inch above the ground, her body leaning forward on a high chair with a bottle raised to her mouth. Her blond hair hung to her waist, an echo of a smile ghosting her lips. Standing up, Arianne was eye-to-eye with the girl. Isla looked away. Arianne grabbed the handle on the back of her chair and jerked it around so Isla faced her. “Apologize.”
“I’m sorry,” Isla muttered. Her drink had sloshed all over her clothes, her legs tangled up under the table. The wine slid down into her neck and dripped down her collar. “If that’s what you want. I’m sorry.”
Chapter 30 Arianne
Arianne waited at the door. Lydia’s family were all there, sitting in a row on those white metal seats outside the wards. She ran to them. “I’m so sorry, I’ve just heard—I came here straight away—where’s--?”
Mrs. Strayen smiled shakily and hugged her. “She’s fine,” Lydia’s mother whispered. “She’s better now. She woke this morning. Everything will be okay. Everything.” She was hugging Arianne so tight it seemed like she wanted to infuse her with the power of her own belief. “Do you want to go see her? She’s not awake at the moment, but--”
“Yes, of course. Where is she?”
When Arianne was led to the cot, she had to look twice before she confirmed it was Lydia Strayen. She looked smaller somehow, her eyes closed and her mouth half open, lying spread out on the bed with a white sheet over her. Half of her hair had been hacked and shorn away, stitches crisscrossing her scalp up to her forehead, and the other only part of her that was visible over the sheet were her arms, bandaged so thickly not a patch of skin showed up to where the hospital gown covered her. The needles had been taped to her neck instead of her forearms or the inside of her elbow, so it looked almost like she was floating, held aloft by the tubes. A leg peeked out from under the sheets, half covered in a cast.
“The doctors say it looks much worse than it really is,” Mrs. Strayen said, somewhat defensively. “I know she’ll be alright. It’s just a few broken bones and some burns, and… Well, nothing serious, she was so lucky to be…” She flinched. “I mean… She was so lucky that it was all it was,” Lydia’s mother finished clumsily.
Perhaps. Lydia was lucky to be alive, by the look of her. Though maybe not so lucky that it happened to her. “How did it happen?” Arianne asked.
“She was having a walk with a friend of hers—Raymond something, I think—They went all the way over to the highways over on the hills, and you know there aren’t really many cars there, no one goes there…” Mrs. Strayen shivered. “She wasn’t looking where she was going… And then this car was going so fast as well… She was so lucky it wasn’t anything worse than this…” She trailed into silence again. “I was so scared…”
Arianne looked away from the girl lying on the bed. She looked sick, dying, whatever her mother said. She saved me, and I wasn’t there when she almost died until two days after. Mrs. Strayen hugged her again. “It’s so good of you all to come over, Arianne,” she whispered to Arianne’s shoulder. Tears had welled up in her eyes. “I don’t think we could have dealt with it alone.”
The machines whispered around her. The other patients were mostly asleep, given the hour. Some others were awake, conversing in quiet voices with their family and friends or staring up at the ceiling. They didn’t look that bad, Arianne thought as she looked the others over. Some had heavy bandages over their heads, or were plastered up in casts, one in a wheelchair, but none were lashed to heavy machines or looked in a especially bad condition. Except for her. Maybe Lydia’s mother was right, and it was worse than it seemed. A nurse was rushing past the door with a metal cart, clanging loudly on the floor. Over beside the other cot, a doctor was checking a patient while taking quick notes. The blinking digits overhead read 11:00 pm. “I could stay with you for a while.” She would be leaving for the airport early next morning to meet Tarra when he came back, but would have a few hours, at least. And I don’t want to go back to the house.
“Oh.” Mrs. Strayen looked stricken. “Well, of course, I know Lydia would appreciate it, but it’s quite late, and you should be getting home…”
“No, it’s fine.” Arianne sat on the chair next to the doll on the cot. “I’ll stay for a while.”
Mrs. Strayen hugged her again, tightly. “Thank you, Arianne.”
She smiled tightly. “It’s nothing.”
When Lydia’s mother had left, she turned back to the girl. Is this really her? Arianne couldn’t help wondering again. She wanted to take her hand, but they were wrapped up in cloudy bandages. What should I say?
“Lydia,” Arianne whispered. She remembered how strong the other girl had seemed when she’d hauled Arianne to her feet and half-carried her out down the stairs that day when Lydia came to pull her out of the house. She called me, and I turned away. “Lydia, it’s Arianne.”
The other girl didn’t answer. Why should she? Arianne looked away again, not being able to bring herself to look at the other girl’s face. When all of this is done, she’ll have more scars than I do. Hopefully the doctors would be able to close the cuts neatly, and they wouldn’t show except for thin silvery lines. Those can fade, over time.
Arianne sat. The blinking digits read 12:00, then 1:00, then 2:00. Lydia’s father came in to check on her and nodded to Arianne and thanked her as well, asking if she wanted to leave. Arianne shook her head. Doctors strode in and out, timeless in their large white cloaks. A patient moaned and his friend soothed him. Lydia’s little brother threw a fit outside, and Arianne heard Mrs. Strayen hush him, and later she came in again to fuss over Lydia’s bedsheets and pillows and medicine, and left. 3:00. A doctor came in, walked to Lydia’s bedside, threw open the sheets, checked the fluids, looked at the machines, jotted down notes, and left. A nurse came later to replace the fluids with new bags, and left. Arianne looked at her hands, trying to ignore the itch in her skin. I should have cut. I shouldn’t have put the knife back into the box. The pain would draw me out. 4:00. She stared at the corner of the wall, where a spider was making a web. Anywhere but her face. Is this what she feels when she sees my skin? The thought sent another tingle up her arms.
At 5:00, Arianne was fighting to keep her eyes open. She pushed the chair back quietly and turned away. The family was dozing on their chairs, except for little Jack, who stared at Arianne with wide eyes. She put a finger to her lips and waved, and left.
She slept in the car, thankfully dreamless. When the car stopped the driver had to call her three times before she woke. Arianne paid him and clambered out. The sun touched the high metal roof of the terminal station, a weak wintery glow. The chill had come back, and she huddled in her coat. Terminal four. It’s four.
She saw Tarra with his head down, in a black coat pulled over his nose as he stared down into his phone screen. The position made Arianne slightly uncomfortable. That’s how I wear my clothes, to cover my neck. She saw his parents sitting next to him, so she waited around the corner instead of walking up. Tarra’s parents were both busy and were almost always out on some business trip or working late, but they would ask after him and talk to him and nag and laugh like any other normal person acted with their children when they were together. They are absent from his house, but not his life. She didn’t want to let them see her.
After a while Tarra got up and walked around to her, seeing her text. “Arianne?”
“Hi.” She suddenly felt bared, like her skin was on display, and looked away.
“You look like you haven’t slept in days.”
“One night.” She knew he was going to ask her where she was the days she wasn’t there, ask her about the call. “I was with Lydia.”
Tarra stilled. “Why?”
“In the hospital.”
“What happened?”
“Car accident.” Arianne looked away again. Her skin was screaming at her, so loudly she was sure he would be able to see the sirens flashing red under her shirt. Ridiculously, she felt her throat tighten. I’m not even sad. She bit her lip.
“What? Is it serious?” Tarra gripped her shoulders. “Arianne?” He tried to turn her face around, but she shook his hand off.
“It’s not that bad. Her mother said it was just some broken bones. Burns. It just looks…” Her voice was thick.
“Well, that’s not so bad, is it?” He was looking at her in a way she hoped she would never see on his face again, like he really was seeing her. “She’ll pull through.” He tried to turn her to face the light, gently, but she wrenched herself back. “Arianne, what is it? Is there something you’re not telling me?”
Is there something you’re not telling me? Arianne felt furious at herself, humiliated. I’m going to make a scene here if I don’t hold it in. She thought of Lydia facing Eliana, of Pax nodding at her, of her own anger that had spilled over the edge just last night when she’d stormed out of the group she’d hidden herself in for so long. Everything’s unravelling, coming apart. I lied and pretended, but they’re seeing, and I can’t stop. She had the sudden urge to tell him the truth, to hurt him, to tell him the girl he loved was all a lie. She was so tired, so tired of having to slip on different masks for everyone. It’s been two years. Soon I’ll leave, and put this all behind me. Once she was gone, she could start something new, and leave this mess behind. I could make a mess of everything and go away. The words were almost on her lips, but she swallowed them.
“No,” she whispered. “Nothing.”
“Arianne, look at me.” His voice was very quiet, almost pleading.
She turned away, feeling like a spiteful little girl. That’s all there is. All I am. She wanted to turn back and laugh and tell him it was all a joke, and close the distance between them and pretend nothing had ever happened or changed. “I… She… She’ll be fine. I don’t know why I…”
“It’s okay.” He turned a little to look at her face, and whispered in her hair so softly she thought she’d imagined it. “Not to be okay.”
Chapter 31 Lydia
It was the third day when she finally had a visitor other than her parents. Martha ran in and almost hugged her, but Lydia shook her head. She ran her hand over Lydia’s shoulder. “Oh my god, Lydia.”
“Thanks,” she mumbled. “I was afraid it looked bad.”
Martha looked as if she was going to cry. Oh, not all of this again. Everyone was looking at her like they were about to cry. Is it the gratitude, or the fear, or just the pity? Lydia had been able to prop herself up on the bed and talk normally. They all told her how lucky she was, the doctors and her family and now Martha as well, leaning forward to kiss her cheek. Only two ribs and a leg and some cuts and burns. She didn’t think they were lying, but her family still glanced away when she probed further. I don’t think anything’s happened to my brain. Or maybe I’m already delusional and I don’t know it. She knew some patients with severe brain injury who had no idea of their condition. Lydia had looked into a mirror when her parents weren’t there, wheedled the nurse into giving her a look. Her hands were bandaged so tight she couldn’t hold anything, and the skin under them raw and painful, so she looked as the nurse held it before her face.
Well, at least I know what they see. Half of her scalp had been shorn, leaving stitches crisscrossing neatly. Her face was pale and wan, bloodless as a ghost’s. She’d been mostly asleep, so she had no idea what was going on inside her body or when they changed her bandages and tended to her. Mom told her a lot of her friends had been around, adding that Arianne had stayed the night before. Thank her for me, she’d said.
Lydia was grateful. The bones and bruises and scrapes and burns would heal, she supposed, and soon she would be back to normal. Even so, it seemed as if she couldn’t be grateful enough. Every single person who saw her noted how lucky she had been, and it didn’t seem right to say no.
Martha smiled. “We were so scared when we heard.”
“I know.” Another phrase she’d heard enough of, but she smiled back. “Like my new hair?”
“Oh—Lydia, that’s not funny.” Martha threw her a look. “It’s good enough that you’re in one piece.”
“I know.”
“How did it happen? Can I stay? To help?”
She winced. “I got stupid. That road just rarely has cars. And that’s what the driver thought. I presume.” She paused. “But you’ve had enough of the hospital, Martha. You don’t have to stick around. I’m awfully boring. All I do is sleep.”
Martha laughed. “How are you feeling?”
“Sore,” she answered semi-truthfully. Her muscles ached, but her skin and bones screamed in pain. “Whatever they’re giving me for the pain does alright. It doesn’t hurt that much unless I move a lot. Or someone hugs me.”
“I’ll be careful next time,” Martha promised.
“You were careful enough this time.” She rolled her eyes. “The first time Jack came in they almost had to call the doctors again.”
Martha smiled again, and looked at her. Lydia wanted her to stop. Stop staring. She wanted to make everything normal, but that was virtually impossible with her looking like this. She sighed.
“What’s wrong?” Martha asked, instantly cautious. “Do you need anything?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Really. Just talk to me like we’re at the café, at your place, at my home. I know it looks bad, but it doesn’t go deeper than the muscles and bones.”
Martha winced again as she looked at Lydia’s face. “But you…”
“I know.” Lydia wanted to just go back to what they were. Everyone’s acting like I’m dying. “I’m fine, Martha.” She almost sat up to prove it, then decided against it.
The other girl smiled again, tentative. “Heard you were on a date,” she ventured.
Lydia laughed. It hurt, but felt good. “I’ll get back to that.” Please just treat me like a normal human being.
When Martha left, she felt better. The later part, anyway, even though Martha had still stared at her when she knew Lydia wasn’t looking. It doesn’t matter. I’ll be better soon.
Mom bustled in. “Honey, are you tired? Do you want to get some rest?”
“No, I’m alright.”
She hovered, looking nervous. “It’s getting late, anyway.”
“Mom, I’m fine, and it’s nine o’clock.” Mom wouldn’t meet her eyes. Dad came up behind her. “Lydia, I think you should rest.”
“Why? Look, I’m fine. I could get up if I really wanted to—”
“No no, stay in your bed.” Dad laid a hand on her shoulder. “It’s just that the doctors are coming to change your bandages. I thought it might hurt, and it would be better if you were unconscious.”
“That’s not better.”
Mom sighed. She sat down. “Lydia, honey, there are some things we haven’t told you.”
“Like?” Her breathing hitched.
Mom exchanged a glance with Dad. “You’re lucky to be alive, Lydia—”
“You’ve said that before. What is it?”
The nurse came in, pushing a cart full of bottles and bandages. Hydrogen Peroxide, alcohol, formaldehyde. No wonder Dad had said it would hurt. A few cuts and burns, is all. And I have the morphine.
“You can tell me, Mom.” Lydia held out her arms for the nurse. “And I can have the distraction from this.”
Dad winced, and looked away. Mom sat tight-lipped and stared at her arms.
“Tell me. I should know, whatever it is.”
But the bandages had come off, and she suddenly knew that they didn’t need to speak anymore.
The skin on her right arm had been burnt the worst, her right hand with it, then her left hand, and the burns on her left side were slighter. Not slight, though. It started somewhere around her elbows, getting worse when it neared her hands and wrists. A red, angry rash, becoming something that was much worse. The flesh and skin on her right hand had sloughed away, the skin on her wrists purple and pink and glistening scar tissue. Her left hand fared better, though not much. Deep cuts were sliced into the flesh and skin, cutting almost to the bone, the skin around red and puffy. Her wrist and arm on the left side were mostly just red rash, none of the scar tissue that marred the right. Even so the sight was grotesque and horrifying, but what scared Lydia more was that she couldn’t feel it, at least not as much as it was supposed to hurt. Her arms had stung and burned and itched, and she knew that they were burned, perhaps badly… But nothing could have prepared her for this. How much painkiller have they been giving me? Or is the tissue there half dead already?
As the gauze went around her again, Lydia turned to her parents. “You knew this?” Her voice shook.
Neither of them met her gaze. She looked down at the cloudy wrapping. Mom said, quietly, “You got skin grafts earlier, but they wouldn’t...”
“And you tell me today?” The sounds around her swelled to twice their noise. “But why didn’t you tell me? I’ll get more skin grafts, they can try again, and it can be patched up, right?”
Neither of them answered. Lydia hated them then, sitting with their heads bowed. They were never defeated, never looked defeated. “Look at me. What happened to me?” her voice was a whisper.
Mom cradled her face. Her voice was fierce and raw. “You’re lucky to be alive, that’s what. Nothing else matters. There are other ways.”
“Other ways to what?”
Dad stood up. “I’m very sorry, Lydia—”
“Just say it.”
“The doctors are afraid it was too late… That’s why they waited so long to see if they could—stabilize you before—but it was too--”
“But I’ll get better, won’t I? Burns heal. My bones and cuts will, too. Right?” Her voice sounded far away. She felt dizzy. “It’ll all be okay, they’ll fix me, it’s a problem but they can solve it.”
They just looked at her. Lydia looked back down to her hands. No, that’s not right. It was meant to be.
No, she thought, as the dark and painkillers claimed her. No, no, no, no, no.
Chapter 32 Arianne
Turn the sky upside down and the world falls down;
Turn my body up to down and it folds
Into a valentine heart you sold
I open my eyes and the sky crumples to gold
Touch the air and hear your heartbeat; Singing a eulogy
To the sweet sickly folds
Of the sky in the air; your hand in my hair,
Pulling out my tears
In long threads of beer
Fizzing, sparkling, bursting apart on the ground like
A ripe melon in the air;
That heart you sold in the dust of ages old
Splitting, tearing, splashing
Without flair, only fear
February 14, Arianne’s book
“You never got around to answering me.” Tarra’s voice was mild, but tense. “What happened after that day.”
“What day?” Arianne couldn’t look at him. They were sitting in front of a table, his laptop sitting on the surface, his story gleaming in dark bold letters.
“When you called me.” He typed some words, eyes not leaving the screen.
“I called you a lot of times.” She’d never been on the defensive, not with him. It was always he who smiled and nodded and looked away or looked at her. Never me. She sighed. “I was with Lydia.”
“After your trip?” His hands stilled on the keyboard.
“I stayed over. After the trip. Lost my phone. I’ve told you about it, I’m sorry I didn’t call you. It was nice at her house. I… forgot.”
“I know.” He turned back to his laptop. The glow was reflected in his eyes, turning them into gray orbs filled by lines of words. He stared at the screen, but didn’t seem to be seeing it. Just a few more weeks, a month, two. He’ll hold out. I’ll hold out. He will choose to believe what he wants to believe. She had no doubt that even Tarra must have some inkling of what was going on, but preferred to think that he wouldn’t carry his investigations out.
She leaned over, read the page. “I liked that part. It goes well with the whole setting. Why did you put it out?”
He stood up abruptly, slamming the laptop shut. “Arianne, I’m tired.”
“It’s not too late.” She didn’t understand. He just got here. “We still have time.”
Tarra’s voice was distant. “No, I’ll be going.” He turned and smiled at her, but the expression never touched his eyes.
“Can you come with me tomorrow? To the hospital.” She hadn’t been with Lydia for a day. It would be good to have someone with me.
He paused. “Why?”
“What, why?” Tarra wasn’t making sense today.
“Why do you want me to come? You never seemed to.”
She remembered all of his offerings to accompany to her house, to wherever she went at night. No, no, I’ll be fine, it’s too far, it’s late, I won’t be late, don’t worry. “I like you with me.”
Not a shadow of a blush crossed his skin. He sighed, looked away, ran a hand through his hair. “Strange. It seems I hadn’t picked up on that before.”
“I do,” she said. “I’m sorry about the earlier times. I was busy and—”
“I know.” He slid the laptop into his bag, walked to the door. What’s the matter with him today?
“Tarra—” She stood up.
“Oh, I’ll go with you.” He smiled thinly. His black hair was wet where he’d walked through the rain; the cold had come back again after a brief respite. “You send me the place.”
Arianne wanted to pull him back, cup his face in her hands and see the girl reflected in his eyes, confirm that she was still alive. Maybe she died, already. Somewhere. Sometime. She wanted him to look at her and smile that shy smile and blush, and hear him talk about his story, hear him laugh, kiss him until his ears turned red. Take one memory that’s sweet when I leave this town. Arianne stood behind him as he shook out his umbrella, scattering the ground with droplets. “Okay.”
He pushed open the door. The rain kissed her skin, cold as a knife’s bite. “Bye.” He gave her another cool smile over his shoulder. “See you tomorrow.”
Arianne circled the table. His cup was half full, not even cool yet. Well, that went great. She hadn’t really doubted that one day he would find out and pull away, but hadn’t understood how and when it happened. She heard Paxon’s laugh. I thought this one would last a little longer.
So did I.
When she got to the house, the rain was hot on her heels, splattering her ankles with droplets of mud. She pushed open the door and the wind rushed inside. When Arianne walked into the great room, she saw her mother waiting for her.
Eliana had a bottle in her hands. Her hair was lank and unkempt, her face drowned in the shadows. Arianne wanted to run back down the stairs, but her feet were rooted to the spot. “Mother,” she heard herself say, cool and steady and dead.
Eliana didn’t look up. She never drinks. It’s me who does the alcohol. She heard a sob and braced herself for the next words. “I’m sorry,” the woman who had been her mother whispered.
It’s okay, mother, Arianne almost said. “You’re always sorry.” Her words snapped out of her taut as a band.
Eliana didn’t look up. “I’m sorry,” she breathed again. In her hands the bottle clunked. “Why did I do those things? I wasn’t myself.”
“You don’t have a self.”
“Please.” Her voice was pleading now. “Please, Arianne.”
“I never had to. What are you doing here?”
“I wanted to see you. I wanted to say sorry. I was wrong, Arianne. Please.”
“I’m not staying in the same house you’re in.”
Eliana covered her face with her hands. “I’m doing everything wrong.”
Arianne didn’t answer, so she went on. “I’m sorry, Arianne, really. It’ll never happen again. I… We can start over again. Clean. Another life for both of us.”
“You’ll have that life, but not with me.”
The woman who had been her mother sobbed harder. “I took a wrong turn, Arianne. I wanted to have him back. Everything was my mothers, only he was mine. I was happy. Arianne, I never meant to do those things.”
For a split second she heard the other woman, the one who would help her and care for her, the woman who was not much more than a girl who had nothing but money, youth, a desire to escape and an obsession for love. It was her that Arianne answered to, her that Arianne thought might come back again someday. But she was in her grave now, as dead as Aaron became when he slipped out the door in the dead of the night. The memories that stalked her were no more than remnants, the ghosts of spirits, corpses of people who might have been. No, mother, instinct bid her to whisper.
“I leave or you go.” Arianne turned for the stairs, then paused. She walked to her room and pulled out the box, and slid it into her bag.
“Arianne,” Eliana wept. “You can’t leave. You can’t. I made you, my blood is in your veins. You’ll never leave. You won’t.”
“My friend told you to leave. I’m telling you to leave. I never left you. You were the one who threw me away like trash.” She walked to the stairs, then ran.
She found herself walled up in a little ally between the trees, wedging her umbrella between the walls. Her back was pressed to the slick wet stone, the rain sliding down her neck. Her hands were shaking as she took the knife out and gave it a good long look. I threw it away last time. I can throw it away this time. Can I?
The blade bit, but she felt no pleasure, not like it was before. The blood ran down her sleeves with the rain, staining the white hem pink. She wiped the knife clean on her shirt and locked it back inside the box. It had been the first time she confronted Eliana, talked back to her since she was eight, instead of nodding and running. And what a treating I got that last time.
Unbidden, Lydia Strayen’s voice came back to claw at her again. Maybe it’s time you stopped running away. Arianne closed her eyes and saw her, the stitches in her skull, the cast and bandages of her body. But she’s broken now, as broken as I am, though her fissures are on the outside.
Fear was a strange feeling. It ate at you slowly, not like anger, which would quench you all a sudden and then spit you out again. Fear happened when you saw yourself; anger came when you turned away from the mirror. Fear thudded quietly from inside and ate you up alive, prompting you to seek help, while anger urged you on to do the reckless thing, to hurt yourself to stop feeling, and fear was death to anger. She remembered the night she ran up the stairs ready to claw her own face to bloody ribbons, and fled down with a pounding heart a frightened wounded animal. I sought out Lydia that day, she remembered. She was afraid now, not angry, not with herself or with Eliana. Once, she’d read in a book, an exchange:
Can a man still be brave if he is afraid?
That is the only time a man can be brave.
She shook the random memory off, shivered. What are you afraid of? Counselors and friends had all asked her. She remembered lying on her back on the carpet while Antony sat on the sofa.
What are you afraid of, Arianne?
My mother, she’d whispered. I’m afraid she’ll hurt me.
No, she thought. No, that was never it.
She saw Eliana again, broken and drunk and dripping and scared. She saw her in the mirror in her cheekbones, saw her when she raised a bottle to her lips or took a knife to the skin. I made you. My blood is in your veins.
That’s me, that’s what I would have become. I’m not scared of her hurting me.
I’m afraid of her being me.
Chapter 33 Lydia
Lydia looked up to the ceiling, blank and white and cold. If there really is a god none of us believed in, why did he arrange this for me? Yet if it was something she had done, what had she done to deserve what was happening to her now? Everything had been going on the way it should have been. Everything, then nothing.
She’d wanted to be would she could have been since she was no more than ten. I was always meant to work with a scalpel in one hand. What good was a surgeon who didn’t have hands?
You have hands. She did; things of bone, bloody deformed skeletal claws with glistening scar tissue and red inflamed flesh. Nothing that will be able to hold a knife. Nothing that will be able to save lives, or cut the tumor from brain tissue, sever the neurons and slice through the spinal base. The doctors had told her later that the skin would heal, leaving something as thick as leather and near as clumsy, or the scar tissue that would mold into something else just as hideous. I will never ever be able to hold a scalpel. I will never be what I should be, must be, can only be.
People came in to comfort her. Her family, her friends, and other people she’d never cared about much and cared even less about now. Mom and Dad and Rosie and Jack and Martha and Ameri and Delissa and Raymond, and more who she’d forgotten in a blink and a turn of her head. It was queer how little she cared about them, when previously almost all her thoughts had been on them. She had chafed under the cooing and fussing before, insisting that everything was okay and would get better, because it had been then; now she put a wall between herself and the world around her. All she needed to do was stare up or close her eyes, or turn her head away. They all seemed to understand, every single one of them, who smiled teary smiles and petted her. You don’t. It was almost funny how before she had thought that it could be put right, when she had searched endlessly, pried, haggled, asked for skin grafts and operations, and finally gave up. Arianne came to whisper in her ear: Not every problem can be solved, Lydia.
The days were always the worst. When she woke she would reach for her Book, lying by her bedside, then remember she couldn’t write, and every single word inside The Book was all gone and dead and burnt. Then someone would come to fuss over her, and she would smile and nod and play along on a good day and turn away and brood on a bad one. She had once loved the mornings, loved how the sun touched the sky and drew her into a new day that was all right, sure and equipped with weapons to face the world. I never even asked for a sword to fight with. All I wanted was a scalpel.
Now she hated how the sun tore shadows across the sky, painting the jagged skylines in bursts of red and gold. A new day. More days, until the end of time. Her time blurred together, as did the faces of the visitors around her. The sun seemed to rise, dragging herself and her torn ruined burnt hands and dreams with her, over and over and over and over again, a million times a day. The doctors and nurses would come in and feel her skin, change her bandages, adjust the fluids, look over the casts. What’s the point? Everything I could have been is dead already. Her life seemed to stretch out in two directions; one that she found in The Book and had known for years, and the other… Every day as she watched the sun rise and the lights blink she would think, it’s a dream, all a dream, but then the pain would go into her head again. They’d been cutting off the painkillers, when she wanted them the most.
Even worse than the dreaming was the hope. Sometimes she felt it crop up inside her again, an echo of the person that she was, yelling at her to do something. I tried. I tried so hard. She had looked through every article, asked every doctor, fought and argued and wept, and watched their eyes go from resigned to pitying to unbearable, watched the scar tissue creep up over her skin like a ghastly plague. It’s all dead now, gone and burnt and dead, dead, dead.
Her mother came to talk to her daily, concern creasing her brow. She told her daughter how lucky she was to be with them, that everything would be alright, and that they would find a way out of it. Lydia just closed her eyes. The pain that she knew she’d disappointed her, disappointed all of them, burned hot and heavy and hard and ate her raw… but not half so bad as the flames tearing up her arms.
She remembered Dad saying, she was praying for you. Lydia had never prayed, not once in her lifetime, but she stared at the sun creeping up the skyline and fumbled in the semi-darkness, trying to muster words. The garbled speech that came out of her was not likely to arouse any god, real or no. She gave up after the third time. They were never her gods… But who was she now? They were not the other girl’s gods, that girl who still left a whisper in her body and thrived in the big white book next to her, as silent and solid as a tombstone. The other girl had loved that once, loved how it brought her steadiness and easiness and peace, but all it brought Lydia was anger and resentment. Many a night she woke with her heart pounding and flames creeping up her arms, and listened to The Book that had once been her religion taunt her. She’s gone now, girl, and nothing you try is going to bring her back. What was she without the belief she had? She who had been sure of everything she said and did, and knew all the reasons of her existence.
Am I only a container now? She wondered more than once. An empty container, a body whose best part of the soul had already left her… But even that was hard to account for. The stitches were gone, and when she looked in the mirror she saw the pale pink thin scar stretched over her bared scalp that only had short bristly hair growing back like the first tentative buds pushing out of the ground at the first rush of spring wind. Another snow, and they die. The winter had come back, beating the brief respite of spring, and the rain woke her on the days the sun did not. With only half of her hair shorn, she looked ridiculous. Wouldn’t have been better if it was all gone. The swelling in her face had gone down some as well, but the bruises and cuts remained. Her skin was sickly pale, although she doubted it was from the injuries. The other girl would have healed by now. She would have risen to meet it and struck it and flaunted her scars and laughed and returned to her old life triumphant, regardless of the gaze of other people. But the other girl was dead now, and it was Lydia occupying the remnants of her torn burnt broken body, and Lydia could feel the gazes and stares much more than the other girl.
I can feel it, Arianne breathed a ghostly whisper. Lydia had been trying to glimpse her scars as she covered herself, and Arianne had looked up and stared at her. I thought she was bluffing.
Arianne hadn’t been lying, though. Lydia could feel the eyes, all probing and flitting and staring, like ants crawling over her skin, and whereas the other girl who’d died would have laughed it off, maybe even flaunted herself, Lydia withdrew deeper and covered herself more. Half her body was still in bandages and casts.
What is that name, anyway? She had answered to Lydia Strayen since she’d been able to talk, perhaps even before that. But it was the other girl who had answered, not the pale sick burnt ungrateful thing that now lurked beneath the surface. Do I still answer for it now? What was I, what am I? Was I only a pile of plans and grids and papers? Or was I more than that? What is left of me when I take away my Book and the life it had?
She’d tried to talk with people at first, tried to get it out. They all looked at her like she was mad. “Only focus on getting better,” they would say. “Everything will work out on its own.”
Is this how it’s working out? Lydia didn’t think much of it. She had not even needed to think so much about useless matters like this before; all she had needed was to dissect and analyze it, and map it out, then do it. I could control the world then, with a pen and a grid and a layout of plans. I wanted to control more, with a scalpel in my hand, but the world spat in my face at that.
One day, when her mother came in with the usual careful, worried look on her face, Lydia had snapped.
“Stop looking at me like that.”
The look only deepened. Mom looked at her with a mixture of pity and worry. “Lydia, what’s wrong?”
She felt trapped, suffocating in her grave. The cast was too hard and the bandages too tight, her arms burning with anger and pain. Her leg and ribs should have hurt much more than her arms… and they had, when Lydia had not looked upon her own skin, not known that they were the ones that would never heal. Now it was her arms and hands screaming for her attention, her broken bones shoved into the background. “What do you think is wrong?”
“Lydia, honey.” Mom laid a hand on her brow, gently stroking back what remained of her hair. “I know you’re upset. But it won’t always be like this. A life is full of ups and downs. I understand you’re having a hard time—”
“What do you understand so much, Mom? What do you think I’m thinking? All of you. You all come in and tell me how incredibly lucky darling little poor Lydia has been—”
“You are lucky. You got hit by a car on the road and—”
“I’m not!” Sweat was pooling on her skin. “If I’d died I would have been luckier than this! I should have died back then, that time, neat and clean, instead of coming back in this—this—”
Her mother had paled. “Don’t talk like that, Lydia,” she whispered. “You’re not feeling well. You’re not yourself. Of course you were lucky—”
“I’m never ever going to feel well or be myself again. She died. Your precious darling brave daughter died when that car hit her and the oil and fire ate off her hands—I don’t—I’m not her.”
“Of course you’re her,” Mom was crying now. She kissed her daughter. “You’ll always be her, no matter what you look like.”
“This isn’t about a few scrapes and my hair getting hacked off.” Her head was spinning from the effort. “I’m not the same person anymore. Everything she has is gone, and I don’t know—” Stop crying, she wanted to scream to her mother. Stop making me feel guilty for hurting you. Stop looking at me like you’re afraid I’ll break. Stop thinking I’m pitiful and I’ve gone mad. Shout at me, match my temper, hit me, slap me—something—Who had told her the same things, when she had not been able to understand it?
Mom embraced her instead and called for the doctor. Lydia was lying on her side with tear tracks on her face when they got there. Mom looked as if she were on the verge of tears again.
Later, they asked her what she wanted. Nothing, she thought, and told them as much.
“Is there anyone you want to see? Talk to, maybe?”
No. You’re all the same.
That night as she lay on her back again, staring up at the ceiling and hearing the patient in the cot next to her exchange a weepy conversation with a pretty young woman that might have been his daughter or his girlfriend, she whispered, “Arianne. I need to see Arianne.”
Chapter 34 Lydia
When Lydia saw Arianne, she had to smile.
“What?” Arianne asked when she saw Lydia smirking.
“You almost look as bad as I do.” She snorted. “I take that back. Maybe not as much.” The other girl looked as though she hadn’t slept for days, her clothes soaked in patches from the rain. There were dark shadows under her eyes without anything to cover them up, and her eyes had a permanent tired, glazed look to them.
Arianne dragged the chair to her and draped herself over it, propping her legs on the lower edge of Lydia’s bed. “Well, you can’t expect everyone to look as cheery as you are.”
Lydia sighed. The bandages had come off last night, leaving her arms bare, though not her hands yet. She found herself hiding them under the sheets, although it hurt whenever she moved and they brushed against her skin. “Yeah. There’s that point.”
Arianne looked at her casts, raised her eyebrows. “That hurt?”
She grimaced. “When I move. I don’t really care about that.”
“Really? I hear you had quite the tantrum yesterday.” Arianne dragged the chair closer. “Don’t know why it surprises me.”
“It’s not about that.”
“I’m sure it’s because you find the hospital meals unfavorable.”
“My bones and face will heal. This won’t.” She drew her arms out.
There was a moment of stillness, then Arianne laughed. “Oh god, Lydia, I’m so sorry… But look at the two of us… Scarred and burned. You’ll look worse than I do.” She laughed again.
There was a queer sense of relief and easiness, the tension draining out of her. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Not gasping and saying you’re sorry.”
There was a pause as the smile slid off the other girl’s face, turned brooding. “I get that.”
“I didn’t really want to see anyone. Else, I mean.”
“I know how you enjoy my company.”
The absurdity of it all made her laugh, although it hurt. I actually do. How did that ever happen? “I think I sort of understand what you said earlier. About not being able to feel it when you’re outside.”
Arianne made a little jerk of her head. “What happened to the faith in life? The problem-solving mantra? This?” She nodded at The Book, shut and silent and untouched.
Lydia’s throat got tight then. “They don’t belong to me anymore.” She looked away. “They’re all gone now.” She had picked it up, but leafing through The Book with Martha’s help only felt like gazing at another person’s life through smoky glass, and also something that had to be pressed up on her. She remembered Martha saying, do you remember this? You were so happy then, and quickly glancing up at her to gauge her reaction, like Lydia would suddenly just get the old feeling back.
“I have to say, I’m surprised.” Arianne leaned back on the back legs of the chair, tilting it. “Welcome to the club.”
“They all want to drag me back into it.” Lydia looked at her arms. It was strange not having to tuck them behind her veil. “Like it’s just this. Or it’s a temporary thing.”
“Is this about the surgeon thing?”
“Not exactly.”
Arianne didn’t say anything for a moment. It was so good for someone not to cry or pity her or chide her. Lydia felt equal parts smothered and ignored. They all asked how she was feeling and if she was all right or if she needed anything, but whenever she talked about what she was actually thinking they would all wave it off. No, that’s fine, it’ll pass. As long as you’re okay, things will get better. She had the feeling that it would wear off over time, that there was only so long a time others would give you to grieve and break and mope around. They’ll allow me to have pain, but not to feel it.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not now.”
They were silent again. “I saw my mother yesterday,” The other girl said suddenly. She was staring out the window.
“What?” Lydia almost sat up. “When? Where? What happened?”
“In the house.” Arianne glanced behind her. She let the chair stand back on its four feet again. “I left.”
“You left?”
“You didn’t expect me to stay there, did you?”
“She should have left. I told her to leave.”
“My mother has never been one to do what she’s told. Quite like me, in that way.” Arianne sighed. “I guess I’m like her in a lot of ways.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You can’t stop what you’re given.”
Lydia forgot about herself for a second, and if only for that she was grateful. “Arianne—”
The other girl laughed. “There goes that voice again. I’d have thought this was enough for you.” She nodded to the cards on her table. “They all tell you it’ll get better, if you can just get over it, right?”
Mom poked her head around the door. “Lydia, your friends have come to visit you.”
“I’ll be leaving,” Arianne said, and made to get up.
Interaction with anyone from her old life made her feel like screaming. She remembered the puzzled look in their faces. “Something’s happened to you,” they would say, and she would want to shout, yes, yes, something’s happened to me. And they would always ask, what’s wrong? Then came the condolences, but none of them would really be listening.
Arianne saw the look on her face, and laughed. “Feeling bad?” She leaned close. “Well, just wait—It’ll all get worse.” She nodded toward the drip that had been taped to her left elbow, and lowered her voice. “I’d be grateful for that, if I were you.”
Chapter 35 Arianne
She found Tarra waiting just outside the door, his face expressionless. She wondered if he’d heard her words, then decided she didn’t care anymore. I’m being reckless. With him. With everyone. Her words with Lydia wouldn’t have been the best optimistic pep talk either, but she’d seen the other girl’s eyes and knew what that look meant. She’s coming over to us now. No pets on the back would solve it.
Mostly, though, it was probably just the night before. Eliana had always brought out the worst in her. Arianne had to admit that, after knowing Lydia’s life wasn’t in danger, she had taken a guilty savage delight in seeing the innocence unraveled. She who would take on the world if she could, and told me to just get better. Well, she’s having her share of the cake now. She understood having your identity taken away, and how it broke you, and the detachment from the world after that. She wouldn’t have wanted my pity anyway. Arianne thought of how Paxon had laughed when she’d pulled up her sleeves and the relief she’d felt then, had seen it mirrored in Lydia’s eyes.
Even so, it was reckless. And wrong. The guilt crept up on her, overwhelming the spite. She doesn’t deserve it.
“What was that about?” Tarra’s voice was strained. He had led her to an empty corridor, a small space at the end of a long walk. The white walls pressed in on either side of them.
“What?”
“‘It’ll all just get worse?’”
“I didn’t know you were eavesdropping.”
“I didn’t need to. You were speaking loud enough, with the mother there too. What’s she going to think?”
His questioning sounded so much like Lydia that Arianne almost answered with a smirk and a rebuff. She bit her lip and looked away instead. She was tired. Tired of the lying, tired of the deceit. Tired of having to feel the weight chafe at her. The words came out of her. “Don’t I have permission to say that?”
“What permission?”
“I’ve had enough of this life to say bad things about it.” Her voice shook, only slightly. “No one’s ever been good to me.”
Tarra was silent again, in one of those pauses that sent her heart thumping and made her wonder if this was the time he would tell her what he knew. His voice was clipped and flat when he spoke. “I was good to you.”
“You thought you were.” Arianne was tired of lying. Let him see the scars. Let him see the monster. “But I’m not her, Tarra. You love a pretty helpless innocent girl that lives only in your dreams, but I made her up. I was never what you thought I was.” Her breath caught in her throat, and she heard the old beat starting to pulse under her skin, almost soothing in its familiarity. Inhuman, abomination, liar, pretender. “We both closed our eyes and ears to the world and chose to believe our fantasies, but they can’t be anything more than that. I’m not a little girl, Tarra, at least not in the way you think I am. I don’t have a protector, and I never could have one.” She thought of the girl-child in his stories, the girl she would have liked to be. “I’m not as good or as innocent or as sweet and loving as she is. I’m—” Wrong, she thought, and almost said. Wrong to be born, wrong to be spawned. Eliana’s words echoed. She isn’t even a human. She felt a surge of relief as she said it all, stripping off the armor, getting it all out, like the first drop of blood her knife drew when her hands shook and her heart thumped. I threw away my memories, now I’m throwing away my deceit, peeling off my skin. She felt released, cleansed… and something that was not relief, a panic building up in the back of her head. Suddenly part of her wanted to take it all back, take her words that cut into the stony faced stranger so close to her and give her back the boy she knew, of the firm gentle words and smiles. Their fingers were still laced, but she had never felt so distant from him.
Tarra just looked at her. She wished she could know what he was thinking. Arianne had always thought that she could read him, that he’d worn his heart on his sleeve and she could see him, that strange detached feeling she got when she looked to see how he reacted to her words. She could not read him now, nor in his silences and pauses. His eyes were cool gray mirrors, blank, and as still and dead as her own when she held herself back.
All he said was, “Is that all?”
Arianne felt as if someone was choking off her throat. I can’t answer that. Where was his shock, where was his dismay and anger and wounded pride? She had expected all of those things, but nothing like what was happening now.
Tarra sighed and looked away from her face, the expression mirroring the one he’d worn yesterday when he’d pulled away. “That’s what you think, right?” Some of his pain and anger had crept through the curt barrier of his words, and she could hear his voice shake. “Well, I guess it was both of us.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “Yes, we did shut ourselves to the truth and choose to believe our fantasies… But they weren’t anything the other was thinking, was it, Arianne?” The hand around hers tightened until it almost hurt. “Do you think I really swallowed every single thing you told me? Did I seem that much a fool to you? No, don’t answer that, maybe I was. Did you think I never knew where you went night after night and how you’d come back after you drank your life out on the table? Did you think I never knew about what went on in your house? Did you think I never knew about this?” His hand shifted, and his fingers brushed against the ridges of her scars, the first one closest to her hand at the end of her wrist.
Arianne flinched impulsively, but couldn’t pull her hand back. She had never been scared of him, ever since she’d met him two years ago, but she was scared now, scared that she couldn’t read his face or his eyes, scared of the words coming off his tongue, scared of the hand that had scraped her scars.
“We were both feeding each other lies, Arianne. And thought that we were so clever… Thought we played the other like an instrument, right?” His voice was raw now, but his body was rigid as a board next to hers. “I knew you because of your mother, Arianne. The first night we met, remember? I was late, coming to that party, and happened to be walking through that small dark alleyway… And there was this girl standing there half a head taller than the woman before her, but cowering all the same, with her head bent low. I heard what she said, saw what she did. It wasn’t for me to meddle with your affairs, but I saw you right where I was ten minutes later at the center of a ring of people looking as perfect and whole as a princess. I wanted to ask you later about it, but you played the part of what you thought I wanted to see so seamlessly I was having trouble believing you were the same person, and then I never got around to it. Call me a fool or a coward or whatever you want for it, but I was drawn to you, wanted to be good to you the more I knew you, and I knew what you wanted me to think, so I went along with it. I always thought I would come around to asking you, but you backed off the subject whenever I even came close. I thought you would tell me, someday, and I could be patient for a while, wait until you trusted me.” The anger had drained out of his voice, turned it flat again, and his face was brooding, eyes hooded and shadowed.
“It’s been two years, Arianne. Tell me I haven’t given you space, played your game. Tell me I haven’t prompted you, asked you, told you to take me with you and tell me what was going on in your head. You would come to me after days of sounding distant with your eyes dark and a broken smile on your face, and whenever I asked you anything you would find some way to gloss it over, say I’m fine, it’s nothing, don’t worry, and every single time I would tell myself that this would be the day, but I would be too much of a coward to face it. That night when Paxon called me and I took you home I thought this time it would finally have to do, but you said no.” His gaze went past her. “You said my name, and said that I couldn’t find out or I would leave you, or you would leave me because you wouldn’t be able to face me after that. And you never said anything else about me, to me, when you were so drunk so couldn’t do anything else than whisper broken words and weep and be sick. I heard your mother’s name and your friends and your past lovers and you called to them over and over and over, but for me all you had was ‘He can’t know’. I told myself that I could still give you time, that we could try again, and anyway that night when I was changing your clothes for you I saw the scars and balked again. I always knew you were hurt, broken in some way, knew that something had gone not in the right way, and I did like the other part of you… The girl you showed me, who could still dream and hope and laugh and write stories and tell jokes and feel love. It wasn’t just a show for me. I thought if you would just come clean to me, talk to me, tell us, the scars would fade and so would the wrongs, and we would find some way to get you out of the mess you were born into.”
The silence dragged. Arianne could hear the soft thudding of her own heart, but she felt as if all the blood had drained from her brain. Tarra looked back at her, saw the way she trembled. “It was like that the other day, you know, when you called me and sounded so scared.” His smile was pained. “Do I scare you, Arianne? You always seem to be at war with yourself. Sometimes I’m just a pet that you like and you see every thought in my head, or so you think, but other times I scare you, don’t I? Because you’re afraid I’ll know what you are.” He sounded distant again. “I was scared, too, that time, and when I called you over and over and you never answered I asked everyone you knew where you were, and Lydia Strayen told me you were in that house with your mother. I might have come back then, if she had not gone looking for you. I dared to hope again… You asked me for help before everything went wrong, and you would have to explain things, but I got more from Lydia than from your mouth. When you came to meet me the day I came back, and when I thought again that this would be the time, you just turned away and told me it was nothing again. And yesterday… What did you say this time? At Lydia’s, weren’t you, those three days you didn’t return my calls? Even if something like that happened to you and you wouldn’t trust me enough just to tell me something, anything. If you’d just told me you were in your own house and shut your mouth after that, I would have waited…But you didn’t give me even that.”
He looked at her again, shook his hand free from hers to tilt her face up so he could see her eyes. “There it is,” he whispered. “There’s the look.” Her let his hand fall, and smiled a tired smile. “I’ve seen it on your face over and over again when you thought I wasn’t paying attention, guarding me from your secrets. Well, you can keep them from now on, and you won’t have to be scared again.”
Tarra turned away, and Arianne listened to his footfalls, watched his back recede from sight until he turned a corner. She knew she should go after him, pull him back, tell him that she would try again and things would be better and could be fixed, but all she did was slide down to the ground and put her head on her knees.
Chapter 36 Lydia
Arianne looked as the bandages came off and things that had been her hands came out. She grimaced at the sight, but didn’t gasp. Lydia bit back a hiss as the new bandages came on.
When the nurse left, the metal cart clanging over the cracks on the floor, she looked down at her hands and felt sick all over again. The skin was getting better day by day, if the clumsy thick leathery glove that had started to grow out of the fire and blood the accident had left was any idea of better. How lucky I am, she tried to make herself think again, but couldn’t muster the strength. At least the burns didn’t get infected, or I would have to get my hands sawed off.
Her left was not burnt half as badly as her right, and the bandages had come off it, leaving only her right still wrapped up, but there were those cuts slicing across her fingers from where she’d put out her hands and met some piece of sharp glass or metal. At least… She’d been to the other ward on the third floor the other day, seen the patients who had it much worse than her, few as they were, with the burns covering their faces and torsos and legs, in the small rom that had bars outside the windows like a prison cell, filled with the moans of the patients lying on the beds. That could have happened to me. Would I have minded more if it was my face that looked like this, or my hands?
“I’m sorry about what I said the other day.” Arianne was staring out the window at the far end of the room. A dim golden glow bathed the room, touching the empty and occupied beds, sketching glowing outlines of the white sheets and painting gleaming dots on the metal bars that danced as the wind ruffled the few leaves outside and shifted the light. “About nothing getting better.”
“It wasn’t wrong.” Lydia tried to flex her fingers on her left hand and was met by a jolt of pain. She’d been taken off the fluids yesterday, replaced by small white pills that she should only take when the pain was too bad. She left them on the little table by her bedside, not wanting to give in. It was almost as if she thought that if she didn’t admit it, time would bend back for her and she would find a way out of it. “I’m getting to that.”
The other girl was silent, staring out into the weak sunset again. “That’s what I thought.” She looked down to her hands. “Maybe you were right, the whole time.”
“About what?”
“Believing in the right things, or something along those lines. Believing that there would be something good even if life was messed up.” She was completely serious.
“Did my mother set you up to do this?”
Arianne didn’t smile. “I came up with it myself.”
Lydia looked at her, disbelieving. “You of all people are starting to talk about things like this?” She’d had enough pity to last a lifetime, but Arianne’s was too much to bear. Even she’s going to tell me that everything will get better. What could it be, except for pity and kindness? She was sick of pity and kindness. There’s nothing left of me anymore.
“I never thought I’d be saying this.” Arianne watched her face, unflinching. “Maybe there are good things, if you let yourself see them.” Her voice was musing. “It’s like that time when I saw you standing outside my door and I almost hoped that I was hallucinating, so I wouldn’t have to believe that it was little Lydia Strayen coming to pull me from Eliana. So I wouldn’t have to believe that things could be right again.”
Lydia had never heard Arianne call her mother by name; it had always been her or my mother. The other words slipped from her mind, like the time she had stared, not understanding, as the other girl sat in the silvery moonlight a hundred years ago and spoke words without meaning.
Those were becoming clearer, though, as she watched her skin grow thick and taut day by day. There was one night, when she just wanted to rip her skin off her body and be done with all of it, wanted to slice the festering weeping wounds off herself, run away and distance herself from the thing that she had become.
The feeling had been reckless, heady, and she knew at the moment that if someone was hurting her she would have urged it on, knowing that nothing could come of her anyway. I’m thinking all the things I’ve hated and despised before, she’d realized, as she was staring at the white pills on the desk, lying next to The Book. She wondered what it would feel like to pour the whole bottle down her throat and sleep for a thousand years, and even the thought of those people she’d loved couldn’t still her. It would hurt them, wouldn’t it? They would understand then, feel what I feel.
But she’d stopped, knowing that she would regret it when the feeling passed. It had awed her almost as much as it scared her, and every time she felt it, a dull throb in the back of her head, she would hear Arianne again. Have you ever thought that it might feel good to be feel bad, right to be wrong? So your body wouldn’t really be yours anymore. It came over her in whispers, not really even the big things, like when the nurse came to peel off her bandages, or when she’d fought with her father the other day. It came, always, unnoticed, unprepared, when she suddenly woke and felt the pressure of a scalpel pressed between her fingers again, or when Jack had staged a play just to make her feel better but she couldn’t, or when she saw The Book fall open at a page she’d written once about college applications, or when the hem of her bandages caught as she was trying to sit up in the bed. She would want to break something then, so much, when she had tried to fix everything before, because she knew that this would not be solved by her just wanting to solve it. The words came back to bite her, taunting. Solve the problem.
“Stop trying to make me better. Stop trying to make me whole.” She could feel heat pressing up behind her eyes and hated herself for it. “I’m never going to be again.”
“I wasn’t.”
“What, then? What are you trying to say?”
“That you have a choice.”
“Like you did?”
Arianne fell silent again at that. She pushed back her chair. Before she left, she looked back and smiled thinly. “Happy birthday, Lydia.”
She’d forgotten.
Then she saw them, all waiting by the door, with tentative smiles and shining eyes. Martha hugged her lightly and left a package beside her, Ameri smiled and gave her a thick book on medicine, then apologized for Delissa for not being there. Mom kissed her cheek and assured her in a whisper that she would a better birthday once she was better. Jack balanced an awkward conjunction of a model of her he had made on the table beside her, which lit up in white and green when he pressed a button. When the cake came, it was in the shape of a white book, and she blew the candles out lightly as they sang quietly not to disturb the other patients, but half the room had joined in by the time they were finished. People came around, clad in casts and bandages, to congratulate her. The cake had to be fed to her, and she had smears of white cream on her face by the time she’d had a few bites, after which it was whisked away quickly by Rosie, declaring that her health wasn’t suited for high sugar levels. The nurse poked her head around the door to see what the commotion was about. Lydia tried to smile, knew she should, but the clamp on her breathing again made her choke. I should have been happy. When she looked around at all the smiling faces around her, hopeful, eager, careful, the burst of pain and guilt she had not allowed herself to feel snapped open again.
Eighteen, Lydia thought, looking up to the white ceiling, later that day when things had quieted. Can that be? She had become an adult overnight. Whatever her age, she felt more a little girl than ever, trapped in a body that wasn’t hers, frightened and hurt. When she thought of Lydia Strayen again, would the word woman replace child? But that didn’t matter, anymore, not as much; for, overlaying the letters, whichever they were, would always be cripple.
Lydia closed her eyes again, but their faces seemed to be branded into the inside of her eyelids. She wanted to hate them, close the light and hope out, but the dam broke and she was drowning in the depths of her own feelings.
For the first time since the accident, she opened The Book and began to look through it, trying to find an answer, some spark that would bring to life that girl inside of her and call her back, to meet life and its quarrels. I owe it to them to try. She owes it to them to try. She even asked for her notebooks, and had them piled up beside her bed, but every time she opened them she found her eyes wandering aimlessly over the pages and glassing over after only a short while of reading her own words, so she reached for The Book first instead.
The room was strangely serene, as the sun and shadows dappled the floor and fell across the creamy white pages in her hands. Over on the other cot, a woman was smiling fondly at her daughter, while the bed next to hers was empty, a book left half open on the pillow. At the other end of the room, an old man in a wheelchair was slowly getting pushed around, the sun touching his silver hair.
Everything looked so peaceful, as the sun sank and sank, even here in the hospital. She looked back down. The cover was blank, smooth. She unclasped the fastenings clumsily, using her knuckles to tip the first page back. Her own handwriting from three years back stared at her through slanting black letters and the mist of time.
This book is Lydia Strayen’s property, her fourteen-year-old hand had scrawled in looping cursive, bold and steady and sure. Beneath the letters, uncharacteristically neat writing marked line after line in small tidy words. She saw the final, detailed, if not childish plan again: An apartment right next to the second hospital. She had even added, seventh floor. Lydia remembered a day she’d been there to see, looking up the brick walls, gravel crunching beneath her feet and a sweet breeze in her hair. Ivy had been creeping up the walls then, splashing red and white with hues of green and yellow. The top floors were the seventh floors, with a roof on top and slanting glass panels catching the light. I thought my life was beginning, then, but it had already half ended.
She had written, wait for me, and at the time anything put down on the thick white pages was a promise and a wish, better than any magic spell. It all came true… Until it didn’t. The school and subjects were all there as well, on the front page of he first year: Chemistry, Biology, Physics, the grades she would have to get slotted neatly next to the colleges she would like to go to, year after year after year. There were scraps and photos, too, come off of textbooks and newspapers, with circles and lines and margins. A flimsy piece of paper with pictures of diagrams peeked up through two passages talking about a patient. And everywhere plans, plans written for the day and month and week and year, walled up in neat grids or overflowing the pages, when and what to do, how much, with whom, the little boxes all ticked and tucked away or crossed out and re-written. Pages and pages and more pages.
The dim glow faded and the sterile lights snapped brighter, and her mother came around to check on her, smiled when she saw Lydia turning the pages entranced. Doctors and nurses bustled in for their nightly examination, and Lydia was turned and prodded and rubbed and pricked. The visitors had cleared out, mostly, and the patient beside her had returned to his bed. Lydia didn’t see any of it; her eyes never left the page. She found the day where small notebooks added to the big white book, found the day she had been so happy when she reached another milestone, found the day when nothing had worked out but she had changed the writings to make a new plan. Then she was staring at long lapses and blank pages, on those days when she was on the trip with Arianne, and that last day, with the words, meeting with Raymond in the afternoon written in a quick flourish, the last “n” trailing a long flamboyant tail. The sky had turned dark, and it was no longer the world outside she saw but the room inside reflected in the glass.
Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon. It was strange how little she thought of him and how little she cared, when before she would stutter and trip over her words whenever he came near. He’d visited her thrice after the incident, but she had paid him no more attention than the others. He’s just a boy, a child. A normal, growing, healthy boy. She let the unhurt tips of her fingers trace the letters on the page. She thought of Arianne again, and the people she met with. Lydia felt uncomfortable with normal, whole people now, having to cover her arms and act to care about the same things they did. Like draws to like, she heard, and it was Arianne again, with all her cuts and scars and drinks, everything Lydia had despised before, her that she thought of the most, her that would give her any comfort or understanding.
Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon. Could she have known what would happen? Was it truly an accident, or had there been some sign, some inevitable clue she’d missed? Lydia flipped back the pages, searching for an answer again, but it was as silent as the time she’d tried to write something about Arianne. It’s made for plans and solutions, not feelings. Lydia had always felt that she could control things, her own life with The Book, and other lives with her scalpel. Staring at the blank pages of The Book laid out before her, for the first time she felt powerless, like there truly was something bigger and stronger, invisible and impenetrable, that controlled her life, a force that was out of her control and her knowledge.
She found herself coming back again and again to that day when she had crossed her plans all out when they hadn’t gone the way she’d hoped. Clean strike-through lines, cutting smaller boxes into the grids. Somehow she thought that if there was an answer, it lay here, not in the neat gleaming plans of her past.
Chapter 37 Arianne
And If I were wrong?
February 17, Arianne’s book
“Nothing for today?” Pax asked. She was leaning against the rails beside the river; her short hair fluttered around her face like indigo cloud. Light flashed on the metal around her neck and in her hair.
“I thought we could try to converse some without a drink between us.” Arianne shielded her eyes from the glare reflecting off the water. “And perhaps not in the middle of the night.”
“That’s new.” Pax eyed her. “Well, what is it, then? Spit it out.”
“Why are you always under the impression that I just wanted to tell you something?”
“When have you ever called me out when you were perfectly well?”
Arianne had to smile. “Good point.” She joined the older girl by the railing. Behind them, a long walk stretched out, flanked on the opposite side by a green lawn and a row of trees, though a thin covering of them; she could see easily to the plaza between the spaces between the trees. Laughter and chatter floated through the air to reach her. She could see children playing at roller-skates and skateboards and bikes, and on the wide walk behind them passerby talked and laughed. In front, the river stretched out far and wide, the buildings on the opposite side gleaming glass and steel and granite, the water itself glittering in the light despite being slightly murky, like a pale golden ribbon stretching out upon itself. A boat rolled past, churning up flowers of white spray. Spring is in the air. “Did I ever tell you about Eliana?”
Pax turned her eyes from the river, wary. “Your mother? Why?”
“A lot of reasons.” She paused, trying to find words. “How much did you know?”
The other girl tipped her head to the right, still wary. “The basics, I would say.”
The bracelet on her wrist had been Eliana’s; Arianne undid the clasps and turned it over in her hands. She gave it to me, said that it was lucky, that I would need it one day. It had been the earlier times, and one of Eliana’s better days, or rather one of her apologizing days. “It was better when she was younger. When I was little.” She balled the chain into a clump in her fist. “She was fleeing from her life. She was--”
Pax waited. Arianne turned the chain over, then fisted it again. “I can’t do this. I can’t talk about her.”
The other girl didn’t push her. Pax drummed her fingers on the railing, making a brassy clanging sound as the rings on her fingers struck metal. She listened to the beat. One, two, one, two, one, two. Finally, the other girl said, “I thought I’d stop. The drinking. And the tattoos.”
“And?”
“And nothing. Maybe I will.”
Arianne glanced at her newest, the ink curling above below her collarbone. Pax felt her gaze and shifted a little, letting her collar cover it. “It doesn’t come all at once.”
Pax was probably five or six years older than Arianne, but she never knew the other girl’s exact age, and always saw her as a girl, more like herself than the others. She thought of the last few weeks, months, really, when the other girl started coming in lapses and starts to their gatherings instead of frequently, and mostly just sat and watched, while the quick growth of the ink on her skin had slowed. I thought that was just because there wasn’t much space left on her skin. I should know. Pax was more of a sentimentalist than Arianne was; she inked pictures or words instead of lines on her skin that would last forever, a blade, a word, a mountain, a drop of water. She supposed they all had their meanings and memories, though she had never asked. When Pax had first shown her the skin on her back, there had been flames eating at her spine. It was almost two years ago. She was as irrational as I was. “Why?”
The other girl shrugged, squinting across the water. Her jacket flapped noisily behind her. “Why did I choose to start all of this in the first place?” She paused, pondering her answer. “Do you ever feel, sometimes, like you’ve been pulled out of it suddenly and the realization of what you are just hits you? Like, this is really my life, this is really my body, and I’m really doing this. And whatever you’re doing doesn’t seem right, anymore.”
“It never was.”
“No, but…” Pax rapped on the railing, a quick tap-tap-tap, as if trying to hear the right words in its reverberation. “It felt good. But then it doesn’t.”
The look on Isla’s face flashed before her, the revulsion she’d felt when she knew what she was doing and who she was with. The slick, cold, oily feeling sinking in her stomach when she slid down onto her heels and watched Tarra walk away. “Yes.”
“That’s sort of become a longtime thing for me.” Pax turned a ring on her middle finger. “I want to try something new, you know? Something else.” She pulled back a sleeve, just slightly, and touched the curve of a hand inked to her forearm. “Do you even remember what it was like before you began to… just give in?”
“It was harder.”
“Yeah. That’s why I said ‘give in’. It felt… richer, right? And not in a good sense.” The sleeve went down again. “I don’t really mean to leave everything completely. I don’t think I’d have the strength to do that, anyway. It’s just… I think I’ve spent enough time on this side. I started younger than even you did, do you know? I was fourteen.” She sighed. “I want to have something that I can turn back to when I die. You do feel pleasure in this life, but it comes to fast and leaves too swiftly, with that sort of sharp edge that makes it too hard to recall anything that’s not all flimsy and shallow. And I wonder… Is this all there is? I mean, I can’t say I regret anything. Might have did something worse without it. But it’s starting to get a bit too flat, too repetitive for me, more like an addiction than a choice. And I used to think, so what? But I can’t say that anymore. Maybe you just get to it when you get to it.”
The bracelet was knotted around Arianne’s fingers. It went slack, then wound around her forefinger and middle finger, once and twice and back again. A woman with a child in her arms bent down near her feet to pick a wildflower that was growing out of the cracks in the stone and gave it to her husband. Arianne stared at her hands. “Maybe I’m getting to it now.”
Pax gave a little half smile. Arianne saw the question in her face, and wanted to turn away from it. She was in third grade again, pouring out her heart to strangers. But Pax isn’t Quetin.
“I was with Tarra yesterday.” She said finally. “He knew.”
Pax was still, her elbows on the railing, a toe of a boot scuffing the ground. “Ah.”
“You knew.” Arianne turned to stare at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“What would you have done if I did?” The other girl didn’t flinch from her gaze. “You didn’t want to know, otherwise you would have taken the hints. And it was just a hunch, anyway.”
He has to know sometime. The words stung. I was the blind one. She felt tired, with a completeness that overwhelmed her, and the familiar desire to flee. The chain was chafing her skin. She let it unravel, dangled it above the water. Everything seemed so clear now, in hindsight. For a moment she couldn’t speak, as the strange fumbling anger flooded her again. For him, for her, for myself. Why did everything happen this way?
“And?” Pax prompted, after a long silence.
“He walked out. Can’t say I blame him.” Her skin glowed red hot. “Judge me.”
“Not my place to do so.”
Arianne bit her lip. “I should have followed him. Done something.” The words were foreign on her tongue; for a moment Lydia Strayen’s wide green eyes flashed before her. “I didn’t want to believe it.”
“That there can be something good?”
“Yes.”
“That happens.” The other girl tapped the railing again, using her knuckles this time. Clang clang clang. “It’s what pushed me. To want to stop.”
The thin silvery chain coiled up and uncoiled. “I’ve held on to that all my life, or at least a big enough part to make it my belief of the world. If someone takes that out, everything is wrong.” Wrong to be right.
She could not feel the girl who ran away from everything, but neither the sure steadiness Lydia must have had before her dreams burned to dust. Where am I, then? Stuck somewhere, in the middle. Had all of this happened two months ago, she would have left the town without a second thought. It’s not just him. It’s everything. This just pushed me over the edge. She looked at the other girl. “No words of wisdom?”
“Do you remember how you saw everything is cut black and white?”
“Yes?”
“It’s not really hard to be completely in the dark. Or the light. Because there aren’t really choices you have to make and you don’t really need to struggle. I think we’re just…” Pax pulled at her necklace. “Teetering over the edge.” She sounded as if she were musing over the words for herself rather than Arianne. “We’re not too old. Had a taste of both.” She paused. “Maybe it’s time to make a choice.”
“For what?”
“What we choose to believe in. Even if it’s really on the black side. What you think doesn’t go with what you feel.”
Teetering over the edge. A knife suspended over her skin. Arianne frowned. “I do believe in clean slates. In starting over.” Masks and lives.
“No, it’s not like that.” Pax rubbed the newest tattoo. “Like I said: It’s easier to stay where you are. The time comes when the time comes, and you choose whether or not to… board the train, as it is. I don’t think it’s leaving things behind. More like… Moving on with them.” She laughed, but her eyes looked sad. “Now I sound like an old person handing out life suggestions.”
Teetering over the edge. The bracelet dangled on the tips of her fingers. The last time I saw Eliana was the first time I really saw her. Let go of any fanciful dreams. She let it drop, the silver shadow sinking quick into the depths of the river.
Chapter 38 Arianne
Maybe it’s time you stopped running away.
Arianne mounted the steps, one and two and three. Eliana was gone, taking all of her things with her. Her room was empty, the bed and walls all bare, the floor clean and gleaming. Nothing was left except the furniture. She wondered if Salla would still come back, if Eliana was gone. Arianne stood at the door for a moment, then moved on. A bottle, half empty, stood on the table. She put it in a bag, then went to the fridge and cabinets and took out all of them, putting them inside the sack, then knotted the opening and put it at the top of the stairs.
Her own room had been cleaned up too, she saw, the table wiped and the bedsheets neatly folded. The bar holding her door shut was gone, too; but the marks it left on either side of the doorframe were not. Arianne closed the door behind her, and reached into the drawers to pull out the stacks of paper. Crossed out lines and jumbled words, some letters of the alphabet strung together, that’s all, she tried to think, but she touched the last page from only a few days ago and stashed it safely back in the drawers again. Maybe it’s time you stopped running away. She had been with Lydia a few more times after the first, a broken rag doll. She had been a puppet, dancing on the strings she wove for herself, now they’ve snapped, and she will have to walk alone. She wondered when the girl she was had snapped. You have a choice, Arianne had told Lydia.
She hated it when her own advice applied to herself.
The room had not much of her possession that was important; some clothes and the little black box were all. What have I come back for, this time? Arianne wanted to tell herself that it was to make an end to things, clean it up, but some part of her had felt wrong when she saw the house without Eliana’s shadow, when she had almost grown used to it again. I still want to run to her, almost as much as I want to run away from her. So many masks she had worn, now, one face for one person, one way to act for one setting. She had played the small child, the popular girl, the forgotten shadow, the ghost in the dark, and much and more, but always daughter, daughter, daughter. Is she truly gone?
Arianne could not muster triumph, only relief, and a confusion at the emptiness inside her, like a great part of her had been pulled down and crumbled to dust. How do I act, when she is not to see? What do I say, when she is not to hear? What should I fear or hope, when she is not waiting for me? She had feared Eliana, hated her sometimes, wept bitter tears and cut and drank, had hoped sometimes for her to be gone forever, but now that Eliana had left she wondered what was left of her one she was left. Who was she, if not her mother’s daughter? My blood is in your veins. Where did she stand, how did she act? All her actions had been a response to how other people acted toward her or what they wanted from her, like pieces of a huge puzzle put together to make the girl they called Arianne Whitewood. Did the pieces belong to her, truly, or to the people they’d been made to please? When they broke, what was left of her? Aaron was gone, Antony was gone, Quetin and Lissanda and Eriyan were all silent, Grandes and his group she would no longer want to go back to, nor the one with Resme and Isla. Pax was no longer the same person as she had met two years ago, and Lydia was not the girl she knew from months ago, and Tarra…
But most of all it was Eliana, Eliana with her lilted laughter and uneven words and pale blue eyes, Eliana and the time she would let Arianne crawl into her bed and hold her close, when she was not as unstable and still held out to the hope that Arianne could accomplish what she herself could not. Every part of Arianne had come apart.
She took the sack of bottles, along with some of Eliana’s and her own possessions that were left, and threw them out, but when she wanted to drop the knife and its box along with them her fingers would not part. Arianne remembered the first time, when she sat with her back pressed t the door and was sobbing so hard. It had not really been some big deal, she recalled; but it had hit her hard, harder than the neglect and cruel glances and whispers and snickers at school, or the empty silence she came home to every day. Sometimes all the feelings would stay down when the big blows came, and she thought herself strong enough to cope with whatever life threw at her, only to crop up in tiny things, the wrong color of a pen, a single glance or a word, a website that would not upload. The single dollop had shone on the blade of the knife, and that had felt so good that she couldn’t stop.
Wrong, she thought. Wrong, sick, filthy. Yet she could not let it go. She saw the new tattoo hovering Paxon’s skin. It doesn’t come all at once.
Arianne grasped the hilt, and laid it back in the box. Someday, perhaps. But not now, not today. I’m not ready yet.
When Tarra saw who was standing at the door, he looked like he had half a mind to close the door in Arianne’s face. “Arianne.” There was an edge to her name that she seldom heard. “What is it?”
She realized that she had no idea what to say. I’ve heard enough “I’m sorry”s in my life to never want to hear another apology again. Nor did she want to say it; two words with no weight and no promise, or only a broken one. She said them anyway, at a loss for better words. “I’m sorry.”
“What for?”
She fumbled. “Everything. I shouldn’t have—”
“Did it really have to come to this?” He was accessing her the way he’d looked her the day she went to the airport to meet him, cool eyes, and silent. “I know enough of what you’re going to say. Save it.”
Her mind searched for the answers. What does he want? What should I give, how should I act? But there was no more hiding left for her, the moment she’d chosen to come here, a decision she was starting to regret sorely. “Eliana left the other day.”
“Your mother?”
Arianne had not acknowledged her as that since the day she’d left the room with Lydia. She nodded.
He was waiting for her to speak. When she didn’t, he said, “Good, then. Is that all?”
She recalled all the times she had brushed off her words, spoken to him, watched him as if above him, indifferent. She could not drag that feeling from anywhere within her now, nor watch him the way she had grown accustomed to; her gaze fell somewhere on the ground. “I can change,” She said finally. “Things can change.”
She could feel his gaze on her face. “That’s what I thought.” He sighed. “Save yourself some dignity, Arianne, it’s what you’ve worked so hard to keep.”
“No, I—” She stopped again, wanting to tell him about Lydia and Eliana and Paxon, about everything that had changed, but the words would not come to her. They sounded whiney, begging, a child trying to make excuses and begging for forgiveness. Eliana’s words. I’m so sorry. Arianne knew whatever she did or said, she would never be able to look at Tarra again and not hear his words from the other day and see the look in his eyes, knew that the steely, guarded tone edging his voice would not fade anytime soon, if it did at all, that she would never be able to forget and pretend nothing happened. If I turn away right now, I might still be able to. Spare myself some dignity. But she was done with running away, had grown sick of the identities that never went past her skin, sick of the panic that filled her when she looked into the past. This is my chance at trying to fix anything. The first, and perhaps the last. “I forgot how to trust someone.”
A long silence. Arianne felt the wind lifting her shirt, and resisted the urge to tug it closer to her skin. Tarra still had a hand on the doorknob. “You will fix that.” A pause. “Not me.” When she looked up again, his gaze had lifted from her face to settle somewhere in the distance. “I thought I could. But I’m not important in what you have or what you want or how you choose and what you believe. Oh, I’m not accusing you of anything,” he said, when Arianne tried to protest. “I mean it literally. Only you can fix your problems, whatever they are. I can’t. The choice is yours, and I’m not your medicine or your savior or your tool, so don’t look at me to save you.”
He stopped again, and saw that strange expression she sometimes caught when he thought she wasn’t looking again, faraway and silent. “Sometimes I wonder if it’s really possible. For you, or anyone, to really heal after wrongs, no matter their severity.” His gaze settled back to her arms and wrists. “If a scar is there, does it mean that the hurt is gone? Or just that it’ll leave a mark forever?” His tone was as mild as always, but there was a calm tiredness to it that had not been there before. “Sometimes I wonder if you’re really capable of growing up, Arianne.”
“I couldn’t throw the knife away,” She said suddenly. She did not understand why this was the first statement to pop out of her mouth, when she could have said better things.
“What?”
“Last night. When I went back. I threw away all her things. And some of mine.” The cut on her forearm from a few days before flared briefly. “I couldn’t throw away the knife.” Is that okay? She wanted to ask, but knew that he would give her no answers. It was Eliana’s voice again. It’s never been okay. But it was much worse to be conscious instead of numbing the feelings… Though she had learned the hard way that unconsciousness would bring her bigger consequences than hangovers and scars. I was blind to the world.
Tarra closed the door behind him and leaned against it. Arianne saw the tag at his throat, his shirt turned inside out, and wondered what time it was. I should have taken a watch, at least. “You’ll get to it when you’re ready.”
She saw Pax and her tattoos again. “Maybe.”
He turned away a little, so all she could see was the side of his face. “You will.”
It was the most she would get of him, she knew. When Arianne was walking away, she thought she could feel his gaze at her back, and didn’t dare look back to make sure.
Yes. I will, I will, I will.
Chapter 38 Lydia
That night she could not sleep, looking up into the lights. The hospital always had the lights on, no matter the time. Very soon she would be back, perhaps just tomorrow. The idea unsettled Lydia, even though the hospital was where everything was abnormal. By rights, things should get back to normal when she went back home and got back to her old life.
Why am I crying? Everything will be better once I get back. Everything will go back to what it was. It was with a pressure that she tried to reassure herself; she knew of all the eyes that were waiting, watching. I have to get better, get back, and soon. Lydia knew that, yet the pain pulsed anew at the thought.
She pushed the button on the side of bed and raised herself up to a half-sitting position, quietly, and reached for The Book again. The answer is in The Book.
She traced a fingertip lightly across the edge of the cover, then opened the clasps and looked down at the bold letters again. Lydia Strayen’s property.
“Yes,” she whispered aloud. “Yes, it was.” But she’s not coming back.
She took the corner of the first page between the fingers of her left hand, trying not to bend the cuts too much, and drew it back slowly, not letting go. The page ripped open cleanly at the leather-bound spine, with a soft tearing sound. She brushed it off, meaning to let it land on the floor, but it settled between her legs instead, in the tangle of sheets and flesh and cement. She let it stay where it was. The second page was harder, ripping open at the middle and leaving a long gash slicing halfway down the paper. She shifted, and tugged at the base; it case loose at the seams. Then went the third page, and the fourth. My future, my past. Her skin throbbed with pain as she ripped and tore and tugged, but she went on all the same. When the edge of the page bumped against the cuts, her eyes watered with pain, but she just pulled back and kept going. I deserve pain, I was made for it, born out of flame and debris and filthy oil.
A page and a page and another. Twenty, twenty-one. She ripped away everything that had been that girl’s, her control, her life, her sense of world, her identity, her name. It all got harder as she went along, the pages getting stuck at the shafts of paper that jutted from the spine where the ripping had not been so neat. Hundred and eight, hundred and nine, ten, eleven. She held the book down by her elbow and pulled again. A tear splashed down into the page, but it felt good. Two hundred and three. A page had a smear of blood marring the perfect letters on it as it settled to its place with the others. Her ribs ached with the tempo of her heart. Meeting with Raymond in the afternoon.
The final page tore back, but still a small half of blank pages remained. Lydia took the leather cover, and wrenched it back and forth until it came clean off, scattering the pages like white down over her body. She closed her eyes with the leather cover pressed to her chest.
The days and nights blurred together.
She had given up on trying to get back, trying to be right. Every morning she opened her eyes, turned, and closed them again. People rushed around her, all left, right, front, back, and she shut them all out, answering in blank looks and silences. The only world she felt was the stabbing pain that had started to cease day by day, and on one day she woke up to find herself in her own bed in her own room. She had tried to sit up, but couldn’t do that without the beds in the hospital that could raise her, so she had to turn over and push herself into a half-kneeling position on one knee. Nothing was changed in her room, everything in its place, but there was a wheelchair in the middle of the floor, and a bottle of pills on the drawers. She swallowed one, and after a few minutes another when she felt the unconsciousness not coming fast enough, even though she knew she should only take one at a time. Mom had only found out four days after, when she took the bottle and found it half empty already.
“What did you do?” There was real anger in her mother’s voice now, a harshness Lydia seldom had heard directed at her. “Why did you do that, Lydia? Talk to me!”
Her hands were folded in her lap, quiet. Her mother strode back and forth across the cramped length of Lydia’s room. The notebooks were still exactly where she’d left them. Even in her anger, her mother avoided them, stepping over the binders and notes, careful where she put her feet. “You can’t ignore everything and everyone forever, Lydia. We’ve been very considerate, and we know what you’re going through is hard. We really do. But we can’t coddle you forever.” She stopped, and looked at her daughter, motionless with her eyes staring straight ahead. “Lydia, you know how it works. Be strong and live it through. You can. We all know you can. But you’ve thrown that all away, and you’re hurting everyone.” Her voice sharpened. “Where’s your courage, Lydia?”
If you want her so much, go back and get her. Lydia just wanted to close her eyes and shut her ears, felt suffocated by the onslaught of words, pressured, squeezed. It wasn’t as if she didn’t know how to get better, or that she should. I’m so tired, that’s all. Let me breathe, let me breathe, let me breathe.
“Lydia.” Mom knelt in front of her, forcing her to make eye contact. Her voice had softened. “If you have some problems coping, would you like to see a therapist? A doctor? They can help you. You can tell us.”
Help me become right again. Lydia shook her head, silent. When she was alone again, she half opened her eyes, reached for the pills, swallowed one, though there was no water to go down with it. The hard bitterness stuck in her throat, and she swallowed again, forcefully. Soon, soon, soon. The sweet painlessness stole over her like a cool liquid sheen, erasing her feelings.
Later that day, when she sat on the hills, she fumbled again for the bottle, and found it was almost empty, only a few pills left rattling in the container. What will I do when it’s gone? She wondered, and the thought made her want to weep.
The hills were glowing dully, lines etched in gold curving over the skyline, when Lydia thought that she should go back. It was an empty place, and barren, though unquiet. The wind whipped around the grasses and her head, filling her ears with the sounds of rushing water and wind. In the height of summers the grass would grow to be almost the height of her wheelchair, but now only tufts and uneven patches of green dotted the muddy turf, so she had a good view of what was below her. A single tree rose next to her, probably planted by someone before her, stretching bare branches upwards. It had not been easy getting herself up here, even with Rosie’s help, who had come with her wordlessly and left her when Lydia stayed silent. The hills sloped ever so slightly, but rose up high, and the ground was uneven, the journey up long and tiring with her skin not yet fully healed, the wheels chafing her hands. Lydia looked across the city; she could see it vaguely nestled in the center of the surrounding hills, and on the highest crest she saw the speck of white that marked Arianne’s home.
She sat in her wheelchair and covered her arms with a scarf, and sat with her head laid back to stare into the gray-white sky. Lydia should have been in school by now; the new term had started a while ago. But there was no going back now, no fitting back in, and neither was there anything in front of her. She knew that this was the point where, sooner or later, everything would end.
When Lydia heard footsteps, crunching a little on the dead piles of grass on the narrow path, she closed her eyes and waited. Yet when they stopped, she did not feel the pressure pressing onto the handles of her wheelchair, nor heard the careful honeyed tones or disappointed angry words people had been throwing her way. There was another light rustle, then something pushing to the side of her wheels, and the sound of someone sitting down beside her. Arianne. The other girl had leaned against the side of Lydia’s chair, a thick jacket slung over an arm, leaving her arms bare to the elbows. Lydia found herself staring again, though instead of the horror and grotesque fascination there was hunger in its place. This is how I feel, she thought as she marked a particularly long scar running from the other girl’s wrist to upper arm, silvery and pale. Good to be wrong.
“How did you know where to find me?”
“Your mother told me.” Arianne glanced around. “Where’s that book of yours?”
“You wouldn’t be asking unless you knew.”
Arianne crossed her ankles. “Be better to hear it from you.”
“It was the last part of me.”
“So you could start over?”
“So I could die.”
The other girl didn’t flinch. “Do you know what I think?”
“That I’m right in thinking that.”
“You’re not. I think you need a drink… But you’re not getting that.” Arianne smirked and produced a flask from a pocket, and drank a small swallow.
“Give me that.”
“Oh no you don’t.” Arianne tucked the flask back into its pocket. “Not much good that’s going to do you, either. It doesn’t even have alcohol in it.” Her eyes floated to the bottle wedged between Lydia’s arms. “Not half as strong as whatever that is.”
“It’s painkiller.”
“Sure it is.” Arianne sighed. “Does it work the way you want it to?”
“Well enough.”
“Well.” Arianne twisted to look at her, not turning away from her wounds and casts. Her eyes seemed lighter than Lydia had remember, more blue than purple now, but her skin was as bloodless as ever, a pale sheet against the writhing green lives that thrashed around them. “So this is it, then?” There was no anger or tenderness in her question, only a slightly mocking, almost taunting edge; yet Lydia knew the glint in those eyes, knew how they would dip and sway and look away, to hide what was inside.
“I told you already.”
As if on cue to her thoughts, Arianne glanced away. “Was that all you were, Lydia?” Her voice dropped low. “Some plans and words?”
The words cut her, much harder than any of the condolences or chidings, perhaps because she knew they were true. She had come to detest the person that she once was, almost as much as she wanted to be her again, without doubt, without fear, without anger… But without that, she had been missing some other things too, things that went deeper, cut harder. She had thought she could control the world, move it to her will, and fix anything that happened; but she had flaunted herself too surely, and destiny had dismissed her with a lazy flick of its hand. The girl she had been for seventeen years built her life on the truths she believed, and mapped out a track that ran along every single turn. Not once, since the accident, had Lydia wondered if that really was all there was, if by ripping apart The Book she would really rip the life out of a body. And now I know. But was that all I was, a book?
Yet how could she be anything else? She had been so sure that this would be the one path she would take, like everything else had one answer; a problem, and a solution, a lock and a key, fitting cleanly into one another. She knew that this was her key, as sure as she knew that everything was attracted to the ground for the earth’s gravity. And now her answer was burnt, dead, broken, and the door would remain locked forever. “There’s no place for me here.” She felt quick heat push behind her eyes again. “What else can I do?”
“Go on. You have a family. Friends who love you.” Arianne plucked some weeds and began braiding the grasses together. “There’s much of the world you haven’t seen yet.” Her fingers halted, making a knot.
Lydia might have brushed the words off, had she not known whom they were coming from. “I can’t go back to what I was, Arianne. I can’t be right again. There was an answer to my life, and now it’s gone.”
“Like I did? There was never any answer to mine, as you put it.” Dark blue eyes met green. “Should I have died the moment I was born?”
She found herself fumbling. Arianne spared her an answer. “I thought I should have. A lot of times, really. And it is easier to do so.” The long strip of grass began braiding itself with another. “But sometimes life can shock you.”
“Nothing’s going to put me back to what I was.”
“I never said anything would. Why do you have to use your old ways to measure what you are now?” Arianne folded her arms, so that the scars disappeared again. “You could have hope that there is something better for you.” There was a low silence, as a bird settled on the bare branches of the birch tree next to them took flight. “You were everything I wanted to be and couldn’t be, had everything I wanted and would never get, but you never seemed to know it. That’s still there.”
Lydia was shocked for a second. “That’s what I thought.” She remembered seeing the other girl all dolled up in her luxuries and her beauty, and lavishing it all away. “That you had everything I wanted and you threw it all away.” A low hum started in her chest. Could that really be true? Could things not be lost, remain the same, even in this? “But I’m wrong, broken, crippled… Already.”
“Do you think I don’t know enough of that?” An old note of irritation had crept into the other girl’s voice. “They all say so. They all see that. But who are they to label what’s right and wrong for us? I always hated myself for feeling how much I feel and tried to kill the thing inside me that would think what I think. But why is broken wrong? Why is feeling what we feel wrong? Things have happened to all of us, and if the world around us doesn’t slow down enough, you have to make your own time. I never thought anything about you was wrong, Lydia. Not before and not now. You’re just doubting things, feeling things that you didn’t before, but all of us who have seen this side do. Who can say that we just have to get over it, that we have to heal in ten seconds and move on? Who can say that all our feelings, no matter how small they are, should be trashed and stowed away? But that doesn’t mean you have to give up on it.”
“It was never right to be wrong.”
“The things we do, perhaps.” Arianne laid the grasses on the ground. “But we all have a right to feel what we feel.”
Try, Lydia thought the next day, as she rubbed the sticky medicine into her palms again. Try for Mom, try for Martha, try for life. She let the world’s silence and brokenness soothe her. She had a fumbling sense of knowledge that, whatever her past had taught her, there was more than one answer to life, and the thought made her dizzy. It was what unsettled her about Arianne, even after she’d gotten to know the other girl better. I couldn’t give her an answer, no more than she could. They were both blind now, stumbling in the dark, trying the first path that came under their feet. But I had a light once.
If that was untrue, how many other things were? Uncertainty fogged her vision, made it hard to go forward. How many things did she know for certain? She began to wonder, then, if anything was really real in the world.
The stars were bleeding across the sky now, in a haze of purple. Dusk had started to settle, firmly and surely, and the sky had turned dark with its step, causing the hills to be thrown into darkness with the city shining up at her like a jewel. She could see the thin blade of the moon hanging low in the sky, and a few stars glistening through the haze of light that radiated from below her.
She saw her mother coming up the hill, walking in short, sure steps, turning the corners, her neck craned to look forward. Lydia turned her back to her, and listened for a while, heard how her steps quickened and quickened, until she was almost running, then slowed until she wandered as if in a daze. The barren landscape shifted until it was a blur of gray and white and green and brown, her and her mother the only two figures in it. She knew Mom was looking for her, knew that she was just coming to make sure she was alright, even though Lydia had disappointed her time and time again. But she could not bring herself to call to her, wanted to spite her, and sat silently as Mom turned to venture back, never turning around. The tears choked her.
“Mom?”
Her mother turned back, and walked to the place Lydia was sitting. Her eyes were bright with anxiety. “Oh,” She said, feigning casualness. “I just came by to see if you were okay here.” She paused, uncertain. “Do you want to go back home now?”
Lydia kept her gaze fixed on the collar of her mother’s coat, remembering a time, not too long ago, when she would hug her mother and rest her head against that spot. But she would be taller than her mother now, if she were able to stand up. Was it really that long ago? She couldn’t answer.
“Lydia?”
She pushed the wheelchair forward and wrapped her arms around her mother. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Chapter 39 Arianne
I think it was never true courage or strength that saved me; it was always more of a vanity, an obsession of what other people thought of me… It’s strange, for I fancy that I don’t care about their opinions anymore, and yet… I still pride myself that I am above them, all of them, in some way. The sufferers, who are the same as me—but all of us are sufferers or have been in some way sometimes; -- I know that they will understand, and perhaps will offer their pity… But I don’t want any more pity. Then the others, on the white side… What would they have thought if I did something to myself? That I was not strong enough, and think me a coward and a weakling. It truly is easier to stay where we are, what we are, and never change, and easier still to sink deep into the slumber that does not wake. And, in that sense, I suppose it would be a cowardly act to take one’s own life and give in.
The thing is that, however great my own pains, I still have a clinging to the world; if not for the people around me, then for myself. No one would remember me after I died; I would be erased from history, as if I had never been—and some part of me refuses to give others what they wanted by hurting me: or worse, to leave them not even satisfaction in my death. I still want to, in some way, exist and leave my mark in time—for, if I have not even that, have I been born just to feel pain? I believe myself more than that, that I have had more feelings, more dreams, more thoughts, more pains than those around me—It is indeed obscene pride and vanity that gives me what is here right now; that, carrying me through the urges, and the bright shocks of time when I see that there is truly something good in what I have, perhaps exactly where we thought, perhaps just waiting to be found, and that things can and do change in strange ways for the better.
Arianne’s book
The church was bathed in semi-darkness, silent save for the the soft murmurings of a group near the end of the building. The door creaked under her hand when Arianne pushed it open wider, and stepped in, searching. In the middle between the rows of chairs, a long slim table had been set up, with a few candles floating in their halos of light. At the edge closest to the corner of the church, she saw the soft woolen hood illuminated by the soft glow of a single candle, almost like a priest’s cowl. Arianne walked over, and stood by the girl.
Lydia had cut away the rest of hair, leaving her head bald, and covered it with a thick hood that enveloped her face and neck. The sleeves were long, covering her hands almost to the fingertips. Arianne might not have known her had they met on the street, save for the green pools of her eyes. She was positioned next to the candle in her wheelchair, and flipping through a thick book on religion that had been left on the table. Drawings of piety and devotion were marked between minuscule print, almost indiscernible in the shifting light of the candles.
Lydia acknowledged her presence with a nod and let the book close, moving on to the next volume. Arianne lingered to give the former book a long look. She had not believed in God particularly, but she had always believed in gods and spirits and ghosts and demons, things that went beyond the world before her. When she younger, she had written many random bits and pieces on angels, heavens and hells and the spaces in between, or other answers to the questions that had bubbled up in her. If she had stuck to her beliefs, perhaps it would have been different, but later she stopped thinking and drowned her pounding heart with blades and alcohol instead, mostly because she had not been able to bring herself to believe that there would be a god or a law that everything stuck to, and that there would still be so many sides of the world that it did not offer an explanation. Arianne held a finger next to the flames, letting her hand bathe in its golden light. She had made her own laws for herself, the black-white cut of the world; but now and then the angels and demons would crop up somewhere in that, too.
I never thought I’d see her anywhere like this, though. Lydia had always made it plain that she scorned beliefs in things that were unproved and improbable, preferring to stick to her large book and studies in science. Yet she tore up her old beliefs, and here she stands. Are all our principles as shaky? She knew that Lydia had turned on her old self because it was helpless in the face of her dilemma, and was still searching for an answer, but as the whole point of having a belief was to help the believer in times of need, Arianne didn’t see how she would find better solace here. It’s a truth she wants, not a theory, and she’ll never get that no matter which way she turns once she starts getting trapped in the dark side. Nothing is true here. Arianne knew how the doubt would creep in when things turned black; how she would look into the mirror and wonder what was staring back.
She joined Lydia, who had walked over to the side of the room between two benches. Colored glass panels caught the light and trapped half of it, leaving only weak milky light to touch the room within. Not many colors, either; green and blue and white were all. Lydia stood right before the light, barely not touching it. Arianne stood next to her.
The other girl spoke first. “Should I pray?”
“Do you believe?”
“I don’t know.” Lydia shook back her sleeves a little again. “If there really is this god, why did all of these things happen? Had I done something to deserve it? If not, though… How do I take matters into my hands again?” Her whispers were weak, almost frightened. “I always thought I could control my life. I could find answers to everything, be sure of everything. But what if what I believed for my whole life, what I have been raised and taught on is all wrong? What if they’re right, and there really is some supernatural power that is too big for me to even grasp?”
Arianne thought of her conversation with Pax, by the riverside. I didn’t want to believe that there could be anything good again, after telling myself that things would always get worse. “You can choose what you choose to believe in. And make that your truth.” The words were limp on her tongue; she did not have enough devotion behind them to enforce herself. What does that mean, really?
“Which one, then? The world is full of religions.” Lydia reached her hands out to the light, letting a square of green light fall over the leathery scarred skin on her right. “I’ve been over all of them. I tore up The Book, but I can’t find anything to replace it. Was that even wrong? What if my former beliefs were all right, and now I’m just making a mess of myself? Can I even go back if I wanted to?” Her voice shook. “We stand in a church, but there are many and more beliefs to what we are, temples and altars and chapels and more and more, all with worshipers and followers. Maybe science was a religion, also. But which one is really real? There has to be one answer, one truth.” She paused, and shook her head. “I was going to say a solution. Maybe in some ways it is. Nothing is right it all was before.”
“You’ll find a way out of it.” Arianne looked up at the engravings on the window. Could I bring myself to believe that I belonged to this god and his world? She heard Tarra again. You will fix that. Not me. “All of us have to, once we start to struggle.”
“But what if I don’t? What if I wasn’t meant to get ‘out’?” Lydia tucked her hands in their sleeves again. “I always answered questions before. Now I can’t ask enough of them.”
Arianne was thinking of Eliana again. Is she the way a mother should be? If not, how did she escape the bonds of all of this if it is true? When she dies, will I meet her in some hell? The thought sickened her. Lydia was looking at her. “I thought if I upheld every single law in every way of thought, that would be right… right? But they all contradict each other. No matter what I do, I’m always violating one law for obeying another. Whatever I do, I’ll always do something wrong. People look to religion to save themselves from doubt and anchor their beliefs, but it just makes me doubt more.”
“I never thought that there was a ‘right’ place in the world. Not for me.”
“I did.”
“I know you did. But now you’re tangled up as I am, as all of us are.”
The other girl hesitated. “I know what you were saying. That night.”
“About what?”
“Feeling the wrong things.”
“Ah.” Arianne looked her up and down. “I’d figured that out. Says enough that you ripped your book up. Feel better about it?”
Lydia smiled a crooked smile. “No.” She paused. “It took away what I was before.”
“I know.” The dream of shedding her armor came to her again.
“When I was doing it… It did feel right. To shred everything that I was, so that it would never catch up on me anymore. And to… free myself. From whatever I was feeling. But I know it’s wrong. How can I do something that I know is wrong?” Her voice sharpened with doubt again. “I hated what I was feeling, and hated that hatred even more. Why doesn’t anyone else see?”
“See?”
“All of the feelings come from doubt, right? You get angry when you doubt yourself, and you turn on yourself for that. What’s wrong with me in feeling the wrong things? Why do I have what I have and lose what I have lost? That’s all doubt. But they never seem to see it, not like we do.”
“You certainly didn’t.” Arianne had to push down a sense of amusement, when she recalled what Lydia was like when they first met.
“Was I wrong in that, then? Or in what I am now?”
“I can’t answer that.”
The girl sank into brooding silence. Arianne felt a strange twinge of familiarity. These are the questions I was trapped in when I first started cutting, when I first started. She didn’t wonder about all of it as much in the recent years… Until lately, with everything that had happened. She was stuck in the white, and I in the black. Now we’re both on the edge, and all the doubts come up to eat us. She could not pick up her knife and cut with the old easiness, like it was a sure thing to do, but neither could she throw the blade away once and for all. But the blade never brought the old quietness back to her the way it used to, fading far too quickly and leaving her with a thick sense of guilt; she only felt worse after the oblivion, yet she could not keep herself from going back again.
“It doesn’t come all at once.” Arianne tried to speak the way Pax had. “But something will come.”
Lydia gave her a sidelong look and snorted. “Why do I feel like our places have been reversed?” She sighed. “Arianne Whitewood, giving me reassurance, while I say all the crazy weird things.”
“I have my moments. Don’t look to me for longtime advice, though, it doesn’t last.” There had been small stretches of time, even in her worst days, when she thought herself strong enough and good enough to deal with everything. Courage is doubly precious in the face of pain. “Can I give you some advice?”
“Yeah.”
“Don’t do anything to hurt yourself.”
“This just gets stranger and stranger.”
“I’m only saying it because I’m sure you’ll pull out of it sooner than I do, and when that happens you’ll regret it. And once you start, you can’t stop.”
Lydia’s eyes flitted to her scars again. “Okay.” She hesitated. “What stopped you? From going over?”
She didn’t have to ask to know what Lydia meant. “Pride.” Save yourself some dignity, Arianne, it’s what you’ve worked so hard to keep. She hadn’t seen Tarra after that day, but hadn’t moved out of the house and went away as she’d thought originally. It was only two days to her birthday.
“I’ve thrown away most of that.”
“Can’t help you on that.” Arianne gazed upwards. The ceiling was carved into a dome, layer upon layer of stone. No drawings, no inspections, all pale white ripples of stone. “You’ll find it on your own.” We all have to. “Does this help?”
Lydia followed her gaze. “It gives me something to do.”
“But it doesn’t really make you feel better?”
“What does that word even mean?”
Arianne laughed. “Never thought that would come from you.”
“Same here.” Lydia smiled. “Maybe it is better, in some ways. To not be good. As long as you’re still trying in some ways.” Her hands twitched. “The struggle is harder.”
Paxon’s voice. It feels richer, and not in the good sense. “Yes.”
“No, but when you lose something… And when you’re not…” She trailed off. “Wholly on the black side, as you would put it. There are those moments that make you grateful for everything, because you start to wonder and think and struggle about everything and that makes you doubt everything, like they’ll be gone in an instant. And earlier… Everything went so smoothly. It was good, the good things, but not in the same way.”
“Courage is doubly precious in the face of pain.”
“Yeah, that’s what I meant.” Lydia pushed her wheelchair awkwardly along the aisle. “Maybe there is still hope for both of us.”
Chapter 50 Lydia
First Entry
March 17
Sometimes I find I’m coming to see that hope isn’t a choice, not truly. When we suffocate and drown, it’s the only thing that has even a slim chance of saving who we are; the desperation with which we pitch ourselves into, the blind faith of everything becoming something normal, is the only way to survive… Or we fall headlong down that chasm I’ve just had only a peek into. Sooner or later, we must all be forced to believe in something good, not because we want to, but because it’s the only way up… For if it’s not, what is our answer then? The doubt will eat us up alive.
So we have to trust that, at last, there will be something out there for what we are.
Yesterday I met Martha again. Perhaps Arianne was right; I feel as if there’s a glass window between the two of us now. She’s good, but she doesn’t see, not the way we do; for her hope is still something that comes easy, like breath and air… But for everything I have, I know I’ll never be whole again.
I know I’ll be able to be happy. Fall in love. Have kids, go to work. And I know that things will work out for me someway. But I’ll never really be a child again; I’ll never be able to stop doubting things, or worrying about the future, or agonizing over the past. I’ll never ever be able to have what I did. She just told me that things would become better, but that wasn’t what I meant.
How could I explain that, I was not meaning one thing or two or three, nor the quick shallow flights of happiness or despair, but something larger and deeper? I know things will find another way, but my road was burnt and dead, and after the child had died the adult was born: Mom and Dad and Rosie and Martha and everyone will leave me, one after another, one way or another, or I will have to leave them sometime, inevitably; and I will never be able to trust the life I had so surely, as I had done before.
I guess it’s just that things have happened to me, and whatever I do I’ll never scrub away the stain. They will have to leave their marks, until the day I die and maybe beyond that, altering who I am and what I will become, that my life had been pushed off an old track and onto a new one… But perhaps Arianne was right, and change does not necessarily equal wrong, and that there might truly be more than a single answer to life, or perhaps none.
A hundred gods, a thousand religions. If there were so many beliefs to the eternal questions that humans ask, how could it be that hers had but one direction?
I know I’ll never be certain of what anything is again; never hold a scalpel… I had changed forever; and I’ll never be able to change it back. That was never the path to take, or I would have destroyed myself in the attempt. I guess I almost had.
Whatever I do, Martha will always have something that I won’t, and that this me now, with the mending bones and burnt skin, would always have something that the old Lydia and Martha did not, either. Martha will never see what I see, or really feel what I feel.
But things will be alright. Perhaps some paths are meant to be walked alone, in silence, and in mourning or pain or joy. The absence and loneliness of the universe, of all our puny beings well up in a moment: a sudden swift knowledge that, if I died right there and then, the world would not stop for me, and the meekness and the frailty of my power, no matter in what form, is not even a speck in the lives of those in the world that surround me. I can’t change what they see or make them understand, no more than I can change the world.
But I will find it within myself to love them, I think, to see the world, really see it, and not just with the empty courage to make it mine; I believe, with the conviction of those who don’t have the other choice.
We will struggle to stay afloat, and some of the days the suffocation will get the better of us. But she’ll stay through. I’ll stay through. And perhaps one day we will be able to look in the mirror and see a world that isn’t altered.
Truth be told, I’m sick of it. Sick of the empty thrusts to be better. Sick of trying to sit up. Sick of rubbing medicine on my skin like it’ll ever be something normal. Sick of trying to write a first entry that’s good and sees hope. But when the blackness rises I always see her, and I know we’ll not be alone even if we’re apart. And yes, we all have a right to feel what we feel and be what we are.
It was never a crime for us to sink… The breathlessness and doubt has become a part of who we are, how we think, what we do, and in that we’ll always be able to see something more.
So we carry on in our pursuits, living one day after another, until the day comes when the white arms of that other world come to embrace us.
We’ll be alright.
Lydia’s book
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