Wise creatures, p.13
Wise Creatures, page 13
‘Yeah.’ She said it to me. ‘I think she was trying to get me to open up to her.’
‘Yeah, she used Joan for that on me too, back in the day … Did it work?’
Nina rolls her eyes. ‘Of course not.’ She sighs.
‘So what was your so about?’ I ask.
A first year comes in, takes one look at us and leaves again. Nina smiles at me, mouths, ‘Boo!’ I touch her sleeve, and watch her features twist. Her voice is small.
She doesn’t want to tell you.
‘So. You know the way things kind of died down, apart from that dream?’
I nod.
‘Well …’
She unbuttons her cuffs.
‘… I woke up with this.’
There are raised red marks all the way up her arm.
I wince.
Her pain, her pain.
She swallows.
‘There was … there was a lot to what happened before, Daisy, but this … This wasn’t me. This wasn’t my ghost.’
I reach my hand out to her arm. ‘Can I?’
She nods. I haltingly trace my hand down the length of her forearm, investigating, soothing –
– My fingers almost mirror the marks. Four thick runnels.
My fault my fault
They don’t look like ordinary scrapes. The others were thinner, the work of fingernails, a razor blade perhaps.
I feel the flesh on my forearms begin to pucker.
‘Nina,’ I say. ‘This looks like …’
She nods. ‘I know.’
Her voice is very small. It’s almost nothing. ‘It’s like …’ she says. ‘It’s like something is inside me. Trying to get out.’
I close my eyes.
I have been pushing Them away.
And They have hurt her.
a power
Nina wanted us to do the Ouija board tonight. She said that leaving Them alone wouldn’t work. That anything had to be better than nothing. I told her there was no point. They are already here. It’s just a waiting game now. To see what They will do. The things They want. Her hands moved in the air, her eyes were flashing.
‘That’s what I mean. We could just ask them, Daisy. And then we’d know.’
I do not want to know.
I remember more and more each day.
Things I couldn’t – didn’t want to – touch.
Looking at a colleague of Mam’s. Her face sceptical, indulgent.
Thinking that I was a fraud, a child.
Childhood makes fraud more palatable.
I look her up and down and tell her the things They tell me about her.
A litany.
A list.
Her crumpled face.
Mostly it was comforting for people. But every now and then an evisceration would be necessary. And the hum of satisfaction underneath the words they were giving me was like when Dad and I were walking down by the woodland path behind our estate and we saw a cat and thought it was asleep, and Dad prodded it with a branch and all of a sudden there were maggots everywhere. Teeming. It was not alive. Just full of life. That writhing mass of hunger. That intensity.
Maggots cannot but be maggots.
The creatures are like that.
And They know things.
A voice in my head couldn’t hurt my Nina on her arms.
So it must be real.
But how much of it.
Am I breaking down?
Or was I already broken?
Something awful spilling out of me.
And onto her.
a favour
I got given out to today. Miss Dunphy basically went for me in front of everyone. It was humiliating; you’d think she’d know that the reason I’ve been missing out on homework, falling behind, is because I’m wrecked from all of this. Whatever this is. Humming in my head, and all this tension. Constant tuning in and tuning out. I don’t know what they want from me. Before, I never thought about what they wanted. It was what she wanted. It was her.
Not only her.
My legs are really itchy underneath my tights, but I resist the urge to scratch and scratch them. It’s not the kind of thing you can do in school. There’s always an audience. I just feel really nervous and jumpy and off. Like something’s watching, close enough to touch me.
Megan comes up to me.
‘Hey.’ They’ve changed their earrings to little hoops with small beads on them. I make my face do a smile.
The mirror smile.
I don’t quite disguise what courses through me.
‘Hey.’
‘You okay?’
I might start to cry with the gentleness in their voice.
‘I just need to have a minute or something,’ I say, tucking my hair behind my ears, and then putting it back again.
A curtain.
Swirls of blue.
Their arm on my elbow, steering me in between two stacks of lockers. We’re supposed to be in class. But nothing is what it’s supposed to be.
Megan’s not okay.
I catch my breath.
Cracks in the wall and something winding through them.
Ask what happened.
There is it again.
That isn’t me.
‘Megan, are you okay? Why aren’t you with everyone?’ I keep my voice steady, try to breathe through everything I’m feeling.
‘I wanted to find you.’
They’re in their uniform trousers, and their shirt is buttoned right up to the chin. There’s always something about the way Megan wears clothes that makes them sing.
‘Well, you’ve found me,’ I say. ‘Let’s go to geography.’
‘Do we have to?’
Piotr.
‘What did Piotr do?’ I ask, in a rush.
Their face goes pale.
‘How did you …?’
I shrug.
‘I got a feeling.’
Not a feeling.
Them.
‘Okay,’ they say. ‘We both for sure need to not be here.’
They reach out their hand to take mine, but it’s not an order, it’s a question. Our jumpers rub together. Static shock. We sneak up beyond the meditation space (a former principal’s office with a seagull poster on the wall), and through one of the older classrooms. Megan pulls me through an old science lab and out onto a little fire escape.
‘This door’s alarm doesn’t work,’ they say. ‘So you can just open it and step out. I like it for that. And also, because if the lab’s not getting used, you can crouch behind the benches and no one will see you.’
‘Do you skip class a lot?’ I ask.
They do.
‘More, recently.’
Short stubby little fingers with bright blue nails drum on the railing.
The paint is flaking a little and there are weeds growing on the metal floor.
‘Um, Piotr kind of likes me, I suppose. And he’s been messaging a lot. A lot a lot.’
Screen lighting up.
The middle of the night.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘And was there anything?’
‘He just made it clear that he’d like us to be more than friends. And …’
Their face is hard to read. A sort of blankness.
‘And how do you feel about that? You did hook up that time,’ I say, trying to inject some enthusiasm into my tone.
‘We did … but that was almost a year ago. And lots has changed since then. Has opened up.’
‘Okay …’ I say.
‘We’ve both needed time. To process –’ they gesture to themself – ‘… me being me.’
‘Okay,’ I say again.
The way he smells, he tastes.
They can’t just turn it off.
‘I can’t put my finger on it exactly. And it’s not that he’s said it flat out. But I feel like he wants me to be the … girl he liked back then. Or the version of me that didn’t correct people when they called me that. I don’t mean he’d ask me to, like, change my pronouns back or anything. He knows me better than to say stuff like that. But in his eyes, I would be … and I can’t.’
‘How do you feel about that?’
Horrible.
So horrible.
They sigh. ‘Like my skin is too tight for my body. Or something.’
I nod.
‘I like him so much, Daisy. But I like being who I am more. And if it’s a choice, which it appears to be, I will choose Megan.’
‘I’d choose Megan too,’ I say. ‘I mean, what you’re feeling – it makes sense.’
They press the fleshy part of their palms against their cheekbones.
Trying not to cry.
‘I don’t want to hurt him. By being who I am.’ The crack in their voice.
The gaping space between the wardrobe door.
Swirls on the curtain.
‘He’s hurt you by being who he is though.’
‘Yeah. But he doesn’t even register that really.’
Their leg is jigging up and down. I feel the motion of it through the floor.
I take a breath. ‘Do you want to be with him?’
They close their eyes and open them again, the way they do when they’re trying to answer a hard exam question.
‘I don’t know. I mean, it’s not just him. It’s everyone, or most people. It’s hard to understand. But I can’t let him kiss me and touch me if he doesn’t even see me. And it isn’t fair. It isn’t fucking fair.’
‘No, friend,’ I say. ‘It’s not. And you’re allowed be angry. Or sad. Or anything.’
‘I don’t feel like I am though. And I just wish that I could jump forward a little bit and know that things would be okay. That I’d survive this. Not just him. But everything.’
They drag their sleeve across their face, and grimace.
I close my eyes, and reach my hand to touch their wrist. I want to … I don’t know. To offer comfort.
Bad idea.
A little red-brick house with a back garden and a cat named Walter.
A hula hoop is hanging on the wall.
Megan is happy.
‘You won’t live here,’ I tell them. ‘You’ll be somewhere else. And you’ll feel safe, and more than safe. Fulfilled.’
‘Ha,’ they say. ‘I’d almost believe you.’
‘You should believe me,’ I say. ‘Did I ever tell you I used to be a child psychic?’
‘What?’ They smile, but take a step away.
I do a little flourish with my hands, like ‘Surprise!’
‘Before I lived with Susan and Nina.’
‘So you were, like, really young …’ Their voice has changed, concerned. I do not like it.
There is danger here.
‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘But that’s not the point. The point is that when I have feelings, really strong feelings about someone, they usually check out.’
‘Hmm.’ Something flattens in their face.
To shut you out.
To ward you off.
Keep safe.
‘What?’ I ask. There’s more they want to say. I sense that too.
‘Is it not a bit … intimate, reading someone’s future?’ They sound annoyed. I don’t know what to say.
‘Should I have asked first?’
There are some saplings in front of us, leafless in the cold. They look like cocktail-stick trees poking out of plasticine. I feel my face turn red. I was trying to help.
Megan’s voice is low. ‘Maybe. I think maybe.’
‘It was good though.’
‘Yeah, but the future is just a story, Daisy. Until it’s lived, it’s just a hope we tell ourselves or something.’
This will happen.
‘I’m sorry, Megan,’ I say. ‘I didn’t mean …’
Their face is hard to read, arms slung over the railings.
‘I know. I know you didn’t. Maybe I’m overthinking everything.’
‘What are you going to do, about Piotr?’ I ask.
Megan shrugs. ‘I suppose be friends with him still. I mean, I’ve been honest, and if he doesn’t like that, it doesn’t mean I have to change my behaviour.’
‘And if it gets weird?’
‘Well, I suppose the group dynamic will change a bit, but it wouldn’t be on me.’
‘Of course it wouldn’t,’ I say, feeling a sort of weight in my stomach at the awkwardness of it.
A long exhale. ‘Why is nothing ever simple?’
‘I do not know,’ I say. ‘The ghosts are back.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake.’
I widen my eyes at them. ‘I know, right? There’s always something.’
‘There is. Daisy, I’ve been meaning to say to you …’
‘Yeah?’
‘You know Oz Quigley?’
‘Yeah?’
‘I think he likes you.’
I snort. ‘What makes you think that?’
A small crook of their mouth. ‘He has eyes, doesn’t he? And he’s always using them to stare at you.’
I blush.
‘I don’t know.’ They pull their jumper down towards their hips. ‘I just have a feeling.’
I picture Oz, draped against the side of the shed. The way his face twisted when he felt ashamed. I don’t …
I cannot touch that.
‘Nina wants me to do the Ouija board with her,’ I say, a subject change so both of us can breathe.
‘DOOO IT!’ Megan’s voice is suddenly highly enthusiastic. ‘Use it to get to the bottom of stuff. Have you psychicked her?’
‘I don’t think psychic is a verb.’
‘Anything can be a verb, Daisy, if you COMMIT.’
We smile at each other and it’s like we’re sharing one smile that passes back and forth. It’s so warm. I am glad they want to be my friend after whatever passed between us there. Whatever scared them.
‘No, seriously, I saw this article about Ouija boards, and there’s this thing called the ideomotor effect, and it’s kind of about reflexes you’re not aware you have. Like, you could be pushing the planchette but think it was something else doing it. But really it’s your subconscious or what have you.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Okay. I’ll look that up.’
‘But, like, if you did it with her, it might be a way to get to why she’d be doing this, you know? If it was her and not a ghost.’
A big long pause.
They look at me.
‘Like, maybe she wants to tell you stuff but can’t. And this could be a way to do that, maybe.’
‘Megan,’ I say, ‘every horror movie I have ever seen has told me that using a Ouija board is a terrible idea.’
‘Sometimes we have to question the stories we are told, to work stuff out, you know? Trust your instincts.’
‘I don’t know. My instincts are terrible. Remember those leggings I wore the first non-uniform day in first year?’
‘Ha,’ they say. ‘Those were not great. Trust my instincts on this so – it couldn’t hurt.’
The bell goes. I sigh. Smooth my hair a little.
‘Better get ready.’
‘This was nice,’ Megan says, with a little crooked smile. I can see the point of one of their canines poking out between their lips.
‘Yeah, it’s a good spot.’ I rub my hands along the rough railing. ‘Thanks for sharing it with me.’
‘Not a bother.’ They stretch their arms out wide. ‘It’s nice to be outdoors, you know. Like, at least in primary school there was yard time. Here, it’s like, eat a roll and fuck off.’
I snort, and we walk back through the old lab.
‘Labs are intrinsically creepy,’ Megan says. ‘I think it’s the dissection.’
‘I think my threshold for creepy is higher than yours, because of the haunting,’ I tell them.
‘Fair.’
We’re at the door, when they touch my shoulder.
‘Daisy?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You know that thing with your hand you did for me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Do you ever do it for yourself?’
‘No,’ I say.
We part ways and I watch them move away from me. I think of the hard bones beneath their skin, the way their voice sounded when they said ‘intimate’. I shouldn’t have reached out for something that was theirs and not my own. And I said no. But that wasn’t the full story.
Of course I have done that.
Of course I’ve tried.
It’s just … for me, there’s never been a future there to find.
The girl is joined by another girl.
‘Do we have to record this terrible idea?’ the other girl asks. ‘I mean …’
‘You never know,’ says the girl. ‘What if we get, like, proof or something?’
‘No matter what happens, people are going to think it’s faked.’
‘Not everyone.’
The brown-haired girl sighs. ‘Can you just not post this?’
The other one smiles. ‘Okay. Okay. I won’t … unless something really good happens.’
She holds up the board, but there is no planchette.
‘This time I thought we could use a shot glass.’
She holds it up, turns it around. It is blue, with ‘Ibiza España’ and an outline of a map with a man and a woman standing on it.
‘Where’s that from?’
‘Back of Mom’s drinking press. I think someone must have brought it back for her from Ibiza. I don’t remember her ever going.’
‘She could have got it in a charity shop. Things like that end up in charity shops all the time.’
‘She does like a rummage.’ The girl sighs. ‘Okay. Let’s get on with it. I’m nervous. Are you nervous?’
There’s no reply.
They sit on the floor. The angle makes it hard to see what’s happening.
‘Okay,’ says the girl. ‘Hello.’
A phone vibrates. They both jerk in surprise.
an unexplained chill
Listening to … I don’t want to say ghosts, but that’s kind of the closest word for it, really, is a particular kind of thing. They don’t talk in voices, more just appear in my head and you’d almost think you’re making it up, like they’re your thoughts but they aren’t. They winnow their way into the part of you that’s you, the core that’s with you all day every day, and they assimilate, but there are things they know you couldn’t know.
It’s hard to work out which bits of me are them right now.
