Moth to a flame, p.10
Moth to a Flame, page 10
She never set out to start a revolution. She was only trying to survive. But if what the city needs is a figurehead to rally against – well, maybe her villain status is good for something. Perhaps that’ll be a comfort, when they eventually hunt her down.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she says, pushing her nearly untouched plate away. ‘I’m going to my room.’
‘Isabel,’ begins Leo, but she’s already shoved back her chair. She can’t sit here calmly, knowing the world is turning against her for what she did in Espera. Soon she won’t just be the nameless assassin girl, a fun curiosity for people who’ve never met a killer before. Soon they’ll want to hold her accountable, and she doesn’t even know how she’d begin to take responsibility for everything she’s done.
‘Don’t come after me,’ she tells them firmly, and goes to her room, the only safe place she’s got left.
* * *
It catches Isabel out, how much it hurts to think of her new life going to shit. She’s hardly been doing a great job of making it work, even if she’s getting better at pretending. But now, with the possibility of building a future here fracturing around her, all she wants to do is peel off her skin and scream, because it isn’t fair.
She knew she couldn’t leave the Moth behind in Espera. Kate proved that, for fuck’s sake. But she thought she’d have longer before it caught up with her, before everyone knew.
One thing’s for sure: she can’t stay in this house all night, not with fear and anger buzzing beneath her skin. She waits until the household has gone to bed, writes a note for the others in case they wake up before she’s back, and lets herself out of the front door as quietly as she can.
Most of her usual haunts aren’t safe any more, but she thinks she’ll be okay down at the garage bar. The crew there, with their welcoming smiles and general disdain for authority, are unlikely to turn her away or use her new infamy as an excuse to gawp.
It’s late; the speeches and politics are over for the night, if they happened today at all. Isabel spots a few familiar faces, and Maggie’s propping up her usual end of the bar. The bartender – a guy she thinks she’s heard others call Dan – gives her a nod of welcome and slides a shot across the bar before she’s even asked for it. It’s almost like belonging.
It seems to take longer than usual to get the half-drunk buzz that makes the coloured lights and questionable music of this place bearable, though. Dan slides her another shot, and another. She’s losing track of her alcohol tolerance, always needs to push further to get half as far, and maybe that’s what fucks her up, or maybe the pills Jo slips her when she ventures onto the dancefloor aren’t what she took before, or maybe, maybe it’s just her old damaged body reacting wrong, the way it so often does. Doesn’t matter. All she knows is that the world is green and gold and soft, her fear and anger giving way to mellow contentment. She hardly notices when somebody grabs her by the arm and drags her out into the muggy night air.
‘Hey!’ someone yells. Maggie, she thinks, bold and bright and revolutionary as ever. ‘Leave her alone, you sick fuck, can’t you see she’s high? Tashie, come on, come back inside—’
‘I’m not—’ begins a familiar voice, but someone’s already yanking her away. ‘Wait, please, I’m trying to help. I’m her housemate.’
Leo.
Shit.
Leo can’t be here. Leo can’t see her like this. Isabel tries to tell him to go away and she tries to run and neither works because her words have abandoned her and her legs are rooted to the ground. He takes her arm and begins to lead her away, making reassuring promises to Maggie and the others, but she wants to beg him to let her go back, let her be Natasha for a little while longer…
When they’re completely out of sight and earshot, Leo says, ‘Christ, Isabel, there’s going out on your own and then there’s ending up in a place like that. What were you thinking?’
The fresh air is beginning to sober her up, enough to turn her head and ask him, ‘A place like what?’
He doesn’t have an answer to that, not one he’s willing to say out loud. And she’s glad, because right now her grasp of language isn’t strong enough to defend the bar and the people there. He puts her arm over his shoulder and his own arm around her waist, half carrying her, and then says, ‘I knew you were drinking, but this… how long has this been going on, Isabel?’
How long has what been going on? The world? Herself? The flickering lights inside her head? She’s pretty sure she could have a conversation with her own kneecaps right now, but she can’t seem to fathom the words to answer Leo. Maybe because he, unlike her skeleton, doesn’t understand the backwards tongue of the inside of her head.
‘Jesus, you’re out of it,’ he says. ‘How did you – you know what, I don’t want to know how you’re paying for drugs. I’m pretty sure that would make me an accomplice.’
‘’ccomplice is for crimes,’ Isabel manages. ‘No crimes.’
‘No crimes?’ Leo repeats. ‘You’re high as fuck right now, your friend admitted it. Whatever you took was definitely not legal, and I’d have noticed if you were paying for it with my card.’
She shrugs, which proves quite difficult to do in her current position. ‘Not everyone wants money,’ she gets out.
Whether or not he understands the implications of this, he doesn’t comment. He hails a cab and bundles Isabel into it, giving the driver their address and leaning over to buckle her into her seat to keep her upright.
He’s silent the rest of the way home. Isabel leans her head against the window and ignores the way it jolts whenever they pass over a bump in the road. She’s only half awake by the time the taxi pulls up outside their house and Leo heaves her out, helping her stumble across the threshold.
Inside, he sits her down at the kitchen table, pours a large glass of water, and places it in front of her. He takes her special bread from the cupboard and slots two slices into her toaster.
She stares at the glass for a long time before she manages to take a sip. By the time she’s drunk half the water, Leo’s putting a plate of toast down in front of her. ‘Eat that,’ he says. ‘Maybe then you can explain this to me.’
‘There’s nothing to explain,’ she says resentfully, but she eats the toast. It soaks up some of the alcohol, even if it can’t touch everything else currently turning her brain inside out.
Leo takes a seat across from her, arms folded. He doesn’t look impressed. ‘I know you’re upset,’ he says. ‘I get it. But this doesn’t seem like a one-off. So tell me: how long has this been going on?’
‘How long has what been going on?’
‘This.’ He gestures to her. ‘The drinking. The drugs. Whatever the fuck you’re doing to pay for it – I don’t want to ask too many questions about that.’
‘Don’t be a bigot,’ she says, words a little slurred, and wishes she had her radical friends here to explain to him why it’s not like that and why he doesn’t have to look at her like she’s dirty, before it occurs to her that maybe he thinks she’s been killing people. And that – well, she can’t tell if she wants to laugh or cry, but it doesn’t matter, since right now she can only prop her head in her hands and wait for the lights to stop flashing.
‘This isn’t about my opinions or beliefs,’ says Leo, still frighteningly calm. ‘This is about you being severely traumatised and apparently entirely unconcerned with your own personal safety. So I’m going to ask you one more time. How long has this been going on?’
She shrugs. ‘Not that long.’ It’s not like she’s kept track. It wasn’t a deliberate thing in the first place; she barely knows how it started. With Kate – is that where it began?
‘Do you know why I was out there looking for you tonight, Isabel?’
She shrugs. ‘Because you thought people might come after the Moth?’
‘Because you’re a fucking mess,’ he says, and sits back. ‘I’ve been trying so hard to give you space. You’re gone every night, you never talk about where you’ve been, and, yes, you’re an adult, and you can go where you like, but I’m worried, Isabel. You’re going to get yourself killed.’
She thought she was doing okay at hiding all the ways she’s falling apart, but Leo’s always seen straight through her. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘Can you?’ he says. ‘Because right now, it looks like you’re doing the opposite.’
She frowns at him. ‘I wasn’t… I wasn’t hurting myself. I was having fun.’
‘Fun,’ he repeats. ‘Did you forget, somehow, that you’re immunocompromised and on a bunch of meds that don’t mix well with alcohol and recreational drugs? You’ve got no idea what’s in those things. You could’ve gone into anaphylaxis at any time, if they’d destabilised your mast cells. Does that sound like fun to you?’
‘I’m not—’
‘If you’re about to tell me you’re not immunocompromised, don’t try it. I talked to Daragh, Isabel. I know enough about your medical history to know your body is a mess. The fact that we’ve got two toasters should make that pretty damn clear.’
Isabel needs him to stop caring so much about her, and to stop throwing reminders of that care in her face.
She swallows hard and repeats, ‘I wasn’t trying to hurt myself.’
‘Then what were you doing?’
Filling a void. ‘I just… wanted to be someone else for a while.’
Leo looks at her for a long moment, and then he pillows his head on his folded arms on the table and stays there for a long moment, a position of absolute exhaustion and defeat. She reaches out to pat his shoulder, then thinks better of it.
Eventually he raises his head. ‘Please tell me you haven’t been sharing needles.’
This, at least, she can be honest about. ‘Haven’t taken anything that used them.’
He passes his hand across his face. ‘Okay. Well. One less thing for me to worry about. And have you got yourself tested at all since this whole… misery porn trip started? Or were you just going to let your body take its chances?’
‘Tested?’ she asks, unsure what he means.
‘I’ll take that as a no. Christ.’
How quickly he’s adapted to this world. How easily their words fall from his lips, as though he’s shed Espera like so much dead skin.
‘I didn’t mean to worry you,’ she says in a small voice. ‘I… I left you a note.’
‘A note,’ says Leo, and laughs, faintly hysterical. ‘Sure. That would’ve helped, if something happened and you couldn’t get home.’
She doesn’t have a home. Home was Espera and home is gone. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘You know I’ve got to tell Emily about this? Legally, it could screw us over if I don’t and it comes out anyway.’
For the first time, Isabel feels afraid. ‘Will they take me away? From you?’
‘I don’t know. Depends if they think I’m a fit guardian once they know I let this happen.’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘Doesn’t matter. I didn’t stop you; that’s all they’ll see. You’ll probably have to agree to some kind of treatment, at least, likely inpatient, and maybe that’ll convince them you’re committed to turning your back on this particular episode, but—’
‘Inpatient?’ Isabel repeats, as panicked as she can be when her mind still feels like it’s operating on another plane of existence. She’s spent too much of her life in hospitals already; she can’t bear any more.
‘You’re an addict, Isabel.’
She shakes her head. ‘No. No, I’m not. That’s not what this is about.’
‘Then what is it about? Because that’s the best explanation I can come up with that’ll make them cut you some slack, and unless you’ve got a better idea…’
‘I’m not an addict,’ she repeats. She doesn’t have a better explanation for him. ‘I’m just… lost, Leo.’
He sighs and gets up, filling the kettle and flicking it on. ‘Then, okay, we take the mental health angle. God knows you need the therapy, though I hoped we’d reach the point where you’d feel safe enough to choose it yourself. But that won’t be enough, and with all this Moth stuff coming out…’
The softness of the drugs is wearing off, and the world around her feels sharp and unfriendly. ‘You’re trying to send me away?’
‘I’d rather not, but I don’t see that I’ve got much choice. There’ll be somewhere that can help you, I’m sure, but if you stay here…’
‘If I stay here at least I’m not surrounded by strangers who’ve got no idea what it’s like to come from Espera!’
‘But I can’t look after you, Isabel!’ he says, putting a mug down on the counter so hard it cracks. Leo stares at it for a few seconds, startled into silence by its fragility. When he speaks again, his voice wavers, breaking. ‘I thought I could. That’s why I filled in all those bloody forms. But clearly what I’m doing isn’t enough, because I saw what people said on that sighting website, and I didn’t think it was true, but it is, isn’t it? All of it. I know you, Isabel, I know that isn’t what you want. So whatever this is, self-harm via shagging or—’
‘Don’t,’ says Isabel, because it sounds so much worse coming from Leo, but he’s not listening to her any more.
‘You need help. Real help, real doctors who know what they’re talking about.’
She doesn’t want doctors. She doesn’t want anyone poking around inside her head, especially if it means being separated from the only people she’s got left in the world. ‘Please,’ she says, not knowing what she’s asking for, only that she needs it in a way she hasn’t needed anything for a long time. ‘Please, Leo.’
He keeps his back to her as he makes his tea, stirring carefully and placing the teaspoon precisely down on the counter so that it forms a perfect right angle to the sink. ‘You could have died, Isabel,’ he says finally. ‘You could have died, because nobody would’ve known how to help you, and I’d have had to go and identify your body. Did that ever occur to you at all?’
She wants to say: maybe that would be easier for both of us.
And because she’s too numb to think better of it, she does.
Leo doesn’t turn, but he stills, muscles tensing, hands gripping the edge of the counter. ‘I lost my entire family,’ he says. ‘Both my sisters. My mum. I lost them all, one after the other. Don’t tell me that losing someone is ever easier than having them there.’
But Isabel’s not his sister. She’s a mess.
‘Then don’t send me away,’ she says. ‘Please. Give me one more chance. I’ll – I’ll do better, I promise.’
He stares into his mug for such a long time that she thinks he won’t answer her at all. She draws patterns in the condensation left by her glass and waits for something, anything, to break the silence.
Finally, he sighs, letting out his breath in one long stream. ‘Go to bed, Isabel,’ he says. ‘We can talk about this when you’ve slept. And when you’re actually sober.’
Sobriety won’t help, but she knows better than to argue with him when he’s like this.
Isabel goes to bed.
12 KURAĜIGA (SUPPORTIVE)
They don’t talk about it.
Leo leaves an array of pointed pamphlets on the table before he heads out to work: ‘Sobriety and you’, ‘Support in bereavement’, ‘Low-cost counselling’. Isabel ignores them and swipes the spare key from its hook, noting that Leo has taken the wallet with him, or put it somewhere else. Well, that’s fine. She doesn’t need it.
She heads back to the garage bar (if it has a name, it’s not painted on any sign or awning). She tells herself it’s because she owes them an explanation before she disappears, and maybe that’s true, but she’s there for more than duty, still craving the freedom of being somebody else and the glory of a willing self-destruction.
She’s never been here in daylight. The rolling metal door is down, the shutter painted in bright colours by somebody with more enthusiasm than skill. Isabel hesitates. There must be another entrance somewhere, a door she can knock on…
‘Oi! Tashie!’
The voice comes from above. Isabel looks up, startled, and sees Maggie on the building’s flat roof, leaning over the small parapet. She waves tentatively. Maggie waves back, then climbs over the parapet and lets herself drop, hanging from the wall until she’s in position to fall neatly to the ground.
Isabel would have done it with more elegance, but it’s not bad for a civilian.
‘Thank fuck you’re all right,’ says Maggie. ‘I’ve been regretting not chasing after you since you left last night. Felt sure the next time I saw you would be on the news reporting your murder. That guy—’
‘Really is my housemate,’ Isabel admits. ‘And as for what the news is saying about me…’
Maggie purses her lips. ‘Yeah,’ she says, so she’s heard. Tashie is a kindness, pretending she’s still Natasha, pretending she was ever Natasha in the first place. ‘I wasn’t gonna bring it up if you didn’t.’
An awkward half-shrug. ‘Some of it’s true.’
She waits for Maggie to ask which parts, whether she really killed a child; to turn her away once she knows. But she only says, ‘Why are you here? We don’t open ’til this evening.’
‘I…’ Why is she here? It feels remarkably presumptuous to admit she came to say goodbye, as though they’d care if somebody who never paid for her drinks stopped showing up to claim them. So she looks at Maggie and says the only honest thing: ‘I’m not okay.’
Maggie regards her. ‘Yeah,’ she says again. ‘I figured that one out. What do you need?’
Of course she figured that out. There’s a reason she stopped responding to Isabel’s flirting, recognising it as the self-destructive impulse that it was. ‘I… my housemate…’ Isabel stares down at the cracked concrete pavement. ‘He wants to send me away. Make me get sober, get therapy, I don’t fucking know, but I… can’t, okay? I can’t.’
