by Tillie Cole
I placed the sack on the ground and opened the pink string keeping it closed right up. I began pulling everything out. I took the pink picnic blanket and placed it on the ground between us. My heart raced in excitement as I set out the tea set. When it was all arranged between us, I stood up and spread out my hands. “There we go! What do you think?”
Heathan looked at me, then down at the tea set on the ground. I dropped to my knees and steadied his cup and saucer in front of him. “It’s Earl Grey,” I said as I lifted the teapot and poured the tea. “Mummy’s favorite. She always drank tea—six cups a day sometimes!” Once Rabbit’s cup was full to the brim, I filled my own. I brought it to my nose and smelled it, laughing as the steam hit my nostrils. “It tickles!” I snorted and wiggled my nose. “The steam tickles my nose every time I smell the essence of bergamot. But I always do it anyway because it smells sooo good.”
“You’re talking funny,” he said abruptly.
I rolled my eyes. “It’s afternoon tea. Afternoon tea must be taken with an English accent. It’s my favorite. When I talk like this I sound just like my mummy. My mummy always had afternoon tea. Every single day at four p.m. on the dot.”
I was about to take a sip when, over the lip of my cup, I saw Heathan watching me weirdly again. His cup was still on the blanket between us. I wondered if he’d ever had afternoon tea before. If he hadn’t, it was a travesty!
I leaned forward. “You need to drink it soon, Rabbit. While it’s hot. Just make sure you blow on it first. You don’t want to get a burned tongue. That’s the worst feeling in the world!”
Heathan leaned over his cup and then looked up at me through his hair. “There’s nothing inside it.”
My hand froze on my cup. I had to be sure to hold the handle and not touch the china. I didn’t want to burn my finger. “What are you talking about, Rabbit? I just poured you a cup!” My head dropped to the side. “You have never had afternoon tea before, have you?”
Heathan slowly shook his head. I placed my cup on the blanket. “I normally have cakes and treats too. But silly me, I haven’t brought them today. I wasn’t expecting new company. New acquaintances, as Mummy would say.”
Heathan frowned and stared down at his cup. The pink of the cup and blanket was bright against his black clothes. “Would you like me to teach you how to drink your tea properly?” I scooted around the edge of the blanket until I was sitting right by his side. Reaching down, I put my hand on his. I jumped when Heathan froze and snapped his head my way. I forgot he didn’t want me touching him.
I couldn’t help it. I always touched people. I was a touchy person.
I went to pull my hand back, sad, when he said, “No . . .” I could feel my heart beating faster in my chest. “You can leave it there,” he said. But he sounded funny. His teeth were gritted together, like he was in pain or something.
I leaned in closer, until my arm pressed against his. “You smell good,” I said. Heathan’s eyes looked into mine. “And you have the prettiest eyes I’ve ever seen.” His jaw clenched, and he moved closer until his nose was near my neck. My eyes went wide as I wondered what he was doing.
He moved back, his nose near my nose, and said, “You smell good too.” His eyes closed, and opened again a second later. “Like roses.”
I smiled and nodded. “It is roses. It was my mummy’s perfume.” I made sure no one was around before saying, “I’m not supposed to wear it—Papa told me so—but I sneak a little bit on every day. Just a little drop behind each ear.” I tapped behind my ear to show him. “Out of sight.”
Tightening my grip on his hand, I looked back at the cup of tea before us. “To drink tea, you must take your fingers and put them through the handle.” I nodded at Heathan and guided his hand down to the cup. I put his fingers where they were supposed to go. “Now you bring the cup to your lips.” Heathan did as I said, never taking his eyes off mine. Just as the cup almost touched his lips, I sat up straighter and shouted, “Wait!” Heathan stopped. I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand. “I forgot the most important thing!” I reached out and pulled his pinky finger out into the air. I clapped and smiled. “There. To drink tea properly, you have to stick out your pinky. It’s the law when drinking tea. Mummy told me that in England, if you don’t do it, the Queen can chop off your head.” I slowly touched Heathan’s black hair. “And your head is far too pretty to chop off, Rabbit.”
I sat back, waiting for him to drink. “Go on then,” I urged. “Take a sip.” Heathan’s eyebrows were still pulled down, but he took a sip of the tea, then lowered the cup and saucer back down to the blanket. “Well?” I held my breath.
“It was good,” Heathan said, kind of awkwardly, but I still squealed in delight.
“It wasn’t too hot?”
“Just right,” he declared, and I moved back to my cup and took a sip too. I loved tea so much. But only Earl Grey. No other blend of tea was good enough. To drink Darjeeling, especially, was positively a crime.
“What else is in the sack?” Heathan asked as I placed my cup on the ground. I whipped around and pulled out my most prized possession. I shuffled on my knees toward Heathan and placed the boombox on the blanket.
Heathan raised his eyebrow. I pulled the bright pink boombox toward me and switched it on. “It was Mummy’s. There’s a tape inside. A cassette. It has all of her favorite songs on it. They are from the eighties. I don’t really know what that means, but they are my most favorite songs in the entire world. I play them every single day.”
I ran my hand over the loveheart stickers my mummy had stuck on when she was younger. I turned to Heathan. “You want to listen, Rabbit?”
He nodded. I rewound the tape until I found my most favorite song and pressed play. The music started. “This song is called ‘Dear Jessie.’ It’s by a lady called Madonna. It was Mummy’s favorite song in the whole wide world.”
I swayed as the music started. Unable to sit down, I jumped to my feet and, holding my Alice doll in my hands, I began to dance and sing. I spun around, head tipped back as I sang the words out loud. When I could spin no more, I looked over at Heathan. He was watching me with a strange expression on his face.
I dipped my shoulder and looked him right in the eyes. I danced and sang, moving toward him, putting on a show. I always put on shows for my papa and my uncles. Almost every night. They always asked me to dance for them in my Alice in Wonderland dress—it was their favorite dress of mine. I loved to dance for people. It always made them smile.
When the song ended, I dropped down beside him, out of breath. “Did you like that, Rabbit?” I pulled Alice to my chest.
His silver eyes ran down over my dress, then back to my face. “Yes,” he said, his voice raspy. “I liked it a lot.”
“Really?”
He nodded.
“I’m so happy!” I took another sip of my tea, and Heathan did the same. I poured us one more cup. When all the tea had been drunk, I reached into the sack for my final treasure.
I placed the book before Heathan. “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”
Heathan picked up the book and ran his fingers over the old front cover. “Your favorite book.” He opened the cover and started looking at the pages.
I gasped. “Can you read, Rabbit?”
Heathan’s hands paused, and he looked at me. “Yeah. You can’t?”
I shook my head. “I’m homeschooled. My papa is a very busy man and he doesn’t get much time to teach me. I spend most of my days playing out here in the yard.” I played with Alice’s hair. When I flicked my eyes back to Heathan, he was still watching me. “Can . . . could you read the book to me, Rabbit?”
Heathan looked like he was going to say no, but then his shoulders dropped and he nodded. Smiling, I moved until my head rested on his leg. I heard Heathan breathing weird, but I didn’t say anything. I looked up, and he was looking down at me.
He was very handsome.
“My mummy read this to me every night when she w
as alive. Since then, no one has read to me . . . until now.”
Heathan swallowed, and then started at the first page. I smiled as he read. And he read well. He must be really smart, I thought. Quiet and smart.
I studied Heathan as he read. I listened to his voice, his strong Texan accent . . . just like mine when I wasn’t using my English one. “Why didn’t your mummy want you, Rabbit?”
Heathan stopped reading and looked down at me. His silver eyes seemed to darken. “No one ever wants me,” was all he said.
“Your papa? Mr. James doesn’t?”
Heathan shook his head once. “He doesn’t want me either. But I’ve got nowhere else to go. He told me to stay away from him while I was here. So I do.”
I felt my heart grow heavy with sadness. “Then I’ll want you,” I said quietly, and Heathan’s eyes grew so wide they looked like two bright moons shining in the midnight sky. I put my hand in his and squeezed gently. “I’ll be your friend, and you will be mine. Dolly and Rabbit. Friends of the Earnshaw estate . . . your first friend in the whole wide world.”
I rolled to the boombox beside me and pressed the play button. As Mummy’s tape played, I rested my head back on Heathan’s leg and gave him a huge smile. Heathan’s hand left the book, then, really slowly, he lowered his fingers to my face and over to my hair. He straightened my headband. I thought he might smile at me, but he didn’t. He looked back at the book. I closed my eyes as he read to me again. And all the time he did, I imagined I could hear the tick-tock of his pocket watch in his vest.
I knew I would like the sound very much.
Tick tock.
Heathan James.
My new friend.
Tick tock.
Chapter 2
Heathan
Two years later . . .
They all expected me to feel something. They all stared at me as we stood at the side of the grave. My papa was lowered into the ground, and I watched, detached, as his coffin was placed in the grave. The pastor said something, but I didn’t bother listening. I was too busy wondering what was happening to his body as it wasted away in the wooden box. Wondering what his blood looked like after five days of being dead. Was it thick and red? Congealed, like Jell-O? Had it changed color? Had his skin turned dry, cracked, gray? Did he stink? Had he started to decay, lips losing flesh, pulling back from his yellowing teeth?
A hand slid into mine. I didn’t need to look to know it was Dolly. She was the only person who dared touch me. She was the only person who ever spoke to me. Just the way I liked it.
I lifted my eyes and saw Eddie Smith glaring at me from across the grave, that stupid hat on his head. He watched Dolly’s head fall against my arm and hug it close. When he met my eyes, I smirked at him, eyes burning. She was mine. He had her once, but from the minute I came along, he no longer existed in her world. There was me, the only one in her life now. I’d told her that to be my friend, she’d have to cut Eddie loose. I didn’t share. Especially not with straightlaced jerks like him. She chose me. In a heartbeat. The decision between me and Eddie had never been a choice. She belonged to me . . . and she knew it.
Eddie hated it, of course. I read it in his face every time he stared at her like she was a favorite toy he’d lost. Every time he looked at me with his ex-best friend on my arm, he radiated with hatred.
He should hate me.
I was never giving her back.
I was keeping her . . . forever.
Over the past couple of years, Eddie had come to the estate less and less. He was once a staple, but since I arrived, his presence was no longer needed. I saw him watching through the fence most days, but I’d made sure she’d told him he wasn’t welcome.
He was now redundant in Dolly’s life.
I was all she would ever need.
I would make sure of it.
“Rabbit?” Dolly’s voice pulled me away from Eddie and his shit-scared face. When I looked down at her sad blue eyes, she pointed to her papa beside her. Mr. Earnshaw was holding out a bucket of dirt.
“Take a handful of the dirt, son. Throw it into the grave, on your papa’s coffin.” I did as asked. But I never broke away from Dolly’s hand. She sniffed, and when I looked at her again, I saw her crying. I rubbed the tear from her cheek with my thumb, then brought the tear to my mouth.
It tasted of salt.
It tasted of her.
It tasted good.
The pastor said something else, and then everyone began walking back toward the main house. I saw Mr. Earnshaw and the “uncles,” his business partners, walking at the front of the small crowd. It was just estate staff. Mr. Earnshaw and his business partners never really left the estate. We were alone all the way out here in the Dallas countryside. But I had Dolly. So I didn’t care.
I was homeschooled, had been since I arrived. But, just like Dolly, I wasn’t actually schooled by anyone. So I spent my days with her, drinking tea at her tea parties and trying to teach her how to read and write. She tried, but she wasn’t too good. She knew the basics, but she struggled with most things.
It pissed me the hell off.
“You want to go to my bedroom, Rabbit?” Dolly held on tighter to my arm, her cheek against my jacket. I nodded, not saying a word, and let her lead me to the house and into her quiet room. I heard the sound of the adults in the main room on the floor below. But I didn’t wanna be around them. I didn’t like them. Being around them made me want to hurt them. Being around anyone but Dolly made me want to take a gun and pierce a bullet through their thick skulls. I didn’t know why. Those were just the daily thoughts I’d had about people ever since I could remember. Most nights I fell asleep imagining what they would all look like dead.
Dolly sat on her bed, her china-faced doll, as always, pulled tightly to her chest. She was wearing black today. She looked weird not dressed in her blue dress, white socks and white apron.
I hated it.
I went to her closet and pulled out one of her many identical blue dresses. Her big shimmering blue eyes were fixed on me as I held out the dress. “Change into this.”
Dolly looked down at her black dress and coat. “Papa said I had to wear black today. To honor your papa. Like I did at my mummy’s funeral.”
“I fucking hate you in black. You belong in color.” I pushed the dress out again.
Dolly scowled. “You’re always in black,” she said and pouted her full lips. “Why can’t I wear black too?”
I was getting annoyed. “I live in shade. You don’t. You live in the light . . . now change.”
I kept my eyes fixed on hers until she sighed dramatically and took the dress from my hand. The only bit of emotion I’d felt all day came flooding to my chest as she marched past me to her bathroom, stomping her feet. I felt my lip tug up at one corner. It was as close to a smile as I ever got.
And only ever for her.
She was always dramatic. Full of life. Pushed every one of my buttons.
Throwing the long black jacket Mr. Earnshaw had bought for me for today across a chair, I sat down on the bed. My hand dipped into my vest pocket and pulled out my pocket watch. I ran my fingers over the screen and watched the hands move around. Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock . . .
The bathroom door opened and Dolly walked out, once again dressed in her blue dress. Her Alice doll hung at her side. She smiled and held out her arms to the side, seeking approval for her outfit. She knew I loved her in these clothes.
Only in these clothes.
My living, breathing doll.
She walked to her vanity and sat down on the stool, flicking a glance to me in her mirror, giving me another coy smile. She hummed to herself, yet another song from her mama’s mix tape. I recognized the song. She always sang and danced to this song. Over and over again, every single day. I didn’t care. I loved watching her dance.
I sat back on the bed, my head resting against the brightly painted yellow wall. Dolly reached for the tube of lipstick that sat on her vanity—her mama’s
old lipstick.
Pink.
It was bright pink.
She applied the lipstick, squirted some perfume on her neck, then came to sit beside me. When she played, it was always dress-up. Dress-up and afternoon-tea parties. English accents and bright pink lipstick. She had a picture of her mama at the side of her bed. She wanted to look just like her; that was obvious. With her pink lipstick and long blond hair, she did.
“Rabbit?” Dolly lay down beside me.
“Yeah?”
“Do you feel sad?” Her eyes were so big. I could see tears in them.
“I ain’t sad,” I replied flatly and slumped down until I faced her. Dolly smelled of roses again—my favorite scent. That perfume . . . her . . .
Dolly laid her hand over mine on the mattress between us. “Your papa died. It’s a sad day. You . . .” She looked nervous. “You can cry if you want. It’s okay. I won’t tell anyone.”
I frowned. “I don’t cry.”
“Ever?”
“No.” I tried to think of a time when I’d cried. There had never been one.
“You won’t miss your papa?”
I thought about her question. Then I answered with the truth. “No.”
Dolly gasped. “But you do miss your mummy though, yeah?”
I shook my head. “No.” My eyes narrowed as I tried to read Dolly’s shocked face. I thought of my mama. Thought of her as she dropped me off at the Earnshaw estate gates. Pictured her watching me in the kitchen before she gave me up. Thought of how she cried herself to sleep at night while whispering my name.
And I felt nothing at all.
“She means nothin’ to me. No one does.” As Dolly sucked in a quick breath, I felt something burn in my chest.
“I . . . I don’t mean nothin’ to you, Rabbit? Even me? Your Dolly?” A tear fell from the corner of her eye and rolled down her cheek. I watched the drop fall, and something ripped in my stomach. Her bottom lip was trembling.
My hand jerked out and I wiped the tear with my thumb. “Only you.” Dolly held her breath, searching my face. I glanced down, not knowing what this feeling in my chest, and now my stomach, was.
