Daisy Jacobs Saves the World

by Gary Hindhaugh

  “True.”

  “A room you can’t get into.”

  “Also true … for now. But I will get in. Eventually I will break down your foolish, imaginary door and I’ll —”

  “If it’s so foolish, so lacking in reality, why can’t you huff and puff and blow my door down?”

  “I — I — I don’t know.” This conversation is not going how Quark expected. Daisy is not straightforward. In fact, she is slippery and dishonest with him.

  “Now, Daisy, let’s not argue. We can be honest and open with each other. You can say what you want, you know. But please don’t lie. If you lie to me, you are literally lying to yourself.”

  Chapter 23

  WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER?

  I am flabbergasted; literally lost for words. “Honest!? We’re being honest with each other?”

  “Yes, Daisy, of course,” my own cheating, lying voice says in a tone so full of cool reason it could only fool a complete simpleton. “You know yourself that honesty is the best policy.” It’s obvious that Quark’s trying to make a sucker out of me, but two can play at this game. So, while I rarely tell outright lies, I can easily tell less than the absolute truth — and maybe, just maybe find another way to trick him.

  “Look, Daisy, we got off on the wrong foot,” Quark continues in my suddenly all-too weaselly voice that bugs me so much. Was I always such a conniving, goody-goody? No — don’t answer that. “It’s fair to say that things got heated,” he says. “A bit out of hand. We lost our sense of perspective. It’s not surprising our nerves are frayed. I understand I upset you; it is natural you are concerned.”

  “Concerned! Believe me, I am way more than concerned. What you’re doing is wrong!”

  “I understand. After all, I am made of the same stuff that you are, Daisy.”

  “Well, I know that!”

  “You do?”

  “Yes. To be precise, you’re made of the exact stuff: you are me.” I continue with increasing anger and frustration. “Because you nicked my body. You took me over. And then you tried to push me out; forever!”

  “That was a misunderstanding.”

  “You didn’t mean to clamber inside my head?”

  “Well … ”

  “If that’s the case why didn’t you get out of me as soon as you realised the error of your ways?”

  “Well — ”

  “In fact, why don’t you get out of me right now?!”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It’s not complicated at all. Just go. Depart. Leave. Skedaddle. There’s a whole universe out there for you to explore.”

  “I know, I have been there. And you can too!”

  “Look, I’m fed up of being talked down to by grown ups. And I’m certainly not gonna be taken for a fool by myself! You think I’m stupid? This is my body and my mind we’re talking about. There’s nothing complicated about this! Just get out of me!”

  As I listen to him speak, I wonder at Quark’s quietly correct tone and overly precise choice of language and phraseology. It isn’t how I speak. Do my family, friends and teachers really think this is me? But how could they think otherwise? Logically, they’re not suddenly going to go, “that doesn’t sound like Daisy, I reckon she’s been kidnapped by an alien body-snatcher; let’s help her — quick!”

  I reluctantly admit it’s my voice. But behind it is a simulation of my personality. A fake. And as I hear my voice speaking again, a feeling of vertiginous uncertainty washes over me: I can’t connect to the thoughts and feelings behind it, to the true part of myself that could put a stop to —

  “You know that Sherlock Holmes saying?” says Quark.

  “Huh?” I’m drawn rapidly from my wandering thoughts and thrown by the sudden non sequitur.

  “‘Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’”

  “Okaaaay.”

  “Then, it follows that …”

  “Sorry? What follows?”

  He lets out an exaggerated sigh. “I am here. I am Quark. I am real.”

  I don’t understand where he’s going with this, so I give up and go for my own conversational gear change. “How do you know about Sherlock Holmes?”

  “Duh! I am in your head, girlfriend!”

  “Yuck! Don’t get all ‘with it’ with me, Quark, because, believe me, I have never met anyone more without it in my life!”

  “I think I may be insulted.” My face does indeed look all huffy.

  “It’s like Dad-dancing: it’s excruciatingly embarrassing, you know?”

  “Okay, now I am definitely insulted.” My arms are crossed and there’s a definite pout on my lips.

  It still so weird: looking at my own face in the mirror and seeing those eyes — my eyes, I have to keep reminding myself — staring coldly back at me. Quark may learn the basics of being human, but he can’t yet mask his true feelings … fortunately. While there’s a lightness to his words, and he seems superficially friendly, scratch the surface and there’s cold steel in the tone of my voice as he speaks. And there’s no hiding the icy chill of my eyes — now definitely more steely-grey than green.

  His hostility scares me. It’s partly the simple fact that I see me there in the mirror being so two-faced, forbidding and lacking in emotion. I tend wear my heart on my sleeve. I’m not much of a shouter, but I love a good cry and can be a bit over enthusiastic and passionate about people and stuff I care about. (Not that you’d have noticed …) Whereas, this creature in the mirror is joyless and cold-blooded.

  I quash the familiar rising panic and swallow back my fear. “You were about to explain your general Quark-ness to me, I think. So — I’m listening,” I say with as much of a tone of supreme self-confidence and indifference as I can instil without being able to say the words. “I’m listening with great interest. How can you explain this?”

  “I do not think you have realised how lucky you are.”

  I say nothing. I try very hard to think nothing; to clear my mind entirely; to keep that clarity of thought I know is essential. All around me, people I know — some of whom I love — are going about their lives. My parents go to work, my brother to primary school. For them life continues to be as dull and normal as it ever was in Scuttleford. But normal is subjective. Reality is an illusion. Life is far from normal — even for those who think it is. Life as I knew it — and as they know it — is over. The difference is that they just don’t realise it yet.

  “All around you are people you know and care about.”

  That’s weird! Has he heard what I was thinking?

  “They are all made of the same fundamental matter as you. But you are more than that. You are truly star-stuff now, Daisy. How amazing is that?” He pauses, no doubt expecting me to see the error of my ways. He gets nothing but continuing silence and so continues. “You are extraordinary now. Unique! And yet this is just the beginning of your potential.”

  “I know!”

  “You do? You realise what you can become?” Quark thinks he’s made a breakthrough.

  “Yes. I have an extraordinary super-power.”

  “You do, Daisy, you do.”

  “I can be anything I want to be. There are no limits, imposed by you or anyone else. I can be a doctor like my Mum. An engineer like Dad. I can be a scientist or a brilliant teacher like Mrs Griffin. I can become Prime Minister — and definitely make a better job of it than the one we have now, because I’d help develop a huge planetary shield to stop us being invaded by monstrous, molecule-munching space entities! I’m a girl, what’s your superpower?”

  In the mirror, my shoulders rise and fall as Quark exhales. He ignores my question and his reply is far calmer and more reasonable than mine would have been in the circumstances. “You disappoint me, Daisy.” He cooly flicks my hair away from my face as he reaches round to fix it into a ponytail. He does in fact sound sad about the situation.

  I hate l
istening to and seeing myself like this. It’s my voice, but the words aren’t mine. The real Daisy, the true Daisy is locked inside, while this imposter speaks with my voice! I’m used to my body, the way it moves, the way my face and body react to what I think and feel, to what happens to me. I can sense the way it quirks now when Quark speaks — it’s a Quark quirk! I can hear the sheer lack of ‘Daisy-ness’ as he speaks. It’s horrible being disconnected from myself like this!

  I know myself, so it’s frustrating that no-one else knows I’ve gone away, as it were. Maybe in my life until now I’ve been too quiet, too contained and worried about what other people think. Partly that’s to keep the panics at bay. Also, I faff about being the youngest in my year and my consequent lack of physical development. And I’m maybe a teeny bit over-concerned about my marks and being the best I can be, academically. But surely what Quark says and how he acts as me is strange? But does everyone just think I’m acting weird (or, weird-er in the case of the Satellites, as they saw me as pretty freaky to begin with)?

  I’ve heard my parents talking and I know it divides them. Dad thinks I’m over-compensating for the panics; Mum’s considering intervention: she thinks the bang on my head may have done physical damage and wants me to have an MRI. (I wonder if an imaginary lock on a fictitious door in a hypothetical room would show up on an MRI? And if it did, whether the technician would immediately see it for what it was. “Ah — PSRS: Phantom Stealth Room Syndrome! Take this pill and sit in the corner; you’ll be right as rain in no time.”) But at the moment Mum and Dad are playing the waiting game and just seeing which way it goes.

  But I’m not normal. Not me. Not Daisy. I try to focus, but the ‘who’ of me is distant and out of reach. I’m too far away from myself to make sense of it all. Usually there’s a warm glint in theerd eyes that Quark now looks through so coldly. I’m sure my intelligence is still there. And I seem as strong willed as ever. But I can absolutely guarantee that he looks at the world with less warmth and sees it as being a whole lot less fun than I do, even if he’s less panicky about mundane stuff and more certain in his psychopathy!

  I tear my gaze away from my own face. I can sense the flush of my cheeks and feel the pounding beat of my heart. Quark’s getting frustrated; in fact, really, seriously angry.

  “If you are not coming out, then what has happened until now is trivial compared to what will happen.”

  “What do you mean?” Feelings, like electricity pulse through me. I sense the anger, the rage within him — within me. It scares me. It’s not something I’m used to; not something I feel comfortable with.

  “I will start with your reputation. You will no longer be top-girl, you will fail tests, miss homework deadlines —”

  “But you can’t do that! That’s not who I am, that’s not what I do!”

  “You seem to forget, Daisy Jacobs, you are no longer you. You have ceased to be.”

  “I can’t just give in!” It sounds petty, ridiculous even, but I am top — at everything. I’m the youngest, the littlest; I always have been. I’m competitive. And being good at stuff matters to me. It’s what calms me. “Why do you to trash my reputation and trample me into the dirt?”

  “This will happen, Daisy. It is inevitable. You can accept that this is fated for you and go out at the top. Or you can, as you say, see your reputation left in tatters, your relationship with your family and your friends tarnished — and still end up the same way.”

  It’s so hard, seeing myself like this. With Quark manipulating all the parts of me he’s in control of. And he’s closing in on all of me. But I can’t give in! He’s the one who must fail. I will be Daisy again!

  Chapter 24

  CONSORTING WITH THE ENEMY

  What are you doing, Daisy?”

  Quark jumped, as surprised by the sudden interruption as Mrs Griffin had been to see Daisy with her nose pressed to the glass of the school entrance when the head teacher arrived to open the school at 8am. Mrs Griffin had complemented Daisy on her determination to “get her nose back to the grindstone” (whatever that meant) and allowed Daisy into the library to use a school computer to ‘finish her homework’.

  Now, confused by the jittery reaction of Daisy’s metamorphosing body to the sudden interruption, and trying to remain calm despite the body’s wildly beating heart, Quark turned to see Ellie Watson leaning over Daisy’s shoulder, peering at the computer monitor.

  “What’s that then?”

  “Good morning, Eleanor, I am on the internet.”

  “I can see that. What are you looking at?”

  “I am researching teenagers.”

  “But we are teenagers.”

  “You are, but I am not.”

  Ellie Watson goggled at Daisy in confusion.

  “I mean, of course I am a teenager too,” Quark essayed a laugh which he could not quite bring off and probably appeared awkward. Or maybe just weird. “It is just hard sometimes, is it not? And there are some things about being a teenager I do not quite understand. I mean —” Quark stumbled over the words, unsure how to explain what he needed to find out, but keen to use the knowledge of an expert — a real live teenager (and a girl!) — rather than a dumb computer interface.

  “Oh, I see!” Ellie’s face brightened, and she nudged Daisy’s shoulder, “doing a little ‘research’ are you?”

  “Yes, that’s what I said.”

  “You’re confused about how some things work …” Ellie nodded at the monitor.

  “That is correct.”

  “Well, if there’s anything you need to know, I’m sure I can help you. I’m a woman of the world, if you know what I mean.” She nudged Daisy’s shoulder again. “Know what I mean?”

  It dawned on Quark what Ellie was talking about. “No, that wasn’t what I meant. You are talking of sexual intercourse?” he said loudly. “Have you done that?” he asked, suddenly interested in a new line of human knowledge.

  There were only a handful of students in the library at this hour, but all of them, plus Mrs Thomas, the librarian, stopped what they were doing. At that moment, a pin dropping would have sounded like the lunchtime gong at a hotel. A very large hotel. Everyone stared, open-mouthed, at Ellie, who flushed wildly. “No, of course I haven’t!” She waved her hands in front of herself, patting the air in the universally recognised sign for “FOR GOODNESS’ SAKE BE QUIET!” Unfortunately, though Quark had visited large portions of the universe, he’d clearly skipped the bits that would have told him what this gesture meant.

  “You are not an expert at sex then?” He continued in a voice that would easily reach the back of the stalls at most large theatres.

  “Well, I mean —” Pink bloomed on Ellie’s cheeks and she looked far from her usual brash and confident self.

  Quark frowned. “Why is this so embarrassing? You don’t use the internet for answers about sex, do you? Surely it would be easier to ask your parents or a teacher?” He glanced around, seeing that Mr Ford had just entered the library, “Mr Ford, for example. I’m sure he could help you with sex.” Mr Ford gaped at them like a drowning goldfish, then suddenly seemed to remember he had to be somewhere else at this precise moment and performed an about turn that would have melted the heart of the sternest regimental sergeant-major. He left the library at twice the speed he’d just entered it.

  This gave Ellie a moment to compose herself. “But you were doing the same just now. Looking up information on sex and how the body works.”

  “That was nothing to do with—”

  “And then you shout stuff out across the room. Accusing me of being a tramp or something.”

  “I never said you were sleeping rough! Although, I wondered if you were sleeping arou—”

  “Stop!” Ellie shouted, no longer caring about the disturbance they were creating. She picked up her bag and looked back over her shoulder as she turned to leave. “That’s it, Daisy Jacobs, I was wondering if you needed someone to talk to as you’ve been
in so much trouble recently, but you’re turning into an even bigger crackpot than you were before.” She turned on her heels, marched to the door and left the library.

  Quark blinked at the students who’d watched Ellie’s exit with rapt attention and who now turned to look at Daisy as if wondering what further entertainment this library visit would bring them. He realised this had been a missed opportunity. Ellie — or Amy — was exactly the kind of person to talk to about what was going on with Daisy’s body at the moment.

  He played back the conversation in his head. He could ‘see’ everything that had happened to him so far on earth by accessing his personal Netflix-like memory bank — one of those useful extra senses that us backward humans have never mastered. Reviewing his interaction with Ellie, he realised where he had gone wrong — and how he could get her back on his side. He’d wait for her to calm down and then ask her advice again. Once she understood, Quark knew Ellie would be more than happy to help in the development of ‘new Daisy’ …

  Chapter 25

  WHAT!

  You’re friends with who?!”

  “Eleanor Watson. A delightful child. You have her wrong — she is much misunderstood. And ‘I’ am not her friend, you are. She really likes new Daisy.”

  I’d heard the goss about their over-loud conversation. And, far from ending their would-be friendship, the scandal’s boosted Ellie’s reputation and she’s now even more popular with Scutttleford’s girls — and boys. So ‘I’ now have a new buddy!

  “Icky is not misunderstood. I understand her all too well. She’s a trouble-maker and a bully.”