by Susie Day
“I lied.”
The sea crashes behind me. Seagulls whirl overhead. I can still hear the strumming of Verushka/Danushka’s guitar, as if life is going on quite normally, quite naturally, not crumbling at all.
“Don’t look so appalled, Blue. People lie to themselves all the time.”
“That’s not the same.”
“I know,” she says, looking at her knees again. “I know. I am sorry. But why would I tell you? I got a second chance, one I didn’t expect. No sense wasting it. Besides,” she says, ruffling her hair back over one eye, “you’re a bright girl. To be honest, I didn’t think it’d take you this long to figure it out.”
“So this is my fault?”
“No! But you do get the better end of this deal. You’re doing way better than me at living the perfect teenage summer. You’ve made a bunch of friends, you went out to Mulvey Island, you’re hanging out with a bunch of random scene kids at some beach campfire. And don’t go imagining I haven’t noticed whose coat you’re wearing. Me, I just stared at him from afar like a weirdo. You, you’re practically flirting.”
She smiles, like her old self, all flashy eyes and cheek.
“And you didn’t do any of those things,” I say, bleakly.
“Rub it in, why don’t you? No, I didn’t. But you have! So, you know, woohoo. Go Team Blue.”
She waves one fist feebly in the air.
“You don’t get it, do you?” I say. And she thinks I’m the slow one.
“I’ve been doing what you tell me to do, all this time,” I say, trying to control the wobble in my voice, “because there was a road. Bluebell Road, all planned out.”
“There is!” she says. “I didn’t lie about that. I told you: some things are fixed, some things neither of us can change—”
“But you’re not one of them, are you?”
She looks at her boots.
“I thought at the end of the road was my fourteenth birthday, when I was going to wake and be you. For definite. No mistakes, no chance of messing up. Cast-iron guarantee: no matter how much of a hopeless idiot I am right now, no matter how many detours or side roads I go down, I’m doing what you did. So one day, in the not-too-distant future, I will be you.”
“I didn’t mean for you to think that,” she murmurs.
“And instead? I’ve been doing the exact opposite of what you did.”
“And having fun doing it,” she protests.
I shake my head. “But still doing it differently. So I won’t be you. Ever. Will I?”
Her face pales, and I can see the flicker: the moment where she wonders if she can lie about this too; the twist of her mouth when she accepts she can’t.
“No,” she says. “No, you’ll never be me.”
I nod, my eyes filling up with tears till I can’t even see her, and I wonder how your own self can hurt you that much.
She sits on her rock, saying nothing. There’s nothing to say.
“Hey, there you are!”
It’s Dan’s voice, yelling from the mouth of the cave, half hidden by pebbles. He’s wearing Tiger’s tasselled scarf as a turban, and shouting something about dancing, but then he cuts himself off and disappears. A moment later, Fozzie comes scrambling up out of the dip, looking anxious.
I glare at Red as I swipe the tears away, fumbling in my pocket for a tissue to blow my nose.
“All right? Hey, what’s up, what’s happened?”
I sniff, chin up, straightening my shoulders out. “It’s that other friend of mine,” I say, looking straight at Red. “She’s let me down. Again.”
“And on your fake extra birthday and all? You poor thing,” says Fozzie, rubbing my arm. “I did ask around, try and invite her, but your mum didn’t know who it was – and you’ve never told me her name. Sod her anyway. Come back inside and hang with us, yeah? I saved you a bit of cake. And Merlin’s all worried, bless him.”
Merlin. Beautiful Merlin, who was never on Bluebell Road at all.
“I would.” I squeeze Fozzie’s hand, trying to smile. “I’d love to. But. . .”
Red’s head lifts, and she might not be able to see into my future after all, but she knows I’m saying this to her.
“I need to be on my own.”
And I head off back along the skiddy pebbles, past the turn-off to the short-cut path, to walk the long way home.
“Since when is Ben and Jerry’s on the official recommended healthy eating list?” Dad complains, dumping the shopping on the kitchenette table. “That doctor’s going to string me up tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow?” I say, lifting my head off Peanut’s bump.
“Just a check-up at the hospital, baby, nothing to worry about,” Mum says, smoothing my hair off my forehead with a smile. “And the ice cream isn’t for me – though I will have some. Just to keep Blue company.”
“Ohhh,” says Dad, looking at us curled on the sofa with every pillow and duvet in the van, and Milly tucked under my arm. “Medical emergency. Three spoons coming up.”
We perch the carton of Cookie Dough on my knee and dig in. I’m a giant human cliché, but it does make me feel better, just like Mum said it would. We all go for the same big extra-chocolate-chippy nugget at the same time, spoon-fighting. I end up laughing, and I’m so surprised I start crying again instead.
Mum and Dad very politely go on eating ice cream, and don’t say a word about my sniffing.
“So,” Dad says eventually. “Nice coat.”
I shrink into the collar. “I didn’t mean to borrow it. I’ll give it back tomorrow.”
“Sure. So, you’ll be giving it back to a boy . . . friend?”
“I haven’t got a boyfriend. He’s a boy, who’s a friend. I think.”
I want more than that. My nose is full of woodsmoke and spearmint gum, and the feel of his fingers on my wrist, his hand on my neck. I shut my eyes and see his: hazel, ringed with daring black. My birdlike heart flaps in my chest.
He likes me back. Does he? He does. Does he? He does.
“Right. So the lack of boyfriend, is that why. . .?” says Mum, wagging a melty spoonful of ice cream.
I shake my head, the birdlike feeling fading away. “Argument with a friend-friend. Well . . . a sort-of friend.”
“Oh, one of those,” says Mum.
“Thank god I bought a tub of Chocolate Fudge Brownie while I was at it,” says Dad, nodding seriously. “A sort-of friend: that’s a two-flavours kind of problem.”
“What did the sort-of friend do?” asks Mum.
“Um.” I suck on my cold spoon.
It hurts to think about it.
She took away my future.
She dangled the idea of growing up to be exactly who I wanted, right under my nose. Then she snatched it away again.
“One of those ‘too complicated for the parentals to follow’ type of things?” says Mum, gently nudging me with her elbow so I’ll know she’s joking at herself, not at me.
Does he like me? Or the girl I thought I’d become?
“Complicated doesn’t begin to cover it.”
“Well, we’re here to listen if you want,” says Dad, “or we can just be annoyingly cheerful at you. Speak of the devil. . .” he adds, as Tiger comes home.
Tiger springs through the door, flinging a half-empty canvas bag on to the kitchenette table.
“Hello!” she says, loud and bright. “Ooh, ice-cream party, brilliant!”
She grabs a spoon from the drawer and plonks herself down next to Dad.
“And how was your evening?” asks Mum, as if the answer isn’t obvious.
“Perfect,” she says, sighing. “We put down a blanket and ate sandwiches with the crusts cut off, in triangles, and strawberries. She gave me an Indian head massage. Then we lay on our backs to look at the clouds, and talked about French fi
lms and postmodernism.”
“Yeah? That’s what we do every Wednesday, isn’t it, love?” says Mum, slapping Dad’s thigh and almost hiding her smirk.
Maybe that’s what I’ll start doing, now. Merlin and I could lie side by side in the cave, and talk about photography not being evil. He could properly teach me how to flip his hat. I could feed him strawberries.
My brain is so embarrassing. I don’t even know if Merlin likes strawberries. Or me. I don’t know anything about him, really. I wonder if I’ll ever find out. Red didn’t.
“Nice coat,” Tiger says, poking at my collar.
“Bluebell borrowed it from a boy, who is a friend,” says Dad. “Which isn’t at all the same as a boyfriend.”
“Really?” says Tiger, flaring her blue eyes. Then she frowns. “Where’s my scarf?”
“Um,” I say. The last time I saw it, Dan had it wrapped round his head. It could be anywhere by now. I probably shouldn’t mention that to Tiger – along with the big green algae stain on the back of her white shirt.
“That’s my favourite scarf,” says Tiger, her picnicky glee dimming. “If anything’s happened to my favourite scarf. . .”
I scoop up a big mouthful of vanilla. I can’t deal with a Tiger drama right now.
“You’ll get it back, I promise,” I mumble, mouth full. “Tomorrow.”
She narrows her eyes, then nods, once, and skips off to our bedroom.
“Grabbing a shower,” she calls over her shoulder.
We polish off the rest of the Cookie Dough, listening to the speckle of water and Tiger’s off-key happy singing: be-bop-a-lula, she’s my baby, be-bop-a-lula, I don’t mean maybe.
My eyes prickle with tears again, and Mum tugs me into a hug.
“Don’t stress, baby. If it’s worth fixing, you’ll find a way.”
Dad finds an old Cluedo board in the cupboard under the sofa, and sets it up on the kitchenette table.
Tiger, dripping in a towel, demands to be Professor Plum. A few minutes later, she reappears from behind the orange paisley curtain, damp hair knotted, dressed in fresh clothes.
Comfy jog bottoms.
Flip-flops.
And a purple T-shirt, with a yellow smiley face on the front.
“Yeah, it’s new,” she says, seeing my expression, and holding out the hem of the T-shirt. “Present from Catrin. You like?”
“Mm.” I nod.
I do. I will, because it’s Red’s T-shirt: the one she’s been wearing every single day.
Only that doesn’t mean I will like it, not any more. Not now Red isn’t the girl I’m guaranteed to be.
That’s when it hits me.
If I’m not going to become Red – what happens to her?
11. The Red Dragon
I dream of home.
In my bedroom, the tessellating photographs have grown across my walls like slimy moss. More pictures than I could take in a year, snapshots from the future. I try to get closer, to see what’s in them: to see what’s coming. But the pictures turn their backs and hide.
My head stays under the pillow as I hear Tiger shift around, hunting for trainers; Mum and Dad getting up, flooding the caravan with coffee smells. I fake sleep when muffled voices offer me a cup. If I stay here with Milly, in my little cave of warmth, nothing will go wrong. Nothing will hurt. My future can’t be messed up if I stay in bed instead.
I really do go back to sleep, though. It’s almost eleven when I wake up. I shower, get dressed. The caravan’s quiet: a scribbled note from Dad on the table, Gone to the shops, lazybones. See you for lunch? x.
Merlin’s coat is draped over the shoulders of a kitchen chair. I slip it on, breathing in: smoke and minty gum.
I feel like a weirdo. Is that pervy, sniffing someone’s coat?
If Red were here, she’d be laughing at me. But she’s not. I don’t know where she’s gone. I walk to the edge of the cliffs, where the iron railings lean out, groping towards Mulvey Island and the Bee rock. I take the short-cut path to the Prom, to The Bench. It’s where she always goes when she’s not with me, to sit and watch the tide go in, the tide go out. I always thought it was because she was waiting for something.
But she can’t have been. My summer isn’t her summer. She didn’t have herself hissing in her own ear, telling her the future, some of it true. By being here, she had to be changing her own history.
But what does that mean for her?
What happens to her now? To the year she’s already lived? To the girl who wished herself back on her fourteenth birthday?
The wind ripples the grey sea, rolling in, rolling out. It licks the pebbles, tumbling them into a new order. It washes me with sadness, as I begin to understand.
By the time I get back to the caravan park, I can smell burnt toast and there’s music filtering out through the thin walls: Johnny and the Hurricanes. It’s from Tiger’s favourite CD. Through the windows I can see Dad twirling Tiger, while Mum drums on the table with butter knives.
Red’s outside, looking in.
“I think it’s called a predestination paradox,” I say quietly. “Is that right?”
“Knew I could count on you to know the right technical term,” she says, with a laugh like a sigh.
“It’s impossible,” I say, slowly, still working it all out. “I have to become you, so you can come back in time to change things. But because you’ve come back in time to change things, I’ll never become you. Impossible.”
Red shoots me a wan smile. “I recommend not thinking too hard about it. It’s like the wish. I mean, how was any of this possible? Even I don’t know. But here we are. Reckon you just make the best of wherever you’ve ended up.”
“But—” I can hardly bear to look at her. “But what about you? If I don’t turn into you, what happens? Where do you go?”
Red pushes her hand against the caravan wall, wisps of smoke trailing up as it disappears. Solemn, she watches her fingers as they gradually re-form into a solid hand-shape.
“Where did my hand just go? Don’t know. Guess I’ll just . . . stop.”
“And you’re OK with that? You don’t mind?”
Red takes a very deep breath, and says nothing, and I think about her not taking any more deep breaths, ever; not shaking her hair over her eyes or flashing her grin or tap-tap-tapping the side of her nose. I want to hold her hand but I can’t. She’ll never hold anyone’s hand again, ever.
“I’d mind,” I say, my voice very small and choked.
Red breathes in deeply again, and sniffs. “I mind,” she says, her voice small too. “I think it’s all right to mind.”
There’s a beep-beep-beep from the smoke alarm, and the caravan door springs open, pouring out music, giggling, and the smell of charred bread. Tiger doesn’t see me: she’s too busy wafting a grill pan billowing grey smog out of the door at arm’s length, shouting, “Water, water!” between fits of laughter.
The song changes: Link Wray, something slinky and slow. Dad whoops and cranks up the volume. Mum appears in the doorway, and empties a bowlful of water over the black toast. It sizzles, sending up more smoke. Then she takes the pan from Tiger and whips it sharply to her left, keeping tight hold of the handle, and sending the squares of black wet toast arcing into the sky.
I hear a slap-slap-slap, as they land on the roof of the chalet opposite.
“Mum!” yelps Tiger, and the two clutch each other as they stumble inside, senseless with giggles.
The door slaps closed behind them. Link Wray gets quieter, though the caravan still quivers and creaks as they dance across the crack in the curtains.
Red steps up closer, and peers in: her nose pressed as close against the glass as a wishgirl’s can be.
“Hey,” I say quietly, my heart aching for her; for me, when I was her. “You can come in, you know. You don’t have to
hide out here.”
She shakes her head.
“I like watching.” She sighs as Tiger dumps Dad on the sofa and pulls Mum out of her seat, rock and rolling around her while she taps the beat on her belly. “I like seeing that they’re all right without me.”
They’re not without me. I’m standing right here.
But I know what she means.
Red’s a girl made of smoke, and might-have-been, things I didn’t do and never will. But she was me once. She’s my mum too, she said at the hospital. This is her family.
She’s starting to say goodbye.
“I’ll look after them,” I whisper. “I promise.”
There’s a red wing of hair in the way, so I can’t see her face. But she nods, and I know we understand each other.
I go inside and eat cheese on toast, version number two. I join in the dancing, Merlin’s tailcoat twirling out behind me, knocking cups off the table. I let my brain tick-tick-tick.
I can’t save Red, not really. I can’t save her from wisping away into smoky nothingness when this summer is over – but I can follow her lead, do things her way: brave, and fabulous. That way even when she’s gone, she’ll still be a part of me.
And I realize: I know exactly what I need to do next.
Dad drives Mum off for her four p.m. hospital check-up.
Tiger changes her clothes, little skirt, big shoes, off to see Catrin.
I walk, and walk, the long way round, building up my courage. I go to the fairground, to face my fears.
The Shed is closed up early, for Fifties Fest preparation: boxes of hot-dog buns, a tower of stacking plastic chairs outside. I’m disappointed. I want to see Fozzie, even if I can’t explain. I want Fozzie to see this.
But maybe it’s something I need to do on my own.
The fairground is packed: jerky music, flashing lights, food and screaming. Chaos. Happiness. I feel it buzz through me, the rattle of the Rock’n’Roller like a bass line up my spine. My hands tingle as I weave through the crowds, feeling curious eyes on me. A girl in an oversized black tailcoat, on a sunny early evening in August. I suppose I look a little odd. I smile back, hands in Merlin’s pockets. I like being a little odd, I think.
