Wonderland

by Joanna Nadin

  She peels off the cellophane, letting it catch the wind, the sun glinting off its transparency as it disappears into the heat and light. I watch her, fascinated, as she flicks the packet and a single cigarette shoots up. She takes it with her lips, gloss staining the paper. Pulls out a brass Zippo. Something engraved on it. Her name, I think. Or a boy’s. Then she lights it, shielding it from the wind, hair whipping around her face, and the smell of lighter fluid in the air. I will learn to love that smell.

  “Want one?”

  I shake my head. Then regret it. I should have taken one. Everyone around here smokes. At school it’s practically compulsory.

  Stella shrugs and lies back on the sand. “I called for you at the post office, but an alligator told me you’d be down here.”

  “Crocodile,” I say. “Alfie.” My little brother. Nine and still obsessed with dressing up. Yesterday he was Spider-Man. Teachers have given up on sending him home.

  “He’s grown. Anyway, what’s the difference?”

  “Um. Head shape, apparently.” I fidget, not sure whether to lie down too. I try stretching my legs out but it feels odd. Instead, I pull my skirt over my knees and clutch them tight. “So, how’d you know to try the post office?”

  “God’s sake, Jude.” Stella lifts her sunglasses up and looks at me. “This is Churchtown, not Los Angeles. You can’t cough without someone knowing. Your dad’s glittering career change is headline news.” She lets the glasses drop again.

  I feel heat surge to my cheeks. The last time Stella was here, we lived at the farm. The farm Dad swore he would never take over, but did anyway when his father died. The farm he left London for, bringing his pregnant girlfriend with him, happy to follow, saying it would be an adventure. Dad said she’d read too many daft books, that she was living in a dream world, but she came anyway, head full of the romance of Rebecca and bleak moors and wave-battered beaches. But there’s no romance in farming. In the mud and the rain and the bellowing of sick cows and the getting up at dawn.

  The farm that sent her quietly mad and then drove her away for good. The farm he clung on to through foot-and-mouth, only to lose it a year later. Subsidies forcing him to pour good milk down the drain. Supermarkets cutting prices. Had enough, he said. Can’t fight it anymore. Without her, is what he meant. So the farm got sold off for holiday cottages, and I could feel the village’s silent pity bearing down on us. Lost their mum; now lost their home. Until he bought the old post office/general store and was reborn as some kind of local hero. Nothing heroic in stacking shelves, though. Still has to get up at dawn.

  “So, what is with the underwear?” says Stella, stubbing her cigarette out in the sand. “And that skirt. It’s hideous.”

  I come to. “Oh. Royal Duchy. . . . Bad, huh?”

  She lets out a short, harsh laugh. “Jesus. Who’s paying for that? Your gran?”

  I say nothing. But Stella knows she’s right. It’s Gran’s compromise for the boarding school she really wanted me to go to. Mum’s old school. Some redbrick building in Surrey with stables and a lacrosse team and a foreign secretary in the alumni. Dad stood his ground for months for the local high school, but in the end he said he couldn’t be bothered to argue anymore. Another battle conceded.

  “Bloody bookworm. Bet you love it.” Stella stands up, the sun making a halo behind her. Like an angel. Wearing Topshop and Rimmel. “So, can I come over later, or have you got Latin review or something?”

  “No . . . uh, I mean, yeah. Sure.” I am not sure at all. But I don’t know what else to say. And anyway, Stella doesn’t take no for an answer.

  “Great. Later, then. It’ll be very.”

  “Very what?”

  “Very. Just very . . . Remember?”

  And I do remember. A movie. Heathers. Stella spoke in film lines. She said it made her sound interesting. Compared to most people around here, I guess it did.

  She turns to walk up the cliff path. I call after her. “Where are you staying?”

  She looks over her shoulder. “At the farm.”

  “Oh,” I say, shocked, unable to keep the pointless exclamation from bursting out. But she doesn’t notice. Or says nothing.

  “In the old milking shed. ‘Seaview,’ it’s called now. That’s a joke. Can’t even see the Point.”

  She smiles. And then I smile. And she is gone.

  Self-consciousness gone with her, I fall back on the sand, sun burning down on me. I can hear each breath, each heartbeat a thud-thud against the sea. She’s back. I try to remember what she looked like when I saw her last. And I realize I can’t remember her leaving. The last time, I mean. She just stopped coming around. Then one day I went to find her at the cottage, and it was empty, the door left ajar. Nothing inside but a few crisp packets and a Barbie strung above the door in mock suicide. My Barbie. The one I’d begged for months for. That Dad had refused to get me, so I sobbed to Gran and it arrived the next week. Pink and glittery and perfect. For a month she’d stayed in her box, away from Alfie’s sticky fingers, only coming out for a few minutes each day. Until Stella decided she needed a makeover. So we cut her hair and dyed it black with the ink from Dad’s cartridge pen. Totally Winona, Stella had said, and hung her up like Lydia in Beetlejuice, a film I’d seen once when Dad was away. Mum and me curled up on the sofa with popcorn and Pepsi and old videos. Films that were packed away in cardboard boxes and stashed in the attic when she died.

  I thought I’d seen Stella a few times since then. Usually out on the Point, where we used to hide when she was in trouble. Which was a lot. And once in town, when I’d bunked off PE to meet Ed at HMV, heart pounding in case one of the teachers was on a break and caught me.

  But, when I looked properly, it was never really her. Just some girl with blond hair and an attitude. Or nobody at all.

  And I thought about her, on and off. When I was in a handstand, mostly. Like at primary school. “Handstand Wonderland” it was called. And Stella excelled at it. Her legs poker straight in the hazy sunshine, then falling apart into splits and scissors. The Year Six boys lined up on the bank watching, waiting for a glimpse of what was underneath her dress.

  That’s when I first saw what her confidence could buy. Drinking pink milk at break and watching Emily Applegate’s lot doing handstands, upside down in a row, waving their legs in a jelly wobble. I just watched. I didn’t play. Not with them, anyway. Didn’t dare. But Stella just walks up and says, “I’m in.”

  Emily, upright now, looks her up and down like she is some kind of alien being. Which she is, kind of. “You can’t just join in. You’ve got to be invited.”

  “Yeah?”

  Then she does a perfect Long John Silver, one leg crooked up, for a whole minute, and everyone, even Emily, is in silent reverence. A new queen is crowned. And, reluctantly, I am allowed in with her. Practicing in the dunes after school, the soft sand breaking our fall. Or up against the cowshed walls, our sandals scuffing on the rough wood.

  And I never stopped after that. Not when Stella left. Or when Emily and the others moved on to chase-and-kiss, then smoking in the bus shelter. I carried on. Because I could. And I was good at it. And everything looks different that way up. More interesting.

  When I wake up, it’s late. My face is sore from the afternoon sun, my legs leaden, drugged with sleep. But then my stomach flips. With what? Guilt, maybe. I should be studying, not playing in the sand like a kid. But it’s not that. Exams are over now, but for one. The long days and late nights shut in my room, in my head, trying to burn chemistry and math and which king killed who and when into my memory. It’s done.

  Then I remember. And I can feel it build inside me. Not guilt. Anticipation.

  Red fireworks going off behind my eyes, I pick up my bag and climb through the bleached-out dunes, each step sinking into the hot sand. Like walking through treacle, Mum said.

  I walk down the hill into Churchtown. Hardly a town. A village. A launderette, a pub, and the post office. Our post office. It’s still qui
et, despite the heat. No real tourists yet, just weekenders and hard-core surfers, sleeping in their vans near the Point, watching and waiting for the perfect wave. People complain, but I like them. Bringing another world into our little one, bigger and brasher and better than our endless wet, gray granite and old Land Rovers. Nothing ever happens here. “Take me with you,” I want to say. But I don’t. And then I think that Stella is a sort of perpetual tourist, carrying cigarettes and sunglasses and possibility. And I feel that thing inside me again. In my blood. Warm, like the fuzz of alcohol. Stella.

  I open the door to the post office, setting off the cowbells. Mrs. Hickman is at the register and Alfie is on the floor, still in his crocodile outfit, reading Horse & Hound. He is not especially interested in horses. Or hounds. He just likes magazines. It’s the glossy pages and new smell. And facts. He reads pretty much every magazine in the shop every month. Elle. Caravanning Monthly. Anything he can reach. Dad puts the GQs on the top shelf now, next to the ones in the plastic bags that only Mental Nigel and some of the farm men get.

  Alfie looks up. “Jude, did you know that horses can die from a tummy ache?”

  “Wow,” I say, not meaning it. “Where’s Dad?”

  “At the wholesaler’s,” Mrs. Hickman answers. “Been gone hours. Prob’ly jammed on the A30 again. So how’d it go, luvvie? The exam?”

  “Huh . . . ? Oh, fine,” I say. But I’m not thinking about exams. Not anymore. I turn back to Alfie. “Did you go to school like that again?” I ask.

  Alfie nods.

  “Don’t look at me,” says Mrs. Hickman.

  I wasn’t, but she carries on anyway. “I said he’s got to wear his uniform but he won’t flamin’ change for me and your dad’s already out by then.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” I say. “I think it shows character.”

  Something Mum used to say.

  Mrs. Hickman grunts, in obvious disagreement.

  I take a bottle of water from the fridge and open it. A perk of living above a shop. Pretty much the only one.

  “There’s a tap out back,” Mrs. Hickman says. “All the water you want. Free.”

  I ignore her and take a swig.

  “You OK, love?” Mrs. Hickman is staring at me. Like I’ve done something terrible.

  “Fine,” I say.

  But she’s still staring.

  “I said I’m fine.”

  “OK. OK. Just making sure.” She waves her hand as if to dismiss me and goes back to filling the chewing gum stand.

  I want to tell someone. Anyone. The secret is bursting in me. Begging to be let out. I look at Alfie on the floor. And crouch down next to him.

  “Stella’s back,” I say.

  “Who?” Alfie raises his eyes from the magazine.

  “The girl who came in earlier. Tall. Blonde. Long hair?” Alfie looks blank. “Kind of like Kate Moss. But not as skinny. She said you told her I was at the beach?”

  Alfie shrugs and goes back to Horse & Hound. He’s too young to remember her. One year old when Mum died and Stella came. Two or three when she left.

  Dad will remember her, though. And so will Ed. My stomach turns. Nervous. Or excited, maybe.

  “Ain’t you got a GCSE to study for, missy?” Mrs. Hickman crushes an empty box and pushes it into the bin.

  I have. Drama. The last exam. It’s a practical — Shakespeare — and it’s not for a week. But I take my bag and the water upstairs anyway, glad of the excuse to get away.

  Salt of the earth, Dad calls her. “Looked after you and Alfie like you were hers.” And she did, I guess. Though she had three of her own too. Brought them with her when she worked in the house. Smelling mumsy in a way Mum never did. Of soap and dough. Wearing a housecoat, sleeves rolled up over pudgy arms, doing the jobs Mum didn’t know how to do. Or didn’t want to, more like, Mrs. Hickman would say, thinking I was too young to hear. And I’d played with the boys. The youngest, Ed, just two years older than me. He’d grown up on the farm like it was his playground too. He was my best friend. My only friend. Until Stella came.

  I flop down on my bed and turn on the CD player. Drums and guitars burst into life and I shut my eyes. Stella is back. Golden Stella. Bright and shining. Lighting me up in her trail. And I am glad. And scared. Because now something might happen.

  I’M STILL lying there when Stella walks in, four CDs later. Doesn’t knock, just flops down on the bed beside me. Wearing this yellow ball gown and smelling of lighter fluid and Doublemint gum.

  I sit up, fear and excitement running through me. “God, Stella. You gave me a fright.”

  Stella shrugs. “Door was open.”

  “Did Dad see you?”

  “Nope. All quiet on the western front.” She picks up a CD case and examines it. Throws it back on the stack, dismissing it. “How radical.”

  I feel my face redden. How does Stella always see through that stuff? Even at the age of ten, she was defacing pop posters and modeling herself on dead actresses. Forties Hollywood starlets, radiating beauty and discontent. She’s right about the CD. I bought it because I heard Ed and his mates talking about the band, hoping that by some osmotic process I would be instantly interesting just by owning it.

  “Still, better than the stuff your dad listens to, I suppose. All that cheap TV drama ballad stuff gets on my nerves.” She picks up my copy of The Catcher in the Rye and flicks through it idly. Not really reading. I wait for the comment. But it doesn’t come. I feel grateful for, excited by, the silent approval. If that’s what it is.

  “So, where have you been all this time?” I say.

  “Here and there. Bournemouth was the worst. It’s shit. Don’t ever go.” Stella drops the book back on the pile. “Full of old people and yappy little dogs that crap everywhere. Vile.”

  She turns over onto her stomach. Legs crossed in the air. “Oh. And London. For a year,” she adds, as if it is nothing.

  “You lived in London? Oh, my God. How come?”

  London — the London I remember from Mum’s trips, or rare visits to Gran’s Belgravia flat, or have imagined from soap operas and pop videos and film sets — is Neverland and Disney World and Dante’s Inferno rolled into one. A Paradise Found of clothes and clubs and forbidden pleasures.

  She ignores me. “It was totally amazing. We were living on the top floor of this five-story building with these musicians underneath and a high-class hooker in the basement. Well, that’s what Dad says she was. Seriously. Anyway, Piers — he’s one of the musicians — took me to all these gigs. . . . You won’t believe who I snogged after one of them.”

  “Who?”

  “Johnny Gillespie”

  I don’t know who he is. But I know he must be somebody. Somebody bright and brilliant. “Liar,” I say.

  “Did too. Outside the Rocket. He was horrible. Breath was totally rank.”

  “So why’d you do it, then?”

  “Because I could, duh.” Stella rolls onto her side. “So, what about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Who have you snogged?”

  I feel the butterflies in my stomach unfurl their wings. Stella has been everywhere, seen everything. I have been nowhere. Seen nothing but the narrow streets of Churchtown and the bleak rocks of the Point.

  “Um. No one, really.” I dig around desperately in my head. Trying to unearth something to show her. To prove I’m not who she thinks I am. Who everyone thinks I am. “Well, Woody. You know, Julian Wood, from school? Once. At the fair. But —” It’s not good enough.

  “Christ, don’t tell me you’re still a virgin.” Stella looks at me in amazement. Or worse, delight. “You are, aren’t you? I knew it.”

  I could lie. Tell her I’m not. Pick some random name. A boy from town. Tell her I’ve done it. That it was nothing. That he meant nothing. But that’s not me. And she knows it. “So?”

  “Nothing. Just . . . I mean, are you, like, all ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ or something?”

  “No. I’m just . . . picky. You kn
ow. High standards.” I try to joke. “Have you seen most of the boys around here?” It is true. Kind of. I would rather die than let any of the farm boys or yachties near me. They’re repellent in equal measure. But none of them try anyway. Why would they?

  “OK. Million-dollar question.”

  I groan. This is Stella’s favorite game. Absurd, unanswerable questions. A choice of two evils.

  “Who’d you rather —”

  “Hang on.” I can hear someone on the stairs. Alfie? No, too heavy. I spring up and pull the lock across.

  “Jude?”

  Dad. I don’t want him to know about Stella. Not yet. Maybe not ever. Because he hated her then. Hated all the things I loved. The way she looked, the way she spoke. The way she was. Different. Daring. And she hasn’t changed now.

  I take a breath. “Mmm?”

  “Ed’s here,” he says.

  “Ed? What, Fat Ed?” hisses Stella.

  “Shh,” I hiss.

  “Jude, have you got someone in there?”

  “Yeah. I mean, no. Um, hang on. I’ll be down in a second.”

  Stella is wide-eyed, grinning. “Let me come!”

  “No way,” I mouth.

  “Pretty please!” she begs.

  “No.” I shake my head.

  “Jude?” Dad is still there.

  “Coming,” I shout. Then, quieter, for Stella’s benefit, because it’s what she would say, “Jesus.” I stretch the word out. Watch it hang in the air. I feel that heat again. Electricity. And I know what a drug must feel like. Because I know then that this is the beginning of a bittersweet addiction.

  I hear the stairs again. “Just wait here,” I say to Stella. “Read a book or something.” She smiles. And I know she won’t. That this is theater for her. This is what she lives for. “Just be quiet, anyway.”

  “As a mouse.” She crosses her heart. Hopes to die. And I believe her. I trust her.

  But Ed won’t. He never did. And I know I am about to lie again.