‘Oh God, Pearl.’ Phil hugs me again. ‘You don’t even know how – I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you.’
‘Don’t you go crying on me too,’ I say. ‘Disey and Shad have already tried to drown me.’
She laughs, brushing her tears away with her hand. ‘As if you hadn’t been through enough already.’
‘Yeah, they wanted to up the level of difficulty,’ I say.
‘I don’t even want to think about what it would have been like if you weren’t okay,’ she says. ‘Our year’s already in a collective breakdown, what with Marie and now you and Holly-Anne, so –’
‘What happened to Holly-Anne?’
‘Oh, of course you wouldn’t know. She’s in here too. She has flu or something. I walked past her room on the way here and she looks like death warmed up.’
‘Wow,’ I say. ‘Well, at least I’ve stolen her thunder. Coma trumps flu.’
‘Don’t joke about stuff like that.’
‘That’s the closest thing to superstition I’ve ever heard come out of your mouth.’
‘I don’t want to lose you again.’
My eyes fill with tears. ‘Phil, that’s –’
‘No crying!’ Phil orders me. ‘I can shed tears, but not you. Disey told me I’m not allowed to upset you.’
‘Sorry.’
‘Don’t apologise. I’ve been picking up your homework –’
‘– I thought you weren’t allowed to upset me.’
‘Nice try. There’s not that much, anyway. We did some more on the Third Reich in history and a few more reactions in Chem. And I downloaded some Pretty Little Liars and American Horror Story and Arrow for you, so you can entertain yourself, and . . .’
I lean back and listen to Phil talk, my eyes half-closed. Disey comes in with a doctor a few minutes later, who cleans up my arm. Their familiar presences are a comfort, a shelter, and I don’t want them to leave, because when they do, I know I’m going to have to do some serious thinking and I’m going to come to a conclusion I’m not going to like.
What happened to me was not normal. This . . . coma? Not normal. Everything that’s been going on recently? Not normal.
And the least normal thing of all is Finn Blacklin, who woke me up and made me promise not to tell anyone. And the only thing now standing between me and a watery death in dreamland is one of Finn Blacklin’s black hairs, coiled around the smallest finger on my left hand.
In stories, it always seems to take a long time for the heroine to be convinced that what’s happening is real. Hell, sometimes they prance around for nearly half the story going, ‘La la la, it doesn’t matter what I do because this is a dream, ahahahaha’. Of course, it never is a dream, and they have some life-altering near-death experience that makes them realise that they’re in genuine danger.
I heard somewhere once that if you have a dream of falling and you don’t wake up before you land, you’ll die. Someone should fill heroines in on stuff like that.
But this isn’t a story, and I’m not a heroine. I’m Pearl Linford, and this is my ordinary normal life, and things like this don’t just happen.
Was it Sherlock Holmes that said that you should eliminate the impossible and whatever was left, however improbable, was the truth? Because this is pretty damn improbable. Like, ridiculously improbable.
Marie saw a black horse. She died.
I saw a black horse. And I think it bit me or kicked me or something, because I don’t think there’s any other explanation for the gashes all over my scalp, even though Disey told me she thought it was a tree branch.
Something hit me in the back of the head so hard it’s now stuck there. Something hit Cardy so hard in the ankle he nearly passed out, but it certainly didn’t send him spiralling into a coma, so I don’t know if those two things are related.
There are creepy black cats and black birds everywhere.
Finn woke me up. He swore me to secrecy and then mysteriously disappeared. He shed a black hair which landed on me. And I haven’t seen him since.
Rational explanation?
Come on now, any time. Jump out at me.
I decide I’m accepting applications from irrational explanations, but my brain won’t come up with anything. Some kind of black animal conspiracy? Which Finn is somehow part of, on account of how he has black hair?
Okay. Let’s break it down. One step at a time. Let’s focus on the Finn element.
Would Sherlock Holmes consider ‘hair with healing powers’ an impossible explanation or is that just improbable?
I take a deep breath. What would Sherlock do? How would he work this one out?
Well, first he’d inject himself with heroin – he was a drug addict, wasn’t he? Someone told me that he was a junkie even in the original when we were arguing over whether Benedict Cumberbatch or Jonny Lee Miller was a better Sherlock. So Sherlock would do drugs and then . . . then he’d test his theory, that’s what he’d do.
I look at the clock. It’s after visiting hours and the nurse won’t come by on her rounds for a little while. No time like the present.
Carefully, I unwind Finn’s black hair from my finger and place it on my bed. I hold my left arm above it in a place where it’s certain to land if the coma swallows me up. And I wait.
Nothing.
I’m tired. I think I’d like to close my eyes for a little while.
The water is dark and inviting, like liquid night. I dive, kicking my legs to force myself further down, but it’s hard, because –
I snap awake. The black hair is stuck to my arm. According to the clock, nineteen seconds have passed.
Nineteen seconds. That was all it took.
I coil the hair round my pinky finger again. Sherlock would probably repeat his experiment a few times, but I can’t go back down there, into the pounding darkness of the ocean. I just can’t.
We’ve eliminated the impossible, which is pretty much every single possible rational explanation. There are about four hundred million doctors working on me, and not one of them has been able to say why I woke up.
And that leaves the improbable truth. Which is that Finn Blacklin has magical hair. Which is not only improbable, but freaking ridiculous. That’s got to be the crappiest superpower of all time. ‘I heal you – by the power of my lustrous shiny hair! My secret? This shampoo! Use it and you too will have magic hair!’ Now there’s a commercial that would get laughed off television.
But Finn Blacklin’s ridiculous magical hair is all that’s standing between me and coma dreams for the rest of eternity.
I desperately need to talk to Finn, but he doesn’t magically materialise in my hospital room again. I get an endless parade of visitors – Phil every second she can spare, sometimes dragging a very uncomfortable-looking Julian along with her, Tillie, Annabel, Cardy, people from school I barely speak to, teachers, not to mention the almost constant presence of Disey and/or Shad – but not him.
I desperately wish I’d put Finn’s number into my phone instead of just using Cardy’s that time I called to yell at him. Or that I’d accepted the friend request he sent me. Although he probably would have screened my calls and de-friended me, because he’s not responding to any of the contact methods I try. I try to add him on Facebook and pretty much spam his email inbox (our school email addresses are pretty easy to guess), but I get sweet FA.
I begin to wonder if I did imagine it after all – whether that whole don’t tell anyone I was here or there will be dire consequences! bit was a hallucination or a dream. Or maybe I really do have brain damage. But then there’s the black hair, and oh God I’m going to go crazy if I have to stay in here any longer.
I take to wandering the corridors whenever I can get away with it, which is really not very often. They don’t like it, but I’m going nuts just hanging out in that stupid bed by myself, even though they’ve moved me from intensive care to a normal ward. Phil’s given me books and TV, but I can’t properly pay attention. My mind keeps spinning and
swirling and I need to talk to Finn and I need to sit down at my keyboard for a solid few days and I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE SO I CAN WORK OUT WTF IS GOING ON.
On one of my wanderings, I see Holly-Anne. As in I see her literally – her door is open and I see her sleeping. Even sick she looks gorgeous, red hair spilled out over the pillow in loose curls. I feel insanely jealous.
I am never, ever, ever going to adjust to being bald.
I go past her room a couple of times, hopeful that Finn might show up there. I’m not sure where their on-again/off-again dating relationship is at right now, but if it is on-again, he is really crap at visiting, because I never see him. Which just makes me antsy and confused and GAAAAAAAAH.
I do see one unexpected dude, though. I’m wandering back to my room with a packet of chips from the vending machine four days after my Finn-induced wake-up call when I hear a croaky voice call my name. ‘Pearl?’
It’s, of all people, Ranga Dave. ‘Dave,’ I say, hovering awkwardly in his door. ‘What happened to you? You look like hell!’
‘Right back at you,’ he says, grinning weakly. ‘Nice haircut. Real punk. Suits you.’
Ranga Dave is a big strong guy, but he seems to have shrunk to about half his usual size, like someone’s let the air out of him. His freckles stand out in stark relief against his pale skin, as does his shock of red hair, bright against the hospital white of his bed. He’s hooked up to what looks like about a thousand different machines and he’s wheezing like a smoker. ‘I knew you were sick but I didn’t know you were this bad,’ I say.
‘You’re all sensitivity, Pearl.’
‘Sorry. But –’
‘It’s all right, I’m just messing with you.’ He smiles. ‘I heard about your accident. I’m glad you’re okay.’
‘Thanks. But . . . dude, if I knew you were this sick I would have come to visit you.’
‘I didn’t think it was this bad until my skin started turning blue,’ he says. ‘Turns out I have pneumonia.’
Pneumonia. Wow.
‘I thought pneumonia was . . . you know . . .’
‘An old-people disease? Me too.’ He coughs, a real hacking cough that makes his whole body shake. ‘I guess I’m just really unlucky.’
‘Do you know how you got it?’
‘No clue,’ he says. ‘I just started to feel really tired. Then I started coughing . . . and I was sleepwalking a lot as well.’
‘Sleepwalking?’
‘Never done it before in my life,’ he says. ‘And then – bam. Nearly every night. And it hasn’t stopped – they had to start tying me down at night here so I wouldn’t walk away. As soon as I get better, they’re going to stick me straight in a sleep study.’
We talk for a little while more before a nurse comes round to take his vitals and I’m shooed back to my own room. I sit cross-legged on my bed and open my chips, munching on them contemplatively. Is Ranga Dave just a casualty of the rain and the winter, like Holly-Anne? If Dave had got sick outside this current climate of weirdness I wouldn’t have given it a second thought, so should I give it one now? It seems . . . silly.
But silly or not, Marie is dead. Silly or not, I was in a coma for a week and I only woke up because Finn Blacklin moulted on me. And whether it’s silly or not, whether or not Ranga Dave having pneumonia and sleepwalking and black horses and black cats and whatever is related to it, something real is happening, something serious, and I can’t explain it, and I have to figure it out.
And while I’m here, stuck in this hospital bed with nurses coming round every four seconds, I’m not going to be able to figure anything out. Not until I can track down Finn Blacklin, pin him to a wall and force something resembling information out of –
Hang on. There’s something I’ve missed. I am such a moron.
Finn Blacklin woke me up from a coma. But how did I fall into the coma in the first place?
I’ve been so busy trying to work out what’s going on and angsting about Finn that I’ve glossed over the most basic thing of all. Maybe that rock stuck in my head really has given me brain damage, because I am so freaking stupid.
That black horse wasn’t just in my backyard for funsies. It was waiting for me. And someone – I don’t know – threw or pegged or shot that rock at me.
That isn’t an accident. This was planned. Someone was outside my house, trying to lure me outside, looking for an opportunity to kill me. Me, specifically.
Someone wants me dead.
I don’t sleep for about three days. The only time I feel safe is when someone is with me. Panic sets in as soon as I’m alone, a tightening in my chest like I can’t breathe. I’m convinced that some Freddy-Krueger-type serial killer is going to burst in at any second. I know there’s always people bustling round in a hospital at all hours of the day but it doesn’t make me feel any better. Hospitals are huge, nameless, anonymous, and people die in them every second. What would one more death be?
Oh God, Pearl, stop being so melodramatic. No one wants to kill you. Why would anyone want to kill you?
‘Good news, Pearl,’ the nurse says when she bustles into my room on Friday morning.
‘What’s that?’ I ask.
‘You’ve got the all-clear from the doctors – you’re going to have to come back so we can do some more scans and tests and things, and you might have to stay the odd night for observation so we can work out what to do about that rock in your head, but you can go home this afternoon.’
If the killer doesn’t get me first – FFS, keep it together, Linford!
‘But you have to take it easy, okay?’ the nurse says warningly. ‘The rock in your head is wedged tightly – so tightly they couldn’t move it during surgery – but if it moves, that could be bad. So you need to rest up and stay calm.’
Yeah, like that’s going to happen.
I’m glad it’s Shad who comes to get me. He’s normally easier to wheedle into things than Disey. I try to talk him into taking me to school (nominally ‘so I can say hello to everyone’, but obviously so I can shove Finn into a cupboard somewhere and accost him about his magical hair) but he won’t budge. ‘The doctors said you have to rest, Pearlie,’ he says firmly. ‘We’re not taking any risks with you.’
‘But Shad –’
‘No buts. You’re too precious.’
‘Shad –’
‘No, Pearl.’
It’s strangely bizarre, returning home, returning to my old room, my old things, my old life. Shad puts the kettle on and I sit at the kitchen table, unwilling to be in a room where he isn’t. ‘Can Phil come visit me after school?’ I ask.
‘Of course,’ Shad replies. ‘Why don’t you ask her to stay for dinner? It’s your welcome home, after all.’
Maybe I can con her into spending the night. I dare any weird murder-y type person to even begin to mess with Philippa Kostakidis. ‘Okay.’
‘I might ask Helena to come too, if that works for you . . .’
I open my mouth to refuse and then I see the look on Shad’s face and it totally breaks my heart. ‘Sure,’ I say.
He regards me for a long moment before kissing me on the top of my bald head. ‘You’re the best, Pearlie.’
‘Yeah, I know.’
He laughs obligingly. ‘I have to get some work done. I’ll just be in my study – yell if you need me, all right?’
A needle of cold fear stabs right through my heart. ‘Sure thing,’ I say cheerily. ‘I’ll just sit out in the lounge room and watch TV. Catch up on my soaps.’
If you sit on the sofa in just the right place, you have a clear line of sight into Shad’s study. I noticed this for the first time when I was fourteen and accidentally saw much more than I wanted to see of Shad and his girlfriend at the time, and the mental scars are such that I’ve pretty much avoided the spot ever since.
But I’m glad of it today.
I’ve emailed Finn fourteen more times and tried to add him on Facebook again with absolutely no response by the time Phil a
rrives that afternoon. I have also spent two hours freaking out even more than normal when I spot a black cat prowling around our backyard. ‘Hey, you,’ she says when Shad opens the front door (I, apparently, am considered too much of an invalid to do strenuous tasks like that). ‘How are you feeling?’
‘Much better,’ I say.
Apart from the fact that someone wants to kill me, but you know, details.
‘I hope you don’t mind that I brought Jules,’ she says.
I do mind, but I’m not about to tell her that. She’s had a rough time enough of it lately what with me being in the hospital and him grieving his ex-girlfriend without me being a bitch about it. ‘The more the merrier,’ I say. ‘How are you doing, Julian?’
‘Fine,’ he says.
As you can see, he’s not exactly a big talker.
We sit on the couch and talk about school and TV and mundane things. Julian contributes exactly zero, just kind of sitting there with his arm around Phil staring into space like some kind of portable body pillow. I manage to find emotional room amidst all the panic about the killing killers who want to kill me to wonder WTF Phil sees in him, and that, weirdly, makes me glad he’s there.
I am so glad I have Phil in my life. Everything is better with her around.
‘I heard a good rumour today,’ she says, flicking a Pringle into her mouth. ‘Wanna hear?’
‘What do you think? Spill!’
‘Apparently Ms Rao has a boyfriend.’
‘Ooooh, intriguing!’
‘But wait, there’s more! Apparently it’s someone on staff.’
‘Wow! Do we know who?’
‘There are several conflicting theories,’ Phil replies. ‘Mr Jordano – you know, that PE teacher with the really short shorts – has apparently been seen out and about with her in the past –’
‘I remember! Could it be a rekindled romance?’
‘The drama, the drama! And there’s a Mr Day theory –’
‘No! He’s nine hundred years old!’
‘– but wait, it gets worse! Then there’s the Mr Pellegrino theory, which is gaining popularity, though I personally find it disgusting as he is about twelve –’
Valentine Page 9
