My head tried to catch up with my voice. What had I said? I looked around the group, tried to smile with nobility, and nodded at Briony.
But Briony did not speak. Nobody spoke. There was silence—and then a deluge.
‘You crashed a car?’
‘What do you mean, you’re sick all the time?’
‘You’re failing Year 11?’
I turned to Astrid who had asked this last question. ‘I haven’t done any homework for weeks,’ I said. ‘I’ve got seven overdue assignments and five overdue essays.’
‘Seven overdue assignments,’ she whispered.
At which, I burst into tears and began to blather: ‘And I wrote you all memos! But you still won’t forgive me! Except Astrid! I didn’t write a memo for—! But the green ribbon! But the Name Game! I couldn’t! And I was unforgivable! So how can I—? And Sergio, I can’t believe I—! I was never coming back! But Mr Botherit! And someone moved me! And the nail polish! And I felt so guilty! And I’m 50, 50 sorry!’
I stopped talking and simply sobbed, wrenching sobs— and then something happened. I sensed the strange, sweet melodies of comfort. A careful shifting of people towards me. Somebody’s hand gently stroking my hair. Somebody’s arm, hesitantly, patting my back.
Warmth and relief overcame me. I did not want it to stop, this comfort, this touching, and so I kept my head buried and cried on.
Eventually, I had to look up. The stroking hands paused. They were all around me, watching carefully, confusion like giant spotlights in their eyes.
‘Bindy,’ said Toby, in the sweetest voice, ‘what the FLAX are you talking about?’
I laughed shakily. It was Toby’s hand on my back. He kept it there, and feeling its warmth gave me strength.
I took a great breath and told the story of my year.
I began with the first Name Game. I know it by heart. I recited all their comments, how upset I’d been, how I’d chosen poisonous animals as revenge. I told them how it had gone too far, and how guilty I’d felt, and how I’d planned to leave, but Mr Botherit had said someone moved me into this FAD group. I said someone from FAD gave me nail polish. I told them how sick I’d been, about my strange dreams and hallucinations and insomnia, how I’d stopped doing school work and somehow didn’t care. That I thought it would fix things if I gave them good animals. That I didn’t understand why it hadn’t worked.
Once I had finished, they were all thoughtful and quiet for a few moments.
Then someone asked what the doctors said about my health.
I had to admit that I had refused to see a doctor. The confusion lights switched back on.
‘I think it might be glandular fever,’ I whispered. ‘If a doctor thinks that’s what it is, I’ll have to take weeks off school. I can’t do that, especially not now I’m so behind. Besides—’ I avoided Astrid’s eyes. ‘I don’t believe that glandular fever exists.’
Now Astrid became very professional about my symptoms. She fired rapid questions at me, and actually felt the glands in my neck. ‘Trust me,’ she said, ‘glandular fever exists. I used to want it until I like got it? Cos I thought you’d just watch tv and that? But you feel like SPURGE. YOU can’t even watch tv, you feel, like, so SPURGEY. And you’re not supposed to kiss anyone for, like, a year, but I ignored that bit.’
Everyone else wanted to check my glands, too, and there was disagreement about whether they were swollen or not.
‘I didn’t throw up when I had glandular fever though,’ Astrid said. ‘Plus I didn’t get those hallucinations you’ve got? Maybe you’ve got something, like, fatal?’
‘Have you got an eating disorder?’ said Emily. ‘Why do you keep throwing up if you haven’t got an eating disorder?’
‘Whatever’s wrong with you,’ said Briony, ‘you should go to the doctor. What if there’s just one pill you need to take to get better? And if you don’t take it, you’ll get worse and end up having to take even more time off school.’
Everybody agreed.
‘Plus,’ said Astrid kindly, ‘how do you know you’re not contagious? Maybe you’ve got, like, typhoid or that FOXGLOVE chicken flu, whatever it’s called, and you’re giving it to all of us? No offence.’
But the others doubted I was contagious because I’d been sick for such a long time without anyone else catching it.
‘Anyway,’ Sergio said, shifting subjects, ‘you’ve got to get a doctor’s certificate so you can give it to your teachers and get extensions for the overdue assignments.’
They all agreed about that, too, and assured me I would not fail. All I needed, they said (knowledgeably), was a doctor’s certificate. They were pleasingly dismissive about my school work worries.
But then they moved into the more difficult territory of my attitude towards them.
‘Okay, so you’ve been feeling sick and that,’ said Astrid, ‘but it’s kind of like no excuse for slagging us all off, and like putting posters up with our names on them, and what you said to Sergio and that?’
‘I guess she’s been delusional,’ Toby pointed out.
‘And the Name Game,’ Elizabeth said. ‘If people said all those things about me, I’d be upset, too.’
‘Well, the Name Game,’ Emily leapt in. ‘I wanted to say something about that. How you said what everyone said about you? Like you’d figured it all out. Well, there’s an injustice there, because I didn’t write what you think I wrote. That you have long words in your huge head. I wrote that you can’t help who you are and maybe you’ll change. And I said, “Good luck with Year 11. I think you’ll change.” Something like that. Which was meant in the greatest and most compassionate sense and was my effort to be kind, Bindy, as you know that we hadn’t got on well in the past, but I wanted to start fresh.’
‘I’m the one who said you have long words in your head,’ Briony confessed. ‘Sorry. But I was just trying to make it funny by talking about your big head. I was really just praising you, Bindy, for having a good vocabulary.’
‘Yeah,’ said Astrid. ‘And I was just praising you, too, Bindy. I just said you wear your hair weird which means you’ve got guts, and I actually meant that about taking guts, cos a lot of people, like me, for example, kind of like choose clothes that are fashionable? And I admire people that don’t. Even if it hurts my eyes to look at them. So, that wasn’t that bad of a thing to write, was it?’
‘I didn’t say you were a bit too smart, either,’ Elizabeth put in. ‘I said you’re a fast typist. Which you’ve got to admit, you are. I don’t know who wrote that you’re a bit too smart.’
‘I did,’ said Sergio, and then, to me, defensively, ‘but you are.’
Toby sighed deeply. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘I did write that you talk like a horse. It was a humorous reference to the way you say “nay” all the time. You know, neigh. Like a horse. But your voice is just fine, Bindy, it’s not like a horse. It’s a very nice voice.’
‘Well, except when she gets, like, hysterical, I guess?’ Astrid chatted. ‘Toby, you’ve gotta admit, sometimes Bindy goes off and then her voice has this scre—’
Sergio interrupted, changing the subject. ‘You said you crashed a car?’ he prompted me.
But I had to take a moment to look from face to face, and readjust my views of each of them. Except for Toby and his talks like a horse, none of them had written what I thought they had. And the way they explained themselves now: maybe the comments weren’t as serious as I had thought? Maybe I’d over-reacted? I began to smile a little.
‘You crashed a car?’ said Sergio, hopefully.
So I described my driving lesson, and how my uncle had told me to be one with the car—and as I spoke, I remembered.
‘My piano teacher said that too!’ I exclaimed. ‘She said I wasn’t one with the piano! I’m not one with the piano or the car! Because I drove straight into a parked car! I’m not one, I can’t be one with anything—I don’t—I just don’t belong.’
Suddenly, I was crying again.
�
��See, that’s your fault,’ Astrid said. ‘Because when you act like the teacher you can’t be part of the class? If you want to be one with us, you’ve got to—’
But Sergio was talking over Astrid’s voice again.
‘You just crashed straight into a parked car?’ he said. ‘That’s it? You drove out of your driveway and hit a parked car? Forget about it.’ (He used his mafia accent at the end.)
Then he described the three accidents he’d had. He included squealing-tyre, shrieking-brake and crunching-metal sound effects. Next thing, almost all of them were telling car-crash stories. Running over letterboxes. Putting the car into reverse instead of drive. ‘The road took a right-hand bend,’ I heard Toby say, ‘but the car did not.’
I looked around, astonished.
‘See?’ said Emily. ‘We’re all the same. None of us can drive!’
‘Well,’ said Sergio slowly, ‘maybe some of us can dr—’
‘If you want to be one with us,’ Astrid repeated, ‘you’ve gotta stop acting like you’re better than us.’
‘And you’ve gotta try to learn the difference,’ said Sergio, thoughtfully, ‘between an animal and a human being.’
Astrid stood up and left the room.
Toby put his arm around my shoulder. ‘And look at your beautiful indigo eyes,’ he murmured. ‘All red now with your crying.’
‘Indigo,’ scoffed Sergio. ‘Indigo mean purple. Her eyes are not purple. They’re midnight-blue.’
They argued mildly until Astrid returned with a tray of hot chocolate for everyone.
And as I looked down at the little white marshmallow bobbing about in my hot chocolate, I thought: this is what it’s like to have friends.
It soon emerged that Astrid had put Kahlua in everyone’s hot chocolate. I have never really drunk alcohol before, so I believe it had an effect on me. In fact, I found myself accepting her offers of more alcoholic beverages. Tall alcoholic beverages in glasses! Colourful alcohol! Alcohol mixed with soft drinks! They were all surprisingly delicious.
Everyone was drinking, and some people even smoked marijuana! Not I.
Someone put music on, and it was a song I recognised from the hip-hop class. Forgetting myself, I stood up and tried out some of the ‘hip-hop’ moves I had almost learned in the class.
At which, Astrid and Elizabeth began to do the same moves! They did them beautifully—those girls can dance! Only, they did not seem to be trying to show me up. Oh no, they did not seem to judge me for my inabilities! They were just happy, they said, to be reminded of those dance moves. They had forgotten them!
Now everyone was dancing!
Even Briony! (Toby made her.)
Everything was music, shouting and leaping!
Try appeared at the door, dressed in her pyjamas, rubbing sleepy eyes. We looked at her, guiltily, and somebody turned the music down. Try simply smiled, turned, and went back to bed.
And that is why I am here now, in this rocking chair, typing at my computer. (I felt such a wave of creativity! Such a desire to write!) Now we are all quiet—we are all reading, blowing on flames, playing games.
And there is my reflection in the mirror, sharp as a musical score.
There am I, one with this room.
One with this group of people.
And there is something about crying,
About dancing, and drinking,
About talking
That makes me feel so very
Happy so very
Tired
And now I might fall asleep
I might just
Fall
Asleep
On this
Nice Typewriting
Pillow here
This nice
Keyboard
Coloured
Pillow
Here
f4 f5 f6 calling to my forehead
6
Emily
Okay, DO NOT BE MAD, Bindy. This is Emily, and I know I am typing on your computer, but there is a reason for it. So please forgive me right away.
What happened was the best intentions. Astrid and I were reading on the couches, and Sergio and Toby decided we were boring, and they lifted up Astrid’s couch and kind of rocked it in the air, and she was sitting back with her arms behind her head, enjoying the ride, and
Astrid
Just tell her, Em. Okay, while my couch is in the air, Emily sees some paper on the floor under the couch and she goes, ‘What’s that under there?’ and Sergio effin drops his end of the couch trying to see where Em’s pointing, which gave me concussion, I swear, it was like a JOLT? And it’s these papers stapled together with your name on the front. So, we look over at you, kind of like, ‘What’s this?’ But you were passed out on your rocking chair and face first in your laptop.
So we read the papers. Em starts reading it aloud, and then we start passing it around, taking turns reading it aloud until it’s done. And for your information the papers were called: Bindy Mackenzie: A Life.
Emily
Right, exactly, okay, but I would have explained it more tentatively than Astrid just did and maybe less blame on me. So, basically, we read your whole life story, Bindy, and PLEASE DON’T BE MAD. We felt guilty, but you say in the introduction that it’s an FAD assignment, so we are actually FAD. We ARE your life raft, Bindy, so we thought the LIFE raft should read the LIFE story. In case it would help with all those issues you were telling us tonight.
So, after we read it, we were all quiet, thinking, wow, kind of interesting life. And we wanted to talk to you about it, and make comments, and that, but you were still comatose on your computer. So, we’re staring at you, and Briony goes, ‘I wonder if she’ll get cancer with her face on the computer like that?’ And Toby goes, ‘Maybe we should shut it down for her?’
So we slid your computer out and put a big atlas under your face instead, so you wouldn’t notice, and you stayed passed out. And I really quickly hit save and closed the document you were working on, without looking at it, to show to you that I don’t usually read people’s private things, just your life story, that’s it. But then I had this idea, and I go, ‘Maybe, we could just put a message on her computer screen telling her we read her life story and what we think about it, so she sees that when she wakes up?’
And everyone agreed. I think because it’s easier to confess in writing than to tell you in person. So, we just opened a new document and that’s what this is. So, now everyone wants to say something about your life story.
Astrid
Okay, I want to say something first which is that your problem is very clear from this life story. It’s that you think you’re like a scientist and the rest of the world is like your experiment? Your life story is full of watching other people, and being scientific about them. It’s like you think you’re above other people, and maybe even grading us for an exam going on inside your head? It’s weird, Bindy. You’ve gotta learn that you’re not necessarily above us, just cos you’re smarter than we are.
Sergio
Astrid and Emily are being hogging of the computer. Other people should get to speak. I say this about your life story, Bindy: I was right when I said you are too smart. You are, Bindy. There’s something wrong with your brain, you’re so smart.
Astrid
But it was really interesting how you say it’s hard to be number 1? I’m kind of like tripping about that now, because it’s so interesting? I never thought of it like that. That you’d be scared all the time? It’s a lesson for me, I’ll confess that.
Briony
This is Briony. I liked your life story, Bindy. I hope you forgive us for reading it. You sure have to move house a lot. You must feel very confused.
Elizabeth
Well, I just want to say sorry that we read your life story, and I hope you don’t mind. We all felt bad but we also felt like we were getting to know you in a way.
And I’ve been thinking about how you said you’ve tried to change and see the positive things
about us, instead of being critical. So you sent us those memos giving us ‘good animals’. I guess I’m thinking that that was nice of you, and you were trying hard, but there’s not much difference between deciding what’s bad and deciding what’s good. Either way it’s judging people. And maybe you’d feel more ‘one with your world’ if you just relaxed and stopped trying to judge? And I’m thinking maybe
Emily
Sorry about grabbing the computer, Liz, I just really had to write this before anyone else did, which is that, Bindy, it’s your DAD’S fault that you feel superior to everyone!!! And it’s your DAD’S fault that you’re always judging!! Because he MADE you into a judge! Or anyway he encouraged that tendaciousness in you. Because he said to you that you are the shepherd and the rest of us are sheep. And he says that terrible thing when you’re going to Ashbury where he says those other kids are ‘nothing’ and you are ‘number one’. And he always wants you to rip us off to make money.
Elizabeth
That’s kind of what I was about to say.
Emily
Okay. Sorry, Liz. And also, Bindy, we think your dad doesn’t sound all that nice and maybe you should realise that? Because it seems like you think he’s great, but he’s always making you do the painting and sanding, and, don’t get offended, but he sounds a TINY bit pleased with himself. Whereas, however, I KNOW your mum is nice because I know her. And she comes out better in your life story than your dad does.
Now, also, this will be a cruel truth maybe, but your parents’ marriage is not in a perfect situation there. It sounds like they were happy once when you were really little, and your dad fell over and everyone was laughing except you? Only, since then, we kept hearing stories about them fighting, and we were all looking at each other, kind of grimacing, and I think there is doom on the horizon.
Briony
Yes, no wonder you’re feeling so sick, really, with your parents fighting all the time, and moving all the time, and now you have to live with your aunt and uncle. I wondered why you were living there.
The Betrayal of Bindy Mackenzie Page 25
