To Dare

by Jemma Wayne

  “No!” Sarah called after her, her fingers scratching at the door. “No! Veronica, wait! The door’s stuck! Veronica! Veronica!”

  But there was no answer, except for perhaps a giggle, wafting on the wind.

  And then, nothing at all – no pulling on the door, no Veronica raising the alarm, no Eliza. No parents coming to help. They were going out, Sarah remembered frantically. For the first time, they had agreed to leave Eliza in charge.

  Second by frightening second, the room shrunk to suffocation.

  And Sarah screamed.

  She screamed until her throat hurt and her voice came out in muffled wheezes. She banged against the door until her knuckles bled. In vain she tried to climb the bunks and squeeze through the miniscule window, but her face scratched against the splintered frame and her shoulders wouldn’t fit. Tears arrived. Great heaving ones that she hadn’t felt since she was much younger, and grabbed at her lungs. She gasped for air. She worried she was choking. Nausea gripped her stomach. Her ears rang. And on and on it went, on and on and on, until so much time elapsed that she collapsed onto the bottom bunk and drew her knees up to her chest and lay there, whimpering, shaking, trapped. As she cried, the sound of her feebleness, the physical proof of it, both angered and disgusted her, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop. She couldn’t do anything. This time it wasn’t a consensual dare, this time she couldn’t say no, this time she was truly out of control. A timid sheep leading no one.

  The pale light from the window began to fade, panic swelled in her throat, and she trembled more. Because now came the darkness. Not the soft bedroom kind, filtered by street lights through curtains, or hallway lamps. Not the moonlit, stargazing kind. But absolute, devil-shaped darkness, where even one’s own limbs cannot be deciphered, and so detach, like a part of oneself lost. On the bunk, Sarah backed herself into a corner, the feeling of wood against flesh anchoring her at least to existence.

  But then came the thirst. And the hunger. And then a need for the loo. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t bring herself to move, so soon there followed a liquid stench that wrapped itself around her legs and turned to paralysing coldness.

  Finally, there was a slipping into oblivion.

  By the time the door opened, it was light again outside, but the darkness had settled deep within.

  “Here you are!” exclaimed Veronica cheerfully.

  Veronica led her by the hand up to the house. She kissed her on the cheek as Sarah changed silently for breakfast, neither of them mentioning the ‘accident’ to her parents. All through that meal, Sarah stared with red, sore eyes at her sister and her best friend, their hair freshly braided to match, one dark, one light, both sleek and smooth, her own colour an in-between nothingness, matted with tears.

  “I love you Sawah,” Veronica said that night in bed.

  And then, Veronica left. She and her parents retreated to Brighton for the rest of the summer. And when almost a month later they were about to return to school, Veronica phoned to say that her parents were moving to Oman and she was going to boarding school, and could Sarah please also say hi to Eliza.

  That autumn term, Sarah was not in a two. Neither was anybody else. Somehow, without discussion, the old pairings had dissipated. A number of the girls in her year had met boys at summer camp or on holiday, or at an elder cousin’s evening in, and some were now the overt holders of boyfriends. Liaisons lasted a week, two. At a month they were relationship veterans. They figured out their lasting compatibility by writing their names and crossing out the letters that corresponded to the word LOVE on the backs of their homework diaries. Occasionally a particular bomber-jacketed boy would turn up with a few friends in the school car park, and then they would untie ponytails and borrow each other’s hairbrushes and lip gloss, before sauntering arms hooked down the path to meet them. And coolly flicking their hair. At somebody’s Bat Chayil that December, a boy with floppy brown locks and unfinished stubble asked Sarah to ‘pull’ him. And she did.

  Nobody mentioned the drama and fascination they had felt just months earlier in the friendships of twelve-year-old girls. They still had friends, and best friends, and took time to make the distinction. But they were no longer practising for other things.

  Veronica did not stay in touch. She might as well have moved to Oman with her parents for all the difference it made her being in Kent. Letters trailed off by Christmas.

  Yet Sarah had thought of Veronica. She thought of her when she closed the door to a too-small toilet cubicle, when her mouth went dry in a lift, or when panic struck her on the tube. She thought of her when she saw a flash of blonde hair, or tanned flesh diving into a swimming pool. She thought of her when she saw her own naked reflection on the bathroom wall.

  She thought of her now too, eyes firmly shut so as not to see how close the MRI machine was around her. Of course the pool house had been the trigger. Of course it was Veronica. Of course the impact was material. Before then, she and Eliza had laughingly hidden themselves in the linen chest at the end of their parents’ bed; and they had buttoned themselves into duvet covers, delighting in losing the opening. She and Eliza. Eliza.

  Sarah’s breath stuck suddenly in her throat. She had spent so long pretending not to blame herself for Eliza’s accident that she hadn’t even let her mind reach the logical conclusion of that thought.

  Who had caused the claustrophobia that called for a car instead of the tube?

  Who had put Eliza on the road that day really?

  Who had pulled that trigger?

  Veronica. Veronica.

  Of course it was Veronica. She’d pulled Eliza away from her that summer, and then she’d taken her forever.

  Veronica.

  For twenty-odd years she’d been the source of all Sarah’s nervousness and fear and self-loathing. The reason she’d declined a university sports trip, unable then to summon the courage to fly. The reason she’d had to rush out of an interview after a revolving door sent her into panic. The reason for nights and nights of insomnia in the dark. And Eliza. The reason she had lost Eliza. Her sister. Her always.

  And Veronica didn’t even seem to remember.

  That had been the thing about her from the beginning, the thing that Sarah most hated and envied: the girl was oblivious. Beautiful naturally. Confident without trying. Wealthy for generations. And more than anything, she was free, bold, wild. That was what captivated people, that was what had hypnotised Sarah, that was what sometimes still, she wished she could be, rid of the long lists of morals embedded within her, the responsibilities of an immigrant family, a wandering people, parents who instilled these things. What would it be like, she wondered, to be free to do something deliberately bad, or not even bad, but foolish, unguarded, careless? What would it be like for the world to come so easily, to be as oblivious as her friend?

  Keeping her eyes shut tight inside the machine, Sarah asked her mind to imagine it. But she couldn’t, because even at university, even in that great wildness of youth, Sarah had remained ‘true to herself’. She had drunk only in moderation. She had never woken up in a surprising bedroom. She simply was unable to be that girl who could get up in front of other people to sing or dance with abandon, who didn’t care. Only once, it had happened. Just once: at her parents’ house that summer, under the blanket of night, and the sticky wood of the pool house, and the indifference of her hero sister. Watchful margins had somehow rubbed away, and awakened things. She had been emboldened, by Veronica, loved by her, illuminated by her gaze.

  Until all light disappeared in the tiny room at the back of the pool house.

  Sarah opened her eyes, then seeing the proximity of the machine, snapped them quickly shut again in a surge of panic – familiar and debilitating.

  How dare Veronica do this to her? And to Eliza. And not even deign to remember it. How dare she invite them to dinner and then undermine her, manipulate her, visit David. How dare she make trouble now for Amelia. Suggesting there was something wrong with her. Ho
ld that over them. And why did Sarah put up with it? Why had Sarah never called her to account? Why had she let it go back then? Why hadn’t she told her parents? Why had she ‘risen above it’ and ‘walked away’ and not done something to take revenge?

  Finding her, days later, crying in the bathroom, Eliza had hugged her, and hugged her, and made her tell her everything. Then she’d told Sarah that she’d had no idea what Veronica had done – Veronica had said Sarah was ill in bed. And she didn’t care what Adam thought, she’d never liked Veronica anyway, she’d only been hanging out with her because she was there, and she knew it would annoy Sarah. ‘Sorry,’ she’d added. Her tanned arms squeezed Sarah’s tiny frame. She smelled of coconut sunscreen. And bubblegum lip gloss. Sarah breathed her in, and Eliza squeezed tighter. Then she told Sarah – softly, sincerely – that she knew the two of them had been fighting lately, that things were different, but Sarah was still her sister, always her sister. Always. So she would always be in her corner, on her side. And at least Sarah had been the bigger person, and done nothing of which she should feel ashamed.

  Despite teenage-dom, Eliza was as fluent as Sarah in the family mantras.

  People evolve though, don’t they?

  They meander.

  Simone

  Simone dresses in jeans, a simple white t-shirt, and a blazer she bought a few years back from a thrift shop. Outside the school gate, she stamps out her cigarette. She remembers how to play this part, though now it feels like dress-up. The teachers don’t seem to notice. In the head’s office, they are easily convinced. They tell her about the ‘incident’, the morning after her fight with Terry – how Dominic arrived late, as he does most mornings they add, then kicked over a classroom chair when the teacher asked him a question about the homework. In turn, she promises to have words with him, agreeing with the school that boundaries need to be set. It’s that age, isn’t it, she volunteers, when they start to act out a bit; she’ll talk to him. Also, there’s the general lack of concentration, the panel of teachers persist – more politely now that she seems one of them – and the detachment, has she noticed him tuning out sometimes? Because it’s not that he doesn’t have potential. But he must make an effort, he must stay on top of things, and of course any kind of violence cannot be tolerated. Simone smiles and agrees and bemoans that she doesn’t know where it has come from.

  A nod to the secretary as she exits the building completes the exchange of adult exasperation. Simone makes it through the heavy door and down the steps, her palm slowly stroking the railing, flesh finding fortification in cool iron. But at the bottom she has to let go, and it is before she has left the playground that she collapses into a torrent of tears, unbefitting of her blazer, crouching on the concrete. She has told Dominic’s teachers exactly what her parents would have said about her, what they did say, to her – they didn’t know where it had all come from.

  Simone stares at the closed wooden door. The scratching is there, like a mouse between floorboards. She is sixteen. Her father’s pen works to fill the pages from which he’ll speak tomorrow, delivering a lecture, enlightening a class, filling his students with the passion he does not hold for his wife and cannot muster for his daughter. If she knocks, he won’t answer. If she enters, he will usher her away. If she stands in the hallway and screams and hits the walls and knocks over photographs, perhaps he will emerge for a moment and look at her with disappointment, or worse, puzzlement, confirming how unknown she is to him. If she keeps it up for long enough, perhaps her mother too will come out from her bedroom where she might be sleeping, is always sleeping, the research fellowship having disappeared without explanation some years back. Then, her mother will stare at her disdainfully, as though perturbed by the intrusion of sound. There is no point in any of these things. So Simone moves from the hallway into her bedroom, where she closes her own door, and gently scratches her skin instead of paper. She watches the way the blood trickles past her wrist, taking comfort in the certainty of that, proof that her actions do cause an effect, even if only on herself.

  It is winter, but she wears short sleeves around the flat, waiting for somebody to notice. The multiplying marks on her arms are like breadcrumbs, but her mother leaves her dinner for her in the oven, and her father eats his behind his closed wooden door, and they miss the clues they might have otherwise used to track back to her. Or to each other. They are sleeping separately. There is no spare room, but Simone notices the blankets hidden behind the sofa and the way that the living room has come to have a slept-in morning stench. Nobody has told her anything. Nobody speaks at all. She feels as though she will be deafened by the silence.

  At school there is a new student who doesn’t yet know that Simone is not one of the popular girls. They find themselves next to each other in A Level English and she asks Simone where you can go around here to party. Simone doesn’t know, but she pretends she does and takes the new girl, Kara, to a pub she walks past sometimes and seems busy. Kara looks around disdainfully as they enter. The clientele is far older than they are. There should be blow-dried girls in flared jeans, and men ordering copious rounds of vodka shots. There should be trendy light fittings, and menus describing humorously named cocktails. Instead, a gang of long-haired bikers look up from their beers. The other sticky tables are populated similarly disappointingly: middle-aged alcoholics; younger, pasty-skinned girls unsophisticatedly revealing both leg and middle; guys with shaved heads and gold teeth, all of them laughing too loudly, too coarsely. Kara goes to the bar and orders a gin and tonic. Simone, who has never drunk alcohol, copies her. The liquid feels at once cool and hot. Within a second, she can feel it flowing through her veins. “You sure about this place?” asks Kara, and Simone assures her that usually it’s really buzzy and maybe they’re just there a bit early, and anyway the drinks are cheap. Kara nods but isn’t convinced. When she has finished her drink, she pretends she isn’t feeling well and suggests they leave. Simone laughs loudly at this and tells her to go. By now, the gin is pumping hard, she can feel it coursing through her.

  “Lightweight!” she declares, then she taps a man on the shoulder and points at Kara: “She’s a lightweight!”

  Kara does not really know Simone yet, they’re not really friends, she doesn’t feel the weight of obligation. So she leaves.

  Left, Simone orders another gin and tonic, and then another. Music sings in her spine. The too-loud laughter is contagious and she sets about giggling. The barman asks her if she’s alright, and she shouts back to him: “I’m laughing!” He nods, that you are, love, that you are. “I’m laughing,” she repeats to a table of people nearby. And they find this hilarious. They laugh with her. Or maybe at her. They hear what she has said and they laugh in response. One of them moves up on the bench and invites her to join them. They are only a few years older than she is, mainly men, but there’s a girl on one of their laps. Somebody orders her another drink. That too feels good; it blurs things. She laughs again. And the group laugh again. One of the men puts his hand on her thigh, and she points at it: “Look what he’s doing!” And everybody laughs again at that.

  It might have been minutes or hours later that she feels movement in her stomach, a curdling of something. She runs to the door of the pub and throws up outside it. One of the men from the table joins her. He puts his arm around her waist. “You want me to take you home?” he asks. She shakes her head and stumbles away. She is unnerved suddenly, weakened by her stomach’s frailness, alerted to the realisation of something shifting inside. She wobbles, slipping off the pavement. “You sure?” the man asks again. But she nods convincingly, and he doesn’t follow, and somehow she finds her way back home, where nobody is waiting.

  That night she doesn’t even register the silence in the house. She sleeps without waking, well past the single, persistent sound of her alarm for school. When she hobbles into the kitchen for breakfast, still nobody is there.

  It is almost two months before she starts singing on the doorstep. They can’t igno
re that, can they? Neighbours complain. But by then she has met Noah and she only wants her parents to notice so that she can tell them it’s too late.

  Noah is six foot tall, skinny, his hair long and locked in dreads. He is more reserved than his friends, but he notices everything. He noticed her. On the night they first kissed, he ran his thumb over the bumpy tracks on her forearm, then he covered them with a strong, large palm, as though he was bandaging her, shielding her with protective wrap. His mother is a nurse in A&E. His father works in retail. She discovers later that this means he is a sales assistant in Dixons, but Noah is following neither of his parents’ paths, and they don’t want him to. He is studying for his NVQ in accounting, and he writes songs that he is beginning to gig. That is his passion, he tells her, his dream if ever he can afford to pursue it. His friends believe he will. They raise him up as special, a towering talent in their midst, only there among them until the world discovers his gift, although each of them have whispering aspirations too, growing louder. He plays his creations to Simone and she wants to cry for the way in which she feels he knows her. He thinks she is special too. He tells her to stuff her parents, but not to stuff up herself and urges her to do her exams that summer. She won’t. They’ll notice that. And besides, Noah is doing fine without A Levels. Exams aren’t what matter. Money isn’t even what matters. ‘What matters then?’ asks Noah.