by Penni Russon
Trout was staring at her. ‘When did you …?’
‘What?’ Undine asked.
‘Get so smart?’
‘I’m not. I mean, I’m just the same smart I always was.’
‘No, really. Just then, you seemed …’ and Trout’s voice trailed off again.
‘What?’ Undine asked.
‘Almost grown up. Insightful. Like you had a handle on it,’ Trout said.
‘Really?’ Undine raised her eyebrows. She didn’t know what to make of that. ‘It’s an illusion. If anything, I feel more like a child than ever.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Trout lay on his back on the balcony, his eyes closed as if he was almost asleep. Undine sat cross-legged near his head.
‘So, are you going to do medicine this year?’
‘I might not,’ Trout said recklessly. ‘I might be a photographer instead. I might go to Paris.’
‘Lou wants me to go away,’ Undine said glumly.
‘Are you sure that’s what she said?’ Trout asked doubtfully without opening his eyes. ‘She seemed all falling-apartish when you were gone.’
‘I’m sure,’ Undine said defensively. ‘She’s set it all up, arranged for people to have me. I’d be leaving next month, travelling round the mainland, then the US. Greece for the European summer.’
‘Sounds amazing,’ Trout said flatly. ‘You should go.’
‘But I don’t want to go,’ said Undine, and she knew she sounded nothing like a grown-up now, more like a sulky child. ‘I just got back. I thought … she would want me.’
‘You were gone for six months, Undine. She grieved for you. She probably blamed herself when you went missing. You can’t just expect … Jesus, Undine. People change. They keep living, the best way they can. Wounds close over. They don’t heal, but they … they get hard. They seal up. We’d gotten used to life without you.’
‘Well, sorry,’ Undine snapped. ‘Sorry I interrupted life without me. It sounds great.’
Trout sat up and shook his head. ‘It wasn’t great. It was hard, sometimes it was horrible. But you can’t expect that we all just sat around missing you all the time. The world keeps turning, even without you in it.’
‘I didn’t think—’
‘You don’t think. You’re so wrapped up in yourself. You come back and then everything … the world … it’s as if you’re this weight and everything slides towards you.’
‘I don’t mean to be a weight. I don’t want to be.’
‘But you are. Don’t you see? For me, that’s exactly what you are. And … and I can’t do it anymore,’ Trout said wonderingly, as if he was just realising something.
‘What are you saying?’ Undine asked. She felt a pre-emptive sadness well up inside her.
‘I can’t be this person anymore. I can’t be what you want me to be.’
‘What I want you to be? Don’t you … don’t you love me?’
Trout snorted. ‘I’ve loved you for so long, I don’t even know what it feels like not to.’
‘Because I think …’ Undine said, ‘I think my feelings have changed. Trout, I—’
‘Don’t,’ Trout said roughly, as if he knew what Undine was going to say. ‘Don’t do this.’
‘But I—’
‘I don’t want you to say it.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased. I thought it was what you wanted.’
Trout didn’t look at her. ‘I had a moment – right there, on those steps, six months ago. The birds were singing. I said goodbye. I let you go.’
‘And now I’m back.’
‘And I’m happy, really. I’m glad you’re safe, I’m glad you’re well.’
Glad you’re well? Undine thought. That’s the kind of thing an aunt you only saw every second Christmas would say. ‘Are we even friends?’ she asked numbly.
‘I don’t know.’
She gulped noisily, trying to swallow the rising sadness down. It was as if Trout was breaking up with her. Before they’d even had a chance to …
‘I don’t know,’ Trout said again. ‘I don’t know how to just be your friend. I’ve always loved you first. That’s my fault not yours. I don’t blame you for that. But it’s not a very honest basis for a friendship.’
‘Trout, we’ve always … I … I stayed friends with you when you … But you’re saying you can’t be my friend when I feel like this, about you? That’s not fair!’
Trout looked at Undine now. ‘I don’t know how you did it. Because I don’t think I can. Whatever this is, whatever we had, or didn’t have … It’s over.’
Suddenly Undine heard Lou banging on her bedroom door. ‘Undine! Tell Trout to go home,’ she called. ‘It’s after midnight.’
‘Okay,’ Undine replied, trying to keep her sadness in check. ‘Sorry.’
‘Goodnight,’ Lou said, and Undine couldn’t tell if she was angry or not.
She turned back to Trout, who already had a leg over the balustrade. Lou banged on the door again. ‘And tell him just to come down the stairs like ordinary people.’
Trout shrugged sheepishly and pulled his leg back. ‘Goodbye, Undine. I am glad you’re back. And I did miss you.’ He looked down into her face. For a moment she thought he might actually kiss her. But he didn’t. He edged around her on the small balcony and walked through her room to go down the stairs as per Lou’s instructions.
It wasn’t till he had shut the front door and gone down the steps towards his parents’ house that Undine was able to manage a small, sorrowful ‘goodbye’.
Trout had been half-planning to stay the night at his family home, to creep upstairs and sleep in his single, slightly undersized childhood bed. But it was a pleasure, walking at night in the warm summer heat, so he kept going. He felt lighter, different. Something had changed, something essential within him. When you were in love with someone and they weren’t in love with you, it was a bit like carrying a big ball of string around, and finding one end had got loose and had snarled on something, and then it just tangled everything up, so wherever you looked you saw string. It seemed to strangle the whole world and it was all so messy and knotty and complicated you couldn’t hope to follow it back to the end and wrap it up and make it neat and tidy again.
But you could – Trout had just discovered – you could just let go of the ball. You could stop carrying it close to your chest as if it might be useful one day, or necessary, as if it was something worth saving. You could stop pulling that string tight, you could stop looking behind you to see what was holding you up. You could just let it go. Let it roll away, let it all unravel. You could be a photographer. You could go to Paris.
You could just. Let it. Go.
Undine dreamed. She was in that grey place again, gasping to breathe. The greyness was pressing in around her, so close she felt stifled. But then suddenly there was perspective. In the distance, she saw a small flickering light.
She fought her way through the greyness towards the light, pushing through the heavy air as if she were walking through a wardrobe filled with long weighty dresses. When she got to the source of the light, she realised it was Phoenix, sitting cross-legged on the ground – light was emanating from him. He was wearing a long feather headdress, as though he were a kid playing cowboys and Indians.
‘What are you doing here?’ Undine asked. ‘This is my place.’
‘I ended up here,’ said Phoenix. ‘It’s like the frontier. Lawless. Wild. I think there’re tigers.’ He looked over his shoulder.
‘You don’t know anything,’ Undine said disdainfully. ‘This isn’t a frontier, a borderland. This isn’t a space between.’
‘It’s not?’ asked Phoenix, surprised.
‘No,’ said Undine. ‘But I don’t expect you to understand.’
Phoenix’s bottom lip trembled, as if he might cry. ‘Why not?’
In the dream now, Undine could see herself, and suddenly she was grey too. She was of the world, and grey all over. Not just a muted absence of colour,
she was violently grey, like a thunderous, boiling storm sky. ‘Because’, she answered in a voice that was not a voice, ‘this is a dead world. And you’re dead too.’
And she watched as Phoenix clasped his throat and fell to the ground, and then he was gone and she was alone in the greyness and filled with bitter, anguished rage.
She woke suddenly, but the atmosphere of the dream permeated the room. The air was thick and difficult to breathe. She went to the balcony again and opened the French doors. The heat was too much, she was tired, she wanted to sleep. She wanted a cool earth, and mildness.
She looked for it again, the magic inside her, that ribbon of silvery thread entwining her heart, which was still sore and sad from her conversation with Trout. She summoned up her energy, pulling, teasing the magic out. As tired as she was, as sorry and sad, it felt good to use it, to release it. The restless, perpetual noise of the magic was silenced, and a kind of calm washed over her as she sent it upwards into the sky, looking for fat molecules of moisture to make it rain, to draw the realm of the sky down to the earth. She felt the magic soaring upwards, connected to her, to her solar plexus, the centre of her, so again she thought of a kite but this time she was the caster, she controlled the string. She held the string tightly. She didn’t want to tear the sky apart, didn’t want to lose control.
Pulling at its leash, the magic rolled and danced in the buoyant airstreams of the stratosphere. Lightning flashed, illuminating the white walls of her room. Thunder clapped and rolled. The sky was lit up with the flickering electrical storm, and she could see the outline of Mount Wellington and the rolling foothills that swelled at the mountain’s base. The sky flashed, like a camera, a thousand cameras, taking a thousand photographs.
She sat on the chair at her desk, watching her storm and waiting for rain, but though the lightning continued to jab at the sky, no rain came, until the thunder was nothing but a diminishing growl, rumbling in the distant sky.
For some reason, now, she thought about the other Undine, the one whose world she had … borrowed … for a while. How was she now? Was she home? Was her life as messy, as confused? Tonight, alone in her bare bedroom, she felt close, that other girl. As if Undine could just stretch a little, reach across space, through it, and touch her.
She got back into bed, burying her head into her pillow, curling up on her side. She was lonely. She missed Trout.
The storm died. All that was left was a whispering, words swirling around her. In the long night, it was almost comforting.
‘Sister. I feel you. You’re close. Come closer.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Undine sat up, blinking, wide awake. It was early. Morning was just beginning to lighten the sky outside. The night’s storm had left no trace and the heat wave showed no sign of abating. Her eyes were dry as stones but inside she still felt tender and damp and wrecked as she remembered Trout, saying goodbye.
She went downstairs. The house was dim and quiet in the early morning. She sat down at the kitchen table and stared out into the garden.
Did Lou really think Undine should leave? Maybe – Undine let herself think it for a minute – maybe Lou was right. She could go with Marv and May, stay with Lena in Greece. Or she could find her own way, move out as Trout had done, get a job. For a moment, Undine’s future flowered ahead of her. Dawn spread across the sky and the garden seemed to shiver with promise in the rosy light. If going was best – for Jasper and Lou – then perhaps she wouldn’t mind it completely, finding somewhere else to be. Finding someone else to be. She could change herself even, change the way she looked, cut her hair, reinvent herself …
But then she remembered: Sister … The coldness of it seemed to shroud even the garden’s shining possibilities. How could she be a girl with a haircut and a flat and a job when she had that – the magic – flowing through her, twisting around in her insides? You breathe black like me. You’re savage like me. She was hardly a good candidate for a functioning member of society. Besides, this was her home. She wanted to belong to it. She wanted to belong to Lou. She wanted to belong to Jasper and for Jasper to belong to her. And if it was him, if it was his voice calling her sister, then she wanted to protect him too.
She heard a small gulping noise. Jasper was standing in his bedroom doorway, rubbing his tired eyes.
‘Undine?’ he said, in a wobbly voice.
‘Are you okay?’
‘I’m wet,’ Jasper said. ‘The bed’s wet too.’ It took Undine a moment to realise what Jasper meant.
‘Oh! It’s okay. Come on, I’ll give you a hand. Let’s get your jarmies off and then we can strip the bed.’ She took his hand. ‘You can help me push the buttons on the washing machine,’ she said.
Jasper nodded unhappily and let Undine lead him back into the bedroom. Undine knelt down and tugged off his pyjama shorts and singlet. He stood with his arms limp, letting himself be undressed.
‘I had a bad dream,’ he whispered huskily.
‘Did you?’ Undine asked sympathetically. ‘Me too. Did yours have an Indian in it?’
Jasper looked at her as if trying to work out whether she was being funny. ‘No!’ he said, almost smiling.
When his clothes were off and he was clean, dry and dressed again, he and Undine peeled the urine soaked sheets off the bed and tossed them into the washing machine in the laundry. By the time Lou emerged, Undine had made Jasper’s bed with fresh sheets and Jasper was sitting on the kitchen bench watching Undine make pancakes, tittering shyly as she slid each one to the edge of the pan and tried to flip them, with variable success.
‘Morning,’ said Lou.
‘Morning.’ Undine tried to keep the weightiness of last night’s discussion out of her voice.
‘Wet or dry?’ Lou asked Jasper.
‘Wet,’ Jasper announced matter-of-factly.
‘It’s okay,’ Undine said. ‘I took care of it.’
Lou raised her eyebrows. Did she seem annoyed? What was her problem, anyway?
‘You didn’t have to do that,’ Lou said. ‘You could have woken me.’
Undine shrugged. ‘I didn’t mind. Pancakes? There’s tea if you want it.’
Lou peered into the pan. ‘Is there anything you don’t do?’ she asked, but her laugh was shaky, as if she wasn’t entirely appreciative.
They all sat down together to eat.
‘Pancakes on a Tuesday,’ Lou said to Jasper. ‘What a treat.’
‘Do you want me to take Jasper to creche? We could get the bus,’ Undine offered.
‘He’s not at creche this week. I’m keeping him home with me,’ Lou said.
‘Aren’t I going to creche?’ Jasper asked.
‘No, sweetheart,’ Lou said. ‘Remember? Next week you start school.’
‘Oh, yeah. Big school.’ He leaned forward in his seat and said to Undine, ‘I’m going to take a lunchbox.’
‘And writing books. And a pencil case,’ Lou added in a singsong voice.
Jasper looked at Undine. ‘And Undine’s going to school,’ he said.
Undine looked at Lou, who was still looking at her plate. ‘We’ll see,’ Lou said.
‘And she’ll take a lunchbox. And a bag and a pencil case and a drink bottle.’ Jasper was ticking them off against his fingers.
Undine smiled weakly. The thought of going back to high school next week – with a bag, pencil case and lunchbox – made her feel vaguely ill.
‘Where am I going today?’ Jasper asked Lou.
‘Nowhere,’ Lou said. ‘We might go and see if Mim’s home. Maybe we’ll go to the park.’
‘I’m going to make a nest,’ Jasper told Undine.
‘A nest?’ Undine asked. She heard a tremor in her voice. She remembered the nest she’d begun making with the ‘other’ Jasper.
‘Yes. For sleeping and being a bird in.’
‘All right,’ said Undine, faintly. ‘What a good idea. You should. Make a nest.’ To Lou, Undine said, ‘I’ll call Marv and May today.’
&nb
sp; Lou paused, her fork halfway to her mouth. ‘So you’re going?’
Undine put her knife and fork down and looked at Lou. ‘I’m not.’
Lou shrugged, still not looking at her. ‘Well, you don’t have to decide today. Ring them on the weekend. But if you’re going to be around today, we should go down to the high school and re-enrol you. Just to keep your options open.’
Undine sawed another mouthful of pancake with her knife and chewed it over and over, but the lump in her throat made it hard to swallow. Lou didn’t even try. She carried her plate into the kitchen. Undine could hear her scraping the remains of her breakfast into the bin.
‘You’re late!’ Liv said when she saw Phoenix come in. She kept wiping the table she was at. ‘I thought you weren’t coming. I thought—’
Phoenix winced. ‘Don’t. Don’t think that. Don’t ever think that.’
‘How can you stay?’ she said, moving to the next table. ‘You’re hardly real. You don’t live anywhere. I’ve never seen your house, you’ve never been to mine. I keep thinking you’re a ghost I dreamed up. If it wasn’t for your words all over the city, I’d think you were never here at all.’
‘Oh, Liv.’
‘Do you love other girls? Are you as nice to them as you are to me?’
‘Liv, please don’t,’ Phoenix said, pained. ‘Don’t do this. It’s just you. Only ever you.’
‘I can’t help it. I just want … I want this so much. I want it to be real. I want it to last.’
‘So do I,’ said Phoenix. ‘That’s what I want too.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
As they drove along the curving road that swept past the university, Undine looked out the window and caught sight of Grunt, waiting to cross the road.
‘There’s Alastair,’ said Lou.
He looked up as they drove past and Undine raised her hand in a wave. Grunt raised his uncertainly in return, as if he hadn’t quite recognised them. Undine bit her lip. Why did Grunt make her feel this way, when it was Trout – she was sure it was Trout – she wanted? It confused her. She pressed back against the seat, fighting the urge to lean out the window and look back at Grunt.
