Under My Skin

by A. E. Dooland

  I'd been standing near the small glass dining table where I'd left my tablet, and since I'd been thinking of painting anyway, I'd picked it up. Unfortunately, when Bree was done admiring my walls, the first thing she did was spot it in my hand.

  She looked really excited. “Oh, my god, are you going to do something now?” she asked, already knowing the answer. She rushed over to me. “Can I watch? Please say I can watch! I've always wondered how you do it and you never stream, so it would be kind of interesting to watch how you go about it—”

  “It's coming up to eight on a school night,” I pointed out, interrupting her because I knew I wasn't going to be able to get a word in otherwise. “You really need to go home. Your parents are probably wondering where the hell their daughter is every night.”

  She made a face. “I told them I was at a friend's house,” she said, and then looked hopefully up at me. “It's kind of true, isn't it?”

  I closed my eyes for a second, remembering who I was dealing with again. She was relentless. “Bree, I don’t know how to answer that,” I told her, hoping honesty was the best call. “How would they feel if they knew you were at a 25 year old’s house? It's probably inappropriate for you to hang around for much longer. I’m not sure what you want me to say.”

  She scoffed. “Well, it's not like you're up here getting me pregnant,” she said. She didn't give me a chance to respond to that before moving right along again. “What I want you to say is that you'll be friends with me, so let's just be friends? You let me in, so obviously you don't hate me. There's no rule that says you can only be friends with people your own age, and if we’re friends, it’s not weird that I’m in here.”

  The way she put it, 'let's be friends', made it seem like she was suggesting I click a button on Facebook or change my status to 'friends with Bree'. I didn't actually know what she thought about the way actual friendships worked, but I doubted it generally started with a marriage-like friendship proposal. Then again, Bree's idea of things clearly differed a lot from most people's. Those flowers, I thought.

  “Is there actually any way for me to say 'no' to that?”

  From how much her brow was wavering, I think there actually might have been. “I guess so,” she said, and then spoke with so much animation that her curls bounced. “But you can ask Courtney, I'm actually really nice. I always try and do nice things for people, and I'll try really hard not to accidentally insult you or do anything that you really, really don't want me to do. And if you're really tired from work and you want to relax I won't make you leave the house, we can just hang out up here. It could be awesome and I just really think you should try it first instead of just saying 'no' outright.”

  I listened to her deliver her pitch with total and complete conviction, heart on sleeve. God, I could really hurt her right now, I thought, watching her. I could say 'nope' and crush that little heart of hers. Fuck, I thought, I think I'm giving in to those curls. Shit.

  “You should work in sales,” I told her, and I was sure my resignation was audible. Before she could get too excited, though, I jabbed the air toward her with my stylus. “This is conditional on you never showing up or leaving anything anywhere again, okay?” She nodded mutely. “I'm serious about that. And I'm holding you to the 'I won't do things you don't want me to' clause, too.”

  “Whatever you want!” she said in the top register of her voice. “Oh, my god!” She looked like she was about to throw her arms around my middle. Before she managed to, I ducked into the bedroom to grab the laptop, came back with it and began setting up.

  Bree shuffled one of the kitchen chairs around beside me and she still looked really excited. “This is so awesome, you have no idea,” she said as I was trying to get comfortable. “I've wanted to do this for so long!”

  I listened to her, trying to figure out how to position myself. It was a bit awkward, because normally I'd put a leg up and lean the tablet across my thigh. I was still wearing my work skirt, so that wasn't going to happen. I did bend my leg up experimentally, though, but the skirt was too tight and the fabric wasn't stretchy. Also, my stockings were slipping off the chair.

  Bree noticed. “You need one like this,” she said, smoothing the pleated skirt of her school uniform. It might have been passable when she was standing up, but as soon as she sat down it was scandalously short. I would never in a million years show that much skin. I did not need a skirt like that; even ten times that amount of fabric wouldn't be enough to make me comfortable. “Anyway, it doesn't matter, just put trackies on or something. It’s not like you need to dress up so much to sit in your living room.”

  I thought about that for a second; I supposed my black tracksuit pants wouldn't look so out of place with my work blouse, and I did still have all my make-up on. I went into my bedroom, shut the door and put them on. Without the hoodie, they didn’t look too boyish and the colour of them was such that they looked a bit like work-pants anyway. My white socks didn't match so well, but whatever. Fuck, this was way more comfortable. I did give my big hoodie a bit of a sad glance as I left the bedroom, though.

  The trackies made everything so much easier, and I put the tablet across my knee and thought about what to draw. Bree was actually quiet for once, and I had been gazing forward trying to decide what do to when I noticed I was looking directly at those horrifying flowers. Bree sat straight up. “Yes!” she said. “It would be so poetic. I rescued them and then they went on to become famous!”

  Hah, famous? “I don't have that many watchers online,” I told her. “But okay.”

  I decided not to bother with a background—that would have taken ages and Bree did actually need to leave at some sort of reasonable hour—and just started drawing shapes. She obviously did actually know a thing or two about art, as well, because a couple of times while she was commenting on what I was doing, she used the correct terminology for the tools and asked me questions about my brushes.

  “You know a lot. Do you draw?” I asked, working on giving one of the flowers a deep, open mouth with many layers of shark-teeth. I didn’t remember seeing any pictures in her gallery on Deviant Art.

  Bree laughed at what I was doing with the flower. “You want the truth?” I nodded as I kept painting. “You kind of taught me all that stuff.”

  I stopped for a second and looked at her. I did? I didn't remember those conversations at all, they must have happened ages ago. “Really?”

  She relaxed back in the chair again. “Yeah. And no, I can't draw. I'll just hang around and be kind of in awe of you and a bit depressed.” I shot her a strange look, she explained, “Well, it's like you have this totally amazing gift and you're not even using it.”

  I clicked through the palette. “It's not a gift,” I said, “it's six years of locking myself up in a graphics lab every recess and lunchtime.”

  “Bit late for me, then, I guess,” Bree said. “Plus at Cloverfield we only get half an hour for lunch and that's barely even enough to eat food. I think they just want to make sure we don't have time to cross the road to the boys’ school. Are you this good at your job?”

  There was that familiar whiplash again. “I think so,” I said, and the corrected myself. “I mean, yes. I just got promoted.”

  Her face lit up again. “Oh, that's great! Is that what you were happy about earlier?”

  I was actually surprised she'd been listening. She certainly hadn't acted like she was listening. I stopped for a second and looked at her again, and then went back to the tablet. I decided not to ask about it. “Yup.”

  “Well, if you're half as good at... project managing or whatever you call it as you are at art, I bet you're awesome.”

  There's something to be said for being heavily praised. I got it all the time online, but it's one thing to have disembodied text saying your art is amazing and another to have someone sitting next to you saying it. And Bree was just so damn genuine, I found it difficult to hang on to my reservations about having let her stay. This was actually okay. It
wasn't exactly video games with Henry, but it wasn't ruining my evening. And she probably wouldn’t be here for that long, anyway, because I was nearly done with the picture.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I'd done anything grotesque, but the flowers definitely belonged in that category by the time I was finished. I'd really only suggested the vase and painted these exaggerated, monstrous flowers full of teeth and tentacles pouring out of it like something from a horror movie. It was different from what I normally did, but I was happy with how all the textures turned out. I sat back from the tablet and examined it.

  Bree loved it. “That's incredible. You did that in half an hour,” she gushed, leaning over the picture. Then, she reached out and tentatively touched the tablet where the furry flower was.

  I just stared at her for a second. What was she expecting? It was a screen.

  She saw my expression and giggled. “Sorry, it just kind of looked really furry and I guess I just needed to remind myself that it's just a picture.”

  “You can touch the real thing if you want,” I told her, and gestured at the actual flowers. “Just make sure you don't go anywhere near them without a sharp sword.”

  She laughed again. “It was actually really funny, because the florist asked me if I knew what to feed it, and I was like, 'um, you need to feed bouquets?' And I just had this weird image of, like, chopping up raw meat for it or something.”

  “Raw meat?” I snorted. “Please. Those flowers clearly hunger for the souls of unborn children.”

  Bree looked from my neutral expression to the flowers and burst out laughing. I hadn't thought it was that funny, but she kept laughing for a good several minutes, to the point at which she could barely breathe and her eyes were watering. She calmed down a little, and then saw the flowers and started all over again. I watched her at first because it was entertaining, but after her skirt rode a bit high I spent the rest of her giggle fit uploading the picture to Deviant Art. I didn't really think twice about the comment I put on the submission, but when Bree finally sobered up and bent forward to read it, she liked it.

  “'For Bree',” she read aloud, and then from how she looked at me you'd have thought I'd done a hell of a lot more than dedicate a 30 minute speed-paint to her. “You don't know what this means,” she said, basically articulating what I was thinking. Fortunately, she spelt it out for me. “Like, I've been a huge fan of yours for ages and now I'm here and you're painting for me and you're hilarious and just so nice.”

  She was actually going to make me blush if I let her go on, so I didn't. “Will you finally go home and leave me alone now?” I asked her, but I might have been smiling a little.

  She grinned. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “I kind of got what I came for earlier anyway.”

  “You mean I didn't need to do all this?” I gestured at the screen.

  Instead of answering, she sat forward tensely for a couple of seconds, looking like she wanted to say something. Then, she lifted the tablet off my knee, flipped to Photoshop and scribbled down a phone number on one of the layers. When she finished it, though, she leant back, made a noise and then Control-Zed the last three digits and tried again.

  I smirked. “That would have been a lot cooler if you knew your own phone number.”

  “Well, it's not like I call it all the time,” she said, and then jumped up and rushed off to her schoolbag. “You should just give me yours!”

  Yeah, no. My work number was the same as my home number, and she definitely wasn't getting it until I was sure I could trust her to not text me all day.

  After she'd given me the right number, I shut the lid of my laptop. “Come on,” I said, bustling her towards the door. “Let's get you home before your parents call the cops on me. Where do you live? If it's not too far, I'll come for the ride.”

  She looked alarmed. “No, that's okay, it's actually really far,” she said. “I'll just take the train.”

  I looked pointedly towards the windows; it was getting dark outside. Bree was the last person in the world who should be allowed near strangers after dark. Especially in that skirt.

  “I can go by myself,” she said quickly, before I could speak. “I do it all the time, there’s still always people around in stations until much later. I'll probably just go to Courtney's anyway.”

  I went to get my purse and take another 50 out. I didn't feel fantastic about giving away more of my money to her, but I also didn't relish the prospect of another night spent lying awake and wondering if she'd been kidnapped or murdered. “Okay, I won't come with you, but no trains,” I said, making sure she took it.

  When I'd put my skirt back on and Bree was on her way out the door, I cleared my throat and she stopped. I nodded towards the evil flowers. “You're just going to leave without saying goodbye to them?”

  She giggled and bounced over to the vase, pretending to tickle one them under its chin. “Wow, I really love these things. Don’t forget to feed them!” she told me, pretending to sound stern.

  “Stockpiling human corpses as we speak.”

  She was still laughing when we’d made it down to the bottom of the building. Being a hotel in central Sydney, there were already taxis waiting to collect people. It was merely a matter of walking up to the one at the head of the rank.

  She stopped in front of me. I’d just slipped on some ballet flats because my feet were still hurting from yesterday, but even without heels on I was just so much taller than her. The combination of me being very tall and her being very short made her seem almost child-like, but from this angle I could see pretty deep into her unbuttoned school-shirt. She definitely wasn’t a child, that was for sure. I wished she’d do up that damn button, though. Being able to see inside made me uncomfortable and it was going to give people the wrong idea about her.

  I didn’t say anything about it because Bree already looked like she was about to explode with something. It made me even more uncomfortable. “What?”

  “I’m one of those people who always hugs everyone,” she said, sounding urgently worried about it.

  I squinted at her. I was the opposite of one of those. “Please don’t.”

  “I know I promised I wouldn't do anything you didn't like, but it’s hard because you're really funny and I want to!”

  “Then you’ll have to be really strong,” I told her, taking her shoulders, spinning her around and pushing her gently towards the taxi before she inevitably lost the fight with herself and pounced on me in front of everyone.

  She let me usher her over to the taxi, hopping into it and winding down the window. I didn't miss the taxi driver's eyes dipping to that skirt and I made sure he saw me glaring at him.

  “I had a great time!” she said out the window, oblivious to my exchange with the taxi driver. “And I'm sorry I just kind of showed up before,” she reconsidered, looking torn, “but also kind of not really because it worked.”

  I just nodded and waved at her, watching the taxi drive up the street and then trudging back inside.

  I had been wondering what I was going to do about dinner and waiting for the lift when a guy who was walking past the hotel ducked inside the lobby. I wasn’t really paying much attention to him until I saw him disappear into the toilets beside reception. No one on the desk batted an eyelid, they just went about their business as he finished and went out the door again.

  I missed the lift, because I was just gaping: Bree had said the reception staff wouldn’t let her use the toilets, and that’s why she’d asked to use mine, and that’s why I’d let her in.

  She wouldn't just say that. Would she...?

  I couldn’t leave it, I had to walk up and ask. “Excuse me,” I said to one of them, “if people ask to use the toilets in the lobby here, do you let them?”

  They all looked at each other. “Strictly speaking they’re not public toilets,” one of the staff answered me. “But we generally let people, anyway.”

  I sighed heavily; she hadn’t told me the truth. Bree, I thought, scrun
ching up my face. It wasn’t that not being allowed to use the toilets was a particularly serious lie, but I felt so stupid for not even picking up on it. I’d lived here for four years. Fucking hell, I was angry with her, but also really angry with myself because part of me was actually glad that I’d let her in.

  I went back upstairs and spent a minute or two staring down at those monstrous flowers while I tried to figure out what I should do. Even without the lying, that girl had gone from stalking me to my apartment to somehow keeping me company in it. That had to be some sort of magic trick. Maybe she did have that creepy shrine in her bedroom after all. I groaned aloud and put my head in my hands. Goddamnit, what the hell was I going to do with her? How did this even happen?

  I decided to consult Henry about it, and when I picked up my phone there was already a text from him. “I could use some of those semi-automatics you keep recommending right about now. I know I generally advocate peaceful resolutions to conflict but I’m halfway up the clock tower right now with Sean Frost.”

  You’re halfway up a clock tower, I thought dryly. Speaking of clocks, I looked at the one on my wall. It was 8:15. Plenty of time for a few rounds of the new expansion. Maybe Henry could bring up some food and we could eat, shoot each other and just pretend everything was great and that no one was driving us crazy. I texted him back and then went to have a quick shower before he rocked up.

  I was running the water and trying to decide if I could be bothered washing my hair or not when I caught sight of something on the glass as I opened the door to the shower cubicle.

  The door was all fogged up, except for where someone had drawn a big lopsided smiley face on the surface with their finger and written 'made u look!!!!!'.

  SEVEN