Kat Got Your Tongue

by Lee Weatherly

  God, why did I say I'd go?? When I asked Mum about it I tried to sound completely unenthusiastic, so she'd say no, but she said, ‘Of course, that sounds like fun.’ And looked really pleased. I bet Jade's right. She's probably already planning on buying candles and wine for a romantic dinner for two, for her and her live-in lover.

  He brought home a bunch of flowers for Mum tonight that made mine look completely puny. Plus they gave each other valentine cards, staring all mushily at each other, and then after tea I caught them kissing in the kitchen. A real kiss, not just a peck on the lips. I mean, they had their arms around each other and were using tongues and everything.

  It made me feel sick, seeing Mum like that. I backed straight out again, not saying anything, and then later Richard came into the lounge to get something and asked if Cupid had been good to me today. Meaning did I get any cards.

  I told him it wasn't any of his business, and went upstairs and banged my door shut. Mum didn't come up, so I guess she's too busy snogging lover-boy to bother.

  Ian Lindley didn't guess, by the way. Jade says she doesn't like him that much anyway.

  17 February

  I didn't spend the night at Tina's after all. I don't want to talk about it.

  Later

  It's after 1.00 a.m. and I can't stop crying. I'm doing it really quietly, so that Mum and Richard won't hear, but I just can't stop.

  I can't believe I did that. I wish I could just sink into the ground and disappear forever. I acted like such an IDIOT, and Tina's going to tell everyone, I just know it. Everyone will know.

  I wish I could die.

  Chapter Eleven

  Kat

  After tea that night, I told Richard and Beth I was tired and went up the stairs to my room, my fingers trailing on the banister. What was I going to do? If Jade were telling the truth, then that group of girls might have done something awful to me. I had to find out, but how? They weren't about to tell me, that was obvious enough.

  I opened the door to my room, and blinked. Lying on my bed was a CD, still in its plastic wrapping. I picked it up. Mahler, Symphony No. 5. Richard!

  Thoughts of Jade flew completely out of my head. Clutching the CD, I dashed downstairs again, grinning so widely that I could feel my cheeks stretching.

  ‘Richard! Thank you!'

  He and Beth were sitting on the sofa talking, but they broke off when I burst into the lounge. Richard smiled. ‘Oh, you found it, then.'

  ‘Yes! Thank you! It's perfect!’ Without thinking, I swooped down and gave him a hug.

  A startled laugh burst out from him, and he hugged me back with one arm. ‘Glad you like it.'

  ‘I'm going to go and play it right now.’ I smiled down at the CD, turning it over in my hand. There was a painting of the sea on the front cover, with Royal Philharmonic Orchestra written below it.

  Beth cleared her throat. ‘It'll be nice to hear classical music in the house again.'

  I looked up quickly. ‘Did I used to play classical music, then?’ I asked.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Beth. ‘You didn't like all of it, but some of it you really loved. Mahler is a new one, though. I think.'

  ‘What else did I like?’ I said faintly, holding the CD.

  ‘Oh, let me think … Mozart. Brahms. Bach, you loved Bach. You used to play one of his violin concertos all the time.'

  ‘Well – why did I stop listening to it?’ The words burst out of me.

  Beth shook her head. ‘I don't know. I hadn't really thought about it until now.’ An awkward silence fell around us. Suddenly I wondered if I should have hugged her as well. Were her feelings hurt that I hadn't? I hesitated, but my arms were frozen to my sides. I just couldn't do it; it would be like lying.

  I backed away a step. ‘Well – thanks again,’ I said to Richard.

  He grinned and lifted his hand in a half-salute. ‘Any time.'

  The music was as wonderful as I remembered. It started slow, with a single trumpet blowing, and then built and built until it was a whirlwind of sound, like a storm crashing through a forest. I sat cross-legged on the bed with my eyes shut tightly, letting it wash over me and sweep me away.

  Finally the CD ended, and I slowly opened my eyes, hugging my knees to my chest. I let out a breath, looking around my room.

  It was actually starting to feel like my room now, even though it still didn't have much to do with anything I liked. For instance, I hated the posters of actors and pop stars all over the walls – it was like being stared at by a bunch of grinning strangers. Most of them were of a boy with wavy dark hair and brooding eyes. Beth had told me that he was called Orlando Bloom, and that I had really, really liked him. Apparently I had seen some film called Pirates of the Caribbean four times.

  Now I stared at the poster of Orlando over the desk, thinking about what I had been like when I was Kathy.

  Maybe I had more in common with my old self than I had thought. Would I have liked Mahler's Fifth Symphony? If the old me were here now, what would she think of it? For a moment I imagined her opening the bedroom door and coming into the room, separate from me, smiling.

  ‘What happened?’ I whispered. Why had I been so afraid of Jade and the others?

  I jumped up and hit ‘play’ on the CD player. As the symphony began again, I started opening up drawers and pawing through them. There had to be something in here that would tell me what had been going on, what I had really been like! Why Jade and Poppy, supposedly my best friends, hated me now.

  But there was nothing. I looked through all the drawers, and even searched through the book bag I had been carrying when the car hit me, which the woman driving it had found and given back to Beth. That felt spooky, like going through things belonging to a ghost.

  All it had in it were textbooks and exercise books, though. I flipped through them. I had had loopy, precise handwriting, and obviously hadn't liked history very much, if the amount of doodles in the margin had anything to do with it.

  I sat back on my heels, blowing out a heavy breath. The music had turned soft and gentle, like a summertime breeze off a lake. ‘Kathy, where are you?’ I murmured. ‘Come on, help me out. Where are you hiding?'

  My gaze drifted to the bed. It was a single that sat pressed against the wall, with a white reading light attached to the headboard. Hang on – I sat up straighter, thinking. Hiding. If I were going to hide something – I mean, if there were something that really mattered to me – I wouldn't put it in one of my drawers or my school bag. I'd really hide it.

  A moment later, I was gently scooting the bed out from the wall. Flopping down onto my stomach, I worked my hand under the mattress, running it along the length of the bed. Nothing there. I frowned and tried again, worming my hand as far under the mattress as I could. My palm tingled as I swept it along.

  Suddenly my heart leaped. I was touching the tip of something smooth and hard. My fingers strained for it, nudging it towards me, and then my hand closed around it, and I pulled it out.

  A small stone statue of a cat nestled in my hand. It stared up at me with an inscrutable expression, almost smiling. A tiny hoop earring ran through one of its ears, like a pirate cat.

  I gazed down at it in wonder, running a finger down its snake-like spine. A cat. I had hidden a cat. And now I was called Kat. It seemed too bizarre to be a coincidence. Like the old part of me that was hidden was reaching out to me, asking for help.

  I swallowed, tightening my fingers around the statue. ‘I'll help you,’ I whispered. ‘I'll find out what happened.'

  Nobody had mentioned my going to school yet, and after what had happened that afternoon with Poppy and Jade it was pretty much the last place on the planet that I wanted to go. But I knew now that I had to. Because if they knew what had happened to me, then other people might too.

  And I had to find out.

  I saw the hard look in Jade's dark eyes again, and shivered. ’ You knew, I bet,’ I murmured to the cat. ‘I wish you could just tell me.'

 
He gazed up at me, as unmoving as if he had lain hidden for a thousand years.

  * * *

  Beth looked very relieved when I mentioned going back to school to her the next morning. She leaned against the kitchen worktop, holding a cup of coffee.

  ‘Yes, brilliant idea – I would have suggested it myself in a few more days. We were just waiting for you to feel up to it, but I think it would really help you get your memory back.'

  My memory again. My lips tightened with the effort to hold in a groan. Why did she always have to bang on about it?

  Amazingly, Beth grimaced. She put her cup on the counter. ‘Sorry, there I go again,’ she said. ‘I know I keep pushing about your memory. I don't mean to.’ She tried to smile.

  Well, you do a pretty good job of it for someone who doesn't even mean to, I thought. I didn't say it.

  She sighed, gazing out at the garden. A neighbour's cat was prowling through it like he owned it – a fluffy white and brown creature with a plume-like tail. Beth took a breath. ‘It's just – well, I guess I miss you.'

  I shrugged stiffly. ‘I'm still here, even if I don't remember anything.'

  ‘I know, but—’ Beth broke off, and quickly poured herself some more coffee. ‘Never mind. You're right,’ she said, stirring in a dollop of milk. She looked up and smiled. Her face looked stretched, uncomfortable.

  ‘Look, why don't I ring your headmistress today and see what she suggests? How much do you remember from your lessons?'

  Part of me wanted to slam out of the room without even answering – let her wait forever for her real daughter to come back. Instead I put my hand in my pocket, feeling the stone weight of the cat nestled there. He gave me courage, and I took a deep breath.

  ‘Not that much,’ I admitted. ‘I was looking through the textbooks last night …I think I could catch up pretty quickly, though.'

  Beth nodded. ‘And school's definitely the right place for you. You need to be back with your friends, don't you?'

  Friends. I tried to smile. ‘Yeah, definitely.'

  Dr Perrin's office didn't feel any more inviting the second time I was in it. I sat on the same saggy green sofa as before, and spent the whole forty-five minutes putting my hand to my mouth and then snatching it away again. My nails were starting to grow out a bit, and I was trying to stop biting them.

  Dr Perrin read through my dream journal with her eyes narrowed, nodding slightly to herself. ‘Very interesting, Kat. Now, this dream you had on Thursday night, where you were hiking up a tall mountain in the snow – how did you feel during it? What was the prevailing mood of the dream?'

  I put on a thoughtful face, like I was trying really, really hard to remember. Actually, I had forgotten to write down my dreams a couple of mornings, so I'd scribbled down a bunch of pretend dreams an hour ago, using different pens so she wouldn't catch me out.

  ‘Um … I felt OK,’ I told her.

  One of her painted eyebrows lifted slightly. ‘No feelings of tension or stress?'

  Wrong answer, obviously. I pretended to think about it. ‘Well … maybe a little, because of all the snow – I was trudging through it, and it kept snowing, and I wasn't sure I could keep my footing.'

  Dr Perrin's pen scratched across her notepad. I watched, fascinated with the way her hair stayed completely in place when she moved, with not even a single strand shifting.

  She looked up, flashing her teeth at me. ‘Well, that's very typical. And was there any sense of panic, like you had to get to the top of the mountain before something bad happened?'

  I almost started laughing, and had to bite the inside of my cheek. ‘Um … maybe a bit of panic.'

  Her big toothy smile drooped at the edges. ‘Just a bit?'

  I rubbed my thumb. ‘Maybe more than a bit.’

  ‘Ah, now we're getting somewhere.’ Scribble, scribble. ‘Kat, it's very important that you note down moods in your dreams, as accurately as you can remember them.'

  I nodded, making a mental note to myself to include fake feelings in my fake dreams from now on.

  ‘Now then,’ said Dr Perrin, ‘obviously the sense of tension and panic in the dream relates to what's happening to you now, while the mountain represents the obstacles you're facing. Do you see? You feel that there's a mammoth task ahead of you, you're frightened that you'll fail, you wonder if you'll ever succeed at it.'

  I went cold as she spoke. I tried not to let my face show anything, but inside, my heart started pounding like one of the drums on Kathy's CDs. It was just a made-up dream! How did she know all that?

  ‘Yes? Is that right?’ asked Dr Perrin.

  I felt my face go red. I lifted a shoulder, not looking at her. ‘I guess.'

  ‘Of course. It's a very fraught time for you, isn't it? Now, how's everything at home? Are you finding things less strange now?'

  ‘I'm getting ready to go back to school,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Oh?’ She wrote something down. ‘And how do you feel about that?'

  I stared at her pen, watching it move across the page. ‘I … well, I guess sort of what you said. Like – like I'm not sure I'll succeed.’ I took a deep breath, wondering if I should tell her about Poppy and Jade, and how strange they were acting.

  Before I could decide, Dr Perrin put down her pen and beamed at me. ‘Shall we work out some visualizations for you?'

  Eh? I stared at her. ‘Work out what?’

  ‘Visualizations. A coping technique where you see yourself succeeding. Right, now I want you to picture yourself walking up the front steps of the school – try to see it really, really vividly. Now you're going into the building … Picture yourself making lots of friends and doing well …'

  She went on and on like that, constructing this happy fake reality, when all I had wanted was to talk about how scared I was. She had this way of crinkling up the corners of her eyes when she smiled, like she thought it made her look more sincere or something. God, why had I told her anything?

  I went back to staring at the clock.

  My year head was called Mrs Boucher. Beth rang her up and they had a long chat, and then the next thing I knew I was at the school sitting in an empty classroom, doing a series of tests so that they could figure out what to do with me.

  I didn't recognize anything about the school, not a single door or corridor. I bent over my test papers, trying to concentrate even though I knew Jade and Poppy were somewhere in the building. I was just glad I hadn't seen them.

  That night Beth talked to Mrs Boucher again, and when she hung up the phone she looked pleased. ‘She said she thinks you'll only need special help in maths and science, and that you should be able to go back into your old classes for everything else, so long as you have support.'

  I was sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, practising Richard's card trick, working on the sleight of hand over and over. Sometimes I thought I just about had it, and then I'd drop the whole deck or something, and have to start again.

  Now I stared down at the queen of clubs. ‘That's great,’ I said. Slowly, I shuffled the deck again, tapping the cards together and watching the bright reds and blacks merge together.

  ‘She thinks that a FAB buddy would be a good idea too,’ Beth said, slicing up a green pepper. She was cooking tea for a change, since Richard had to work late.

  The cut on my forehead gave a tiny throb as I frowned. ‘A what buddy?'

  Beth kept her eyes on the pepper, like it was taking all of her concentration to chop it. ‘It's this programme called Friends and Buddies. You were part of it before your accident …’ There was a pause, and then she cleared her throat and smiled at me.

  ‘You helped out a new girl called Tina McNutt. So Mrs Boucher has asked Tina if she'd like to return the favour.'

  Tina. My muscles tensed. ‘What did she say?’

  ‘She'd love to. She's going to meet you outside the front gates on Monday.'

  So Tina didn't hate me! My heart flew up at the news. I did the sleight of hand perfectly, and gri
nned to myself. Thank God – I'd have one friend, at least.

  Chapter Twelve

  Kathy

  18 February

  Mum just came in, asking me what's wrong. Again. I wanted to say, What's wrong is that you won't leave me alone! Instead I told her that I'm fine, and Tina and I just had a row, that's all. Which is what I told her when I came home last night, no doubt ruining her romantic evening with Richard.

  She kept trying for a bit, and then finally she said, ‘Well, if you want to talk about it …’ and left.

  I am never, ever, going to want to talk about it.

  19 February

  Mum just asked if I wanted to go for a swim with her. She doesn't even like swimming that much, so I think she was trying to lure me out of my room, since I've hardly come out since I got home. But there was no way I could go to the pool with her – what if Poppy was there?! She'd be sure to ask how Friday night went.

  If she doesn't know already. Oh God. I feel so ill, just thinking about it.

  I'm going to write about it. Maybe it will help.

  The bizarre thing is, when I first got to Tina's house I thought it might all be OK. She and her dad live in this tiny three-up, three-down. That surprised me, because somehow I thought it would be somewhere really lavish – though I'm not sure why I thought that when Mr McNutt's car is falling to bits.

  We ordered pizza, and messed around for a bit. Finally we went up to Tina's room, which is almost as small as mine, with this huge mural of the sea on one wall – the one her dad painted, obviously. It was OK, I guess. Not that great. The main thing I noticed was that she had a music stand in the corner. I could see her violin case sitting next to it.

  I don't know why I did this. I really don't. But I said, ‘Why don't you play something?'

  And Tina said OK, and got out her violin. She wasn't self-conscious at all. She started playing this piece she said she had been practising, and I knew it straight away – it was Mozart's Ave Verum. I played it to get my grade four, years ago. I always liked playing it, because it's basically this light, gentle piece, like walking through a forest. That sounds so soppy, but it's true.