by Tina Smith
“When you’ve lost someone in a traffic accident that -”
“No,” Cres insisted, “I’ll be happy to show her a few things, Soph.” There was an uncharacteristic quietness to her voice that I didn’t think I’d heard before. Again there existed a certain stillness at the table bordering on awkward silence before Reid gave a smile and said he could teach me. I huffed a little at the offer and then reined in my reaction, somehow giving a nod. I knew he said it to appease Sophie.
“See,” mum said, “there’s always someone who can help, you just have to ask.” I knew she was hoping I would spend the cash on clothes still. “You and Cres and Reid could all go along,” she suggested enthusiastically as the counsellor nodded, oblivious to the complicated social triangle that existed.
Sophie then continued with her story of the time I nearly drowned and how I was so lucky that a local woman had saved me. For the first time I learnt that Tormey Hunter had ironically been found dead in the river herself, before the topic was hurriedly changed by Sally Bradshaw, who was keen to avoid the subject of death, in case any of us cracked. The evening otherwise passed by smoothly with fake smiles, a few painful photographs and a chocolate marble cake, covered in ganache with delicate white chocolate ivy leaves. Mum had designed it and the Coffee House in town had made it as a custom order. I noticed the ivy design matched the quilt cover. If I’d thought my father had bought my gift, I knew then he had not. I wondered if dad had even paid for the present. I realized he hadn’t called either.
After dinner and dessert I told mum Cres would give me a lift home. I waved to the rest of the guests who exited the parking lot out front. I was glad inside that it was over. Mum gave me a kiss on the cheek; she rubbed my arm.
“I won’t wait up.”
I smiled at her. She thought I would go out partying someplace. I handed her the cake box containing the remains of my birthday cake.
“Oh, girls, I hate to remind you,” she called. “But you both will be careful. The curfew – stay indoors, won’t you? Bye!” With that she got in her clapped-out yellow Toyota with my present. She placed the leftover-boxed cake in the passenger seat and contentedly headed home.
I looked up as she drove away to see there was a fluorescent yellow waxing moon, only days from being full, glowing down. We rested when it was at its fullest, because the wolves were at their strongest then. But the crescent moon was ours.
The silver-grey tinted sky began to rumble softly.
“Can I take the bracelet off now?” I moaned the instant we were alone in the lot, already fiddling with the clasp.
“What, that bracelet may come in handy someday,” Cres replied, offence coating her tone as her dark brows furrowed.
I gave up with the clasp and looked at her. “What?” I scoffed but she only smirked.
“I’m sooo getting you back for this,” I breathed and though I waved my fist, swinging the charms on my wrist, I meant the party. The clouds thundered lightly in the looming clouds.
“Oh, my God,” Cres said, sounding for once more like a teenager than usual. “I might let you. What was that with your mother sitting Reid and me together?” She laughed, casually getting a strip of gum out of her jeans pocket.
I walked towards the jeep and shrugged. Then I added as though it had only just occurred to me, as I opened the squeaky passenger door, “She might think you are a closet couple?”
Cres gritted her teeth. “I wonder who gave her that idea?” She glanced at me, fluttering her jet-black lashes as she opened the equally squeaky driver’s side door.
I smacked my lips.
“Small towns?”
“Well, at least now the rumours will break,” she offered, slyly.
“What?” I said getting in, as lightning flashed above.
“About us,” she replied nonchalantly, unclipping her keys from her belt loop and slipping them in the ignition.
I looked at her waiting for an explanation.
“You know half the town thinks we’re lesbians.”
I considered this. “Touché,” I huffed as she started up the engine and slammed her door. I thought about it, and then remarked, “Well, Doreen and Lorraine will be disappointed.” It was a blatant joke at Giny’s mothers’ expense. I didn’t know where or when Cres had heard it, but I was too preoccupied to give a damn about the town gossip. Cres smiled slyly. I pulled off the black stiletto, rubbing the spot on my heel where it had irritated most and turned my mind to training. If she was amused she hid it.
We drove out to the river, under the voluminous grey clouds above Shade.
“What’s on the agenda for tonight?” I enquired, as we got out at the riverbank, stepping barefoot amongst the feathered, dying tall grass of wild wheat.
She pulled a wrapped gift from her backpack, chewing her gum as a sheepish grin broke out.
“This is from all of us – Jackson, Reid, Gin and me,” she clarified.
I accepted it shyly. She had gone above and beyond. “Oh, thanks.” I blushed awkwardly. I wondered why she hadn’t given it to me earlier but as I unwrapped the crinkled brown paper from the oblong-shaped gift I saw it was a knife, just small enough to be concealed and long enough to do damage. I unfolded the sharp edge from the brown grip and examined the point. She could tell by my expression I was pleased by it. I tried to clip back the long blade, when Cres’s nail-less hand touched mine.
“Here.” She helped me press a button under the handle, so that the ten centimetre knife blade clipped back into the grip.
I pulled it out again, to try it for myself.
“Nice, huh?” she smiled.
I wondered if she would have liked it herself. “It’s nice, thanks.” I pushed the stainless steel blade back in again and tucked it in my pocket. I expected to get into training.
“We can get a case for it?”
“No, it’s good like this, I can hide it.” I looked down, tucking my shirt over it. “It must have cost a lot.”
Cres had turned casually and was reaching back into the car. She pulled something out of the glove box. “Here.”
In her palm was a pair of scissors. She pulled out her ponytail and turned around. I automatically took the nail scissors but looked at them in my hand. She was being very trusting of me tonight.
Her back to me, she answered my previous question “It’s a Kyobi hunting knife.”
In the absence of a comb I smoothed down her hair.
We were silent for a moment. Kyobi was evidently a good brand.
“How do you get it so straight?” I said making idle conversation as I began to cut in the moonlight. As I snipped her hair I noticed how soft it was.
“I usually do it in the afternoons,” she uttered. “It’s not.”
A blanket of clouds had formed and a tickling gust of wind suggested a cool change. The sky became darker. I heard a faint rustle.
“What?” I muttered, feeling the light drops of rain on my arms, as the lightning flashed in the distance.
“Straight,” she laughed. “I use two mirrors,” she explained. Her hair fell away onto her shoulders and the chunk I was left holding I then threw to the dry grass beneath my bare feet.
The texture was coarse and yet silken like straw. I thought I heard an unusual rustling and paused as I snipped through her Lucerne ends, stopping mid snip.
Then I continued, catching Reid’s odour of men’s deodorant and musk on the breeze. But when there were no other sounds but those emanating from the stormy sky I settled to chatting as I trimmed. Ignoring the intrusion, I pretended not to notice Reid spying on us.
6. Bitter Sweet
I thought about him as I lay across my bed, as I felt the coolness of the new ivy-patterned velveteen covers against my bare skin. I tried to remember it all. His musky smell, and the feel of his chest against my cheek, his mouth, his eyes, the expressions of his features. I hated that I had a terrible memory for faces, though his was burnt into mine more than any other. The more I prayed to see him the
more vague the memory of his face was. I begged quietly to God for him to be alive somewhere; and I cried weak tears because I would never see him again or feel the heat of his body against me. All that I had was the single tag to fill the cold void in my chest. They had left me that small half, and nothing else but emptiness. Like a terrible angst and pain it would rise in me like a tidal wave of grief with nothing to weigh it down but little the piece of cold metal. Here in purgatory I had internal injuries. He had been wiped away, heartlessly evaporated from my life. I missed him desperately. I pained for the dead, who felt nothing. I hated the oblivion that remained, that soaked into me. I was left behind in the bittersweet loneliness of sparse memories, fading into darkness as black as my heart.
Cres relied on the fact that I believed he would leave me, the way my father had and maybe somewhere deep down I felt like I deserved it. I was now shaped in her likeness, the virgin warrior. But I needed him; my body ached for him still. He wasn’t there and he would never appear to me again.
Despite this I wished he would come in through my window, as though it could happen. Like the first night we had held each other, not so long ago. The knowledge that he never would again touch me caused a desperate sorrow that swelled inside me. I waited for the huntress to take him away - to let go. I awaited the nothingness that existed around me, to seep inside me. Until I wouldn’t know if it was my heartbeat or hers coming to take from me, what soon I wouldn’t remember.
She was always there. I couldn’t help but love her because of it and I became somewhat conflicted. I knew what was good for me, logically - but nothing could change the plan, not parties and presents or friends or school, the sugary coating. A tiny part of me wished for an easier path. I indulged this desire one night in the confines of my room as Cresida lay on the floor reading a book.
The grinding sensation of unrequited devotion had worn me down, until I dared to unburden my heart to her rather than suffer in silence.
“Cresida, I miss him day and night and I don’t want to,” I confided looking into her almond blue eyes visible in the shallow pink light of the Tibetan Salt lamp that I had recently acquired for my eighteenth birthday. “I really don’t want to.” I wanted her to believe me or take it all away. Though perhaps I said it because there was nothing that would unbind me, and if it did maybe I would be happier than I would even know, and guilty all at the same time. Maybe that was when she tried to preoccupy me with the hunt in the mountains.
“I can’t feel it.” I gazed at her. “Shouldn’t I be able to feel that he’s gone?”
“No. You’re confused because of the numbness the huntress leaves us, maybe because you’re angry that you never said goodbye.”
“I forgive him,” I said quietly, knowing still I felt more than I should. But there was nothing to forgive. I wasn’t angry, not with him, not even if he was alive somewhere. I loved him.
I said it because I wanted to talk about him - to be able to say his name just for a moment, to share some of my torment with someone who could try to understand. Why did I feel something I wasn’t supposed to?
If putting it in the context of trying to accept his loss was the only way to say his name, then I would do it. I couldn’t shut off the way I felt, or maybe I didn’t want to forget the feeling. Guiltily, I found myself trying to want what she wanted for me, knowing it would be easier. But that was not what was in my heart - that piece of my flesh which would soon turn to stone. In my beating heart I wanted him back, in every moment. But not even in the underworld can you raise the dead.
Once I felt something for him, neither Cresida nor heaven or hell could tear it out of me. It was a disease without a cure, and I was riddled with it. I couldn’t know a world, any world without him. Whatever it was that I was plagued by, I knew it wasn’t good, wasn’t ideal, wasn’t something my parents, my friends, my teachers or the pack wanted for me. Not even I could tear it out of my body.
But now my heart was starting to die. I had almost convinced myself that if I could just be allowed to see his grave and to say a final goodbye maybe I could let go, as though the act of closure would make the pain stop and my heart fall like a stone into the abyss. The two halves of me were in a standoff but the overwhelming part that loved him would win. He had to be alive, somewhere, for me to feel this way.
My mother assumed I was depressed. Grief and depression do feel the same, and what else could it be? I was sick. I knew she had felt that way when my dad betrayed her, the loss and pain, and perhaps I understood her more. They all hoped it would pass, assumed this was a phase like all things with the young. And in fact time was the least of the threats to this unhealthiness. In trying to murder it, I had numbed every part of me, physically and emotionally; I was dead, while still it remained, to spite even me - in the face of everything. The weeping ceased externally, like they all wanted it to; the way Sophie stopped weeping over the divorce. Despite my dry eyes, my heart screamed his name.
As we lay in my room I broke the silence “Don’t you think I want to rid myself of it, no one will make me feel the way he does - did,” I corrected, too late.
She listened to my pleading in the dim as we feigned rest whilst waiting for the dark of a black moonless night to draw us away.
“Do you think there is anything I can do?” I pleaded.
During the day at school I’d even been given a hall pass to speak to the counsellor, Bradshaw, who by now had been permanently installed due to the unusually high numbers of death amongst its students. Unfortunately she was out of the office and so I gave up. What would I have said, anyway? Cresida and the others hadn’t noticed this, even though they kept a close watch, or maybe they just didn’t mention it. I wondered if she would have stopped me. I wondered what I would have said.
Her face was stoic in the pink light. “Maybe you need to say goodbye?” Cres suggested, hardly swaying. Evidently the Agatha Christie she was reading was at an interesting point. I knew she was almost as desperate as me to relieve my obsession with the dead man or maybe just with the wolf he was, or perhaps I had fooled her too. She was perceptive. What she saw was a puzzle to everyone else. It didn’t have rules, the gift she inherently possessed, but like a radio it had to be tuned. She had to know I hadn’t given up. The huntress’s hand had not extinguished him.
I contemplated her answer. “Yes - how though, I’ve tried, god please drug me! Anything, Cresida, this is so wrong, I can’t help it. I want to hang on.” I looked at her, desperate and pained. I don’t want to let go. “I need to say goodbye.” There was no pill for it. I was sure she had waited for me to realize it was true, that he was gone. Finished. Dead. And I faced worse emotions if he was alive. Why didn’t he come for me?
She paused and then said, “So, maybe if you had a ceremony or something?”
I could almost hear my subconscious cry with victory as the words fell from her mouth. This was all I needed, something with which to work, a chink in her armour. I had prayed day and night for her to break, to relent.
“You think?” I asked, enthused. “Where?”
“Anywhere,” she whispered, disinterestedly.
“I want to go to Tarah Beach,” I answered too quickly. It was the only town in the valley around Shade that had some decent (expensive) shops because it was a popular tourist spot and importantly the place his grave supposedly lay.
“Why?” she said with suspicion tingeing her tone.
“That’s where they always talked about. Please, anything to be near him where he was, to say a proper goodbye, so maybe it will help this madness inside me to end.” I sounded convincing, in just enough desperate need. The feelings were an obsession to me, which I tried to cover, probably not well enough. She saw my struggle.
She looked transfixed in thought in the yellow-pink light; she knew I was sick with an angst beyond my control. Her expression of empathy was steady as she stared blankly at the ceiling resting the book over her chest.
“Cresida, I’m in hell," I begged. “L
et’s just try to do something - you need it too - don’t you? Maybe even Reid could come.” My voice went quiet at the end.
In the dim pink light she looked taken aback. I would have said anything to leave.
“Just something.” I shrugged trying to hide my blatant enthusiasm at the thought of seeing him in any way, to feel his bones near me. I craved it now like a dose of heroin to the addict deep within, forcing its will against the logic, inside me. “We’ll make a day of it.” I hoped I didn’t sound nearly as desperate as I was. I wanted to touch the place his remains lay. I hoped anxiously then that I would know the truth, the truth I was supposed to accept, that he was dead; to lay my body against the earth that covered him.
“He won’t come,” she warned, casually pretending to pick something from the carpet – lint, I think. I knew she meant Reid.
I confessed, “I don’t care about Reid, at this point. God, I have half a mind to shoot him - but what if he says something that makes it more…final. Maybe half the reason I’m like this is because of the shock of him telling me - or not telling me …you know that I don’t believe him.” I should have said ‘don’t want to believe him’ - but it was too late. I hoped she didn’t notice this Freudian slip.
She replied “I don’t-”
I cut her off, I didn’t want to hear her say it; it was a good idea, I thought. God damn it; it was my only one - my only chance at escape from the confines of school, home and Shade.
“Come on, please? I’m in hell here and you know it. I’m as sick of it as you are,” I begged softly. I thought I could see her wince. “I pine all day and all night.” I laughed painfully. “Just give me something to do other than training - to say goodbye. If I could just maybe, just have something of his?” I eagerly waited for her answer. I had the tag but I was greedy when it came to him. Knowing full well she now knew with certainty I had not let go, she turned on her side to face me.
