Plain Jane

by Kim Hood

  ‘Jane, what would you like?’ Farley was asking me a question.

  ‘What?’ He was across from me, asking me a question and I couldn’t comprehend what he was asking me. Sally, who was Dell’s cousin, was standing beside me, waiting for me to answer. Why was she there? Was she here to report back to him?

  ‘Do you want to hear the specials again?’ She was talking to me. I hadn’t seen her come up to us. I hadn’t heard her tell us about the specials in the first place. Emma, Emma was special. Why was I here, on some sort of a date, when she was about to lose everything? I’d gotten lost in just being with Farley and forgotten that I was supposed to be making a plan for her.

  ‘A coffee.’ I could hear Farley talking, but he seemed far away. I couldn’t hear him over the sound system. It was turned up too loudly.

  I was so tired. I must have dozed off. I needed the coffee.

  ‘Farley, where’s my backpack?’ Adrenaline started flooding through my veins with that thought. I looked under the table. It wasn’t there. Oh god, I’d lost it and there wasn’t time to do all of that research again, to find the answers again.

  ‘It’s okay, Jane. I’m buying.’

  ‘No, I need it. I can’t lose it. It has everything, all of my research.’

  ‘It’s in the car,’ Farley said. ‘What research? Have you decided to give into doing actual assignments?’ I tried to hold his face in focus, but looking at him scared me. His expression was all wrong for the teasing tone he was trying for. Too many furrowed lines, his eyes too wide open with fear.

  I really couldn’t breathe now. There was this picture of a burning car in front of me. Kaitlin’s car was on fire. They were trying to get rid of everything I knew. Burn all of the evidence, keep it hidden. I couldn’t lose it. I stood up, heart racing.

  ‘I have to get it. I can’t leave it there.’ But even as I said the words, I knew that the picture wasn’t real. The car wasn’t burning. There was no fire. Nobody was going to burn the car.

  ‘Are you okay, Jane?’ I wasn’t okay, but I sat down, trying to stop this new picture. I just needed to breathe. It would stop if I could just get enough air to breathe.

  ‘I just need to keep her breathing. I forgot. They’re all going to stop me. I need to keep them away from her.’ In my head, the words all made sense. But they weren’t coming out of my mouth right. The thoughts were too fast, half of them getting lost between the words I spoke.

  ‘What are you talking about, Jane? You aren’t making sense.’ Oh god, I couldn’t do this with Farley. Everything was crashing back, and I couldn’t stop it. I shouldn’t have brought him in here. I was going to lose him.

  I put my head on the table, closing my eyes to just stop all of the pictures that were coming back. They wouldn’t stop. I put my arms over my head to try to block them.

  Inhale, exhale. I concentrated on breathing, just breathing. When the pictures started to slow I concentrated on Farley. He was here, he was real. The only thing I could count on to be real. And when I trusted myself to speak again I told him that we had to go.

  We were nearly at the door when they came in it. Tracey, with Dell beside her, and when I looked down, her hand in his. Both of them stopped dead.

  ‘Jane!’ Tracey seemed as surprised to see me. I saw Dell looking past me, seeing Farley. I could see what he was thinking.

  ‘I can’t do this right now. I really can’t do this.’ I needed to get out. Now. But Tracey and Dell were still in the doorway and the only way out was between them. Tracey and Dell. They were in the doorway, too close together, and Farley was too far behind me.

  ‘Jane––’ Tracey tried to stop me, but I couldn’t stop. I was suffocating and I couldn’t stop to deal with Farley colliding with my world.

  I pushed my way through, separating Tracey and Dell, and leaving Farley trapped. The door shut behind me and Farley was on the other side of it.

  The cold air hit me and suddenly I could breathe again. Kaitlin’s car was just where we had left it, and it was perfectly intact. Well, at least in the same shape we had left it in anyway. I tried the door. Farley hadn’t locked it, and it was still warm when I got in. My backpack was there, covering the hole in the floor. I wound the window down to let the cold air in. I couldn’t risk suffocating, while I waited for Farley to get out.

  It was taking him so long. I wanted to go and save him, but I just couldn’t. What could I do? Every time I opened my mouth terrible things happened. If we had just stayed in the car, kept driving, it would have been okay. I would have stayed okay.

  I closed my eyes again, and tried to get back to that blissful feeling of just loving Farley with every thought, every image, every cell. It wouldn’t come back. All I could see was Dell, looking past me, and I couldn’t see Farley at all.

  Finally, after what seemed like ages, the driver’s door opened and Farley got in.

  ‘I’m sorry, Farley.’ My life was one long list of apologies; none of them any good. I couldn’t fix all of the damage I was inflicting. He sat there a moment, just looking ahead, even though you couldn’t see a thing out of the front window.

  ‘Jane, tell me what is going on. For you. What’s happening?’ He turned and took my hand, linking his fingers through mine. I wanted to just think of that, our hands together. Linked. If I opened my mouth, I would break the link.

  ‘Please,’ he tried again. ‘What’s wrong?’

  What’s wrong with you, Jane? I couldn’t think about that question. He was ruining everything. I needed him to stop talking. I wanted so badly to just to be here with him, not talking, not thinking.

  There was only one way to make that happen.

  He was so beautiful. I leaned over and put my lips on his. Wanting to lose myself in him. Disappear.

  The hand that was woven through mine let go, and then both his hands were on my shoulders, pushing me back. Not pulling me in, pushing me away.

  ‘No, Jane.’ He didn’t even say Not here, not now.

  And I knew with crystal, clear absoluteness that this was real. How could I have possibly imagined that he would want me?

  I opened the door to leave. He tried to hold my arm to stop me, but I yanked it free.

  ‘Please don’t go.’ There was one more thing to say. The last thing.

  ‘Go back to your alternate universe. I don’t exist in it.’

  I slammed the door as I got out, because that is what you are supposed to do when things are completely over.

  Somehow I got home. Somehow I had a conversation with Dad. Thank god it was Dad, Mom having stayed with Emma. I couldn’t have withstood Mom grilling me. Not that I didn’t deserve it. I couldn’t seem to turn around with upsetting someone.

  But Dad had been too tired to be upset by me anymore. I don’t even know what we talked about. Nothing I suppose, because even if I hadn’t have lost the plot earlier, neither one of us would have wanted to talk about what we both couldn’t stop thinking about, what was planned for tomorrow.

  I didn’t want to think about it. But it was the only thing left for me to think about.

  I tried to just sleep. I knew that, logically, that is what I needed to do. And I desperately wanted to sink into nothingness, to sink into a dark pit where I didn’t have to think.

  When I tried though, it was like dimming the lights in the theatre; all it did was illuminate the pictures that wouldn’t stop flashing through my head. They wouldn’t stop no matter how tightly I closed my eyes. And now there was nobody I could hope to save me from seeing them, to make me forget them.

  I turned on the light and tried to draw, to find the excitement that had been there every time I picked up a pencil in the last two weeks. It was gone. I couldn’t make any image stay still enough in my mind to draw anyway.

  The research that had kept me focused through the last two nights was finished. There was no point in looking up any more information. Dr Jonathan had already confirmed what I knew, that I just had to stop them from taking Emma’s leg. Only, now,
in the dark, on my own, I couldn’t seem to care anymore. What good was it to have answers, when nobody would hear them? Even Emma was being brainwashed into thinking there was no choice. And when I tried to think about it, I couldn’t remember even Dr Jonathan offering to help me do anything different.

  Of course he hadn’t. He was all conspiracy and secrecy, and no action. There wasn’t anyone who was going to do a thing. Not one thing. I was the only one. If I didn’t do something, make someone listen, then Emma was going to lose her leg tomorrow.

  ‘Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?’ Dad was asking me for the third time, as I was nearly out the door to catch the school bus. He was going to the hospital, to be with Emma while she waited for the butchers to take her into surgery. ‘The forecast isn’t good. There’s a storm system moving in.’

  I was absolutely sure. I had just finished my third cup of coffee, trying to jolt my mind into some sort of coherent thought, and it wasn’t working. I hadn’t been able to sleep at all. Even laying still had been nearly impossible and I’d spent most of the night walking back and forth in my room, fighting the urge to go outside. I felt like crying I was so exhausted and fidgety at the same time.

  ‘Dad, seriously, you don’t want me there hours before. I’ll do your head in,’ I assured him. More to the point, it would do my head in. ‘Just tell Emma I’ll be there. Tell her I’ve turned the page around.’

  I was lying. There wasn’t even a page in that stupid book Mom used to read to us for what I was feeling.

  I don’t know how I thought getting on the school bus would be better. As soon as I reached the top step I knew I was in trouble. The evening before, running into Tracey and Dell in Shirley’s, came crashing back into my head. I’d kept the whole mess out of my mind when I’d slammed the car door on Farley. There was too much going on in my head without thinking about Tracey, about Dell, about Farley.

  How on earth was I going to keep it out of my head when Tracey was sitting in the same familiar seat? When her posse were sitting right behind her, looking at me like I was about to make their week with whatever came out of my mouth? It was fairly obvious that news had travelled far too fast.

  Not as fast as my brain was working though. Not as fast as the words threatening to explode out of my mouth. There was no way I could risk saying a word. As muddled as everything felt, I still knew that I had to keep my mouth firmly shut.

  I did pretty well at first, mainly because Tracey didn’t want to speak any more than I did. We passed the first half hour with both of us pretending to sleep.

  I wished that I could actually sleep. I tried to not think, to just see black, to relax even if I couldn’t sleep. Tracey’s attempt at pretending to sleep, with all of the shifting and sighing she was doing, wasn’t helping though. Finally, I couldn’t do it anymore and when I opened my eyes to sneak a peek her way, it was exactly the time she was looking at me too, and then we couldn’t avoid each other anymore.

  ‘How is Emma?’ Tracey was so nervous the sentence came out almost as one word.

  ‘Fine. Well as least five-sixths of her is fine and the remaining sixth won’t be relevant after today apparently.’

  Well that certainly kept anyone from talking any further. Not even the tag team listening behind us had anything to add, though Tracey looked like I had just slapped her in the face. I didn’t want to think about how she felt. I couldn’t. I needed to just concentrate on keeping my mouth shut.

  But, you’ve guessed already that I didn’t do that. Of course I didn’t.

  ‘And how is Dell?’ I asked brightly. What the hell was I playing at? I had no idea. The words just spilled out. Four small words that were going to lead to torture for everyone.

  Tracey could have spun me all kinds of stories. I could think of several without even trying, all of them perfectly plausible and reasonable. It isn’t like I caught them making out or anything. Tracey can’t lie though. Not one bit. It’s just one of her debilitating, and endearing, features.

  ‘He rang you and rang you, Jane,’ she defended. ‘I was just trying to help him understand. That’s all I meant to do. Honest.’

  ‘So, what did you do instead?’ I had no right to do this to her. I knew I had no right. And to be honest, I didn’t really care what she had done. It was just … everything was spinning so fast, and this, this meaningless thing was something I could be upset about, could focus on. Or try to anyway.

  ‘You selfish cow!’ Brenda exploded, standing up to hoover over me. I swear she had spent the whole bus ride just waiting for her opportunity to say that. ‘You were the one who was so horrible to Dell. You were the one who got together with some bohemian weirdo, without even saying one word to your best friend about it.’

  It was all so irrelevant to anything that mattered, and Brenda was still standing up, looking almost demented with anger – that I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. Not just chuckle, but laugh, like you do when you know you shouldn’t, but can’t stop. I was laughing so hard that tears were rolling down my cheeks and my sides started to hurt. But it wasn’t like laughing when something is that funny. My emotions were upside down, because I swear I would have cried if I could have. If I could have just slowed things down to be able to know how I felt.

  She was right. Every word true. And it didn’t matter. None of it mattered.

  ‘What is wrong with you?’ Brenda said in exasperation. Even though Brenda asked it in the snide, insulting way, I still didn’t want to hear it one more time.

  ‘Do you really want me to start, Brenda?’ She looked back at me defiantly, and when I glanced at Aishling, her expression was as steely. Even Tracey had her arms crossed, though she looked more uncomfortable than angry. They wanted me to start talking.

  And that is when I could feel. Anger so sharp that you could cut someone in two with it, which is what I was going to do. ‘I can’t stand any of this anymore. I can’t stand any of you anymore. You all sit there looking at me like I am the devil and do you know why? It’s because you don’t know the devil. You haven’t met him. Dances, la de da. New shoes, ooooh nice. Let’s all marry our boyfriends and live out nice little lives in our nice little houses. Try looking at half a head lying on the floor. Try fighting the whole pharmaceutical industry that is stealing your sister. I’m not the devil. I’m the archangel and you don’t even know it.’

  The words exploded around my head. I was glad I had said them. They needed to be said. These girls thought that everything that was going on in their world was so absolutely right when it was actually one big lie.

  Wasn’t it? It didn’t matter because there wasn’t any way that I could get myself back to that world even if I wanted to. I didn’t know where I was, but I was certainly miles down the rabbit hole from there.

  The bus had just made the turn into town and instead of carrying on down the main street, it pulled over and stopped. I realised that I was standing in the middle of the aisle and it wasn’t just the three girls who had been listening to me. The whole bus was quiet and all eyes were turned my way. Everyone was against me, trying to stop me. Stop me from what?

  ‘You four girls get off,’ the driver bellowed back at us. ‘This is your stop today, and if I hear that sort of carry on again, you’ll be walking from Verwood.’

  I knew then that I had really stepped over the line. We’d had the same driver since starting secondary school, and this was the first time he had ever kicked anyone off.

  ‘You’re kidding! I wasn’t even saying anything,’ Aishling complained. All of us stood up to get off though. I got to the front first.

  ‘Let them stay. It’s my fault,’ I said. I could see him hesitating. It was starting to snow properly, obliterating the view out the windshield.

  ‘One more chance,’ he grumbled. ‘Go on. Back to your seat.’

  ‘I’ll get off,’ I insisted. There was no way I could go to school anyway. I wasn’t sure there was anywhere I could go to be okay, but school was definitely not on the l
ist.

  I stepped into the swirling snow. Big, wet snowflakes were already sticking to me. Dad had been right; it didn’t look like the snow was going to let up for a while. I tried to think of what I should do, where I should go. There wasn’t anywhere safe anymore.

  Thinking wasn’t going to help me. I couldn’t even try to keep anything straight in my head. It hurt too much. I couldn’t fight whatever was happening any more. I had to give in to where the universe was throwing me and trust that it would work out.

  To be honest, I don’t remember how I made my way from there to Red River. It was like time started to speed up so much that even though the thoughts and pictures in my head were going faster than I thought possible, I still couldn’t keep pace. I know I didn’t take the bus, because the CCTV footage showed me walking in the front door of the hospital at 10am, and there wasn’t a bus that would have gotten me there by that time. I’ve kept that fact to myself though; Mom worries enough about axe murderers without telling her I probably hitched a ride, but I can’t remember it.

  I do remember waiting for Dr Jonathan. Well, I wasn’t waiting for the actual Dr Jonathan. I was waiting for his signal, to tell me what the plan was going to be. Somehow by that time I knew that he had a plan to take Emma out of the operating room, while she was sedated, and before they cut off her leg. All I had to do was to wait for some sign of where to go to meet him.

  And the signal did come. Suddenly, the thoughts just came into my head of where to go.

  I know it sounds crazy, and this is really as much as I can relay in a way that even remotely makes sense. You know when you have a dream that completely makes sense when you are dreaming it, and you can still remember it when you wake up, but when you try to tell someone about it, you can’t really put it into words? All of a sudden it doesn’t make sense anymore? That time was just like that.