The Bone Dragon

by Alexia Casale

  Through the curtain of my hair, I see Lynne and Phee huddled together. Jenny’s mum is standing next to them, white-faced, her arm around about Phee’s heaving shoulders. Lynne’s mascara has run. A line of snot glints, oozing down to the curve of her lip. Her tongue darts out to lick it away. She smears the rest across her face with her hand.

  Behind them, most of our year are hovering, staring at me.

  Jenny’s mum keeps sniffing. Sniffing and apologising. Well, sometimes apologising. Mostly she just keeps going on and on about the fact that she ‘wasn’t to know Sonny Rawlins would do something as reckless’ as pushing me in the pool, how ‘he’d always seemed a bit troubled’ but she’d ‘never thought he’d take his bullying to a physical level with a girl’ and how she couldn’t have known that she shouldn’t have let Jenny invite him . . .

  I am almost grateful for the regular interruptions from the doctors and nurses who’ve bundled me into a hospital gown and wrapped me in blankets. X-rayed me and listened to my chest. Checked my blood pressure and my temperature. And asked me a full million questions about what hurts, and where, and how much.

  Through it all, Jenny’s mum has paced back and forth wringing her hands – literally wringing her hands – and saying that she doesn’t know what she is going to tell Amy when she arrives.

  I suppose I should be grateful that she is in such a state: she hasn’t even noticed all the times I’ve ignored or deflected the curious questions of the nurses and doctors about how exactly I’d managed to injure my ribs that way. Paul and I agreed a while back that consultants have to know, but that doctors and nurses don’t. They need to know what is wrong but satisfying their idle curiosity about how my ribcage ended up in pieces isn’t necessary: it doesn’t make a blind bit of difference to their ability to look after me.

  I tap the oxygen monitor clipped over my index finger against the mattress and blow out a heavy sigh.

  ‘Shall I get you something to eat, Evie? How about another cup of hot chocolate?’

  The first cup was grey and grainy with sugar: they’d said the sugar would help the shock wear off and the heat would bring my temperature back up to normal. But they had all agreed that my lungs were clear, my ribs didn’t seem to be injured any further, and that I wasn’t hypothermic or anything else.

  A woman in one of the other A & E beds sets up a steady groaning. My fingers twitch with the urge to go over and tell her to shut up. No one groans like that when they’re in the throes of agony. Each of these groans is perfectly crafted: a row of fat little clichés.

  ‘Oh dear,’ says Jenny’s mother, practising her hand-wringing some more. ‘Oh, oh, do you think I should go and find a nurse?’

  I close my eyes and breathe rhythmically. Maybe Jenny is adopted too because I kind of always figured that women who’d had kids knew all about proper pain, but Jenny’s mum is oblivious to the fact that the groaning woman needs to be reminded of the story of the boy who cried wolf.

  I listen to the sounds of the ward, thankful that it’s only lunchtime. When I fell off my bike a year ago, and Amy and Paul insisted we come to the hospital to check that my melon-sized ankle wasn’t broken, it was evening, so my first experience of A & E was that it was full of drunk people yelling, screaming, sobbing. Not to mention all the drunk friends and relatives who were also yelling, screaming and sobbing. It’s a relief that today the biggest problem is the fussers. I’m coming round to the conclusion that it’s kind of nice to be taken to the hospital, even if I don’t need to be here. A nice change from cleaning myself up in the bathroom and then making sure I didn’t gasp or moan no matter how much my ribs hurt when I had to pick up my school backpack the next morning.

  A nurse turns up to deal with the groaner. There are some hiccupy tears. Then someone comes fast-marching down the ward, the way Amy does when she’s really stressed.

  ‘It’s just this one here. We closed the curtains to . . .’ someone says.

  The rest is lost in the angry whoosh as the curtains are ripped open.

  ‘Evie,’ Amy says.

  Just ‘Evie’. She looks me up and down in the time it takes to step up to the edge of the bed. One hand cups my cheek and the other strokes my hair as she presses a fierce kiss to my forehead. ‘What have they given you for the pain?’

  ‘Codeine. I asked for . . .’

  Amy kisses my forehead again, already turning to the nurse. ‘My daughter needs a prescription for some Oramorph to take home with us. A hundred-millilitre bottle will do.’

  The nurse makes a face that she clearly thinks is sympathetic and apologetic. ‘Well, we do prefer to avoid giving morphine to adolescents unless there’s a serious injury. You see . . .’

  ‘My daughter is recovering from chest surgery. She’s got a three-inch gap in her ribcage, fresh scarring and bones that haven’t finished healing, so you’d better not think to tell me that getting shoved into a pool, having to be fished out by a lifeguard and coughing her lungs out to expel all the water she breathed in doesn’t require some decent pain relief. I want to speak to the duty doctor as soon as she’s available. In the meantime, you go and tell her that my daughter needs some pain relief that will actually relieve her pain.’

  The nurse pulls a different face (this one is not in the least apologetic) and stomps off.

  ‘Oh Amy,’ says Jenny’s mum, showing off her freshly honed hand-wringing skills. ‘Oh Amy, I’m so sorry about all this. I never dreamt . . .’

  ‘Thanks for coming to the hospital with Evie, Janet,’ Amy interrupts. ‘But please could you be quiet and give me a few minutes to see how my daughter is.’

  Jenny’s mother’s mouth actually falls open. I know how she feels. She mumbles something completely inarticulate and goes away. Amy has eased herself on to the edge of the bed on my right side even before Jenny’s mum is gone. One hand is now gently massaging the knots around my left shoulder blade, while the other continues to stroke my hair.

  ‘Have they said anything about the water you swallowed?’ Amy asks.

  ‘They keep fussing because they don’t understand my ribs, but I’m fine. Just . . .’ I cut myself off. I don’t want to think about how humiliated I am, about what everyone will be saying back at the party, let alone what they’ll all say at school on Monday.

  Amy tilts my face up gently and looks into my eyes. She stops stroking my hair long enough to rummage in her handbag.

  ‘I brought your dragon,’ she says.

  And just like that my eyes flood with tears and the pain in my chest is solid and heavy.

  ‘Oh, Evie, I thought you might like . . .’

  ‘Want,’ I gasp, having to force so hard to get the word out around the pain that my voice goes all squashed. I am grabbing for the little pot with the yellow lid before Amy has even drawn it fully out of the bag. I let her adjust me so that I’m sitting back against her chest and her arms are around me and because it’s Amy I don’t have to remind her to keep her left arm high so it doesn’t press against my rib.

  I fumble the Dragon out of the pot and push it against my breastbone. It’s a lovely clean pain, sharp and fresh as tea with lemon. I pant through the urge to cry: shallow little puffs against the pain in my ribs and the other pain in the middle of my chest, like terror and fury and hurt all fused together.

  ‘Blue pill,’ I grit out, knowing that Amy will have one with her: she always carries a little box with some of my painkillers and blue pills just in case.

  ‘We need to ask the doctor, Evie.’

  Without intending to, I make a sharp high noise in the back of my throat. That’s what agony sounds like, I think, my head twitching in the direction of the groaner.

  Amy kisses the side of my head as she gropes one-handed in her bag for the pillbox. She flicks the box’s catch up and the moment she shakes the contents out on to my palm, I cram the little powder-blue oblong into my mouth. Dry-swallowing it makes me cough but Amy pats my back in just the right way, in just the right place to stop the cough w
ithout hurting my ribs. Once I’ve tipped the remaining pills back into the box and she’s put it away again in her bag, she goes back to kneading the muscles in my shoulder without my needing to ask.

  ‘There was a crooked man,’ she whispers, breath warm against my hair.

  ‘And he . . . he walked a crooked mile,’ I gasp. ‘He found a crooked sixpence . . . Upon a cr-crooked stile.’

  The Dragon is safe in my hand and I fix an image of it in the front of my mind, painting the words of the nursery rhyme beneath, not letting the other things creep in from the sides.

  The curtain rustles and my eyes open before I think to stop them, but it’s just a draught.

  ‘He had a crooked cat,’ Amy says.

  The room is all distorted in ways I can’t put my finger on. And there are things at the edges of my vision. Like wisps of curtain or cobweb. And I know that there are pictures on them, like the web that the Lady of Shalott wove.

  ‘He had a crooked cat,’ Amy says again.

  ‘And it . . . it caught . . . it caught a crooked, a crooked mouse.’

  Amy kisses my hair.

  The rhyme is like the Lady’s weaving. If I stop, if I let myself look at those things in the corner, I’ll call down the curse: the web will float wide and engulf me, dragging me down into those pictures. Because I know that they’re pictures of Fiona, and her parents, and their house: real things that aren’t real any more. They’re just fragments now, hovering ghosts, making the room grow cold.

  ‘And they all lived together in a little crooked house.’

  ‘A little crooked house,’ I echo, squeezing my eyes closed. ‘A little crooked house.’

  ‘There was a crooked man,’ Amy whispers into my hair, soft and gentle and patient. ‘And he walked a crooked mile.’

  Over and over we go: the crooked man in his crooked world. And then slowly, slowly the room warms. It begins to bob very slightly, dipping gently from side to side, as if we’re on water. In a boat on the water.

  I sigh, feel Amy’s hot breath in my hair as she does too.

  The cold and fear and fury in my chest are being put to sleep. Their claws no longer dig into my heart and lungs. They have stopped snarling and writhing in my chest. It’s all growing quiet and calm.

  I open my eyes and watch the room rock me gently. There’s nothing in the corners now. They’re just blurred and misty: my field of vision is narrowed down, all the edges blunted. I blink around a yawn: my eyelids sink lazily, rise reluctantly, like Lynne chasing after a netball when it gets knocked out of bounds. Bounds? Is that the right word for netball? Out . . . When it gets knocked out . . .

  I sigh and yawn again.

  ‘How’re your ribs feeling?’ Amy asks.

  Another yawn. ‘’S OK. Don’t care any more.’

  I love the blue pills. Dr Barstow suggested them. My GP wasn’t sure but agreed to let me try them and they’re the best thing ever. They’re only for emergencies, so I don’t take them very often. Just when I can’t stand it. When everything slips sideways as if I’ve fallen into a nightmare without ever falling asleep and it’s like being dragged down a rabbit hole by a rabbit that’s all black and snarling, red eyes and sharp teeth and claws . . . The blue pills push the world away a few steps, let me float beyond it for a while.

  I know my ribs hurt, but the pain is a few paces off to the side. It doesn’t bother me there.

  I should be huddled, shivering, on the edge of the playing field, with Lynne and Phee getting told off for ignoring the ball and coming over to chat to me. I should be splitting my attention between the desultory lacrosse game and my stupid pencil case, the shivering making me even clumsier with the big needle than usual until I end up accidentally shoving it halfway down under one of my fingernails and give up. But I’m not sitting there, biting my hair, wishing that Phee and Lynne would come over to distract me. Instead, I’m in the headmistress’s office with Amy and Paul, waiting for Mrs Henderson to finish her business in the anteroom with her secretary, so that we can talk about Sonny Rawlins.

  It’s the perfect opportunity to focus on how much I hate him: it’s probably the one time when no one would fault me for thinking of nothing else. But for some reason even I can’t put my finger on, I am not cooperating with Amy’s attempts to make his life as miserable as possible.

  I try to concentrate on making out Mrs Henderson’s voice from behind the office door, but there are too many other people talking out there and, in any case, I don’t really care what she’s got to say. Paul shifts with a sigh and rubs at the bridge of his nose. Amy glares at him, then sets about arranging her skirt over her knees in little pleats. Paul heaves in a deep breath as if he’s going to sigh again, then makes a face and lets his breath out silently.

  Amy, Paul and I are fed up with each other. Amy wants to show me that they’re ready to stick up for me and not let anyone else get away with hurting me. I get it. I really do. And I appreciate it. I really, really do, but . . . But I’m not quite sure what. Just but. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that it’s Amy who’s baying for blood, while Paul seems oddly unwilling to rock the boat at school by bringing in the police or lawyers. So Amy’s cross with Paul, while I’m openly cross with Amy for pushing and less openly cross with Paul because he’s not.

  I’m actually looking forward to talking it over tonight with Ms Winters: maybe she’ll be able to help me figure it out, provided she’s done apologising, that is. She came over the day after the thing at the pool, all distraught that she’d somehow ignored hints that something like this would happen . . . But I was so matter-of-fact about how even I hadn’t ever expected Sonny Rawlins to do more than pinch me in the corridor that the weird spots of colour in her cheeks faded away and she went all normal again. Then Amy made us each a huge mug of hot chocolate and she stayed to play Cluedo with us for an hour.

  But I was being funny about the whole thing even then: when Ms Winters swore she would make sure Mrs Henderson understood that the thing at the pool wasn’t a one-off, I told her not to. She thought it was because I didn’t want her to say anything about what we talk about together, but that’s not it. Or not really. It’s all part of how upside-down I am – how upside-down we all are – about what happened.

  I mean, I get that this thing about Sonny Rawlins is all mixed up in my mind with Fiona and her parents, not just for me but for Amy and Paul too. I get it, but I don’t get quite why I don’t want there to be a big fuss about what Sonny Rawlins did. Maybe it’s partly because the whispering that follows me about school is bad enough already, let alone the fact that people from other years have started coming up to ask me whether Sonny Rawlins has been arrested and whether I’m going to testify at the trial. But that’s not really it.

  Amy said we should go to the police and press charges and everything. Not that Sonny Rawlins would go to prison or anything, but it still wouldn’t be much fun for him. Only I hate talking to the police. I get all the stuff Uncle Ben told me about the fact that it’s their job to explore whether what you say will hold up in court, but they’re not very nice about it. The woman who took my statement about Fiona and her parents was awful. I hate her ten times more than I could ever hate Sonny Rawlins. She wouldn’t let me talk around things. And then she wrote up everything I said with about seven billion spelling mistakes and no grammar. All those things she’d made me say that I’d never said out loud before . . . that I never would have said out loud, not to anyone, ever . . . and she wrote them all up with spelling mistakes.

  The door clicks open and as Mrs Henderson comes in, crossing to sit behind her desk, I turn my thoughts gratefully from the memories.

  Mrs Henderson leans casually back, propping her elbows on the arms of her chair and steepling her fingers together. ‘Sorry about that,’ she says, smiling, but her fingers collapse down into a white-knuckled grip. I miss what she says next in the hope that she’ll turn her hands over and do ‘and here’s all the people’, fingers waving like centipede legs when yo
u accidentally tip one over lifting a garden stone to see what’s lurking underneath.

  ‘Evie?’ Amy prompts, and I realise they’re all waiting for a response to a question I didn’t hear.

  Mrs Henderson sighs, pushing her hands back into the steeple position, and I wonder if this is an unconscious attempt to pray for patience. ‘What do you think we should do, Evie?’

  What does she expect me to say? ‘Please could you boil him in oil?’ Perhaps they think they’re giving me an opportunity to get it out of my system, but I don’t want to get angry if all they’re going to do is listen. And I’m not going to give them the chance to try to talk me round to whatever it is they’ve already decided to do.

  ‘I think Sonny Rawlins is a rotten bully, but he probably did just mean to push me in, like you’d push anyone else. And he might have known it would hurt me a bit more, but I don’t think he realised what would happen,’ I say, though I don’t understand why. I’d quite like Sonny Rawlins to drop dead in a ditch after all.

  ‘Well, Evie, that’s a very mature perspective on things,’ Mrs Henderson says. The long, polished nails on her right hand slide under the long, polished nails on her left.

  ‘We all know Evie’s very mature,’ Amy snaps. Paul leans over, as if to take one of her hands, but she shifts away from him, shoving them into her pockets.

  ‘I’m very pleased to see that you understand Sonny’s motivation, Evie,’ Mrs Henderson says quickly, and slightly too loudly, ‘but you didn’t tell me what you thought about his punishment.’

  I shrug, keeping my gaze fixed on her hands. Her fingers have been scratching reflexively at a mark on her folder. Now a little piece of polish flakes away. The muscles in her cheek work as she glares down at the ragged patch of yellow showing through the white polish painted on to the tip of the nail.