“I’ve got some information that might interest you.”
This one is ‘Making Contact’: Cliff’s voice is an enhanced whisper, the phone too close to his mouth as if his purpose is to freak me out. Seven has just pronounced him my stalker. Here’s my Maverick face coming out of his phone, my eyes uncertain, alert. I was being presented with a wood-effect wardrobe; was he trying to drive me crazy, pretend the furniture is whispering? The hat was hooked over the wardrobe door - that’s how he secretly filmed me that day. The second time he’d hidden himself, if you count the Library. I hold my breath for the attack that’s coming:
“Cliff, can you see why this is bothering me? Can you? Stop and think how weird you’re being. Phoning up a complete stranger, claiming to know secrets about their private family life?”
For the first time I get an objective view of the Smile Blocker in action and let’s just say- it works. Hang on, let’s stay objective here. I was provoked. Isn’t this a valid response?
I re-play my rant at the wardrobe and my phone hang-up on Cliff.
The real story of “Us” must start in the Library: True helping the new boy to access his homework assignment. I offered to shake his hand! He didn’t take me up on it. He crept up on me, passed judgment on my brand new face without revealing his own.
My face was out of control that day- it wasn’t yet mine. He met me on a bad day; my best friend had just stopped talking to me because of the whopping great crater in my face. I need to know if school keeps a record of goings-on in the Library. It’s an educational record isn’t it? They must do. I shall demand that he finds that footage, demand that he puts it in at the start. Why does this feel like I’m on trial?
My bedroom never felt more claustrophobic. I make a point of having a slow stretch. It hurts. ‘True’s Surprise Visit’ is the only one I can’t immediately place, so I play it next. A single pre-rehearsed line pops out of my vast, looming face:
“...wanted to check if you were okay?”
This is after Friday Sport. Cliff was standing at his front door, startled. I was messing with the plot. (Did he have it all pre-scripted in his head, each of our meetings?) He had disappeared straight away- to grab the hat, of course. (That stupid hat didn’t come off again until after the cinema.) Seven had ordered him to show himself, he’d been surrounded, shoved to the ground and hurt. He couldn’t have planned that. My Maverick mouth is open, catching flies. I remember that turquoise scarf.
“Kind of puts you in an awkward position, doesn’t it?” Cliff ‘s voice in neutral. “Having to justify your friend’s behaviour to a Natural.”
I can’t watch this! I tried to apologise for Seven and Cliff forced me to choose between them. What I’ll do is, I’ll get a Merlot- mouth for the final scene- the final climax Cliff’s got coming to him when I finally get my hands on him- and drag a sympathy vote from the viewers. Dad leaving had messed me up, doesn’t my dented face prove that? Perhaps there could be a voiceover, a neutral commentator to explain my loyalty to Seven, our history, how we protect each other.
I open up “Cinema” in a state of fluttering desperation. This is the first time I began to relax in Cliff’s company. At least, I think I did. Yes, you can see from the way I’m holding my face that I want him to like me. Subtle though. I bet he can’t spot what I’m doing with my eyes in the dark; it’s holding him back, suddenly I’m doing well. He certainly acted like he’d had a good time, but then I suppose he would: he was acting. Skip to the end, because it was his lateness that accounts for any tight expressions I may have pulled at the start. I was almost stood up, the whole queue was laughing at me. Oh God, maybe it was some kind of technical delay with all the nanocameras? Perhaps he was learning his lines?
So I’ve got my head back laughing, enveloped in smoke.
“You and Your bad decisions,” rolls Rex Rayne, and it becomes clear that we are having a moment in the aftermath of the plane crash. Cliff is the outsider. What’s he doing watching me in the dark, instead of the film? Wait, it was just the hat watching. (The hat I am going to trample flat.) My Maverick mouth dominates the screen, laughing. It moves how I secretly hoped it might but that’s not the point. It’s Dollar’s final hook: shirtless and glistening against the flames.
Rewind back to Cliff telling me he was Rex Rayne in training; drawing me in with humour to encourage me to turn towards the cameras. Pre-planned trickery? Because it makes for a better scene, doesn’t it? I see that now. Eye contact connects me to my unseen audience. I had to watch him loosen his scarf to eat popcorn and that won’t be in the film, just my frozen face over-reacting to something out of the frame.
I jump forward to a random point. My face is doing a Seven, defying the limits of these humble features of mine. A stampede behind my eyes, the dimple wavers. There it is, and gone again. Am I going to smile? The Smile Blocker swiftly takes care of that. Forest Mortimer lurches into the frame.
Teamwork, they lured me in. Couldn’t know I’d stand in the road of course, but who could refuse Forest? My face is stuck. Forest’s face drops and will my eyes never leave him alone? I assumed he was trying to convert me; he certainly delivered his lines like an actor, a fine Shakespearian type. Now it’s my own face that frightens me, the transparency. I could pay for a PokerFace. Some sort of filter for the emotional range, a cure for loss of face control. Hang on, isn’t that supposed to be my brain? I wish my eyes could empty out like Mum’s did after Dad left.
“Dad. Get the kettle on.”
I’d barely been inside two minutes. Is this a knowing performance by the both of them? Forest’s face has passed out of the frame and I want it back in- as evidence. I re-play the moments in which I first laid eyes on him four, five times, and I still don’t know what happened. That lived-in skin so concealing, I can’t be sure what Forest did with all my shock and horror. How that felt. The soundtrack is Forest’s preaching tone, but there’s an undercurrent of something equally fierce that I missed: protection. My son.
“We meet at last.”
Cliff hammers out a drum roll on the tunnel. He’s so nervous, how come I never noticed? I was terrified too. I am distanced at long last, framed by the rim of the tunnel, peering in. Next there’s my legs, climbing onto the tunnel roof, and leaving Cliff with a circular view of the park. I had to get my back to the sunset. Any eye contact would be a sign of interest, the wrong sort of interest. You can’t see his endless staring, only my profile, on edge. We talk over each other. Cliff’s voice is tighter than I remember it. He laughs like somebody else- he was somebody else, that day.
“I’m not a Natural, I’m an Original.”
I hunch over and study my fingernails. I knew he was deluded, and I was coming up with an exit strategy. My image enlarges a fraction, evidence of his sliding closer. I knew it!
“For future reference: you are allowed to look at me. It’s not against the rules.”
Did I not look closely enough? Did I miss the signs?
“Do you like my hat?” Clever. “I find that people need to see my eyes.”
He expertly draws my gaze back to the nanocameras in order to complete his performance: falling off the tunnel. A sliding mass of evening sky as he drops, and my panicking face over a twisted shoulder, from above. The hat is lifted back on him and it jerks down. To finish, a lurching shot of my whole self abandoned on the tunnel, moving in and out of the edges of the frame as he lopes away. Not lopes, struts. I’m going to kill him.
‘Protest’: my screen shows nothing that makes sense, blurred shapes and shouting. That’s Forest’s blood on the pavement. Cliff’s fedora had come off with the scarf, now it’s back on his head, because he’s filming me over the other side of the street, next to Otis. Intensely avoiding Cliff’s face all over again. This is the only scene in which I wish my face were closer, my expression clearer in the frame. Cliff got me all wrong that day.
“See?” I tap myself on the screen and my face disappears under a finger. “My face is a container full of
things you missed.”
I’m talking aloud to my empty bedroom and I’m sick of the sight of my unedited face. I don’t care about ‘My New Avatar.’ This can’t end on PsychoCliff leaving me in the classroom in the dark. What about my hands slipped under the scarf? Did I imagine the invitation in his eyes when he let me touch and hold his face? The hands he pushed away. But it started in those grey eyes, and all the other hidden ones. I am going to rip that mask right off.
I’m halfway out the door when Dad bellows from the kitchen.
“You here for dinner?”
Is absolutely everybody monitoring me? Dad has got his sleeves rolled up, dicing wildly. He cuts like a machine, all the vegetables into matching cubes.
“You okay, sweetheart? You look like you saw a ghost.”
He sends me a mild smile, he’s had a hands-off parenting thing going on since his return. He understands he stepped out of my world and he’s looking for a route back in. Food’s a lot better though, more reliable. Plus Mum needs the company.
“I’m in a rush- I’ll sort myself something later.” I say.
I get a sudden surge of irritation at this cosy picture of Returned Dad, slotting right back into the gaping hole he left behind.
“Mum saw you with a woman at the supermarket. The day you spoke to Mum?”
Dad frowns, mentally scrolling through female faces. He’s such a Done Deal, such a Dad, I can’t see him ever fascinating women. I never saw him attempt the Dollar gaze, thank God. Many have tried and failed.
“Mum says she was a right Marilyn.”
Dad’s face slides smoothly into recognition without guilt.
“Oh, yeah. As your mum left the supermarket, I noticed this woman staring at her, and at me: look at that evil man, not offering to carry the heavily pregnant lady’s bags! Turns out I was wrong. It was Begin- you remember her? Mum’s old friend from school?”
“The one that used to apologise all the time.”
“Yeah, she said, so sorry to interrupt, but she’d just moved back to the area and she wanted to catch up with Mum. I told her to give her a ring. I think she sensed the atmosphere. The aisles were seething with the aftermath of Mum’s rage.”
He looks delighted at his own description.
“How come Mum didn’t recognise her?”
“She was a right Marilyn. It hadn’t taken, that face. You know when you try not to stare.”
“Mum thought she was your girlfriend.”
This is not strictly true, but I enjoy his face.
“Funny she hasn’t mentioned it. I’ll talk to her about it when she wakes up.”
Dad seems to be getting something out of my face too. He goes bit soppy over Daimon, the son he almost gave up, and it oozes into other things. Babies do that. I wonder if things will ever get back to normal between us, or if normal has to be different now.
“You know, I got so desperate to see you when you wouldn’t answer my messages, he says, “I’d even go into shops and examine the Ultiface Update boxes, searching for a glimpse of my daughter behind Merlot’s latest- whatever. It threw me when Mum said you’d gone Maverick.”
“Did you find me? On the packaging?”
Dad goes back to chopping vegetables extra fast, the kitchen super-hero and his reply is drowned out.
“Dad, stop chopping for a sec. What did you say?”
“Of course not! You’re more than a picture to me.”
Chapter Thirty-One
I slam the front door and hear the cry of Daimon rise up behind it. It’s supposed to be his nap time- his and Mum’s. I’m gone though.
I check my appearance in the reflective house on the corner: my face is fixed and moving fast on angry limbs. I hate what he’s already done to me, made me check my face for give-aways. Hold that expression, battle-ready. They could market me right now as the polar opposite to Merlot. No joke.
As I walk I plan what I’m going to do when Cliff answers the door. I’ll let him fetch that damn hat like last time- if he dares -then I’ll snatch it straight off his smug head and trample it on the pavement and that will be the finale for “Us,” the nanocameras crunching one by one under my feet, no faces at all, then triumphant darkness.
Instead, I get Penny Mortimer looking down on me from her doorstep. She pulls her half-smile and those front teeth come out to perch on her bottom lip, it’s the right tooth that overlaps the left, I feel my return smile Block. This not-good-enough girl demands instant access to her Original son. I must conceal my intent. (I preferred her when she was asleep.)
“I guess you’re after Cliff?” Penny says.
“Yep.”
Her voice was testing the water. Mine comes out like a challenge.
“I’m afraid he’s out” she says
How come he always gets to hide? To escape when it suits him?
“He’s been out all day...” Penny continues, “... actually, he left these.”
Penny turns and crosses to the bottom of the stairs, reappearing with Cliff’s grey scarf unwound across one hand, and his fedora clasped in the other. We regard them in silence. The fedora makes me nervous. I get this sudden lurch that maybe Penny is in on the whole film trick, she’s holding that evil hat at my face level after all, but I change my mind pretty fast. It’s obvious that she’s worried sick about him, but she’s not about to come right out and say it, not yet- not when your kid is sixteen. I guess he swopped scarves before he went out. But the fedora hurts; was that item only ever part of the uniform in my presence?
“We had an argument, Cliff and I.” Penny begins. “I decided to set a new house rule: no scarves indoors. Not in our house, because you know what we believe? We didn’t bring him up to feel ashamed.” I nod, and she continues. “Cliff had been in a bad mood since breakfast so...my timing...well, anyway... I made my demand and the next thing I know he is ripping off his scarf and storming out of the house. He wouldn’t show me his face.”
Penny’s eyes trail to the end of their street, indicating the direction of his exit. My face must have let slip her son matters, because now she’s looking at me like, maybe I’m not the enemy.
“I hoped he might be going to meet his Dad out the front of Ultiface, because he had on one of our t-shirts.” Penny continues, “the one that has a white arrow pointing up to the face, and says: “£23.99? Priceless Original...”
“I’ve seen them.”
“...but Forest hasn’t seen Cliff all day either; and Cliff won’t answer my calls. I was hoping he was with you...”
I shake my head. “Not today.”
“They’re all taking their scarves off outside Ultiface today. The whole crowd.”
Penny seems to expect further questions.
“I expect you’re wondering why I’m not there?” she adds.
Actually I wasn’t; Cliff is outside with a bare face?
“I don’t go along when they all take their scarves off together.” Penny wraps her arms around herself. “There is usually trouble of some sort. I can’t bear it.”
“I can trace him.” I say, and pull my phone out of my pocket.
“Should you...will he mind?” Penny says.
I shrug. “He can always turn his phone off. If the phone is on, he wants to be found.”
“Not by Mum.”
Kind of obvious, but I don’t say. She must know her signal would be on a permanent block. I mean, we’re not little kids. I select Cliff’s last form of contact: the text with all the attached film footage of my unknowing face. I have been captured forever; he is free to do what he likes with his precious Original face. Withhold it from friends, or give it out to any old random strangers on the streets.
“I tried already,” Penny blurts. “He blocks me.”
I smile at her, my real half-dimpled smile and she smiles back with all her funny teeth. When I look back to my phone screen the map has come up, and I see at once that he is on the move and in the vicinity of Ultiface. Any minute now Merlot will be laying her sad gaze up
on Cliff, curved as if into an invisible wind. Unless he walks differently now: the Original filmmaker in his Original t-shirt, the successful manipulator and actor. He always did have a tendency to strut.
“I’ve got him. He’s almost at Ultiface.” I tell Penny.
I keep the map open but move it aside, because I’ve had a message from Seven and it’s called ‘True ‘n’ Cliff: hot or not?’ I open it up and there’s the photo she took of me in my bedroom, with my Smile Blocker face mockingly thrust up close to my first ever portrait, clearly labelled ‘Repulsive Cliff.’ She has sent it to everyone. It was sent first thing this morning. I jerk the screen away from the roving eyes of Penny, but Penny has seen something on my face. I lower my gaze and try to summon my dimple with a vision of Dollar as Rex Rayne, sleeping attractively in a tight white t-shirt in the dawn light. But a different memory comes: the feel of her son’s face in my hands. I manage to smile at Penny. Now I must get to Cliff.
It’s at least a half an hour walk to Ultiface via the High Street. I consider a detour home to get the car, but that would mean avoiding parents, waiting in traffic, this way I keep moving. A lot can change in half an hour. I’m barely out of Cliff’s road when he turns off his phone; he’ll have got a warning that his location was requested and obtained by me. I try to imagine Cliff’s Original face defiant, to the gathering crowd. No image comes, only the certainty of his voice.
I see myself in a shop window and imagine myself into some kind of stupid frilly gown of washed-out peach, taking his arm, Cliff in black tie, because we’re off to attend the film premiere dahhhling- the premiere of “Us”! How perfect. No, what was his title, again? Beyond the Mask: Girl Meets Boy. Boy Traps Girl. Boy Lies.
The High Street is the usual flow of neat faces and interchangeable features that fit. The perfect symmetry of people making use of their local amenities, designed and recycled to fit and balance their every need. Their eyes summon me without meaning to, the empty glow of their Updates are the brightest thing on a grey day. A retro heavy-lidded version of Merlot moves into my visual field, I turn my head away. A pair of golden eyes on a young man talking with Dollar lips, the Dollar lips twist, it’s the PsychoDollar sneer used as an everyday greeting. Reminds me of Daimon’s face twisting gently, curiously at himself in the mirrored surface of his toy cube. Daimon’s face covered in silky rows of teddies. Rows of teddies that are: grinning, scowling, laughing, howling, snoozing, repeat to the edge. Next line, and repeat. One day, what will Daimon’s face say to strangers?
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