Tainted Touch

by Lucy V. Morgan

  I’ve barely touched the prologue when my phone rings. Mom. Fabulous.

  “Hey,” I say, sitting up and tightening the belt of my bathrobe.

  “Caitlyn. How’s everything?” Mom’s voice is curt. She uses exactly as many words as she needs; no more and no less. You can imagine what it was like trying to argue with her when I was younger.

  “Everything’s fine,” I lie. Mom means well, but she’s about as comforting as a swift kick in the ovaries.

  “Good. Have you heard from your sister this week?”

  I pause briefly to count the days. “Spoke to her on Monday. Why?”

  “Did she seem alright?”

  “Yeah, of course.” I reach down and give the thick wad of book in my lap a squeeze, as if Mills still lingers on the pages. “Is–is something wrong with her?”

  Mom sighs. “She’s been in bed most of the weekend. Sleeping.”

  Mills does not sleep easy. She’s been an insomniac since we were kids. “Isn’t that…good?”

  “Under normal circumstances, yes. But she had an essay back this week, Caitlyn. It wasn’t quite up to her usual standard.” She puts hesitant emphasis on those last two words. “She was very upset about it, and while I thought it would pass…I think it might not be the first bad result she’s had recently.”

  “Mom. A bad result for Mills is like, a C.”

  “But a C won’t get her into Cambridge,” she says bluntly. “Will it?”

  I actually can’t remember the last time she got a C. I grew up thinking she was incapable of anything below a B+. “Did she say much about it?”

  “No. Point-blank refused. I offered to speak to her teachers–”

  “Oh God, no. Just no.” I’m an hour away from the woman, but I’m cringing like she’s right in front of me. “You know that never goes well.”

  She huffs. “I only do it because I care about you. Those teachers, they just push her and push her, and I warned that Mr Picklington that she’d burn out if they weren’t caref–”

  “Mom. Mills is not burning out, okay? So there’s one bad–well, badish–result that you know of. Fussing over her isn’t going to help. You know she hates it.”

  “And you know I’m only worried. I’d be the same if it was you.” She gives another heaving sigh. “Could you make time for a visit this weekend?”

  “Ah…I’ve got to work. Sorry.” Guilt stirs beneath my breastbone the minute I say the words. It’s not Mom’s fault she can’t afford to help me out with uni and I’ve never thought that she should, but now the notion hangs there anyway. “I could invite her up here, though? Does she still have the afternoon off on Fridays?”

  “I think so. If she’s not out with those kids.” You’d think that Mom would approve of someone named Loki, but according to her, you can’t get away with that kind of thing unless your dad was in a seventies rock band. “Shall I suggest it?”

  “No. I’ll sort it out. Don’t tell her you spoke to me, okay?”

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because if she wanted me to know, she’d have told me.”

  More huffing. She treats it like performance art. My mother: nagging, the percussion section. “Fine, fine. But please don’t forget, Caitlyn.”

  Pointless as it is, I give the book another squeeze. “I won’t.”

  “Your course isn’t giving you any trouble, is it?”

  “No more than usual,” I grumble. “I’m not stressing over it, if that’s what you mean.”

  “Good.”

  Silence. I consider asking how her canvassing is going, but think better of it. If I’m going to self-medicate, it’ll be with cake and Pepsi–not a fat dose of her righteous anger.

  “I’ll let you get back to your studies, then,” she says dryly, as if we both know it’s not what I’m doing. “Take care, poppet.”

  “You too.”

  The line goes dead. Minutes, like words, are not wasted in her wake.

  Before I end up dwelling on that, I bash out a text to Mills and then return to the book. Reading it will make me feel closer to her, and we’ll have something to talk about when she visits. Plus I feel seriously guilty for not starting it until now.

  Turns out The Waves is what you might call a slow starter. The main character, Grace, is seemingly alone in this dystopian near-future, and holes herself up in this lighthouse at the ends of the earth to stare at the sea a lot and mull over all the mistakes she’s made. Grace is not a people person; she pushed away family, snubbed friends, jilted lovers. So far, the most dystopian thing about the book is the freaking decor–the woman spends a whole chapter peeling the paint off her windowsill before running out and chucking the flecks of dried emulsion into the sea. She tossed the peelings off the edge of the cliff, but they caught in a grey fist of ocean wind that spat them right back at her. Then she kills a seagull with a slingshot, names it after her lost love, and plucks it to roast.

  Screw this. I’m baking.

  ***

  “So.” I hold up the plate. Rich and Drew lean in, their foreheads creased with concentration. “Cupcakes. Are we ready?”

  “And here’s one you made earlier?” Rich quips.

  “Here’s a whole dozen I made earlier. Well. Yesterday.” I nod to the plate, which holds a neat circle of fluffy chocolate mounds in silver paper cases. “We’ll start with vanilla, like I said. Recipe’s in the book, which I’ve put by the sink. Ingredients are next to it.”

  Drew eyes my careful display of bowls with a curled upper lip. “We can weigh shit, you know.”

  “And you will. I just like the bowls.”

  Rich snorts at me. “Lemme guess–made a nice photo?”

  “Maybe.” I crack a grin. “You love my food photos.”

  “I just wish they were scratch and sniff.”

  “I thought you said there were a dozen?” Drew jabs a finger at the cakes.

  “Vicky found them. And she was majorly hungover.” Also, feeding her meant I didn’t have to tell her about Art. Or Dominic. So long as nobody knows about that stuff, I can use my favourite strategy and just pretend it isn’t happening. I managed to miss Art almost completely yesterday at work–he was on some long out-call to a rugby club, and then I deliberately didn’t swim. Avoidance: it works for longer than you think, people.

  Drew gives Rich a sly nudge in the ribs. “Hear that? Vicky likes a chocolate injection in the morning.”

  “I’m aware of that,” he mumbles, looking away.

  “Oi. I’m right here, remember? She’s my best friend!”

  Drew’s palm lands over his heart with a soft thump. “Rub it in, why don’t you?”

  “You’re my best man friends.” For a second, I consider patting his arm, but then think better of it. After Saturday night, just the notion of touch makes me shudder. “Happy?”

  He huffs like my mom. “Maybe. But mostly just hungry. How long do these take, again?”

  “Three hours if you include cooling time and frosting.”

  “Fuck that for a bucket of ball juice.”

  “Jeez, Drew.” Rich tugs at the cuffs of his preppy mandigan (turquoise with electric blue cuffs, today). “Why’d you have to be so crude?”

  “Because that’s what best man friends are for,” he retorts.

  “Are we actually going to cook anything today?” I lean against the counter with my arms folded.

  “I dunno. I need to re-rank my friends by gender.”

  “Oh, sod off,” I grunt.

  “What crawled up your arse and died?”

  Rich claws at his face. “Drew!”

  “What? She’s in a bad mood. Don’t tell me you’re hungover as well, Cait.” He peers at me from beneath coiled tendrils of hair. “Are you…?”

  “It’s Monday morning, for crying out loud.”

  “And while that itself is depressing, you’ve got more than a Monday face on,” he insists. “Come on.”

  Aaaaand here it comes.

  “‘Sup.”

&
nbsp; “Nothing’s up,” I spit back.

  Rich finishes organising the bowls in order of size, and turns to face me. “You do seem a bit more…on edge than usual.”

  Inch by inch, I drag my eyes around each corner of the kitchen. Cupboard of Shame. Dishwasher. Spice rack. Limp, miserable potted basil. As if everything wasn’t crap enough, I’ve offended them with the whole man friend thing and I know they only mean well. But I can’t possibly tell them about what happened with Art.

  Drew lowers his tone. “Is it…you know who?”

  “What? Voldemort?” Rich says, scowling.

  “Yeah, utterly humped and dumped me,” I say dryly. “No-nose bastard.”

  There’s a brief clatter as Drew knocks the recipe book over. He shoots down to catch it, fumbling through his own gangly legs. “Fuck. I’m sorry–who humped and dumped you? Because it had better not be who I think it is.”

  “But most other people would be okay?” Rich wrinkles his brow. “I’m missing something here, right?”

  My cheeks roar with a violent blush. And yet asking for their point of view could balm the whole man friend thing, right? That’s what friends do: they confide in each other, no matter how embarrassed they are or how unattractive it makes them feel. Why did I even pause here? It’s created this awkward sense of foreboding and now the whole room is holding its breath. Even the freaking basil.

  “I had a date on Saturday night,” I mumble eventually.

  “Hold up.” Drew shakes an accusing finger. “Is this Mr Drum Roll? Mr Fuck Off Drew, I’ve Got a Lift?”

  “Maybe.” I snatch a cupcake off the plate and shove the whole frosted top into my mouth so I don’t have to look at them.

  “And he’s not…the ex, right?”

  I attempt answering through cake, but then settle for a shake of my head.

  “Well that’s something.” Drew presses his lips together. “Wait–hang on. He humped and dumped you? Do I have to fuck shit up?”

  Rich clucks his tongue against his teeth. “Because that solves everything.”

  “He d’nnn hmph mih!” I make three hard attempts to swallow, and wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. “I didn’t sleep with him, all right? It just…it was a complete mind fuck.”

  Bowls clink as Rich returns to his organising. He gives a soft little sigh. “Ugh. Mental gash-and-dash. I think it’s actually worse than the other kind.”

  Drew spreads his hands, eyebrows raised in disgust. “And he says I’m crude?”

  I shrink back against the counter, although my nerves have dulled and the blush has dimmed. “He’s been flirting with me since he started, and then on Saturday, he asked me out after work. Everything seemed great–like, he was finding these excuses to touch me and being extra flirty–but then he brought me back here, went to kiss me and then just…” I take a deep breath. “Stopped. He just stopped.”

  The boys are quiet for a moment. I think Rich is actually staring at the fireman calendar for an excuse to look at anything but me. Mr March smirks back, clutching a yellow helmet to his groin while he salutes at the camera.

  Eventually, Drew clears his throat. “Well that’s just weird.”

  “Stopped? I mean like, froze completely?” Rich asks, incredulous.

  I give a defeated shrug. “He got me up against the door–”

  Drew stiffens at this.

  “–And then he went in to kiss me…but stopped. And then stepped back and told me he’d had a nice night, blah blah. It was literally as if he changed his mind.”

  “Didn’t you ask him what was up?” says Drew.

  “How would that’ve gone, exactly? I’d have looked like one of those desperate, insecure clingy girls who overanalyses everything.” I throw myself back to that moment in the hall with Art, right after he stepped away from me. Yeah. ‘Sup would have made me look so suave. Though I totally am overanalysing.

  “But it’s fucking weird,” he insists. “People who make the decision to be weird should be held accountable and shit.”

  “He’s not weird! He just didn’t want me, okay? And it’s made me feel like crap, so just give it a rest.” I snatch the book from Drew’s hands, trying to ignore the shock on his face. “Let’s just bake these stupid cakes.”

  “I’m sorry, Cait,” he says quietly.

  Tears needle the backs of my eyeballs, and my whole head goes thick and prickly. My mouth tastes like the bitter end of dark chocolate. “It’s my fault. I should never have brought it up. I’m sorry.”

  Rich gives the book in my hands a little shove. “Men are just a bunch of dicks, aren’t they?”

  Despite everything, I crack a smile at that one. “In a manner of speaking.” But the smile dissolves with the tears that follow, and before I can man the hell up and compose myself, I’m weeping. In front of my friends. Crap.

  They descend immediately, dragging me between their chests into a lump of solid, citrusy boy flesh. I turn to lead weight in grim anticipation, but neither seems to notice and I don’t have the heart to push them away. Look at me, sobbing just because of a stupid bloke. I want to tell Rich and Drew that it’s not just him–it’s a huge mess of issues that Dominic dragged up just in time for the crapsplosion of Art. How convenient. Maybe he’s gone some sort of siren that goes off in his head–warning! Caitlyn is almost HAPPY!

  A voicemail is locked away in the recesses of my phone; it appeared this morning after a missed call from an unknown number. Very clever, Dominic. But I’m not listening.

  Drew rubs my back in soft strokes. “Was it really that bad?”

  “No,” I sniff. “I just mentally chopped a heap of onions.”

  “You,” Rich says accusingly to his brother, “royally suck at this.”

  “Like you’re much better.”

  “I know what it’s like,” Rich mutters. “With…you know.”

  “Vickdemort,” Drew supplies helpfully.

  “Drew. That was bad.” Nothing like godawful smithery to pull me out of my funk. I roll my shoulders between the boys in a tired attempt at a hint, and though they seem reluctant, they do back away a little. Most of my tears are soaked into a damp patch on Rich’s mandigan, and the rest melt with a few blinks. “But I appreciate the effort.”

  Drew glances about. “Where is Vickdemort?”

  “Do I look like her mother?”

  Rich looks like he wants to die. He’s perfected the expression now–his eyebrows sail skyward as his mouth forms a flat line. Something to do with twenty years in Drew’s company, I imagine. “I don’t care where she is.”

  “She’s probably at uni, to be fair,” I say.

  “Which is totally allowed,” Rich adds weakly.

  “Look. I’m hungry.” Drew pats his stomach and gives a little groan. “So let’s stop fannying around and cook these bitches, yeah?”

  I gesture for him to move aside before shoving the recipe book back into the stand. “Best thing I’ve heard all morning.”

  Two and a half hours later, Drew and Rich are applying the finishing touches to their surprisingly neat, well-risen cupcakes. They’ve gone for green frosting, and I watch from the doorway as they smother the lot in multi-coloured sprinkles. Drew sweeps his big, hulking arm too fast and the resulting breeze sends the tiny things flying across the counter in a staccato flurry.

  “Shit,” he hisses. “Ball bags.”

  She tossed the peelings off the edge of the cliff, but they caught in a grey fist of ocean wind that spat them right back at her.

  Screw off, book. I am not living you.

  Chapter Eleven

  So there’s an anger stage, it seems. And it hits me right in the middle of Combat Blast.

  Hans is on a roll. We’re doing all the hardcore tracks–kung fu, capoeira–and the music is loud and fierce; bass rolls off the walls, clutches the floor for split seconds and releases it to ripple beneath our roving feet. Tonight, my body is tribal. Primitive. Reduced to meat and chemicals and the buzz of sweat and squeals.

&
nbsp; That is, until we hit the boxing track and Hans utters some famous last words.

  “Jab, cross, upper, jab, cross, upper. I want power on that upper! Picture the person you want to end, and finish this!”

  Oh, three guesses who puffing, sweat-soaked Caitlyn would like to end about now.

  I stand tight in front stance, knees braced, hips still. My right fist comes out in a jab, snapping back in time to throw my left fist through in the cross-punch. A twist at my waist, and my right fist sails towards Dominic’s invisible chin–maybe a little too hard on the twist because Christ, that stung–but it doesn’t matter. I KO’d his sorry waste of face.

  “Keep going!” Hans bellows. There’s not a beat between the moves. The mic broke two tracks in but as usual, he cares about as much as he stands still. Now he’s at the front, throwing punch after fluid punch, and judging by the glazed look in his eyes, this track is the gym instructor equivalent of an orgasm.

  For the love of God, I haven’t had one of those in way too long. Sex and anger; I guess the blood beating in my ears is a very fine line. Only problem with thinking about orgasms is that–jab, cross, upper, FINISH!–it makes me think of Art. Who is also a waste of face. A really…nice…face.

  Hans jumps out into an A-frame pose. “Okay. Take a few breaths. Now…give me some high knees!” The rhythm picks up again. “High knees, people! You’ve got two minutes left and you are going to work.”

  Take a few breaths. Ha. This is Hans’ idea of recovery; five seconds of in-and-out. Although weirdly, the way this class is paced, I never feel like I can’t go on. That happens afterwards when my muscles realise I’ve stopped moving and make weeping spasms of shock and relief. I run because I have to, because it feels good, because it loosens everything below my waist and if I stand still, I’ll probably just collapse.

  Hans gestures for us to move into right stance. I follow him into a series of jabs and high knees. The second knee turns into a roundhouse, and the third punch turns into a hook that strains my shoulder. No matter–we’re almost done.

  “Pull back for two,” he shouts. “Just two…”