When I asked them over, I forgot for a second that Mum has really gone into overdrive crazy these last few months. I can’t blame her for hurting, Dad doesn’t even try to hide his crap from her any more. But I can blame her for blaming me. I try to see her so little at the moment that I almost blocked out the fact that she lives at home, too. But as soon as she saw Leo and Rose she did that awful thing she does where she puts on this fake front, grins like a psycho clown, offers us drinks and snacks and ‘should she put a pizza in or make us some popcorn?’. FFS. Hair put up in a bun, apron on like she’s some TV chef, only she wobbles and waves her hand around too much and laughs too loud while Gracie sits there, eating chicken nuggets and watching Scooby Doo on a loop. I know that as soon as we’ve gone, she’ll collapse into a chair and down another drink. Velma will unmask the villain and Gracie will keep on chewing.
Rose’s hand, nails bitten short, her plump fingers covered in silver rings, steals into mine. I feel warm and sleepy, flanked on either side by two of my best friends, noticing Leo notice Rose’s hand in mine, registered by the disapproving twitch of his mouth.
There’s a knock at the door. Dad appears, or his head anyway. He never normally comes in here, which means he wants something.
‘You OK in here, kids?’ he says. ‘I heard about Naomi, how is she doing?’
‘They don’t really know yet,’ I reply. ‘It’s kind of amazing she is alive.’
‘Of course . . .’ Dad lingers in the doorway. ‘What did they say happened to her?’
‘I don’t really want to talk about it right now,’ I say to him. ‘It’s probably on the news.’
‘Right . . . well, don’t get up to anything I wouldn’t!’
Oh God, Dad, shut up.
‘These two couldn’t handle me, Mr Saunders,’ Rose grins at my dad, and he blushes and I find my hand released from hers. ‘I need a real man.’
‘Well, call it a night after this cartoon, yeah?’ He comes into the room a little bit more. He looks at Rose’s legs.
‘We’ve got one more to watch,’ I say, getting up off the bed and going to the door, more or less shoving him out onto the landing.
‘I’m off so, out, I’ll see you in the morning.’
‘Out?’ I stare at him. ‘You only just got in and it’s gone ten.’
‘Who are you, my mum?’ He laughs at Rose, looking over my shoulder. ‘You know what this job’s like, half of it is socialising. I don’t have a choice.’
‘I had no idea being a councillor was so exciting,’ I say.
‘It’s work,’ he repeats and as we look at each other we both know he is lying. I feel like I should care about my dad’s girlfriends and my mum’s drinking, that my family that was once so normal and respectable is imploding from the inside out, keeping up appearances all the while. But I don’t care, I don’t give a shit about any of them except Gracie.
A few minutes later and Rose is resting her head on my shoulder.
A minute after that she snores, and Leo and I burst out laughing.
‘Shut the fuck up,’ she mutters, before going back to sleep.
Rose and Red, streak 108 days
Rose
Thanks for tonight pal, after everything that happened today it was fun.
Red
So fun you went to sleep!
Rose
Yaaaysssss, it looked that way, but inside I was 100% ninja pro skills.
Red
What you doing now?
Rose
Listening to my dad and the cow fuck. It’s disgusting.
Video link. Tap here to view: Two Pigs having sex
Red
One good thing about my dad going basically awol, no sex noises. Quite a lot of Mum barfing noises though.
Rose
ewhwhwhwhwhhghghghghghghghghgh
Red
You OK? Today was a head fuck, seeing Nai that way. I still can’t really get my head round it.
Rose
Go again, tomoz after school?
Red
Yeah, so you OK?
Rose
I’m fucked up on my dad’s whiskey, so yeah.
Red
Don’t mess around.
Rose
I don’t mess around, I’m serious.
Red
Well don’t choke on your own vomit, K?
Rose
KK
Red
Rose, about tomorrow . . .
Rose
. . .
Rose
. . .
Rose
. . .
5
Heart racing, acid in my throat, sweat prickling the base of my neck. 3 a.m.
Sit up, my skin prickles and I know I had a bad dream, even though I don’t remember it. There is a taste in my mouth like dirty river water. Drag myself out of bed and stumble into my T-shirt and boxers. Opening my door, I listen for the sound of someone up; Mum is often up at this time, or at least not in bed. I’ll find her passed out, sitting at the kitchen table, or lying face down on the sofa, a pool of drool beneath her gaping mouth. The last thing I need now is her, half-cut and angry looking for someone to take it out on.
It’s quiet and I need a drink, so I risk it.
Dad is in the kitchen, he’s been smoking and there’s booze in the air too. He doesn’t drink like Mum does. Mum drinks likes she breathes, she exists on vodka, her once soft body thin and wiry now, her face reddened and full of shadows. Dad isn’t that bad, but he does like a drink too; takes the edge off, he says. Where did he go until three in the morning where he can drink and smoke?
‘OK mate?’ he says, looking like I’ve caught him out.
‘I need a drink.’ My bare feet are silent on the lino as I go to the tap, and let the water run off my fingers until it’s really cold.
I hear him shift his weight behind me. He coughs and wheezes; smoking isn’t good for him.
‘So, Naomi, they think she might have tried to kill herself?’
‘They don’t know anything.’ I rub my eyes. ‘Dad, it’s three in the morning, you really want to talk about this now?’
‘I know, I can’t sleep. I might call Jackie and Max in the morning, I got to know her a bit, when I was helping her with her Duke of Edinburgh stuff. I feel like I should say something, see if there is anything I can do.’
‘What could you possibly do? You work for the local council, not the Prime Minister.’
‘It’s just good to show people you care,’ he says.
‘In that case could you show Mum you care?’ I tell him. ‘She might slow down on the vodka a bit.’
‘Don’t talk to me that way,’ Dad warns me, but it’s half-hearted. He knows I’m right. It’s kind of pathetic really.
I don’t know how he expects me to react, but ignoring it makes his shoulders slump as he sits back in his chair. There used to be a time when I wanted to be him, when I thought he was the strongest, coolest dad in the world. These days he just makes me cringe inside. A couple of miles away my friend is in a coma with big chunks of her head missing, and it smells like Mum might have thrown up in the hallway, And Dad . . . well, I’m guessing his latest bit on the side likes a fag now and then. Me, I just want to go back to my room. I just want to hide and sleep and forget it all for a couple more hours.
But I can’t. Because it’s not just me. It’s Gracie too. So I take a breath and I try to remember that time when I believed that Mum was the kindest person in the world, and Dad was the bravest, and I try again.
‘Dad . . . Mum’s drinking. It’s getting really bad.’ He turns slightly in his chair to avoid looking at me. ‘You’re not around much to see it, you don’t have to deal with it–’
‘Who do you think is going to be cleaning that mess up out there?’ he snaps at me, as if I should be grateful.
‘So?’ It hurts to have to find the words to say this to him, I mean physically hurts, like the insides of my chest are bruised, black and blue. ‘Don’t you thin
k it’s serious, like before . . . ’
There was a time just after Gracie was born that Mum drank a lot, the first time that I remember, though now I think there must have been times before that. Dad was here, almost all the time, then. Trying to cope with Gracie, trying to get Mum better, he kept telling me how good I was, how brave and strong. And how grateful he was that I didn’t make a fuss and just got on with things. It was around then I started to put on weight, not because I was hungry, just because I needed something to fill up the spaces that she left behind. It was then I started hoarding food under my bed and while Dad was busy with Mum or Gracie, I’d try to fill up the pain inside with food. I’d eat so much I couldn’t help but fall asleep. At ten years old it was the best of way of escaping I knew. Later, when I turned thirteen, the opposite became true. Not eating was the way I tried to control my life. But at ten years old I was always hungry, always trying to feel full, and never succeeding.
‘She’s under a lot of stress, you know what she’s like,’ Dad says. He might as well not say anything.
‘If you were home more, were with her more,’ I try again. ‘Maybe she wouldn’t get so down. Maybe she wouldn’t feel so alone.’
He shifts uncomfortably, half turning away from me, and I can’t help but see him for who he is now. Not the giant, not the god, not the man I looked up to for most of my life as the biggest, smartest and strongest man I know, but a spoilt kid who’s bored of his toys and wants something new. And in that second I hate him.
‘Just move in with your latest slut, then.’ I pick up my glass and pad out of the kitchen, treading carefully around the acrid spots on the hall tiles.
‘Get back here right now,’ Dad hisses at me, and this time he really sounds angry, but I don’t turn around, I don’t give a toss what he thinks of me any more. I can’t remember the last time he did anything worth giving a shit about.
Back in my room, I close the door softly behind me, and stare out of my window, waiting for the sun to come up. There’s something about this time of day that’s comforting. Everything dark, everything quiet. Rows of houses with dark windows make me think of all those dreams out there, filling up the final hours of night sky. Different people in their different houses, where none of this is happening to them. I don’t know why but somehow that makes me feel better, like if all of this is small enough to hurt just me, then it can’t really be that bad.
Sometimes my head is so full of dark, it’s like a fog. It stops me seeing the good things, feeling good things. Everything hurts from the outside in. But it’s only me, and only now. And maybe one day it will be someone else. Someone I don’t know or care about; someone else who looks out of their window waiting for the dawn while I fill the sky with dreams.
I have to sleep. If I don’t sleep, tomorrow my head will pound, and my eyes will swim with light and colours. I’ve got to sleep.
I’ll lay down, close my eyes and think of good things. Gracie playing air guitar while I practise. Rose laughing so hard I can feel her whole body vibrate as she leans against me. The way Leo stands like a gladiator when he plays guitar. When Naomi used to raise one eyebrow and say something stupid like it was deadly serious and make us all laugh until it hurt. I want to think about her like that, not with her head caved in.
A few hours later I wake up gasping, and this time I remember. Dark, thick, freezing water filling my nose and mouth, invading my lungs and something, something cold and cruel pulling me down, deep down under the water, until I know there is no way I will see the surface again.
fanpage
Mirror, Mirror – Band news!
Morning guys, I hope you are all coming to our benefit gig. We’ve been practising and we are red hot, with four new songs just for you. The gig is raising funds for our band mate Naomi Demir, so get your hands on some cash!
Joining us on bass for the concert is musician Leckraj Chamane! We asked Leckraj what he was most looking forward to about playing a gig with Mirror, Mirror and he said, the thousands of fans screaming my name! (Not Really.)
Click here to see the video we made for ‘You’re In With Me.’
Click here to see Rose Carter show you how she warms up her voice.
Click here for the latest rehearsal footage.
Click here for the Mirror, Mirror gallery.
6
No point in trying to sleep again so I stay awake, getting lost in the screen on my chromebook until it’s time to get up.
874 views on our Tumblr this month, that is a fuck ton. Probably about 400 of those are from Rose, checking out the comments on her video, but even so. For four sixteen-year-old kids, it’s pretty good. 1385 followers on Twitter and I’ve applied for a blue tick, I really want a blue tick. A blue tick means we’re real.
Our last band video that we put on our YouTube channel was us in the park, it was awesome. It was for our track, ‘Roundabout’. Nai and I wrote it about a couple of kids who liked each other, but could never get it together. So yeah, the park. I brought a speaker for my phone and we mimed along, singing and playing. We looked like pricks, there were loads of kids watching and at least half of them thought we were wankers. But I knew it would turn out good in the end. Leo found it the hardest. He hates all that crap, all he wants to do is play, but Rose talked him round, got him a little drunk, a little high, until he stopped worrying so much about looking like a tough guy and stood on top of the slide with his guitar, giving it all that. Rose was lying down on the see-saw, miming to the words like 1980s Madonna, so sexy it was unreal. And Naomi, she went round and round slowly on the roundabout and never cracked a smile. I filmed most of it on Nai’s phone in its Legend of Zelda: Tri Force case, filming the whole track on each band member so I could cut it together later, until it was my turn to drum on the bench. And then Rose took over filming. I had shades on, fingerless leather gloves. It’s had 924 views. I feel pretty good about that. 2300 likes on our Facebook page. 760 followers on Instagram. And I am getting us on Spotify, one of these days.
Because you see, I like the me in that world, the one you see on social media. That me looks like a person who knows what they are doing, what they want, where they are going. That me is on-point. That me always looks good, always looks relaxed, and when I’ve got the sticks in my hand every single little bit of me works like it is supposed to, every muscle, every reflex, every heartbeat, every brain cell. The reflection of me, that lives behind the shiny screen, is the one who gets the likes, and the hearts, and the direct messages. Sideways smiles from girls who think maybe, actually, even though they have never thought it before, they could like me that way, because although I’m short and skinny, man, can I play those drums. That kid is pretty sexy.
But it took me a long time to think that way about this me. The real life, no-filter me.
This me, the me made of blood, bone, nerves and synapses is the me that I never used to be into. Back when I was hiding in those folds of fat as a little kid, my body felt like an inescapable prison, because that’s the me that my heart beats in; a fleshy bloody prison that I hated as much as I needed it.
And then something happened that made me stop eating.
I saw myself one day, in the mirrors in the changing rooms at school. Like a weird angle that showed me my reflection in way I didn’t recognise, and I saw a stranger. A person I hated, and loathed, and pitied.
And over the next year or so I worked really hard on becoming invisible, whittling away that person to almost nothing, not throwing up but hardly eating. Bingeing was for a baby, a little kid out of control. Not eating was for the new me, the one that had total control, and I was sure they’d notice, and they did. But it was only to tell me how much better I looked. Even when my hip bones looked like they might cut through my skin, even when I felt cold on a blazing hot day. I blew myself up like a balloon because of them, I turned myself into a skeleton because of them and nothing changed. Except me.
The band, Leo, Nai and Rose, they were the ones who saved me, because they
saw me, not the way I was, but the way I could be. And when they saw that version, I saw it too. I realised that if I didn’t live my life for me then very soon I’d get to a place I couldn’t get back from. I didn’t want to be the next member of my family to fuck up, that wasn’t going to be me.
So slowly, slowly, over that year behind the drums, playing and hanging out with the people I began to realise were my mates, I was too busy letting go of control to think about what I was eating. It was terrifying; I was scared but I was excited too, because I had friends, and music, and dancing, and laughing, and going out all night, hopping from club to club, bar to bar, and howling at the moon.
Doesn’t sound like a fitness regime, does it, but it was. The more I played, the fitter and stronger I got. I stopped thinking about eating, so I ate when I wanted and it seemed to be about as much as I needed. And the more I let myself be me on the inside, the more it matched me on the outside.
It wasn’t a health kick, it was a happiness kick, it was realising that no matter how much I wanted it, I didn’t need my mum and dad to take care of me. I could take care of myself. I do take care of myself, and Gracie. I’m better at this shit than they ever were.
Christ, I am so self-obsessed, I bore myself.
I used to be too fat, I used to be too thin. Now I’m fit as a butcher’s dog. Get over it, Red, there are more important things going on right now.
I just want to see Nai again.
Leo’s waiting for me on the corner.
Leo and some of his mates, mates he had before the band and still hangs around with now and then, which is cool because they don’t mind me and I don’t mind them.
It’s when there are girls around that I turn into a fuckwit. How do I walk again? What do I say that isn’t a string of shit? Am I funny? Am I a loser? All these thoughts chasing each other at maximum speed, racing round and round my head. I even have to tell myself to walk when I’m around girls I fancy. I have to say, ‘Those are your feet, dumb-ass, they go one in front of the other.
Mirror, Mirror Page 4
