by Kate Gordon
And so did Wonder.
Together the friends looked at the sky, from where the paint can had fallen, and, behind a cobweb curtain, inside an open window, there floated the snickering grin of Georgiana Kinch.
Wonder growled, ‘I’ll break her bones,’ and she would have, but Mabel shook her head.
‘No,’ she said, simply. ‘That’s not on my list.’
‘What can we do, then?’ asked Wonder.
Mabel wiped away some of the black paint, revealing the pale skin below, and she smiled. ‘I think I will wash,’ she said, simply. ‘And then, I believe, I shall need a hairpin. For today, I might be a thief.’
‘You have a thief’s cloak,’ said Wonder, chancing a joke.
And, to her relief, Mabel threw back her head and laughed a laugh made of silver smoke and wonderful wickedness.
‘I do,’ she said. ‘It’s perfect. And I’m glad that this has happened.’
‘Why?’ asked Wonder, bemused.
‘I needed an excuse,’ said Mabel, ‘an excuse to be bad.’
Wonder and Mabel stood in the cloakroom. It was a damp and dreary space – the ceiling was thick with mould and the floor was a mess of puddles, even when it wasn’t raining. The morning dew must creep in there, Wonder always thought, when it was too cold to stay outside.
The middle of the room was taken up by wooden racks for coats, and the walls were lined with tall metal lockers. Not all of the girls had a locker – most kept their books in their rooms and lugged them down the many stairs before classes, and then up again afterwards. But some girls had parents with money, and these girls kept their things locked away in this room, downstairs, and never had to lug at all.
‘Do you know which one is hers?’ asked Mabel.
Wonder nodded. She knew every inch of Direleafe Hall. ‘That one,’ she said, pointing.
Mabel rolled her eyes. She gave a little cough that became a laugh. ‘I should have known.’
Georgiana’s locker was the only one with little red hearts all over it. And in the centre of the metal door was a picture of Georgiana and all her friends.
Wonder used to look at the picture with envy. Now, she saw it through Mabel’s eyes. ‘It is a little bit silly, isn’t it?’ Wonder said, laughing.
Mabel nodded. And then she skipped across to the locker and traced the edges of the picture with her fingers.
‘You’re going to steal that?’ Wonder gasped.
Mabel shook her head. She pointed at the hairpin in Wonder’s hand. ‘Do you know how to use it?’
A grin spread slowly over Wonder’s face. She nodded. ‘I do.’
Her smile drooped a little bit as she remembered when she had learned the skill, helped by Hollowbeak, who seemed to possess knowledge of a disturbing number of criminal talents.
Just a little bit that way, he’d told her, as she’d wiggled the pin in the rusty lock of the archives room’s ancient cabinet. Listen for the click.
It hadn’t taken very long for the click to sound. It hadn’t taken very long, either, to find the mildewed folder inside.
And it hadn’t taken very long to read it.
There wasn’t much of a story. There hadn’t been enough time, she supposed, to make a longer one.
She shook her head, shook the memory out of her. It floated away like a dandelion head.
‘I’ll teach you,’ she said to Mabel. ‘You just listen for the click …’
Mabel was a very fast learner. In a matter of minutes, Georgiana’s locker popped open, breathing out vanilla perfume.
‘What will you take?’ asked Wonder.
Mabel smiled and reached inside the shadowy depths. She retrieved a small pink envelope. She opened it and, while Wonder watched, she read the contents.
Mabel looked up at Wonder with sparkling eyes. ‘It’s a love note,’ she said.
‘Who is it for?’ asked Wonder, eagerly.
Mabel shook her head.
Wonder deflated. ‘What are you going to do with it?’ she asked, in a small voice.
‘Just … take it,’ Mabel said.
‘Not … tell everyone?’ Wonder asked.
Mabel met her eyes. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I only wanted to steal. If I told everyone … that would be a different thing. That would be nasty. I am not nasty. All of this was a little bit bad, it’s true, but it wasn’t ever nasty.’
She slid the letter into the pocket of her cardigan. And then she closed the locker door.
‘Won’t you tell me who it was for?’ Wonder asked, as they walked away.
Mabel looked through the window, out into the grounds and to the tree where Hollowbeak sat. ‘I can trust you?’ she said. ‘You won’t tell anyone?’
Wonder followed Mabel’s gaze over to Hollowbeak. She turned away, blocking him out so she could see only her friend. ‘You can trust me.’
Mabel leaned close and whispered a name.
Wonder’s eyes widened. ‘I promise I won’t tell a soul,’ she whispered. ‘You can trust me completely.’
Mabel nodded. She pulled a piece of paper from her cardigan pocket. Not Georgiana’s letter – that was safely folded away. This was the paper with the list. She smoothed it flat. Then she crossed out the first line.
Steal something
That night, Wonder lay in her attic bed. And she dreamed. And it was glorious.
She dreamed that she and Mabel stood in front of the class, dressed in top hats and tails, dancing and singing to the delight of everyone.
Ms Gallow smiled.
Hollowbeak – who sat at the window – bobbed along to the jolly song they sang.
Even Georgiana Kinch’s face, when it was not tarnished by meanness, was curiously lovely.
Wonder’s mother was there, as she always was in Wonder’s dreams, right in the middle of everything. Happy. Radiant. Full of life and love and everything.
And she looked like Wonder – that dark hair and those dark eyes and that smile that made dents in her cheeks – but she glowed. She glowed more than Wonder ever had. She was lit from within. She was the most beautiful person Wonder had ever seen.
Then.
Now.
She smiled at Wonder and she beckoned, and Wonder wanted more than anything to run into her arms.
But she knew she couldn’t. It wasn’t time. There was something she had to do first. But what was it?
Usually, Wonder woke from these dreams, upset and shivering. Because she could not run into her mother’s arms. Because her mother did not exist. Because her mother did exist, somewhere …
Somewhere far away.
But Wonder could not go to her.
She was trapped, here, so heavy and stuck, and she did not know how to be light. She did not know how to be free.
Hollowbeak would hop onto her knee and lean his downy head on her chest and stroke her gently with his wing until her breathing calmed. They would sit that way until things were …
Not good, but better, at least.
This time, in this dream, Wonder did not feel sad or worried. She knew she was doing exactly what she was meant to be doing.
Dancing with Mabel.
It wasn’t enough to make her light. It wasn’t enough to make her free. But it was something.
Wonder, in the dream, was something.
Wonder Quinn was always a back-ground kind of girl, even before. But it never used to matter. She’d always had her mother and her mother was Wonder’s best friend. Her mother was everything.
Maybe the other girls saw that, before. They saw there was no space for them. And that was true.
Wonder’s mother sang to her and they danced and they laughed, up in their attic quarters. They danced so hard the floorboards creaked and the golden motes rose up to dance with them, and Wonder had all she needed, then.
But since her mother left …
There had been a hole. Or maybe there was always a hole, but her mother had obscured it.
Wonder had not danced, since her mother left her. There was nobody to dance with.
Until Mabel.
And now she danced with Mabel, and Mabel filled the hole, and everything seemed to be more right than it had been for a long time, or maybe than it had ever been.
It was almost completely right.
It was almost completely perfect.
Almost.
At lunchtime, Wonder Quinn and Mabel Clattersham sat on the roof of Direleafe Hall.
On the emerald grass below, girls sat in circles gossiping, or played with jumping ropes and balls. Wonder and Mabel paid them no attention. They were thinking of bigger things.
From his perch on the silver birch tree, Hollowbeak watched the both of them. His eyes were narrowed and his wings crossed in front of him like folded arms. The girls paid him no mind, either. They were in a bubble, only big enough for two.
‘You know you’ll get in trouble if Ms Gallow sees you up here,’ Wonder warned Mabel, though her heart wasn’t in it, really. The last thing she wanted was for Mabel to leave, and she was secretly glad when Mabel only shrugged.
‘I don’t mind. What about you? Do you ever get in trouble?’ asked Mabel.
‘They don’t notice me,’ Wonder said, quietly, picking her fingernail.
‘I don’t know how that could be possible,’ said Mabel. ‘You caught my eye the moment I walked into the classroom. I knew I had to sit next to you and be your friend. You seemed like you were infinite. You’re extraordinary, Wonder Quinn.’
Wonder, in that moment, felt exactly that. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.
‘Why do you think they don’t notice you?’ Mabel tugged at the corner of a shingle that was lifting. She prised off a chunk that was shaped like a heart and gave it to Wonder.
Wonder thought it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen – much more beautiful than Georgiana’s gaudy love-hearts. She put it in her pocket, with the blunt pencil. They were her treasures.
‘They don’t notice me because they don’t know how to,’ said Wonder. ‘Because I have no parents and no home. They don’t want to admit I’m real because that means that horrible things happen to real people in the real world, and horrible things might happen to them. They don’t want to admit that heartbreak is a fact.’
‘Are you heartbroken, then?’ asked Mabel.
Wonder shook her head. ‘It’s not broken,’ she said. ‘But it should be. It should be in a thousand pieces or more. I should have drowned the world with my tears, but they are all still inside me. I don’t know how to cry them.’
There was a broken beat and both girls looked away, one down and one up, and both at nothing, really.
‘Your mother is dead?’ said Mabel, at last.
Wonder nodded. ‘She died in a fire,’ she said. ‘She was a teacher here, at Direleafe Hall. We had our own room. The fire ate everything.’
‘She died but you survived,’ said Mabel.
Wonder looked away again.
‘You’re like me,’ Mabel said, after it was clear Wonder would not speak. ‘I don’t cry, ever. My mother says my nerves are all on the outside of my skin. She says I feel too much – too deeply. But she’s wrong. I feel all sorts of things. But not sorrow. My mother banned sorrow when I was small and now, I don’t know how to feel it. She does, though. My mother is all sorrow. Not in front of me, of course, but when her bedroom door is locked, when she thinks I can’t hear.’
‘One day, I will cry,’ whispered Wonder. ‘And on that day, I will break apart and float off to the stars. I am too heavy, now, to float.’
‘You speak like a poem,’ said Mabel. ‘You speak in riddles. You are a riddle, Wonder Quinn. A beautiful, golden riddle. I wonder, sometimes, if there isn’t a dragon guarding you – if you aren’t, in truth, a treasure.’ Mabel looked away, into the clouds. ‘That one looks like a dragon,’ she said, pointing.
‘That one looks like a walrus,’ said Wonder, giggling.
‘Do you think I could jump from here to the branch?’ Mabel looked at the silver birch tree and then back at Wonder. ‘I’d like to do that, I think. Like Tarzan. A wild thing. Could I make it, do you think?’
‘Yes,’ Wonder said, firmly. ‘I’ve done it a thousand times. It’s only a small distance. Look. There’s Hollowbeak. See how close he is? You could almost touch him, if you reached out far enough. But if you jump, for a moment – a tiny moment between the roof and the tree – it is as if you’re just …’
‘In the sky?’
‘In the sky,’ Wonder said, nodding.
‘I just have to leap.’
‘You just have to leap. And believe.’
Mabel pushed herself into a crouch. ‘Well, then,’ she said. ‘Wish me luck.’
They sat by the base of the tree, nestled in the soft, soft grass like two flowers, blooming.
Mabel crossed another line from her list. The line was a little bit shaky.
Leap into the sky.
Wonder wanted to hold her hand to steady the pencil.
Wonder wanted to hold her hand.
‘I’m breathing so quickly,’ said Mabel.
‘Because you are frightened?’
‘Because I have too much breath for my body. I have too much everything for my body. I am too much. That was too much.’
‘It was bad?’
Mabel shook her head. She leaned back against the branch of the tree.
‘You flew,’ said Wonder, and both girls closed their eyes. Wonder remembered Mabel soaring through the air.
It had been safe. Wonder had known it would be safe. She never would have chanced Mabel’s life. She never would have let her fly if she’d imagined she might fall.
But it still felt dangerous, what Mabel did, in the way that all beautiful things are dangerous.
Wonder opened her eyes and looked at Mabel. Her friend’s eyes were pressed shut, still, and Wonder found she could not imagine what Mabel was thinking. It made her arms prickle. Within her, a rubber band pulled tight. To snap it, she said, ‘You’re a marvel, Mabel.’
‘Am I?’ Mabel replied. But she didn’t open her eyes as she spoke again. ‘Tell me about you, Wonder. While I find my breath and my strength. Tell me five things that make you Wonder Quinn.’
Wonder thought for a very long time. She had to remember hard. And then, finally, as Mabel stayed so silent and still as if she were a statue, she said, ‘I am Wonder. I love to dance and to laugh, but I hadn’t done much of either for a very long time, before I met you.’
‘That’s about me,’ Mabel interrupted. ‘Tell me about you.’
‘All right,’ said Wonder. She lifted her eyes heavenward. ‘I like to dance – I told you that. And I like the colour blue. The kind where it’s blue like blueberries. The kind where it’s trying to be purple, but just not quite getting there. I like the sound of piano being played in another room, like it’s a memory of song, echoing through the years. I like dandelions that push through the dirt a week before it’s springtime. And I …’
She scrunched her eyes closed. That was only four and Mabel had said five. But Wonder couldn’t think of another, all on her own, so she borrowed one of Mabel’s.
‘I am infinite,’ she whispered.
Mabel smiled. Without opening her eyes, she nodded. ‘All of us are,’ she said. ‘But only some of us know it. Thank you for telling me your things, Wonder Quinn. I like you even more now.’
Above the two girls, Hollowbeak snorted. Wonder ignored him.
‘Can I hold your hand?’ asked Mabel.
Wonder felt as if she was full of beetles. She knew she should say no. But she said yes.
Mabel reached out. Her fingers on Wonder’s skin
were like tears of laughter.
‘I feel like I’m touching a star,’ said Mabel.
‘I am so happy,’ said Wonder. And the truth of those words was as solid as the earth beneath her.
Mabel took out her pencil and crossed two items off her list.
Touch a star.
Make someone feel pure happiness.
Her crossings were even shakier this time.
‘I’m getting through it too quickly,’ she whispered. ‘Much too quickly.’
Mabel and Wonder sat again in the library, in the soft, quiet time at the end of the day. Wonder was showing Mabel all her favourite books.
The Silver-eyed Girl
The Winged Heart
Ink and Bones
The Tale of Boundless Joy
‘How have you read so many books?’ asked Mabel.
‘I’ve had a lot of time,’ answered Wonder.
‘Do you take them upstairs to your little room?’ asked Mabel.
Wonder nodded. ‘I read there by candlelight. I like the way the candlelight looks on the pages. It makes it seem as if the book is alive. The words dance up into the air and into my soul.’
‘I want to read every book in the world,’ said Mabel. ‘I want to know everything everyone has ever said.’
‘You could,’ said Wonder, grinning.
‘Will you do it for me?’ said Mabel. She looked at the library clock. ‘Oh, dillweed. I have to go. My parents will be waiting. I hate the end of these days.’
‘So do I,’ said Wonder.
As they walked together out of the library, a tall, thin girl with snow-pale hair – who was not like a snake but a kitten, pretending – stepped into Mabel’s path. ‘You took my letter,’ she spat.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ said Mabel.
If Wonder hadn’t known the truth, she would have believed Mabel. Mabel knew how to lie. She was good at it and this made Wonder feel a bit sad.
‘I know it was you. My friend Alice saw you go into the cloakroom.’ Georgiana gave Mabel a push in the chest. It was only a small push, but a moment later, Mabel was on the floor.
