II. Shu
“Prison, Shu,” she said. “You could go to prison.” Her voice was desperate, and it made me hate myself so very, very much. I couldn’t look into her face; I wouldn’t meet the eyes of the one person who’d always held mine.
I ran my fingers over the dark notches in the table instead, and I watched how the coke in my glass shook with every scream from the band on stage. If only we could trade shoes for a moment, if she could see the hell that went on in my mind, if I could see the troubles that I was sure went on in hers. But there could be no middle ground, nothing but a constant impasse. And the grip on my right arm drew blood as more self-hatred rushed through my body.
“You still don’t understand, Leah. I…”
My cousin sighed, a long exasperated sound. I looked up slightly, enough that I could see how her fingers clutched her pale chin, how they released their grip only to entwine themselves in the curls of her brown hair. We’d been sat there for an hour now trying to convince each other, and our only progress was increased frustration.
“I can’t stop.” I whispered it, even though the band was only a few feet away and she most probably couldn’t hear me. “You know what she’s like, how she is—“
“Of course I know what she’s like!” Her voice was almost as loud as the screech of the music, and I flinched. My right hand jerked and it hit the ashtray, spilling dead cigarettes and grains of ash all over the table.
“How can I not know?!” she said again. I looked up, and my stomach did a flip when I saw the anger on Leah’s face. Pure blind rage. The veins on her neck stood out, and her face was as red as her vision.
“Maria is a fifteen-year old girl, Shu. I am her teacher. Her teacher. I am in a position of trust over her, and how the fuck do you think it’s going to look when it gets out that my cousin is sleeping with my student?!” Oh God, she was swearing. If she was mad before, she was close to breaking point now.
“I-I didn’t…we haven’t—“ She was shaking her head before I’d even finished, and she closed her eyes, her brow quivering below her widow’s peak.
“Shut up. Just shut up.”
Our conversation dwindled into silence, and the band filled the space with their music. I still watched my drink move to it’s inconsistent beat, and my eyes shifted to the fine dust of ash scattered across the wooden table.
I did love Leah. The casual way a corner of her mouth would turn up, her boldness, her enthusiasm. I loved her stubbornness in how she had always defended me, that hard-headedness which was causing such problems now. I loved how her eyes shone when she was teaching, and the fiery spirit with which she did it. The idea that my actions could destroy her career made me feel sick. It really did. After all we’d been through together, and after everything she’d done for me. But no matter how much I loved my cousin, I…needed Maria.
I watched Leah pat her trouser pockets, and then she searched her bag, but the expression on her face told me that one of the cigarettes on the table had been her last. She seemed to realize this shortly after I did, and she sighed. She stood and wore her coat, and she slung the strap of her handbag over her shoulder.
“Have you checked your coat for fags?” I asked her. I was trying to change the topic and calm the situation, but Leah only glared at me.
“Do you even care, Shu?” She sounded desperate again and her eyes searched my face for answers. I looked away, towards the stage. My face was getting hot, and I whispered a prayer to a God I didn’t believe in to still my tears. I would not give in to my natural urge to back down, not now.
“You could never understand, Leah.” My voice was shaking somewhat, but I managed to keep it steady enough. “My mum; she doesn’t see me. She doesn’t care. No one ever did except you, and we barely see each other nowadays—“
“That’s not my fault, Shu. And I’ve told you to see someone about your depression—”
“And I’ve told you, I will not end up hooked on drugs to get through the day. Maria is…she’s everything. I can’t explain it and, oh God, if I could I would but…don’t you want me to be happy, Leah?”
Her eyes became darker than I’d ever seen before, almost like a shadow was covering her face. It made her look far older than her twenty-four years, and for a minute I could understand why our grandfather used to say she looked like her mother. Her jaw was set and hard, and when she answered me her voice was low, and by far more sinister than her shouting.
“Don’t you want me to keep my job, Shu?”
She turned away and walked towards the door. At one point she stopped, and I leaned forward, under the illusion that she might turn back. That we could laugh at each other’s stubbornness and talk properly. That things could just go back to normal. But then she shook her head and moved on and as the low ding of the door’s bell echoed across the room, I remembered that that couldn’t happen. Because what I had with Maria was anything but normal, and because no matter how much she hated me right at that moment, I knew that Leah would carry my secret to the grave.
A laugh brought me to my senses, a shrill, yet strangely happy sound. A sound that made me recall soft skin, brown hair and Maria’s sarcastic smirk. Immediately, my eyes searched the dim-lit, hazy room. Dancing from the empty stage to the dusty bar, I gave the barman a glance before skirting over each and every patron of the café. Until I found her my thoughts were all frenzied, without clear direction and reason. And then I saw her.
Does time, beating its hectic path across the world and other realms, ever stop for a single moment? I wasn’t sure, but it seemed to, just at that moment. Just for a moment, a bare moment, but a moment was more than long enough for what I saw.
Maria sat straight, and despite the haze of smoke I could see her clearly. From the distance I could see the ashen grey of her eyes, and I could feel the firm shape of her cheekbones in my jaw. I remembered still the ice cold feel of her skin against mine—
But there were other people, too. There was a white flash, and suddenly the bar was full, over-full. Where chairs and stools had been empty, untouched, people now sat. Some were tall, some were short. An obese man fit, impossibly, in a single seat between two unaware people. Somewhere a camera flashed, and homunculi fell from it, dazed. They spread blue wings and flew upwards where the light did not reach, into the shadows of the ceiling. Meanwhile, the phantom people carried out their trivialities in silence. One, who seemed quite out of place and time with his top hat and English moustache, laughed at some joke told by the people surrounding him. He was laughing long after they had finished and moved on, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. And then there was another flash. When my eyes adjusted, the phantom people were frozen, staring in a single direction. The homunculi too; they had fallen down and were perched on the heads of strangers. All of these spirits stared at Maria, and I did not want to know why. And then with a blink they were gone, invisible to my sight like they should be. When the blood returned to my cheeks I forced the image to the back of my mind, and just as well as anyone else pretended it had not happened.
Maria was talking to a someone I didn’t recognise…who was he? A boyfriend? …No, he wasn’t. I wasn’t sure who he was, with his dark hair and thin build. I watched him push his glasses up so that they sat properly on his nose, and then I looked away towards the empty stage when I thought he saw me looking. The band was just finishing, with the drummer doing a bit more instrument bashing accompanied by a scream from the lead singer. I clapped, for why I didn’t really know. I think I was trying to calm the ache that was starting in my head, or to still the pounding in my chest through some pretence of normality. It didn’t work, and both went on with the added sting of my previously self-inflicted wound.
I turned back to Maria and her male companion. She was gazing this way but at first she didn’t appear to see me. And then she did, and even from that distance I recognised the scowl that creased her brow. I looked at the ceiling, willing the courage to appear that I had had with Leah.
When I looked back Maria had turned away and she held her…friend’s hands now, and then she turned back to me. I didn’t look away this time, and I held her gaze until she turned instead. I watched her gently take her hand away from the man’s; she wore her bag on her shoulder placing and placed her grey beret on her head before standing. He didn’t seem to notice, and she turned around and exited through the door.
I paused for a moment to gather my courage and to calm myself, and then I got up and went after her.
#
Outside, the downpour quickly drenched my clothes, and plastered my short hair to my forehead, to my neck. Stupidly I’d left my coat in the café, and my t-shirt was soaked through so that my bra was visible—I hugged myself to preserve some sense of modesty and to keep warm. It was later than I’d realized, for the darkness and the cold disorientated me and I had to stop to gather my senses. Even then, it was still too dark to see anything, let alone where Maria had gone. Instinctively, I set off for the nearest bus stop. It occurred to me that I did not know whether Maria lived in Burnwick or not, but either way the shortest route to the train station went through the bus stop. My optimistic side convinced me that there was at least a seventy-five per cent chance I would find Maria along my chosen route. My natural pessimism spoke otherwise however, and of the possibility that I would not reach my destination at all.
There weren’t too many people on the streets at that time, or many places that were still open. The neon lights of pub signs had the faces of homunculi in them, and the only group of people I did pass was a severely drunk man being supported by his slightly-less-drunk friends as they went home or, minus the bout of optimism, to the very next pub. They barely noticed me except to stumble to the left, and anyway their level of sobriety seemed to bother them more than me or the rain. When thunder clapped overhead, the drunk man shouted and slipped in his frenzy, pulling everyone else down with him. I stopped to watch them, and then moved on in the same moment.
The rain came down faster and heavier for every second I walked. My teeth chattered, and my whole body shook sporadically as a chill spread through it. It didn’t help that the wind picked up then, ripping my hair from the sides of my face. But I knew that even if lightning were to strike the ground in front of me I wouldn’t turn back. I needed to see Maria again. I had to. She filled my thoughts during the day and during the night, and it had been this way since I met her. It wasn’t how she looked—she was beautiful, but I’d seen men and women to surpass that beauty. It was just…her. There was something in her eyes, something in her smile, some other quality. Ephemerality. And I needed to know her, to understand her before it disappeared. Before she did.
As I turned the street corner, I almost collided with a tall man in a trench coat. I side-stepped him just in time, and as I turned back to mumble an apology I noticed that he had no face. The realization sent a different sort of chill through me, but when I looked around he was gone, vanished into the rainy night.
These spirits, these apparitions, they’d plagued me since I could remember. And for the most part I’d learnt to ignore them, that was, until I’d met Maria. Until I’d not only seen them, but for the first time in nineteen years they’d seen me. That very first time, I’d seen a goblin sitting on her shoulder, it’s eyes searching me from head to toe. It had gone almost as soon as I’d realized it was there but still, there it had been. Was I crazy?…Perhaps. What I’d been able to pass off as figments of my imagination for so long had now become full-blown delusions, and the mystery of this only made me even more determined to see her again.
Down the street, a half-working streetlamp flickered on and off. People were huddled together under the shelter of the bus stop. I could see Maria’s tell-tale beret at the far end of the crowd. I moved towards her; other people barely noticed me as I passed between them, the one man whose eyes seemed to linger just as quickly turned away. He didn’t really see me. None of them did, except Maria. She eyed me as I approached but did nothing except draw on her cigarette.
A few seconds passed as we watched each other. The light still flickered, and the times we were enveloped in darkness the hot orange end of Maria’s cigarette and the glowing screen of a stranger’s phone were the only sources of luminescence. There were butterflies in my stomach, and I couldn’t help wondering what was passing through her mind. My desperation? It was plain as day. I needed her. My depression? I’d been depressed for years now, and she was the only thing that eased that. My desire?
Eventually I worked up the courage to ask her, half-shouting above the noise of the rain, “Where’s your bus?”
Slowly, the cigarette came out of her mouth, and barely audible words followed instead of the usual smoke.
“My step-dad’s picking me up. I’m just waiting for him here.”
She took another draw, and turned away from me to blow smoke into the cold night. She stretched her arm out and let the light of the cigarette flicker and die in the rain, throwing it to the ground when she was finished. Turning back to me, she continued:
“Why are you here?” She paused. “I thought you didn’t want to see me.”
“I didn’t—I mean, I do but—“
“But what?” She cut me off, and there was anger in her tone of voice. I could see it in her face too, in the furrow of her dark eyebrows. I could see it in the creases in her forehead and around her eyes, in the slight downturn of her pale pink lips. The lights went off, and there was no light anywhere.
“But what?” she asked again. “You just admitted you didn’t want to, you nearly shouted it at me last week. Have you changed your mind now? That’s just too bad.”
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—“
“I don’t care, Shu. I really don’t. Just leave me alone.”
“No, listen to me.” A car was coming down the road, a single car. She moved towards it but I stepped in front of her. My heart was pounding so fast, so hard, and every hair on my body was raised as a result of this adrenaline rush.
“Listen,” I said, and her expression changed in some inconceivable way. “I’m sorry. I am. I just …what you told me…why didn’t you tell me you were still in school?”
She shrugged. “Knowing at the start, finding out later: we both know you’d look past it eventually.”
“And Leah?” It hurt, just to say her name. “What about Leah?”
She blinked at me, and then looked away, down the street. When she turned back her face was composed, pristine, completely clear of the same amount of guilt I felt.
“It might destroy her, but she won’t tell. That’s why you were arguing, wasn’t it?”
She sounded so innocent then, like a child almost. The imagery brought about in my mind made me feel sick, made this feel wrong. But I could not let go of any of it, of her.
“I…I love you, Maria.” Was that what it was? Love? I didn’t know, but suddenly it felt right to say it, it eclipsed my previous emotion as my stomach did a thousand flips. It felt so right, that I said it again and watched Maria’s eyes widen. Slightly. She didn’t say anything, she didn’t frown or open her mouth in extreme shock, but she looked at me with a faint expression of surprise.
The car pulled up a little way away. She glanced at it, and then turned to pull me into a hug. Her arms were warm around my waist, and I buried my head in the rough denim of her jacket.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.” She whispered it in my ear, and she craned her neck downwards to press her mouth against my cheek. No one seemed to notice, and she drew away from me, walking towards the car. She stopped once, to turn back and wave. It was a strange, erratic movement, almost as if she’d forgotten who she was waving to. And then the car was driving away, silver wisps comprising some ethereal creature chasing its rear lights.
Above, the lights went off. And I stood alone, a ghost in the dark night’s rain.
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