Etched on Me Read online

  Solidarity aside, the proper dance towards desire really started with Enya and her Smartie-crapping unicorn.

  About a month after Clare arrived, Lora the soul-gazer got sacked—our guess was that she joined a cult, but staff never said. To replace her, they brought in a chill art therapist called Andrea, who’d set out the supplies and put on music and let us do whatever the fuck we wanted. Patient-directed expression for the win.

  Only problem was, she played the same Enya CD over and over. Which is all right if you’ve gone to the spa for an hour-long massage, but day after day? That’s enough to inspire suicidal ideation in a totally stable person.

  Eventually Clare and I got so bored we started making up an imaginary film for which the awful thing would serve as soundtrack. Plot-wise, it was lightweight fantasy, but the production values were brilliant: drunk fairies, an army of warrior dwarves clad in toddler-sized Doc Martens, and of course Enya herself, riding a unicorn across misty hills of green, wearing a velvet cloak and holding a scepter and commanding her loyal subjects to “Be serene, damn it!”

  “Of course she’d have a minion,” Clare said. “To scoop up all the magical turds.”

  “Nah,” I said, reaching across Chloe for the colored pencil box. “It’s such a magical world that the unicorn craps something smashing.”

  “Like what?”

  “I dunno, Valium?”

  “Dulcolax,” Nina chimed in.

  “No,” Clare said firmly. “It craps Smarties.”

  “I take it you’d like me to bring in a different CD, girls?” Andrea said, shaking her head as she unrolled a fresh sheet of butcher paper on the table.

  I offered to play “Best of the Screaming Women,” but Andrea thought it might be too disturbing, so we had to make do with her copy of Norah Jones instead. A bit snoozy, but still heaps better than the alternative.

  Midway through the first song, Clare lifted her head from her mandala coloring book, and sighed, and said, just loudly enough that I could hear, “Oh, Norah. You’d never wonder why you didn’t come if you’d gone home with me.”

  Well. Suffice it to say I was floored. Not only by quasi-devout, thoroughly private Clare outing herself, but also by the possibility of her sly remark being intended as a hint to me.

  I decided it was best to play it cool, both for her sake and mine. “Eh,” I said, sliding the pencil box down towards Parvati. “She’s not really my type.”

  • • •

  After that little exchange, I had a few more dreams in which my hands tangled in long hair—dark and wiry this time—but otherwise it was business as usual: prim, fully dressed pilgrimages to and from the shower, followed by group group group group pajamas (again, donned in the bathroom) lights out good night.

  At least until Clare’s six weeks of assess-and-adjust were up. She came back from her first therapy session with her head down and her shoulders bristly, clomping about the room as she slammed the armoire door, then her dresser drawers, scrape bang scrape bang.

  “Sorry,” she kept muttering. “Sorry.”

  “It’s cool,” I said from where I lay on my bed, flipping through my notes from containment group. Wasn’t just saying it to be polite; I knew what it was like to crave clamor, blare, vibration, blood. Whatever it took to wear your inside on the outside.

  “No,” she said. “No. It’s fucking not.”

  Whoa. Cheeky as she could get, Clare never let loose even mild swear words, much less an f-bomb.

  I sat up just in time to watch her raise her hands to her face. At first I thought she was covering it, gearing up to cry, but then I saw her fingers curl, their nails clawing over her forehead and down her cheeks.

  “Hey, hey,” I shouted, as I jumped up and ran over to grab her wrists.

  Once cut off, she struggled mightily, pounding her fists against the air.

  “Stop it.” I shook her. “Clare, stop.”

  “Why?” Her voice was a clenched growl. “So they won’t kick me out?”

  “No,” I said. “Because you’re flipping beautiful.”

  Her head and shoulders went still. I felt her hands relax. Brought my own up to cup her cheeks.

  “Liar,” she whispered.

  I stroked her hair. “It’s true.”

  “True you’re lying?”

  “True true.” And to prove it, I duck-dove in and kissed her. My mouth was closed, but it was hardly a peck, either, our lips shifting against each other, feeling their edges.

  As I stepped back, I could hear the low, breathy leak of her slow exhale. Behind her glasses, her stubby lashes blinked furiously.

  “I—I suppose we should go to dinner,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  • • •

  All through our chickpea curry, I kept my head bowed. We walked from the dining table to the couches for nightly group meeting in silence, our paths diverging, as if by unspoken agreement, when Clare took a seat next to Nina and I sat by Chloe.

  All through the to-me-irrelevant discussion of family visits, though, I caught myself sneaking glances at Clare. She sat slumped on the sofa cushion, as if she’d been shoved down there and abandoned, but her chin was lifted high. On someone else, the expression might have seemed affected or imperious, but on her it just looked pert and plucky. I uncrossed my legs, then crossed them again, pressing my thighs tight against each other, forcing myself to look away and listen to Kath’s lecture on how to set reasonable limits.

  Yeah, I admonished myself. You’d best take damn good notes on that.

  We were all about to get up and pick out a board game for our final activity of the evening when I heard the clangy brrring of the hall phone.

  “Grab it before the devil smites you, Clare,” Nina said, snickering, as she leaned up to the top shelf of the bookcase for a tattered Trivial Pursuit box.

  Clare gave a nonchalant oh for pity’s sake head-shake, but the corners of her mouth did a terse little crumple so heartbreaking it made something inside me crumple, too.

  “Leave her alone,” I said to Nina after she’d left.

  “Reckon you’ll want her on your team, Lesley,” Parvati said from where she sat setting up the board.

  Chloe fingered the dispenser of quiz cards, making their top edges snap. “Why even put her on one? We’ll be finished before she is.”

  I had to admit she was probably right, so I settled in grumpily next to Parvati.

  Five minutes later, my team was just about to answer a question in Entertainment when out into the commons came Clare, as shy and tentative as that pink, quavery feeling inside me, a tiny smile now curling her lips upward. When she sidled over and took the empty seat next to mine, it was all I could do not to pull her closer in giddy gladness.

  “Lesley’s about to save us,” Parvati announced.

  Clare’s smile went even deeper, till it was dimply. Crap. Now I really had to bring it.

  Of course, the question would be about some ancient song, from like 1975. No flipping clue.

  Nina snorted. “Useless, you are.”

  “No, she’s not,” Clare said.

  I felt my face do the melt, like Miss’s, only blushier. Reached a hand over, put it on Clare’s forearm, casual, like my fingers were telegraphing nothing more than Thanks for the vote of confidence, mate.

  By the time Chloe’s team had trumped us, it was edging dangerously close to lights-out. I busied myself sorting the pieces and tidying the cards, fiddling around so much that by the time I set the box back up on the shelf, everyone else, including Clare, had filed down the corridor.

  Way to scare her off, I thought as I opened the door to our room.

  Sure enough, no sign of Clare inside. I went to my dresser and pulled out a pair of ratty black yoga trousers and a heather-gray T-shirt with a hole at the seam where the neck met the shoulder. Hurriedly I scrambled out of my jeans and polo and into the makeshift pajamas. I was about to shove my balled-up clothes in the hamper when the door squealed open.

  I turne
d around. Dropped my bra, and then the rest. “Jesus, you scared me.”

  Clare stood there in her long nightdress and flip-flops, her hair still braided, her own wad of clothing tucked under her fuzzy-fabricked arm.

  “I—I’m sorry,” she said, in the tiniest, most choked voice you could imagine.

  “It’s okay,” I said, because it was.

  We tossed our dirty clothes into our respective hampers, and slammed our armoire doors closed, like automaton twins. Then we turned towards each other.

  “Hard day, innit?” I said.

  She nodded. I could see the muscles in her throat working, forming a small, ripply knot.

  “That first therapy session sucks. But it gets better. Or at least not so shitty.” My face burned. “Not exactly putting your mind at ease, am I?”

  A demi-pause, just long enough for her pluckypert chin to assert itself again.

  “Actually,” she said, “you are.”

  I brought my forearms up across myself, rubbing their bare skin. “Well, umm, good. I’m glad.”

  She gave a stuttery glance round. “We really . . . Miranda’s going to be knocking on doors in a minute, so we should—”

  “Yeah. Don’t need the curfew telling-off.”

  Her arms were at her own waist like mine now, only bent stiffly, her fingers bound together in fidgety lace. Twirl, twist, twirl.

  “Hug good night?” I said softly. “Or would that be too w—”

  In answer, her hands flew up and apart like a spray of confetti, and then she was barreling towards me. Unmoored again, I wrapped my arms round her waist, both to steady her and to steady myself.

  She rested her cheek on my shoulder as I rested my palm against the back of her head. We stood like that for a minute—her huddled, me hardly believing—and then I felt her shift, just enough to make the press of her full breasts deliberate.

  She turned her head to the side and pressed her mouth to the tiny hole in my T-shirt. Not even her whole mouth, really, just her lower lip, whispery little pucker, then a pull back.

  Emboldened, I rubbed her back, first in compact circles with my fingertips, then with my flat palm, up and up and up and down, just far enough to skirt the ribbed elastic ridge of her knickers.

  I felt Clare lift her head from my shoulder. Her eyes were heavy-lidded, her brow framed by an escaped, traily lock of hair, her lips parted, ever so slightly. Waiting for me.

  For me. I couldn’t believe it, that someone would stand and wait, expectant, craving me, daftscaredsacredstrange, hands hair teeth tongue, my tongue, parting her mouth, reaching in hungrily to lick the chip on her front tooth, to swirl round till it met hers. Me the one moving, instead of the one moved into. Nothing to do with power, just elation: at the small moan she made in the back of her throat, at the taste of mint toothpaste and warm spit, at the folding of her body into mine like batter, egg flour cream sweetness, spun.

  So shaky and surprised, I was, that I could barely walk backwards, but somehow I managed it, my mouth still on her, and then I was lying down, no, more like flopped down, on my bed, with her straddling my hips, and that was just, well, that was just not going to happen, let me tell you, not even with plain halting lovely Clare. I inched my way up, till I was sitting with my back against the wall and she was balanced in my lap with her legs wrapped round me, and then I was taking her hair out its plait, and smoothing it with my fingers, and murmuring inside her mouth.

  When I drew back for air and opened my eyes, Clare’s face in front of me had turned smoky-sultry gorgeous, thanks to the double effect of her glasses being off and her hair having gone loose and unkempt.

  “My knees,” I gasped. “Can you—”

  Clare’s face went red. “Sure, yeah,” she said, sliding off my lap.

  I turned down the top edge of my duvet and slid under. Wriggled up against the wall. Patted the patch of exposed sheet.

  My bed was so narrow we both had to lie on our sides, clutching each other so she wouldn’t fall off onto the floor. Every so often she’d threaten to tumble, and I’d have to lurch forward to grab her, and then we’d shift round, rearranging limbs till we’d gotten it right.

  “Lesley,” she said, so quietly I almost didn’t hear. “Do you think you’re going to get better?”

  “In here?” I mumbled drowsily.

  “No. At all.”

  “Bound to happen someday, innit? If we work hard enough in therapy.”

  I felt her shake her head. “Maybe for you and the rest. But not me.”

  Thanks to my conversations with Miss, I knew how to handle that one. “And why not?”

  “ Because I’m evil.”

  The thought was so laughable I couldn’t help but burst out. “Who the fuck told you that? Kath?” Then I realized, and shut up. “Oh.”

  “They think I’m damned,” Clare whispered. “Not sick.”

  Against my back, I could feel her hand tremble. Under my leg, I could feel hers clench.

  “That’s rubbish,” I said. “Anyone who thinks that about you is the damned one.”

  Her shoulders were shaking now, so hard I knew that every argument I’d put forth would fail.

  “Before here, they tried sending me for a . . .” She hid her face in my shoulder to muffle the words. “An exorcism.”

  “Oh, Clare. Oh, shit, honey. Clare.” I pulled her to me tighter. Kissed her head a million times.

  “I was their miracle, right? Little two-pound baby, gift from God. They debated whether it was messing about with His will to hook me up to all those tubes and save me, but reckoned I was special, I was meant to be here. Always told me my life was extra precious. Went on about how suicide was a sin. I can only imagine what they’d say if they figured out the rest.”

  “They haven’t any idea you like—”

  “No. And it’s got to stay that way.”

  I stroked her hair. “Then I won’t kiss you in front of them at visit weekend.”

  She drew back. “Don’t even joke, Les. We can’t let on to anyone.”

  “But that rule’s just a ‘guideline.’ ” I put on Kath’s bright breathiness. “Not like the other about harming, where you’re out of here after one strike.”

  The mattress shrieked as she sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. “Yeah, well,” she said, “I’m out of here soon as Mum and Dad decide I am.”

  “Wait,” I said, sitting up behind her. “How’s that even—”

  “I’m not sixteen till May.”

  I ran a hand over my face. “Fuck. So they could just—”

  “Ship me off to one of those evangelist boot camps for wayward teens in America?” She stood up, her bare feet slapping onto the linoleum floor. “Yeah. And they would.”

  “Clare,” I said slowly, “if you just want to stop, right now, I—”

  She turned to face me, shoulders squared and resolute.

  “No,” she said. “I’m done swallowing it down with aspirin bottles. I want to start.”

  “With . . . with me,” I said dubiously, like that was akin to dating a serial killer.

  In answer, she bent down, put her hands on my shoulders, and kissed me hard on the mouth.

  “Good night, mistress of the obvious,” she said, dashing back to her side of the room just before Miranda arrived for curfew bed check.

  • • •

  I thought there’d be no way I could possibly sleep after that, but I was so drained it was easy. Just like when you’ve had a panic attack, and then you come down, and the unreal tiredness feels so sheltering to sink into. (Yes, I just compared consensually making out for the first time—to say nothing of receiving confirmation that I was, at very least, not totally straight—to symptoms of an anxiety disorder. Welcome to Lesleyville.)

  Come morning, I woke and sat up to find Clare still dozing, her duvet tucked tight round her ruddied face, her hair even wilder now. The sight of her curled up there was so delicious I could barely stand it, but I made myself get dressed
before creeping over to sit on the bed next to her.

  When I ran my hand lightly over her hair and back in echo of the night before, Clare let out a groany mumble and lifted her head. “Wha—”

  “Wake-up call,” I said, and kissed the edge of her ear.

  She kept her hands over her face, ostensibly rubbing her eyes, but I could see through her fingers that she was smiling. “I missed you.”

  “Even in your sleep?”

  “Yeah.” She sat up slowly, yawning. “How long have we till breakfast?”

  “Ten minutes.”

  I got up so she could get up. Turned my back as she went towards her dresser. Out of awkward politeness, mainly, but also ’cause I knew we had to be careful. Not like there were blinky-eyed cameras in the room, but still.

  I busied myself getting my binder for groups together, straightening the top of my dresser—every twitchy, unnecessary tidy-up you could imagine. Each time I heard a drawer open or slam shut, each time I heard the rustle of stepped-out or stepped-into fabric, I felt myself jump. Bethan always told me I was “hypervigilant,” but this seemed different. Nervous startly excited bracing for—

  Oh, hell, I couldn’t help it. I snuck a glance at her standing there barefoot in her long skirt, hair neatly braided again, one hand poised to pluck a modest blouse from inside her armoire. On her back, rising up from beneath the wide chest band of her beige bra, was a long scar. The kind you couldn’t give yourself.

  Later, I’d learn by feel how far the puckery line traveled in the opposite direction, curving around her side along her rib cage, terminating in a tiny shadow-slit beneath her left breast, but right then all I could see was the arch along her shoulder blade, cresting in a dense channel of tunnely tissue.

  “What—what happened to your—”

  Clare selected an embroidered shirt I especially liked. “They had to open up my heart. To fix it.”