What You Become (14 page)

What did Alisha and Kiaru think about me now? What was going around school? It was peculiar, feeling so detached, but it was a relief too. Emotions made me do ridiculous stuff. I couldn’t trust them.

Dad seemed apologetic when he returned from work. He’d never shouted at me like that before, or called me a
horrible little girl
, and maybe he felt bad about it (like I had yesterday, when I’d still had feelings).

He thanked me for making the house look nice, and asked how Mum was, and I answered in a robotic way. He looked over my work, and offered to slice up an apple for me, but I didn’t want an apple. I didn’t want anything.

After dinner – brown rice and leftover chilli that I couldn’t eat – I went to my room and stared at the ceiling. For the first time in weeks, I didn’t worry about a thing.

At six o’clock the phone rang, and my heart began racing. Maybe it was Ti calling to make friends, to say she’d felt sick since Saturday night as well. But what would Dad say to her? I ran to the landing to listen, surprised when, after a few seconds he shouted for me.

‘I thought you said no phone.’

He moved his head slightly, a kind of shrug. ‘It’s Alisha,’ he said, and I was annoyed on Ti’s behalf. Five years she’d been coming round here. He’d met Alisha once, and already she was in the inner sanctum.

‘Hello?’

‘Rosie! What the hell? How are you? What’s going on?’

I stared blankly at Dad until he walked away. ‘Nothing, I’m fine. How are you? How’s school?’

‘You sound different. Are you okay? What happened? Everyone’s saying Chase got an injunction against you, that Ti’s been arrested. Is it true you’re not coming back?’

‘I’m coming back. I think.’

‘Oh. Well. Phew! Are you all right? You don’t sound all right.’

‘I’m all right,’ I said, only I couldn’t get the words out. I remembered Ti, crying at the top of the slide at the Beacon, and how I’d sworn to do whatever it took to help her.

‘Rosie? Tell me what happened,’ Alisha said, but I couldn’t stop crying for long enough.

‘Talk later,’ I managed in a broken jumble, and then I put my head in my hands.

Joey tiptoed out of his room, and I tried to get myself together, but all control had gone.

‘What is
happening
around here?’ he said as I stood up, hiding my face so as not to alarm him. ‘Why won’t anyone talk to me?’

I was no longer his Rose, that’s what Dad had said. And he was right; I felt it.

So who was I?

Twenty-eight

The next evening, there was a knock on the door after dinner, and a few minutes later Dad came up to my room with a purple folder.

‘That was your friends at the door,’ he said, meaning my
authorized
friends. ‘They took some notes for you. They say hello. They hope you’re all right.’

I took the folder wordlessly, and Dad stood by my bed for a minute, fiddling with a thread dangling from the sleeve of his tweed jacket, before leaving.

The folder contained school-related notes from English and Science in Alisha and Kiaru’s writing, and I scanned them, disappointed, until I reached the final page. Following the conclusion subheading was a paragraph headed
Party
.

We’re working on your dad,
Alisha had written.
See you after the play on Friday.

Ava’s party, I’d forgotten. Alisha wrote that the rumour about Chase and Will was all over school, and that people were saying Chase was having an affair with him behind Kes’s back. Kes had delivered a whole-school assembly about the importance of respecting teachers’ rights to private lives, which Chase was mysteriously absent from, and Will had avoided everyone’s eyes the whole time.

You have to come out on Friday
, Alisha had written in her swirly handwriting.
Kiaru wants you to be there
, then she’d drawn a heart that sent my blood pressure soaring.

The rest of the week passed in a similar pattern: I made Mum’s trays, and kept her company, telling her just enough about how I was to make her feel less lonely. Or so I hoped. Joey badgered me to play
Guitar Hero
with him, and asked why I wasn’t talking to Dad, and I fobbed him off by telling him I was on my period, which he didn’t understand at all, and so shut up.

After dinner, the doorbell would ring as Alisha and/or Kiaru brought a new batch of schoolwork. Dad wouldn’t let me speak to them myself or pass anything back, but I listened on the stairs as he talked to them, and they stayed for longer each visit.

We’re working on your dad
, Alisha had written, and I hated how confident she was. I didn’t want my dad to be swayed by charm and scheming. He was always saying how he valued authenticity over everything else, but when it came to it he was as easily fooled as anyone.

Twenty-nine

When Dad called me at sixish the next night I headed downstairs with my hair messy enough that he wouldn’t think I was presuming anything.

Kiaru stood at the door in his tight jeans and huge parka, alone, and my disappointment at Dad’s inconsistency exploded into joy. The weather had turned wintery, although it was March, and Kiaru’s parka finally made sense. I could feel the first smile of the week attempting to bust my face open, but I wouldn’t let Dad see it.

‘Kiaru has said he’ll walk you to this party of Ava’s, and get you home for nine, so how about I handle dinner tonight?’

‘Okay,’ I said flatly.

‘Because I
do
want you to have friends, Rosie, and I want you to see that.’

I shrugged, forcing myself to stay quiet. He wanted me to have friends; he just didn’t believe I was intelligent enough to choose them for myself.

‘So,
nine o’clock
,’ he said firmly, like every dad from every teen movie ever, and for a horrible second I thought Kiaru was going to say, ‘Yes, sir,’ but thankfully he just nodded and turned his attention to me.

‘It’s pretty cold out,’ he said. ‘You might need more layers.’

I ran upstairs and grabbed my duffle coat and Mum’s cream woolly hat, and walking back to the kitchen I could hear him talking to Dad about the weather as though it were an actual subject, and I felt depressed that adults were so easy to manipulate.

‘Right you are,’ I said to break up their chat about when exactly the storm was going to hit, and how likely we were to get caught in it on our way home, and Dad looked weirdly timid as he handed me his oversized golf umbrella. I pulled a face, because it was ridiculous, but Kiaru took it seamlessly, as though Dad had been passing it to him all along. He made everything smooth like hazelnut butter, and it was impressive to witness, but there was something cold about it too, and I thought of Ti, fidgeting and interrupting and whispering and nudging, and I missed her.

‘Right you are,’ Kiaru said, taking my cue. With the umbrella tucked under his arm like one of the Rat Pack, he followed me over the threshold of my house, and allowing my smile free reign finally, I ran into the night, exhilarated by possibility.

The sun hadn’t set yet, and it was still light, though the sky was crowded with blueish-charcoal cloud. Walking together along Erissey Terrace we stared out at a fishing boat heading into the harbour, a swarm of herring gulls trailing behind it like a bad thought.

‘Thanks for the notes,’ I said.

‘You’re welcome. We didn’t want you to get behind. You’ve only just caught up.’

Moored boats bobbed gently on the uneasy water, and my stomach rocked with them as we walked in silence. I was happy to be out here with him, but I was worried about Ti too – it had been almost a whole week now without her sneaking me a phone call, and every time I thought about our argument I got a lump in my throat.

‘So what happened?’ Kiaru asked, after a couple of minutes of silence, and I started to explain about Chase’s garden round two, and how it related to the milkshake shop, that somehow Ti had got caught, though it was Ophelia that had smashed the window. I told him how Mum and Dad thought Ti was bad for me, and how I thought they were wrong but I was worried too, because what if I was delusional the way Ti was about Ophelia? I never wanted to be blind like that.

Kiaru listened, asking occasional questions, and soon we had walked through town and were on Castle Road, cutting on to the coast path, then heading down the steep cliff to Durgan. This wasn’t where Ava’s party was, but I didn’t feel like a party.

We found a low flat rock to sit and watch the waves coming in, and I wished I hadn’t lost my camera because it would be so great to photograph Kiaru against the unsettled sea. I found a thread of seaweed, and tried to pop the bubbles at its ends.

‘Bladderwrack,’ I said.

‘Huh?’

‘This is called bladderwrack. Ti taught me that. She’s in love with the sea.’

Kiaru stared out at it, surging and gigantic just ahead of us. ‘Aren’t we all?’

‘She loves it so much, she wrote
mermaid
as her number one aspiration on her work experience form.’

Kiaru smiled. ‘I wrote international man of mystery on mine.’

‘Did you?’

‘No, of course not. I wrote potter.’

‘Did you!?’

‘No! Why can’t you tell when I’m joking?’

‘Because you never change the tone of your voice! So what did you write? Seriously.’

‘I wrote GP, because my dad has had my work placement lined up at his practice since I was a toddler. Deal is that I have to at least try it before he’ll allow me to choose some “airy fairy” course at university.’

‘Wow.’

‘What did you write?’

‘I wrote photographer, but Mr Starkey said we didn’t have any of those on the work experience books, so I wrote photography teacher instead.’

‘Aim for the stars and you just might hit the moon.’

‘That’s what Ti said!’

‘Ti sounds
hilarious
.’

‘She is. She’s the funniest person I know. She’s an idiot as well though. She makes the stupidest decisions.’

I threw a small rock at the no swimming sign a few metres away, missed, and tried again. The beach here shelved dramatically, so it was hard to climb out if the water was rough or you weren’t a strong swimmer. Every year somebody died. Usually a tourist that didn’t know any better.

‘I can sort of see why my parents don’t want us to be friends to be honest.’

Kiaru aimed, and missed, and I looked for the perfect-sized rock.

‘They don’t get to decide, though, do they? It’s up to you. You just have to show them that it’s a real friendship, that you won’t let them get in the way.’

‘I don’t think she wants to be friends any more. She says we’ve grown apart.’

‘She’s hurt. People are delicate, you know.’

‘That doesn’t make me feel better,’ I said, taking aim.

‘Why not? It should – oh! You got it! Nice one! – it means she cares about you, which means she’ll want to make up. And you obviously care about her. Just tell your dad you’ve listened to what he said, and you’ve thought it through carefully, and he’s wrong. Tell him it’s not up to him to choose who your friends are . . .’

The sheer sense in that made me wonder why I hadn’t managed to say it in the first place, and we sat quietly for a minute listening to the water.

‘I have an admission to make,’ he said after a while.

‘Uh-huh.’

‘This isn’t Ava’s fancy dress party.’

‘I wondered where all the people were . . .’

‘I just wanted to sit somewhere with you for a bit first.’

With you.

‘I actually lied to your dad.’

‘But you were so convincing!’

‘I know, I feel grotty. Never tell him. Do you still want to hang out with me? I mean, do you feel safe?’

‘I feel a bit frightened. Who even are you?’ I said, and our voices bubbled with all the extra stuff we weren’t saying, and there was this huge swell of excitement in me, bigger than all the storm clouds combined, because perfect, virtuous Kiaru had lied to my dad so he could sit somewhere
with me
.

‘You know, when Alisha first picked you out, I wasn’t sure.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re like the most tightly closed book on the shelf.’

‘
You’re
the most tightly closed book on the shelf! You’re like a book that has superglued its pages together, and then vacuum-packed itself, and then fed itself through a mangle.’

He laughed. Again! I could make him laugh!

‘I could see you were pretty, but I didn’t expect you to have such . . . hidden depths.’

I was hardly listening to the end of his sentence because I was so delighted by the start. I already suspected I was interesting, if people got to know me – I didn’t care about that so much – what I wanted was for someone to think I was pretty. Call me shallow, if you like.

‘You shouldn’t write people off so easily,’ I said, and I was joking, but he answered seriously.

‘I really shouldn’t,’ he said, and standing he held his hands out. As he pulled me up we were close together, and I hoped he’d try to kiss me, but he only jumped from the rock, and I blushed though no one was looking.

‘Wonder if we can get on to the roof,’ I shouted over the music. It was some terrible picked-off-TV girl singer convinced she was bleeding love, and my ears hurt. Ava had settled on a rainbow theme in the end, and the crowd was multi-coloured, huddled in corners, and downing drinks or smoking. What I really wanted was to be outside with Kiaru again. It was something I hadn’t really felt before, like all these other people were just in the way.

Palm Beach Hotel had been a decadent palace years ago, but was now a wreck. Disco lights flash-bombed the lavish peeling wallpaper, and a grand staircase spiralling upwards had become a kind of elaborate bench, with kids on every step, kissing and laughing and drinking from cans and glass bottles.

We’d found a makeshift bar in a manky-looking ex-swimming pool. A strobe lit up the old waterline as well as the scum in the corners, and some kid I didn’t know handed us small bottles of beer.

Outside, palm trees flapped their leaves in the wind and gulls surfed the air currents above them. You could just hear the ocean over the sounds of the party, though you couldn’t see it because of a thick hedge around the gardens. Jesse Burzyinski and Tommy O’Shea were pressed against a monkey puzzle tree, and another couple were lying together on the ground though it wasn’t completely dark yet. I pulled my coat round me, glad of Mum’s hat, and looked for the fire stairs.