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Rachel’s homework sat untouched in her school bag, a week of it piling up. Her desk had an empty spot where her laptop had been, her dad had taken it away and plugged it in downstairs, only to be used under supervision. No social media no email no time wasting internet sites, only homework. He had her phone, too.
“You made a promise to me, when you went back to school,” he’d yelled at her, when she arrived home after her night at Danny’s. “You promised to behave. No more sneaking out, no more parties, no more drinking, no more skiving off to do god knows what instead of being in class. And you promised me you’d attend school and you promised me you’d behave while you were there!”
“I have been trying!” Rachel protested in self defence. “I-“
“Don’t give me that,” he complained. “I rang the school, I know how many classes you’ve missed.”
Rachel backed up a little. “It’s not as many as before?” she asked hopefully.
“Before, when you simply stopped going?” he demanded. “Have you been skiving off with this Danny bloke?”
“No,” said Rachel, shaking her head.
“So it’s Zoe then? Or do you have a third friend you’re keeping secret from me?”
“No!”
“No what?” the questions kept coming. “Who are you sneaking around with, Elaine?”
“No one! I’m not sneaking! And it’s not Danny and Zoe’s fault! They’re good!”
“So it’s your fault, is it?”
“No!”
“So who’s fault is it? You’re not going to blame your behaviour on me, are you? Fuck, that’s just what I need.”
“I wasn’t going to!”
“Good! Because it’s your mother you inherited all this crap from, you know that, don’t you?”
Rachel felt small as a bug and about as lovable. “Yes.”
“I’m trying to keep you from turning into her, you know that, don’t you? I’m trying to keep you safe and make you better, but you have to cooperate with me!” He roared his last three words.
“I’m trying!” Rachel protested again. “Please stop yelling at me.”
“Then stop doing things to make me so goddamn pissed off!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Sorry for what?" he said, hitting her with a glare. "Tell me!”
“I’m sorry I – I skipped school and I’m sorry – I’m sorry I went out last night without asking.”
“And?” he demanded.
“And… I’m sorry I stole your bourbon?”
“You what? You little shit!” He was surprised, and Rachel felt her stomach clench up with regret. He didn’t know. He hadn’t noticed. She shouldn’t have said anything. Stupid stupid stupid!
“You are grounded,” he continued. “No phone, no internet, no telly. I’ll drop you at school in the morning and Imogene will pick you up and we will be making contact with your school to check which classes you attend, which will be how many?”
“All of them,” Rachel replied meekly.
“That’s right. And if I catch you stealing anything from me again, or from my wife or her daughter, I will – I will cut your hand off like they do in the fucking Orient, you hear me?”
Rachel shook her head, hard.
“What? You don’t hear me?”
“I won’t steal anything!” she promised.
“You’re goddamn right you won’t.” He looked around her bedroom, as if trying to work out if he’d missed anything. Seemingly satisfied, he turned, his hand on her doorknob. “Get your damn uniform on and I'll take you to school. And get a move on, I'm already late for work.”
Rachel nodded.
“Do we have an understanding about your behaviour?”
Rachel nodded.
“Good,” he said, and left, slamming her door behind him.
She’d tried to do her homework this week. Really. It was so hard to study in the family room, though. It was so quiet down there. Rachel was used to working with her music, and her phone to text Zoe and IM so she could talk to Danny and a dozen different things to look at in her room when her attention wandered. But in the family room, it was so sparse she swore it echoed. Polished floors, walls decorated only in perfectly symmetrical artwork that Rachel could not understand. At least the room opened onto the garden, where there was colour. She found herself staring at the grass quite often, longing to be outside. Her body ached with the desire to run. She had too much energy, and nowhere to use it but homework and chores.
The chores at least were better because they were physical, though there was little satisfaction in cleaning the already shining surfaces. They were over too soon and then it was back to sitting in front of her computer, the wifi disabled, going over and over course notes from Media Studies. Never taking a damn thing in.
She thought about dying, a lot. Lying in her bed, pretending she was quiet and cold and buried.
She seemed to think about dying this time every year, as the world started to warm up, as new life blossomed on the trees outside.
It had been Spring when she’d been admitted to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Ward of Plymouth hospital. Spring as she started to recover. Spring as she screamed and screamed and cried because she’d lost her family. Rachel’s remembered her room at the hospital, remembered some of the others who lived there too, and the therapist she’d worked with over that time. She remembered that she had made up her mind not to live, and pursued that goal for a long time. She turned twelve in hospital, in the autumn.
By midwinter, she was living with her dad. They’d both decided to start again.
And though she’d lived in hospital for so long, and had talked and talked to so many people, certain memories stayed locked away.
Her only memory of what happened that day in early April was cold, cold water. And a heaviness all around her and a bright light and a blurred face above her. When her father told her the details of what had happened, it took her a long time to believe it. The memory she had of that conversation was a weird one; it must have been in the hospital but she kept picturing it different places, like a living room, or a picnic table. But memories do that, her therapist had reassured her. They twist and they turn, and sometimes the more you go over something in your mind the less clear the first memory, the true memory, actually becomes. He probably had to tell her more than once, anyway, and she couldn't remember the first time.
Rachel had gone over scraps of childhood memories so many times they’d all twisted. She tried not to think about the past, though. There was no good to be found there.
Leaving the hospital for the first time had driven home how broken her memory really was. She’d been living in Plymouth before the river, but she didn't remember it. Her dad drove her around, asking if she remembered this, or that. She didn’t recognise the school he said she’d gone to, didn’t recognise the names of the teachers he said she’d liked, didn’t even recognise the home she’d lived in with her mum. They'd said a traumatic event could steal your memories though, and who knew what had happened to her in Plymouth before her mother tried to kill her.
But she recognised her father’s home, when he took her back there. She’d been here before. She remembered coming to stay here, sometime in the past when she was smaller. This was the room she’d shared with one of her brothers and this was the kitchen where they’d made themselves sick by pigging out on all of dad’s food while he wasn’t looking. She remembered. It was such a relief and a miracle that she found she could cry out of happiness.
She hadn’t felt that kind of relief again till she met Zoe and Danny. People who survived and were messed up in so many ways, the same as her or different. People her age who didn’t treat her badly. Liking coming home to place she didn’t know she’d lost.
People she wanted to trust, even as she was waiting for them to hurt her.
Rachel knew how fast homes could change, how quickly security could be uprooted. She remembered packing because her mother said they were going on holiday and never going back to that old house again, setting up somewhere new, on the other side of London or sometimes further afield. One of their long night time drives must have ended in Plymouth.
Homes changed. Security vanished. People turned on you. Rachel knew this.
As April had approached and the sense of impending doom had become heavier and heavier, she started to expect them to turn on her. Expecting it but not wanting it but knowing in her heart it was coming. But she’d crawled into Danny’s bed and he hadn’t tried anything. Nothing bad. Nothing at all. He’d kissed her, and it was wonderful, and he’d smiled when he did it but he did not push. He’d held her hand through their encounter with his mother and he didn’t blame her. He did everything he could to make sure she didn’t feel guilty, even though Rachel knew that guilt is exactly what she should have been feeling.
But even though guilt was what her brain told her to feel; the rest of her was only feeling safer. Safe with Danny.
But that meant something bad was still going to happen. Maybe it would be Zoe who turned on her. They couldn’t both be honest and real and kind. Not really. Not deep down. What if Zoe turned on her? What if?
Rachel got stuck on this thought, shut in her room all silent and alone. She went over and over it till she’d convinced herself it was the only reality.
By the time she fought with Zoe later that week, the tension and terror inside her had built up so bad she just wanted it over and done with. She hadn’t planned the fight, but once Zoe started giving her that look, that freaked-out, I-can’t-handle-you look, Rachel knew everything was about to end. She’d handed herself to Zoe, gave Zoe reasons to hate her, gave Zoe ammunition to use against her, and waited. But Zoe had not lashed back in the way Rachel intended – she’d been snappy and sarcastic but she hadn’t used any of the ammo provided.
But she’d still walked away, and avoided Rachel for the rest of the week. They had PE together on Friday afternoon, but Zoe didn’t show up. There was a rumour going round that she’d left in an ambulance at lunchtime but Rachel wasn’t sure that was true.
On Saturday Rachel went with Indigo and her mother to their spin class. She hated the cheerful instructor yelling motivation at them but she was relieved just to burn off some extra energy and be out of the house. Afterwards, Imogene bought them all lunch, and frozen yoghurt.
“Maybe you can come with us every Saturday?” Indigo said, and Rachel shrugged and said maybe.
“Don’t shrug, Elaine,” Imogene scolded. “It makes you look half-witted.”
“You know you can call me Rachel,” Rachel said, trying hard to ignore the other comment.
Indigo smiled and began to say something but Imogene interrupted. “No,” she said. “Your father wouldn’t like that. Besides, Elaine is much prettier.” She smiled at the girls. “Indigo and Elaine.”
Rachel screwed up her mouth and poked her frozen yogurt with a spoon.
That night Indigo went out with friends, and her dad and Imogene were downstairs having an at-home movie date. Rachel lay on her bed, whispering her name to herself. Rachel, Rachel; sometimes it felt like the only part of her she really knew.
She’d decided to switch to her middle name before starting at London College. Part of her new start. New house, new school, attitude makeover, as Imogene put it. A new-old name to try and be a new person.
Something thumped against her window.
Rachel jumped, and lay where she was for a moment, wondering what it was. She thought Danny? even though her window, unlike his, was impossible to climb into. There were no trees, and no handy guttering. It was just a windowsill, and then flat brick, all the way down to the garden.
But she went to look anyway, pulling her curtains back to peer out into the dark. With her lamp on in her room, she couldn’t see details out the window, just the streetlights that shone over the high brick wall that surrounded their place.
She could see the plastic arrow, suckered to her window, though. There was even a piece of lined paper wrapped around it.
Rachel pulled the curtain closed behind her body to block out the light from her lamp, pressing her nose to the cool glass and looking out. Across the garden, on top of the brick wall, was Zoe with a large plastic bow.
Rachel had to get at that arrow. The big window in her room was painted shut, though; only the small window at the top opened. It was difficult to climb out it, painful but not impossible; Rachel stood on tip toes to push her arms and head out the window, then used her arms till she was half-out, the windowsill digging into her stomach and sides, legs dangling inside the house as her arms stretched out toward the arrow.
She wrapped her fingers around it and pulled – it took a decent effort to un-sucker the arrow from the glass, but once she had it, she slithered back through the window, toes groping for her windowsill to guide her back onto her floor. The arrow had a piece of wool tied around it, that led out the window and back to Zoe.
The note was tied on with a black hair tie. Rachel pulled it off and slipped it onto her wrist as she read.
Here’s hoping Ms Marlow’s archery lessons pay off. I’ve been practicing shooting arrows at my own house all day, though I’m sure that’s not what she was teaching us for.
I made you some lists. Okay they’re not really lists but whatever.
Things I think you are: kind of pigheaded, and bad at listening.
Things I don’t think you are: stupid, slutty, a liar, a bad person, a failure, a faster running than me.
Things I feel right now: super annoyed and confused. And probably a bit scared of falling since I’ll hopefully be sitting on a wall while you read this.
Things I’m not feeling: annoyed at you.
Things I want: to trust you. I really really do so I am going to try really hard. My trust drives are kind of fucked up. Lots of people have done a lot of fucked up things when I trusted them not to. But I kept thinking about all the things you’ve said to me and I know lots of people you were supposed to trust have done things to you as well. And this is really hard to admit but I’ve been scared you’re going to do something to me too.
I’m sorry for how I made you feel stupid. I really don’t think you are. I like talking to you, you’re always saying something interesting even though I think you only remember when said say dumb shit? But we all say dumb shit? Do you remember in my room once out of nowhere you just asked me if I ever thought about it raining at sea? That was so weird, like who’d even think about that? And you went on about how wet and cold it was here in the city, and how much weather happens, all this rain just falling and falling, out to sea where no one can experience it. And we just lay there for ages listening to the rain and then said you said ‘except fisherman I guess’ and I actually cried I was laughing so hard?
That was probably the dumbest conversation I have ever had but it was so fantastic I wouldn’t change a word of it. You are so so so so so far from stupid, I promise that’s what I really think.
Okay I’m running out of paper and I wanted to leave the back empty in case you wanted to write on it too, and didn’t have any of your step-sis’s butterfly paper stashed in your room.
Not sure how to sign this off. Uh. I'll see you on Monday at school?
Yours,
Zoe.
From her position on the wall, Zoe watched Rachel work her way through the letter. She was keeping a real close eye out for other lights in the house coming on, and for people walking down the street, though she was at least eight feet up and how many people actually looked up when they walked? She was pleased the wall was so thick, though, she wouldn’t have liked to be balancing. She could sit pretty comfortably while she waited.
Hope was waiting in a car a little way down the street, keeping an eye on her. She’d given Zoe a boost onto Rachel’s neighbours fence, which was lower than Rachel’s, and she’d been able to climb onto the corner of Rachel’s wall from there. It had been part of one of the escape routes she’d scoped out on her first visit to Rachel’s place, though she hadn’t been thinking about breaking in, that time.
Through the window, she saw Rachel scribbling something on the back of her note. When she was done, she climbed back onto her windowsill, and chucked the arrow out the window. Zoe grinned, and started rolling in her end of the string, pulling the arrow back up toward her. She felt so pleased with herself for this idea.
Rachel’s reply read: Except fishremen I guess. (dont laugh so hard you fall off the wall)
Zoe clutched the piece of paper to her chest, feeling an outpouring of love so strong it almost made her start to cry.
She waved at Rachel, a goodnight wave. Rachel pressed her lips against her window in a kiss, then blew out her cheeks in a blowfish face. Zoe turned her wave into an obscene gesture, and Rachel laughed out loud and flashed her bra. Zoe could hear her laugh across the garden, and though it was a great sound she thought she better climb down; she had no idea where Rachel’s adults were, and Zoe wasn’t planning on getting caught.
She waved again, and walked along the top of the wall to the corner where she dropped down to the neighbours shorter fence, tossed her plastic bow to the ground and lowered herself down after it.
That night, both of them slept a little easier, knowing for sure now that they didn't need to dread seeing each other on Monday morning.
“You made a promise to me, when you went back to school,” he’d yelled at her, when she arrived home after her night at Danny’s. “You promised to behave. No more sneaking out, no more parties, no more drinking, no more skiving off to do god knows what instead of being in class. And you promised me you’d attend school and you promised me you’d behave while you were there!”
“I have been trying!” Rachel protested in self defence. “I-“
“Don’t give me that,” he complained. “I rang the school, I know how many classes you’ve missed.”
Rachel backed up a little. “It’s not as many as before?” she asked hopefully.
“Before, when you simply stopped going?” he demanded. “Have you been skiving off with this Danny bloke?”
“No,” said Rachel, shaking her head.
“So it’s Zoe then? Or do you have a third friend you’re keeping secret from me?”
“No!”
“No what?” the questions kept coming. “Who are you sneaking around with, Elaine?”
“No one! I’m not sneaking! And it’s not Danny and Zoe’s fault! They’re good!”
“So it’s your fault, is it?”
“No!”
“So who’s fault is it? You’re not going to blame your behaviour on me, are you? Fuck, that’s just what I need.”
“I wasn’t going to!”
“Good! Because it’s your mother you inherited all this crap from, you know that, don’t you?”
Rachel felt small as a bug and about as lovable. “Yes.”
“I’m trying to keep you from turning into her, you know that, don’t you? I’m trying to keep you safe and make you better, but you have to cooperate with me!” He roared his last three words.
“I’m trying!” Rachel protested again. “Please stop yelling at me.”
“Then stop doing things to make me so goddamn pissed off!”
“I’m sorry!”
“Sorry for what?" he said, hitting her with a glare. "Tell me!”
“I’m sorry I – I skipped school and I’m sorry – I’m sorry I went out last night without asking.”
“And?” he demanded.
“And… I’m sorry I stole your bourbon?”
“You what? You little shit!” He was surprised, and Rachel felt her stomach clench up with regret. He didn’t know. He hadn’t noticed. She shouldn’t have said anything. Stupid stupid stupid!
“You are grounded,” he continued. “No phone, no internet, no telly. I’ll drop you at school in the morning and Imogene will pick you up and we will be making contact with your school to check which classes you attend, which will be how many?”
“All of them,” Rachel replied meekly.
“That’s right. And if I catch you stealing anything from me again, or from my wife or her daughter, I will – I will cut your hand off like they do in the fucking Orient, you hear me?”
Rachel shook her head, hard.
“What? You don’t hear me?”
“I won’t steal anything!” she promised.
“You’re goddamn right you won’t.” He looked around her bedroom, as if trying to work out if he’d missed anything. Seemingly satisfied, he turned, his hand on her doorknob. “Get your damn uniform on and I'll take you to school. And get a move on, I'm already late for work.”
Rachel nodded.
“Do we have an understanding about your behaviour?”
Rachel nodded.
“Good,” he said, and left, slamming her door behind him.
She’d tried to do her homework this week. Really. It was so hard to study in the family room, though. It was so quiet down there. Rachel was used to working with her music, and her phone to text Zoe and IM so she could talk to Danny and a dozen different things to look at in her room when her attention wandered. But in the family room, it was so sparse she swore it echoed. Polished floors, walls decorated only in perfectly symmetrical artwork that Rachel could not understand. At least the room opened onto the garden, where there was colour. She found herself staring at the grass quite often, longing to be outside. Her body ached with the desire to run. She had too much energy, and nowhere to use it but homework and chores.
The chores at least were better because they were physical, though there was little satisfaction in cleaning the already shining surfaces. They were over too soon and then it was back to sitting in front of her computer, the wifi disabled, going over and over course notes from Media Studies. Never taking a damn thing in.
She thought about dying, a lot. Lying in her bed, pretending she was quiet and cold and buried.
She seemed to think about dying this time every year, as the world started to warm up, as new life blossomed on the trees outside.
It had been Spring when she’d been admitted to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Ward of Plymouth hospital. Spring as she started to recover. Spring as she screamed and screamed and cried because she’d lost her family. Rachel’s remembered her room at the hospital, remembered some of the others who lived there too, and the therapist she’d worked with over that time. She remembered that she had made up her mind not to live, and pursued that goal for a long time. She turned twelve in hospital, in the autumn.
By midwinter, she was living with her dad. They’d both decided to start again.
And though she’d lived in hospital for so long, and had talked and talked to so many people, certain memories stayed locked away.
Her only memory of what happened that day in early April was cold, cold water. And a heaviness all around her and a bright light and a blurred face above her. When her father told her the details of what had happened, it took her a long time to believe it. The memory she had of that conversation was a weird one; it must have been in the hospital but she kept picturing it different places, like a living room, or a picnic table. But memories do that, her therapist had reassured her. They twist and they turn, and sometimes the more you go over something in your mind the less clear the first memory, the true memory, actually becomes. He probably had to tell her more than once, anyway, and she couldn't remember the first time.
Rachel had gone over scraps of childhood memories so many times they’d all twisted. She tried not to think about the past, though. There was no good to be found there.
Leaving the hospital for the first time had driven home how broken her memory really was. She’d been living in Plymouth before the river, but she didn't remember it. Her dad drove her around, asking if she remembered this, or that. She didn’t recognise the school he said she’d gone to, didn’t recognise the names of the teachers he said she’d liked, didn’t even recognise the home she’d lived in with her mum. They'd said a traumatic event could steal your memories though, and who knew what had happened to her in Plymouth before her mother tried to kill her.
But she recognised her father’s home, when he took her back there. She’d been here before. She remembered coming to stay here, sometime in the past when she was smaller. This was the room she’d shared with one of her brothers and this was the kitchen where they’d made themselves sick by pigging out on all of dad’s food while he wasn’t looking. She remembered. It was such a relief and a miracle that she found she could cry out of happiness.
She hadn’t felt that kind of relief again till she met Zoe and Danny. People who survived and were messed up in so many ways, the same as her or different. People her age who didn’t treat her badly. Liking coming home to place she didn’t know she’d lost.
People she wanted to trust, even as she was waiting for them to hurt her.
Rachel knew how fast homes could change, how quickly security could be uprooted. She remembered packing because her mother said they were going on holiday and never going back to that old house again, setting up somewhere new, on the other side of London or sometimes further afield. One of their long night time drives must have ended in Plymouth.
Homes changed. Security vanished. People turned on you. Rachel knew this.
As April had approached and the sense of impending doom had become heavier and heavier, she started to expect them to turn on her. Expecting it but not wanting it but knowing in her heart it was coming. But she’d crawled into Danny’s bed and he hadn’t tried anything. Nothing bad. Nothing at all. He’d kissed her, and it was wonderful, and he’d smiled when he did it but he did not push. He’d held her hand through their encounter with his mother and he didn’t blame her. He did everything he could to make sure she didn’t feel guilty, even though Rachel knew that guilt is exactly what she should have been feeling.
But even though guilt was what her brain told her to feel; the rest of her was only feeling safer. Safe with Danny.
But that meant something bad was still going to happen. Maybe it would be Zoe who turned on her. They couldn’t both be honest and real and kind. Not really. Not deep down. What if Zoe turned on her? What if?
Rachel got stuck on this thought, shut in her room all silent and alone. She went over and over it till she’d convinced herself it was the only reality.
By the time she fought with Zoe later that week, the tension and terror inside her had built up so bad she just wanted it over and done with. She hadn’t planned the fight, but once Zoe started giving her that look, that freaked-out, I-can’t-handle-you look, Rachel knew everything was about to end. She’d handed herself to Zoe, gave Zoe reasons to hate her, gave Zoe ammunition to use against her, and waited. But Zoe had not lashed back in the way Rachel intended – she’d been snappy and sarcastic but she hadn’t used any of the ammo provided.
But she’d still walked away, and avoided Rachel for the rest of the week. They had PE together on Friday afternoon, but Zoe didn’t show up. There was a rumour going round that she’d left in an ambulance at lunchtime but Rachel wasn’t sure that was true.
On Saturday Rachel went with Indigo and her mother to their spin class. She hated the cheerful instructor yelling motivation at them but she was relieved just to burn off some extra energy and be out of the house. Afterwards, Imogene bought them all lunch, and frozen yoghurt.
“Maybe you can come with us every Saturday?” Indigo said, and Rachel shrugged and said maybe.
“Don’t shrug, Elaine,” Imogene scolded. “It makes you look half-witted.”
“You know you can call me Rachel,” Rachel said, trying hard to ignore the other comment.
Indigo smiled and began to say something but Imogene interrupted. “No,” she said. “Your father wouldn’t like that. Besides, Elaine is much prettier.” She smiled at the girls. “Indigo and Elaine.”
Rachel screwed up her mouth and poked her frozen yogurt with a spoon.
That night Indigo went out with friends, and her dad and Imogene were downstairs having an at-home movie date. Rachel lay on her bed, whispering her name to herself. Rachel, Rachel; sometimes it felt like the only part of her she really knew.
She’d decided to switch to her middle name before starting at London College. Part of her new start. New house, new school, attitude makeover, as Imogene put it. A new-old name to try and be a new person.
Something thumped against her window.
Rachel jumped, and lay where she was for a moment, wondering what it was. She thought Danny? even though her window, unlike his, was impossible to climb into. There were no trees, and no handy guttering. It was just a windowsill, and then flat brick, all the way down to the garden.
But she went to look anyway, pulling her curtains back to peer out into the dark. With her lamp on in her room, she couldn’t see details out the window, just the streetlights that shone over the high brick wall that surrounded their place.
She could see the plastic arrow, suckered to her window, though. There was even a piece of lined paper wrapped around it.
Rachel pulled the curtain closed behind her body to block out the light from her lamp, pressing her nose to the cool glass and looking out. Across the garden, on top of the brick wall, was Zoe with a large plastic bow.
Rachel had to get at that arrow. The big window in her room was painted shut, though; only the small window at the top opened. It was difficult to climb out it, painful but not impossible; Rachel stood on tip toes to push her arms and head out the window, then used her arms till she was half-out, the windowsill digging into her stomach and sides, legs dangling inside the house as her arms stretched out toward the arrow.
She wrapped her fingers around it and pulled – it took a decent effort to un-sucker the arrow from the glass, but once she had it, she slithered back through the window, toes groping for her windowsill to guide her back onto her floor. The arrow had a piece of wool tied around it, that led out the window and back to Zoe.
The note was tied on with a black hair tie. Rachel pulled it off and slipped it onto her wrist as she read.
Here’s hoping Ms Marlow’s archery lessons pay off. I’ve been practicing shooting arrows at my own house all day, though I’m sure that’s not what she was teaching us for.
I made you some lists. Okay they’re not really lists but whatever.
Things I think you are: kind of pigheaded, and bad at listening.
Things I don’t think you are: stupid, slutty, a liar, a bad person, a failure, a faster running than me.
Things I feel right now: super annoyed and confused. And probably a bit scared of falling since I’ll hopefully be sitting on a wall while you read this.
Things I’m not feeling: annoyed at you.
Things I want: to trust you. I really really do so I am going to try really hard. My trust drives are kind of fucked up. Lots of people have done a lot of fucked up things when I trusted them not to. But I kept thinking about all the things you’ve said to me and I know lots of people you were supposed to trust have done things to you as well. And this is really hard to admit but I’ve been scared you’re going to do something to me too.
I’m sorry for how I made you feel stupid. I really don’t think you are. I like talking to you, you’re always saying something interesting even though I think you only remember when said say dumb shit? But we all say dumb shit? Do you remember in my room once out of nowhere you just asked me if I ever thought about it raining at sea? That was so weird, like who’d even think about that? And you went on about how wet and cold it was here in the city, and how much weather happens, all this rain just falling and falling, out to sea where no one can experience it. And we just lay there for ages listening to the rain and then said you said ‘except fisherman I guess’ and I actually cried I was laughing so hard?
That was probably the dumbest conversation I have ever had but it was so fantastic I wouldn’t change a word of it. You are so so so so so far from stupid, I promise that’s what I really think.
Okay I’m running out of paper and I wanted to leave the back empty in case you wanted to write on it too, and didn’t have any of your step-sis’s butterfly paper stashed in your room.
Not sure how to sign this off. Uh. I'll see you on Monday at school?
Yours,
Zoe.
From her position on the wall, Zoe watched Rachel work her way through the letter. She was keeping a real close eye out for other lights in the house coming on, and for people walking down the street, though she was at least eight feet up and how many people actually looked up when they walked? She was pleased the wall was so thick, though, she wouldn’t have liked to be balancing. She could sit pretty comfortably while she waited.
Hope was waiting in a car a little way down the street, keeping an eye on her. She’d given Zoe a boost onto Rachel’s neighbours fence, which was lower than Rachel’s, and she’d been able to climb onto the corner of Rachel’s wall from there. It had been part of one of the escape routes she’d scoped out on her first visit to Rachel’s place, though she hadn’t been thinking about breaking in, that time.
Through the window, she saw Rachel scribbling something on the back of her note. When she was done, she climbed back onto her windowsill, and chucked the arrow out the window. Zoe grinned, and started rolling in her end of the string, pulling the arrow back up toward her. She felt so pleased with herself for this idea.
Rachel’s reply read: Except fishremen I guess. (dont laugh so hard you fall off the wall)
Zoe clutched the piece of paper to her chest, feeling an outpouring of love so strong it almost made her start to cry.
She waved at Rachel, a goodnight wave. Rachel pressed her lips against her window in a kiss, then blew out her cheeks in a blowfish face. Zoe turned her wave into an obscene gesture, and Rachel laughed out loud and flashed her bra. Zoe could hear her laugh across the garden, and though it was a great sound she thought she better climb down; she had no idea where Rachel’s adults were, and Zoe wasn’t planning on getting caught.
She waved again, and walked along the top of the wall to the corner where she dropped down to the neighbours shorter fence, tossed her plastic bow to the ground and lowered herself down after it.
That night, both of them slept a little easier, knowing for sure now that they didn't need to dread seeing each other on Monday morning.
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