The World Between Us, page 16
Mum laughs. ‘Not with the amount you spend on salmon.’
I hear a click and the world changes, so now I’m sitting in what seems to be a mining cart at the top of a mountain. And in this world the sky bleeds red and volcanoes erupt all around me.
I laugh. ‘Not quite as realistic, this one.’
‘Let’s see about that …’ Dad says.
And suddenly the mining cart lurches. I reach out and grab Cecelia’s shoulder with my other hand as I speed down tracks on the mountain, lurching left and right and ducking as flying dinosaurs dive for my head. I scream. The cart swings up higher and higher, and ahead of me the track ends altogether, and I put out my feet to stop it, but feel nothing as I’m not really there, and slowly I fall out of the clouds.
I let go of Mum and Cecelia and take off the mask, blinking in the real life around me. Where I’m not falling, but lying in the spare room with a family who are laughing at me.
‘Someone else’s turn, I think,’ I say, feeling slightly sick.
Cecelia grabs the headset off me as Dad warns her about Pop-Tarts again.
I enjoy watching her, exploring spacecraft with robots on the screen, like she really has left this world.
Mum has a go and Dad gives her a set of controllers to hold, so she can swipe at neon bricks with lightsabres. And – because she’s still wearing the Morphsuit – on the screen we just see her head floating in a tunnel of light.
Dad has a go and Cecelia pulls me off to the side, laying my head in her lap.
‘Maybe you could bring Hot Boy here? Have a virtual date with him in a jungle or something. That would be cool.’
I laugh, staring at the light bulb swinging after Dad just accidentally punched it.
‘You know, I think perhaps it’s the real things that are the most fun. Like this,’ I say, smiling at Mum, who is poking Dad in the ribs and making him jump.
Cecelia mock-faints. ‘It’s only taken you sixteen years, Alice, but I think you might have actually finally got it.’
62
Alice
Last night, I dreamed I was back in that endless sea.
It was so deep that, when I looked at what I thought was the bottom, I saw only a starburst sun, shining up at me.
Somewhere I could hear the clicks and slaps of life carrying on above the surface. But no matter how long or urgently I swam, I couldn’t reach it.
I wake up, gasping.
Mum is there already and has taken the day off, like she knew what was going to happen. I try to tell her about my dream and how yesterday was perhaps the most wonderful day anyone has ever spent, but she shushes me.
‘Rest today, love.’
So I do. I eat and I drink, but that’s all. And I try to gather up the spoons that I dropped while spinning in space. Occasionally, though, I clench my fists. Try them out: they’re working. There isn’t any migraine pain, or stomach pain, or mystery bone pain.
My thoughts are whirring and I can remember my name, and Cecelia’s name, and Rowan’s, too.
And my belly even somersaults when I remember that I’m going to be with him outside soon. Not in real life, because, even without the usual dropped-spoon symptoms, I know the Illness is there somewhere – waiting.
I run through all the different ways I could tell him and all the different ways he could react. Everything from him turning off the phone immediately and never speaking to me again, to the far scarier version of him running straight to my house, into my room, and –
I shake my head.
Mum busies round me, muttering about how stupid it was to force me into the spare room on six spoons. And I want to tell her that actually I think this time I’ve got away with it.
But also I don’t want to jinx it.
I want to just float in this hope a little longer.
63
Alice
It’s Wednesday and I’m nervous.
Cecelia keeps messaging lewd things to me and Dad even leaves a note on my pillow telling me not to do anything he wouldn’t do, and it’s difficult to pretend that today is normal.
I practise what I might say again and again in my head, and it never goes quite right. The Illness is a difficult one to explain to someone – even to Cecelia, who’s been seeing it right in front of her for years and years.
She’s right, though. It’s time for Rowan to see me for who I really am. And if he’s really going to see Me, then I’m going to need to use something a little bit different to Stream Cast. I’m going to have to turn my own camera on.
Cecelia races out of school at lunch to help me get ready. She’s packed what looks like the contents of her entire bedroom into one beach bag and, before she’s even all the way in the room, she’s throwing out brightly coloured cardigans and what look like torture devices.
Mum follows at her heels. ‘Cecelia? What the hell is –’
‘Sorry, Sophia, I love you, but –’ She closes the door on Mum’s rather shocked-looking face.
I scowl at her and she throws her hands up.
‘We. Don’t. Have. Time! I only get forty minutes for lunch and have you seen you lately? Dude.’
She jumps on to my bed and hands me a mirror and I make a point of not looking at it.
‘I just need to look presentable, okay? I don’t need a makeover. I don’t need whatever you’re planning on doing with those.’
She stops unwinding the hair curlers and sighs. ‘Mate – and I say this with all the affection in the world – but you are absolutely clueless.’
I go to argue, but she’s suddenly on me with a brush. ‘Shut up now. The master is working.’
So I close my eyes and I let her work.
She mutters what I think may well be insults about my ‘stupid pale face not matching her tones’ and how she ‘really has her work cut out’, until I sneak an eye open and she stops talking.
She must be able to find something, though, because she rubs a sherbet-smelling cream into my skin, and dusts me for fingerprints. She pokes at my eyeballs with a brush and makes me blink on to another.
And then she kisses me. Right on the lips. I look at her, surprised, and she smiles.
‘That, Alice, is how hot you look.’ She sits back and holds up a mirror.
I’m expecting to see someone completely different. Or perhaps just myself looking a mess. But I don’t look like that. I just look like me. Only a bit more even.
I assume that’s it, but she makes me sit still while she drowns me in dry shampoo and burns me with hair curlers.
‘I’m done, I’m done! Now go, clear off.’
She grins and kisses my forehead this time. ‘Knock him dead. Not literally. It is on camera after all.’
I smile at her as she almost cartwheels out.
‘Cecelia!’ I call as she leaves. ‘Thank you.’
She blows me a kiss, and closes the door.
I check my watch. I have an hour and a half before I’m due to speak to Rowan – between his afternoon work shift and picking Jonah up from school. It’s enough time to take off the awful clothes Cecelia made me wear and squeeze myself into my black birthday dress. And try to let my mind empty completely, before it gets packed full of worries again.
At two forty, I take a moment to breathe. Check my spoons. Take out my laptop.
I open the same video-call app that we used to call Dr Rahman. But instead of choosing her name, I copy Rowan’s number instead.
And I turn my camera. On.
My insides leap seeing my own face in the corner. Looking strange, but not in a bad way. I steady the laptop on a pile of pillows so behind me he’ll be able to see the window. The flowers Mum brought me that are bent in prayer.
And me. Here. Alive.
I grip my laptop, tight. And click.
Calling Rowan …
64
Rowan
And now I am standing at the edge of the sea as the sun hole-punches through a hazy film of cloud. The water tosses and churns, raking in stones from the beach and coughing them back out again.
My insides somersault, both with how beautiful it looks and with the disappointment of not seeing Rowan’s face. He must still have his phone in the harness round his chest.
‘Hi,’ I say nervously.
Alice.
Her voice whispers through my earphones.
‘Hey.
So – how was your busy time?’
Was she even doing anything?
Or was she just
avoiding me?
‘It was … eventful,’ I say.
On my lips are the same sort of lies I used to tell Cecelia. Where I’d blur the edges of virtual living and real life, to make it seem as though I was off doing impossible things. But that’s just the thing, isn’t it?
Diving under seas. Floating through space. Going to a party.
They’re not real.
I scrunch my eyes. Squeeze my fists.
‘Could you – could you turn the camera round? To face you.’
I almost want to say
NO.
That it’s not fair that I keep
giving her so much of me
when I have no idea if she’s even alive.
But also – it’s Alice.
And a bigger part of me wants to keep
giving her everything.
I pick up the phone
and turn it.
And now I am standing on a beach, facing a boy.
His face is almost dyed gold from the sun behind me. His hair is tied messily back from his face, but a few strands have escaped. One is sticking to his lips and, as I look at him, he sweeps it back.
And he’s looking. At me.
For a moment, I don’t even register.
But then
– there’s a girl on my screen.
Ghost-white.
Wide eyes that see everything.
And so
bone-achingly beautiful
that the sea seems to freeze mid-wave.
‘Alice?’
He sees me. He sees me. He sees Me.
I’m not just the watcher. And if a car comes roaring through my bedroom wall, he will see it smash through my body. I am here. I am Alive.
And I think I might be hyperventilating.
‘Hi,’ I squeak.
She’s rocking out these big
deep
breaths.
Looking around her
at walls and a window.
‘Hey, hey.’
I sit down like that might help somehow.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing!’ I say and I try to smile. I tuck my hair behind my ears and I keep looking at myself in the corner. ‘I suppose I’m just not used to being the one on camera.’
She’s nervous.
And I wonder if I should tell her that
she doesn’t have anything to be nervous about.
That it’s me. Rowan.
And, for me, seeing her face feels like
flying.
I clear my throat.
‘Would it help if I don’t look at you for a bit?’
I spin the camera round
so we’re back to seeing the same thing
from different worlds.
‘Oh –’
The picture changes and on my screen is the sea churning into the exact colour of the sky, so there’s no break between the two. It just rolls up, over us, like we’re caught in an endless wave that tunnels us – hides us away – propels us to something unknown and deep and beautiful.
But it isn’t Rowan.
‘That’s okay. You can turn me round.’
I spin her back.
‘Hi,’ I laugh. ‘Um –
so you’re here!
And that’s your face.’
I dither to a halt, kicking myself.
I laugh nervously.
‘Am I not what you were expecting?’
His eyes widen.
‘No! You’re – better.
I mean.’
Jesus Christ.
‘To be honest, I didn’t imagine you
to look like anything.
You were just this voice-person, you know?’
I bite my lip and then I remember that he can see me now and quickly stop.
‘A body-less voice-person sounds quite good.’
Imagine the places I could go without a body to hold me back.
‘No, your body is nice –
I mean –
good.’
I sigh into my palm.
‘Can you just pretend I’m not talking?’
I laugh for real this time. Seeing him nervous and stumbling makes me feel less nervous somehow. And, with his eyes covered, I can let myself look properly at the perfectly parallel lines of his eyebrows, mouth and jaw. The hint of dark stubble at the end of his chin. The curls of hair that have come loose from their tie and are fluttering in the sea breeze.
‘I’ve been thinking about what you said before,’ I whisper. ‘About taking something for yourself.’
My heart
L U R C H E S.
I look at her from between my fingers.
I lick my lips. ‘I know you said that art school wasn’t an option, but I’ve been looking, and –’
‘Alice …’
She stops and I do, too.
I want to remind her that I chose
H E R.
But I’m tired of jumping off cliffs
with no safety net.
I sigh.
‘I’ve been looking, too.’
My heart flutters. ‘You have?’
‘Yeah, you wore me down.
Sort of feels like asking me to
go to the moon.
But I guess some people have been.
Some people make it.’
‘It’s not impossible,’ I smile.
Just sort of unlikely.
‘There’s a scholarship your pal Wesley
was always on about.
Maybe after A Levels I can
take a look.’
I’ve managed to hold everything together so far.
Maybe I got this, too …
‘Well, I think you’d be wonderful.’
When she says it,
she nods
like she’s agreeing with herself.
Her fringe bounces into her eyes
(sea blue).
Her lips. Part.
‘Alice?
Where are you?’
I stop. Like I’ve been running so fast that I’ve stumbled over the edge of the world.
I can feel the wind under me like I might be able to jump on its back and fly. But below there’s plummeting and, below that, there are rocks, and even further below that there is absolute nothing, and that scares me the most.
But perhaps this is Living. Perhaps Living isn’t staying on the cliff edge and wondering whether you might fly or fall. Perhaps – sometimes – Living is jumping.
‘Rowan. I need to tell you something.’
She looks afraid.
But I don’t want to turn her round this time.
‘So tell me.’
I close my eyes. Take a breath. And really the truth is just like gravity, isn’t it?
It’s as simple as falling.
‘I’m not … well.’
‘Oh …’
Mam used to use that one, too.
With work. Old boyfriends. Me.
It was always a
– headache, or
– cold, or
– upset tummy.
I wait for Alice to give me
another excuse to leave.
‘It’s – um – it’s difficult to explain.’
I think back to all the rehearsals of this conversation I’ve had, and they all jumble in my head.
‘The Illness takes spoons, you see, and it means that I can’t do things like run or – music – music is hard. And I need to spend a lot of time resting, and sometimes it means I disappear, although not entirely – I am in bed, after all. So …’
It’s not coming out right. He looks away, far into the distance.
‘You know, Alice,
if you don’t want to meet me,
you can just say.’
I watch the whites grow in my own eyes on screen.
‘No! No, Rowan, it’s not that. I’m not explaining myself very well. I do want to meet you. I want to run along the beach with you and go cycling and do a million different impossible –’
‘So come do them, then!’
I’m shouting now.
I shouldn’t, but
this really hurts.
Another person I love
making their excuses to
leave.
‘I can’t,’ I say, my voice breaking. ‘I want to, but the Illness –’
‘I’m late picking up Jonah.’
I stand up and
K I C K
the stones
so they scatter.
‘Rowan –’
A loud, high-pitched sound shrieks through my speakers and I clamp my hands over my ears.
My phone rings.
I glance at it,
ready to hurl another call from Dad
into the sea,
when I see who it is.
The sound stops and all I can see onscreen is his ear.
‘Hello?’
I clutch my chest and try to slow my heartbeat. And, from my speakers, I hear a woman on the other end of the line.
‘Rowan? I’ve been trying to get in touch with your mother –’
‘She’s not –
she’s not available at the moment.
I told you that it was me who –’
‘I really would prefer to speak –’
‘I get it,
but you can’t.
What’s wrong?’
My heart hammers.
I hear a sigh from a long way away.
‘There’s a situation. You should come right away. And please – do get in touch with your mother, because this really is –’
