The Girl Who Cried Boy - Part Three

You've waited patiently (and maybe not so patiently) for more.

Enjoy the next installment of Mya's story

Go back and read her story from the beginning:

The Girl Who Cried Boy - Part One

The Girl Who Cried Boy

By Emily Simpson

Three

I’m late to meet him so I break into a run, my bare feet slapping against the cobbled streets of town. The hands on my watch are spinning; time leaks away from me like a smashed hourglass, but I keep on running. I have to keep on running.

Wait for me, I say, under my breath.

When I make it to the cliff top I get my first glimpse: he’s on the beach below, like I knew he would be, waving up at me. Somehow his face is magnified and I see every tiny freckle, every strand of messy red hair as if the sunset has spilled over onto him. His eyes are wide with expectance, their moisture flashing in the light. And then he shrinks back into scale.

“I’m coming,” I call out to him, beginning my descent down the steps. “Wait there!”

But the more progress I make the more steps appear. I’m running down them as fast as I can, but it’s like I’m running into a hurricane. The steps break away from the cliff and begin to spiral. Panic sets in and I try and keep my eyes on Freddie. Each time I make a full circle I see him again. And each time he’s getting closer, his face growing before my eyes, ballooning in front of me. Soon he’ll be close enough to touch; I know that next time I’ll reach him. But when I’m back facing the sand he’s gone completely, so I hurl myself over the railings of the steps and down onto the beach.

Freddie!” I call, but he isn’t there to reply. I look around; praying for a rock to morph into him, hoping that he’s only hiding, only playing.

And then I see his body face down in the sea, washing up against my feet.

“No. No! Freddie, no!” I fall to my knees and reach for him. His skin is marbled white and blue; ice cold.

No.

I spin him over, preparing for the worst, but it isn’t his face. The hair is too dark, the cheekbones too high. There’s a large mole above the right eyebrow. It’s not Freddie, because it’s Louie.

He opens his eyes, starts to grin.

“Sis?”

Someone is calling me and I snap awake, breathless and clammy, the twist of Louie’s smirk scarred on my mind.

“Shh, baby girl. It’s ok. You’re safe.” There are arms around me, holding me just a fraction too tight. I smell vanilla moisturiser; hear the voice that has soothed me since I was tiny. Mum. “It’s just another nightmare.”

She looks hurt when I wriggle free, edging her chair closer to my bed. I’ve been surprised by how much older she’s looked these past few days. The contours on her face are like webs around her eyes, heightening the shadows that define them. Her hair is streaked with grey; I remember only months ago how she screamed in the bathroom mirror, telling me how her third white strand was taking over her dark bob. She’s been wearing the same clothes all week; jogging trousers and an old jumper, and I have a fleeting image of her sitting in the garden of the B&B with the guests, in a floral tea-dress and makeup, laughing as she pours herself another glass of wine. Now she is a shard of herself. Dulled.

“Are you ok?” She leans forward to smooth back my fringe and I flinch, instinctively. She bites her lip, blinking in quick succession to stem the tears. I don’t mean to hurt her. I can’t seem to help it.

“Don’t be like that Mya.” I jump and turn to find Louie on the other side of my bed, leaning against the wall by the door as if ready to leave. His lip is curling upwards and I shudder, reliving my dream. “She’s only trying to help,” he says.

I don’t respond, staring up at the air conditioning vents of the hospital room instead, wondering how many lungs the air has been through before mine. Even the smell seems regurgitated; new waves of antiseptic pervading the room hourly. I wish there was a window in here, but it’s minimal in every way—just two chairs and a bed—and everything’s white; the sheets, the walls, the vinyl floor. Everything can be wiped clean. 

Mum reaches into her bag and pulls out a box of chocolates. She clutches them in front of her body, a safeguard from me and what I might say or do next.

If only she knew what I feel capable of.

“Here,” She says, laying the Belgian seashells on my bedside table.

“They’re your favourites,” Louie adds, taking a step away from the wall. I glower.

“I’m well aware of that. I get them every time I’m ill.”

“Yes! Well done sweetheart,” Mum says, clapping in delight. “I always buy them for you.”

I’m livid that she thinks this is something to celebrate. That she can possibly believe I would be happy about remembering something so insignificant, when I all I want to know is what’s happening to me, and what’s happening to Freddie.

“Of course I remember that,” I say, distantly. “I remember everything.” Mum’s smile fades and she exhales slowly. Louie scoffs and takes a step back towards the door, just as it swings open and one of the nurses comes in. It’s the blonde who barely looks older than me, with the long fishtail plait, rosy cheeks and unwavering cheerfulness. She sidesteps Louie and comes to the foot of my bed, scooping up my chart and giving Mum a wink.

“Hey guys, how are we doing today?”

We?

Mum bursts into conversation, relaying the minute details of my day, from my nightmare to my toilet habits.

“She’s been really coherent,” she says, patting my hand as if I’m a dog who’s just perfected a new trick. The nurse nods, turning to me.

“Any nausea? Headaches?”

“No more than usual,” I tell her.

“That’s great honey,” she clasps my chart, pencilling something in. “So you’re ok for pain relief then?”

“Yes,” I say, quickly, although it’s a lie; being sedated in any way means a break from this hell. At first I took as much as they’d give me, even putting on a show for the nurses, to really earn my keep; but then I wondered why they were plying me with so much of the stuff and so now I’ve learned control myself. They’re hiding something from me, I know it. They’re feeding me lies.

I replay that first conversation with the doctor on a loop in my head. It’s scratchy, like I’m watching it on an old film projector; yellowed, detached.

“You’ve had a nasty bump Mya; you’ve still got some lesions on your brain that need to heal. What you’re going through is from the stress of your head trauma. People can be effected in all sorts of ways; Amnesia, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and so on.”

“What are you saying? I can’t have Amnesia. I haven’t forgotten Freddie.”

“I’m saying you’re showing signs of someone who’s very confused. What I think you’re demonstrating is a form of confabulation.”

“What?”

“It means honest lying.”

“Honest lying?”

“Your mind genuinely believes things that are…that are false. You don’t know it’s not real. It’s not your fault.”

I can barely breathe as I recall his words. Honest lying? It’s just not true. I feel my throat begin to fill and I roll onto my side and vomit on the floor, until the nurse fetches me a cardboard bowl. Mum coos, rubbing my back gently. I stare down at the watery mess, sloshing it around until it coats all the sides. It came out of me; I saw it. It smells of acid. It’s streaked with orange from my juice at breakfast. This mess came out of me and it’s real. It isn’t a lie. It just isn’t.

Freddie isn’t a lie, even an honest one. He’s not some muddled memory, or invented fantasy. There’s no way in hell he doesn’t exist. I’m surer of Freddie than I am of blinking, of breathing. I don’t need to remember him; I know him.

He stands at six foot, one inch precisely. He has light red hair that’s longer on top and lingers closely against his eyebrows. Freckles are sprinkled around his nose and under his eyes. He has cheeky dimples and a dirty smirk when he’s teasing me, which is often. His front left tooth is slightly crooked and although he says he regrets not having braces, he won’t get them now; he thinks eighteen is too old. Dark hair tickles his arms and legs and chest and he wears three-day-old stubble day in and day out. He has the most perfectly proportioned features; nose, ears and eyes, but his hands and feet are huge. He gets embarrassed about this when he goes bowling, or shoe shopping, or when somebody points it out. He’s got crater-scars on his forehead and the sides of his torso from getting chickenpox at fifteen. He blames his mother for not making sure he caught it when he was a baby, but she maintains she just did a good job protecting him. He mostly wears jumpers over t-shirts and jeans and he sleep in the tiniest, tightest pair of white boxers known to man.

He’s a bonfire baby; born on the fifth of November. His dad wanted to call him Guy but his mother put her foot down. He rents a room from Pete Gillson, the local carpenter, a seven and a half minute walk away from my house. His family home is just over three hours away, where his mum and older sister live. His dad lives in Edinburgh with his new wife, Cindy. Freddie flew up there to take the photos at their wedding, even though guilt over his mother tore him apart.

He’s setting up an independent photography business. He wants to immortalise everything. He likes swimming. Football. Sport in general. Playing the saxophone. His mum’s roast dinners. Glazed cherries. The bits in the ends of cereal packets. The whites of an egg, so I can eat the yolk. Crime and thriller novels and TV programmes. Going to the cinema and eating two large salted popcorns all to himself. Helping Pete in the workshop at weekends. His old monkey teddy from when he was a baby. Pub gardens. The sun being out, even when it’s bitterly cold.

Me.

***

“We thought you might like to look through this,” Mum says, taking the tray of half-eaten shepherd’s pie off my lap and replacing it with an old family photo album.

“Why?” I bite out. The doctor says my memory is fine; that I’ve just reworked Freddie into my past. Almost like Photoshopping.

Louie glares at me and Mum warns him off with a shake of her head. As I hold the photo album I notice for the first time how long my fingernails have grown; how clean they are. I open the book and the first photo is of me and Louie; freshly born and puffy eyed, as if the nine month’s sleep in the womb wasn’t nearly long enough. If it weren’t for the cheesy blue blanket wrapped around Louie and the pink one around me we would be indistinguishable. I like that. Our hair is a mop of black prickles. The toilet brush twins, Dad used to call us. People are envious of our shiny, raven shade, but I hate the colour; it just makes us look pallid and sickly. Besides, we got it from him.

“The day my life began,” Mum whispers, stroking the picture with a single finger. I feel myself softening towards her. What my accident has put her through is unthinkable. I imagine she’s hardly slept since it happened, that she wakes on the hour to some god awful nightmare about my lungs inflating with water, my slow asphyxiation.

“You…” Louie begins his question and then quickly zips up his mouth.     

“Go on,” I goad him, even though we both know it’s probably wiser for him to keep quiet.

“You do remember when our birthday is, don’t you?”

I shut my eyes and try to settle the rage in my stomach. When they open again they are feral and hot. They find Louie in a second.

“Stop patronising me.”

We stare each other out and I feel an uneasy sense of newness between us, a distance. Mum quickly starts to flip through the book. I watch my life unfurl before me and although I know and remember every detail of it, it still feels like it isn’t me I’m looking at. There’s something detached from me and the girl in the photos, like I’m looking at her with cling film wrapped around my eyeballs. I see the before and after shots of mine and Louie’s first day at school: ice white and pressed shirts in the morning and grazed knuckles and felt tip smudges at the end of the day. I see almost every birthday party we’ve ever had: the first six with Dad there and the rest after his breakdown, after they took him. He disappears from the album like a lost school friend but I just don’t feel anything about it. I see the B&B when Mum first bought it; the light and hope in her eyes like no flash a camera could produce. I see us on the beach having a picnic. The beach I used to run on every morning. The beach I went to when I needed space. The beach where Freddie…

Freddie. When I think about him I no longer feel detached. Something burns inside me, like highly charged, angry butterflies in my tummy, hammering to get out. Excitement. Frustration. Pure anger. All of it smeared around my heart like fatty tissue. And I can’t contain it anymore. How can any of this be real? How can you wake up so consumed and sure of someone who doesn’t exist? It’s like someone has sliced a huge chunk out of my brain with a blunt knife. I’m beside myself, and I’ve finally worked out what that means: it means you can’t bear to be inside your own body. You step out of it. You fall apart, literally. Beside yourself.

I throw the album on the floor and sit as high up as I can, my breathing speeding up. Mum jumps back, but Louie moves forward towards my bed.

“Mya?” He says.

“Will someone please tell me what the fuck is happening?” They look at each other with some unspoken code; but I can’t decipher it.  

“Just take a deep breath,” Mum says, turning to me and attempting to stroke my hair.

“I can’t do this,” I start to cry, the tears racing down my face and onto my chest. “I can’t play happy families and pretend I’m fine. I don’t understand what’s happening. I can’t pretend it’s not happening.” My breathing is erratic now.

“Calm down Mya or they’ll come and make you,” Louie says and in a flash I recall the nip of the nurse’s needle, its promise of relief. Maybe that’s what I want. I take a few breaths and my eyes fall shut. I imagine Freddie coming up behind me, his hands around my hips, pulling me to him. After a moment, I’m composed.

“Ok,” Mum says, tears pooling in her eyes. “Let’s talk about it. Whatever you want to talk about. But you can’t get yourself worked up baby. If we don’t…” She sniffs. “If we don’t have the answers you want to hear.”

“My boyfriend,” I start, slowly, feeling ridiculous as they look away from me. “Freddie Lord. I want to know where he is.”

Mum swallows and the room is still for a long time. “Baby girl, we don’t know who this is. We don’t know of a Freddie.”

I’ve heard this sentence so many times, but I still can’t grasp it.

“Maybe he’s someone off your blog,” Louie says. I have a sudden memory of me, hunched over my laptop, reviewing and debating books on my site; Little Miss Bookmarker. It seems like a lifetime ago.

“He’s not,” I whisper. “You know him.” I stare at the corner of the room. There’s a patch of paint flaking off the wall and I imagine it’s my skin, shedding piece by piece.

“Where have we met him?” Mum asks, looking determined.

“He has dinner with us a lot. He sleeps over.”

Mum’s practicality shatters and she starts to sob again, staring at me like I’ve just fallen from the sky. Louie takes her in his arms as her cries begin to heat up the room.

“I don’t understand,” I repeat, almost sedately. “I can’t have made him up.”

And then it hits me.

“Go to where he lives,” I say, almost laughing with delight. “He’s renting Pete’s spare room. Has been since May.” I run the facts over in my head just to make sure, picturing Pete’s little terraced cottage beyond the main strip of town and Freddie’s downstairs bedroom; his walls streaming with photos he’s taken, like one giant mosaic. Pete loves having Freddie around since his own sons are grown and gone. They watch the cricket together and go for Sunday roasts at The Castle. Yes. Yes this is all true. I feel its solidity; roll it around like a pebble, smooth in my palm, then clasp my fist around it. Mum and Louie are exchanging knowing glances again.

“What? Tell me,” I snap.

“Pete sold up months ago, Mya. He moved to Oxford to be nearer to Shay,” Louie says, his voice deeper and more authoritative. I shake my head in disbelief. More lies. The lengths they are going to protect me from the truth—whatever the hell that is—are astonishing.

“Facebook then. He’s in my profile picture.” I see it clearly: us at Olive’s birthday dinner party last month. I’m twizzling Freddie’s bow tie and making a goofy face and he’s nuzzling his nose into my cheek as if he’s about to eat me.

Louie tells me I’m wrong. I can’t even check my own phone; it was washed away. There are no traces of Freddie anywhere. “The doctor has explained what this is about,” Louie continues.

“Confabulation?” I laugh as I say it; at its absurdity. 

“Yes. Remember that documentary about that woman who had a brain disorder and suddenly thought she was French?”

There’s a pause, and for a moment I think we’re on the cusp of laughter, but then I see something in his eyes: a creeping shadow of fear somewhere in their depths—so cleverly he masks it—but I know better.

            

It’s the way he used to look at Dad when he was in the psych ward.

           

“I’d like you to go now,” I say.