The Icarus Girl (30 page)

There was a knock on her closed bedroom door.

“Jess, can I come in?” her father said from outside.

Jess leant from the bed and scooped up her book bag, clutching it to her before saying, “Yeah.”

Daniel, dressed for work in suit and tie, put his head around the door. He looked surprised. Jess aimed a kick in his direction. Had he expected her to be lying in bed poorly, her laboured breathing and pink-tinged eyes an indication in themselves that she would be unable to go to school that day?

Instead Jess was vertical and fully dressed, quiet, with her chin resting on her chest as she stared absently at the floor, swinging her legs, which were in high white socks and ended in black lace-up shoes for the cold weather.

“Listen, Jess. Yesterday, you behaved appallingly towards your mother.”

No response visible or audible from her.

“True or false?”

Finally: “True.”

“Right. You behaved badly, but I didn’t mean to hit you as hard as I did, or even hit you. You know that.”
(Yeah, right.)

“Your mother’s forgotten all about it, and I want to as well. Can’t we make up?”

Jess nodded because she knew she had to, and grudgingly offered her father a handshake, which he somehow turned into a swift hug. As she wrinkled her nose at his change of aftershave, she also became aware of how glad she was that it was morning. She didn’t think that she could bear another night of Tilly-tricks all alone.

“Should I say sorry to Mummy?” she asked into her dad’s shoulder.

Daniel let Jess go and chucked her under the chin. He smiled.

“Probably.”

Jess was forced out of her safe place by the shock of Colleen McLain’s voice. And when she looked at Colleen, who was viewing her with a mixture of concern and glee, she also saw TillyTilly, who was really, impossibly, here in the classroom, sitting opposite her at the table.

“Hello again,” TillyTilly said in a conversational tone once Jess had allowed herself one frightened glance in that direction. “I really
am
sorry about before, and I’ll make it up to you! I don’t even want to swap places anymore, honest!”

Jess twisted away in her seat and looked instead at Colleen.

“What?” Colleen half stretched out a hand with a small, confused intake of breath, and Jess was disgusted to find that her eyes were filled with tears from being so frightened of Tilly. She rubbed at her eyes hard with her knuckles, and Colleen chewed disgustingly on her hair and stared at her with those narrowed brown eyes before asking, “So, what, shall I get Miss or not?”

“Don’t,” Jess told her hastily, as across from her TillyTilly said, “I understand, you know, why you hate him worse than her now. It’s worse when they’re always nice and then they change like that.”

“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” Jess hissed, hands to her ears again, then let out a little sob before she realised that Colleen hadn’t gone away, but was still hovering.

Colleen paused, then pulled out the chair beside TillyTilly, shielding Jess from the view of Sam Robinson and company, who were now beginning to look over.

“Look. What are you telling me to shut up for? I wasn’t even being nasty,” Colleen began heatedly; then, when Jessamy didn’t reply, she locked her fingers together and lowered her voice. “Why are you crying? Jessamy, you shouldn’t cry in front of people, seriously.”

TillyTilly had stopped talking and was now staring at the oblivious Colleen, a poisonous smile hovering on her lips. Their elbows were almost touching. Jess drummed her feet harder on the floor and tried to ignore all of this, but Colleen scraped her hair back behind her ears with her fingers and leaned across the table, still talking earnestly.

“You’ve got to tell Mr. Munroe, and he’ll let you go to the toilet or something. I’ll come with you if you want. Just stop crying, OK?”

“Help me,” Jess said faintly, sliding off her chair and under the table. Both TillyTilly and Colleen were gazing at her in consternation now, their expressions momentarily identical. They blurred; she didn’t know which she was supposed to be scared of now. And the classroom: the classroom was an elastic cube and it was twanging, throwing her with it from side to side as it grew bigger and smaller, bigger and smaller, pulsating like a brightly lit heart with book reviews and timetables on its secret, inside walls.

“Help you? What? Oi, Jessamy—” Colleen crawled under the table, but Jessamy didn’t reply, because it turned out that half-black people could faint after all.

It was proving awkward, this after-school session with Dr. McKenzie. She didn’t want to answer any of his questions, because they were so difficult. She almost wished that she had agreed to have the appointment on another day as her mother had suggested when she picked her up from the nurse’s office at school.

She felt so sleepy.

But she daren’t stop concentrating because that would leave a crease in her vision for TillyTilly to slide gaily on in.

Jess reminded herself again that she mustn’t believe that Tilly really wanted things to be the way they were before; she had to remember that there were two Tillys. It was difficult because she wanted the nice one back, the one who had said she would take care of her and had brought the
ibeji
woman.

Jess realised that she had to be careful not to blurt out “TillyTilly” in every sentence. The two Tillys filled her thoughts to bursting.

Now Dr. McKenzie was asking her about yesterday; her mum had told him all about it. Why? She couldn’t remember. She hadn’t screamed—but she had been mean, and her dad had hit her for the first time. Her father . . . a thought niggled at her: something else had happened about him. What? Any coherent thought was lost in the swim.

“You said that a friend of yours broke the mirror,” Dr. McKenzie began.

Jess looked at her mother before replying, “Yeah.” There was a moment’s silence before she shook herself and remembered to say, “But it was me. I was lying ’cause I thought I’d get in trouble.”

Dr. McKenzie nodded understandingly, then said casually, “And were you lying about who broke the computer as well?”

Jess wasn’t stupid. “No.”

“This friend . . . Tilly. She lives around your area?”
(Nooooooo, don’t ask about HER now.)

“Yeah.”

“And you two go around together quite a lot?”

“Um . . . I s’pose so.”

“Sarah, have
you
met Tilly?”

Jess’s mum shook her head.

“Not from lack of trying. Apparently she’s shy. Good at breaking things, though, judging by my computer.”

Sinking farther down into her chair, Jess adopted a resigned expression as she began to recognise that Sarah probably didn’t believe her about the computer either.

“How would I have broken your computer, Mummy?”
(Did you not see how badly that computer was broken? Mummy, I am
eight years old, and I am not very strong.)

“How would TILLY have broken it?” her mother countered.

Jess shrugged despondently, lifting her hands before dropping them hopelessly. Dr. McKenzie watched her for a few seconds before offering her a Jelly Baby. She took one, but didn’t eat it, pressing at it with her fingers instead.

“Jess,” Colin said at length, “it seems as if it’s more important to you that your mum believes that Tilly broke her computer than the mirror in the bathroom. Why do you think that is?”

Surprised, Jess realised that she hadn’t thought about it in that way.

“I don’t know.”

“Is it because you knew the computer was more important to me, because it had all my work on it?” Sarah asked gently.

Jess gave a disgusted shrug.

“I don’t know! You don’t believe me, anyway. You want me to tell you things, then when I do, you don’t believe me. What’s the point?”

“I believe you, Jess,” Dr. McKenzie said quietly, leaning over and tapping Jess’s wrist to get her attention. “I know that things can be real in different ways.”

Jess ignored him. Now he was trying to say that TillyTilly was imaginary.

“Like . . . say I have an idea of . . . a mermaid, the mermaid is real, but not real in the same way as this table is,” he said, knocking the table in question.

Glaring at him, Jess said, “That’s nice.” He didn’t understand at all. An idea of a stupid mermaid couldn’t come to you and scare you; an idea of a mermaid couldn’t
get
your Year Five teacher so she never came back. Jess finally popped the flattened Jelly Baby into her mouth for comfort.

And now Dr. McKenzie leaned back in his chair again and asked, “Why are you angry?”

And Jess said, “Because I’m tired and you’re confusing me.”

Then Dr. McKenzie said, “Jessamy, are you scared of your mum?”

Just like that.

Jess, now feeling wide awake, peered at Dr. McKenzie then at her mum, who was looking equally surprised.

“I don’t know,” she said finally, being as honest as she could be, because he’d told her that if she wasn’t honest then she wouldn’t feel better. The words came out in a rush. “Sometimes I feel like she wants me to . . . I don’t know. She wants me to be Nigerian or something. And I don’t want to be changed that way; I can’t be. It might hurt.”

“Hurt?” said Dr. McKenzie.

“Yeah, like . . . being stretched.”

“Jess, it’s not a matter of my wanting you to be Nigerian— you are, you just are!” her mother said. When Jess looked at her, she continued, “You’re English too, duh. And it’s OK.”

It wasn’t. She just didn’t know; if she could decide which one to be, maybe she would be able to get rid of TillyTilly, who was angry with her for worrying about it. Ashes and witnesses, homelands chopped into little pieces—she’d be English. No— she couldn’t, though. She’d be Nigerian. No—

“Jessamy, you’re a very articulate child, and your ideas are sometimes . . . surprising. Did you know that?”

A shrug from Jessamy. What did he want her to say?

Dr. McKenzie leaned forward again. “Have you not thought that sometimes your mum might find
that
a little bit scary as well? I know I would.”

Jess shook her head and frowned seriously at him.

“I’m not scary.”

“Hardly anyone thinks of themselves as a scary person, Jess.”

“Is this your last appointment for today?” Jess asked, after a moment’s consideration. The doctor looked intrigued, but nodded her a yes. “Can I go back with you to see Siobhan for a few minutes? I just remembered that I’ve got to tell her something really important.” She glanced at her mother, who had started to object.

“Sarah, you can come too, if you want,” said Dr. McKenzie. He appeared to ponder for a moment, chewing his lip, then nodded affably and checked his watch before popping another Jelly Baby into his mouth. “We still have some time left, though . . .”

When Jess had, in a halting fashion, told Shivs as much about TillyTilly as she could, leaving out the events of the night before so as not to scare her, Shivs nodded her head serenely.

“That’s a bit cool, you know,” she said thoughtfully, before tiptoeing to the bedroom door and putting her ear against it to make sure that they weren’t being listened to. “So she only talks to you when no one else is there?”

Jess, sitting cross-legged on Shivs’s neatly made bed (the only tidy thing in the room), gazed at her best friend in fixed astonishment.

“You don’t think I’ve gone mad?”

Shivs shook her head and yawned, running her hand through the curly tangles of her hair until she inadvertently made them stand upright like a brush. Jess stifled a giggle and decided to leave her that way.

“Nah . . . you’re not mad, and you’re not one of those stupid kids who have imaginary friends just for something to do. This girl called Gemma . . . in my class . . . she used to have some imaginary friend called Katy. Katy, y’know! Not even something like TillyTilly and all the time she was like ‘You can’t sit there . . . Katy’s sitting there,’ but sometimes she’d forget Katy was supposed to be there and sit there herself, the plum!” She laughed, and Jess, astounded to hear this brief account of something so far from her own experience, fell back on to the bed laughing herself. Shivs came over and dropped onto her knees at the bedside, settling herself before saying, “And Gemma wasn’t scared of Katy.”

Jess sat up, her face serious now. “I didn’t say I was scared of Tilly!” (She was.)

Shivs lay flat on her back, then sprang up, hands out, eyes wild as she imitated Jess on the night when Shivs and Dulcie had slept over, shouting out “TILLYTILLY!” in the dark. Then she fell back on to the floor, laughing, but Jess couldn’t join in. She hadn’t known that she’d looked like that. She was embarrassedly gulping back tears again, and Shivs sprang up again and climbed onto the bed, putting an arm around her shoulder, pressing her cheek to Jess’s.

“Oi, if I had a friend who kept appearing and disappearing and
got
my teacher, I’d be a little bit scared that they’d
get
me, too! So listen, what is TillyTilly? I mean, is she dead or something?”

Alarmed, Jess stared upwards at the skylight before replying, almost as if she’d expected TillyTilly to be there, her thin limbs and body pressed flat against the glass, her face a squashed smudge with malevolent eyes, mouth moving in promises to
get
them. Shivs, laughing, glanced up too, and they looked at each other, smiling, while Jess spoke, Shivs pretending to wipe sweat off her forehead.

“I don’t know what she is . . . she said that I do know! But I think she’s wrong, because I have no idea.”

“Maybe she’s your sister, the one who died.” Shivs thoughtfully blew the hair out of her eyes.

“No . . . I don’t think so somehow. I mean, why would she be at my grandfather’s house? I don’t know, actually.”

“Or maybe your mum had a twin that died?”

Jess looked doubtful.

Shivs shook her head in wonder. “I can’t believe that was her on the phone!”

“You think I’m lying about that?”

“No, but . . . well, it didn’t sound any different from you, not even a very little bit.”

“That’s because she kind of made me say it—”