The Icarus Girl (32 page)

Carrying the cup carefully in her hands, Jess passed Shivs and poured the coffee down the kitchen sink. Shivs, who followed her, watched in silence. Jess put the cup down in the sink, then changed her mind and washed it, dried it, put it back with the other coffee cups so it wouldn’t be lonely.

“Where’s your mum?” Shivs asked.

Jess dried her hands on a napkin and beckoned Shivs upstairs. “She’s probably in her study.” She was writing far, far more than she used to, and was crabbier about being interrupted.

Jess’s dad had apparently decided to go back to bed again and was shuffling dreamily up the stairs ahead of them. They couldn’t overtake him: the staircase wasn’t wide enough. Jess was embarrassed and shot an apologetic sideways look at Shivs, but Shivs only grinned at her before grabbing her arm and starting to give her a Chinese burn that meant they had to stop on the stairs for a few seconds anyway, involved in a hushed, giggling scuffle. When they finally made it to Jess’s bedroom, Shivs swung the door shut as if it was her own, kicked her buckle shoes off under Jess’s desk with a whoop and took a running leap at Jess’s bed, only landing by luck. Jess cringed and, more sedately, sat on the chair at her desk, pausing to reach underneath and put Shivs’s shoes neatly side by side so that she wouldn’t have to scrabble to find them. Shivs picked up
The Complete Works of Lewis Carroll
from Jess’s bedside and flicked through it, finding the place where
The Hunting of the Snark
had been bookmarked.

“Hmmm. A snark, hey,” she said before dumping the book on Jess’s pillow and bouncing excitedly up and down. “So, let me see TillyTilly!”

“She’s not seeing me,” TillyTilly warned, from outside the bedroom door.

Jess jumped and looked at Shivs, who was repeating her earlier demand and didn’t seem to have heard anything. Jess went to the door and leaned against it, murmuring pleadingly to the girl that she knew was on the other side.

“Please, TillyTilly, just for a minute,” she begged.

“Is that her?” Shivs toppled off the bed and started coming towards Jess, but was waved back.

TillyTilly gave a sigh.

“Fine. Just for a minute, but she can’t look at me, she has to turn around.”

“No, don’t do it, then,” said Jess, “if you’re not going to do it properly. What’s the point of that? How’s she even going to know you’re there?”

“She’ll know.”

“How?”

TillyTilly said nothing.

Jess chewed on her lip, agitating over how this would work out, then spun around to face Shivs, who was now sitting at the foot of the bed in hushed, expectant silence.

“Listen,” she began, “TillyTilly’s being all shy for some reason, so she doesn’t want you to look at her. So, um, could you close your eyes and put your hands over them?”

Shivs looked surprised, but obliged. “Is she ugly or something?” she enquired, wriggling in her place.

“No! I don’t know why she’s—”

TillyTilly opened the door and came in, closing the door behind her again. She looked at Shivs, then looked at Jess giving a wide-armed shrug. Shivs was now completely still.

“That wasn’t you opening and shutting the door, was it, Jess?” Shivs said in a low voice.

Jess shook her head no, then remembered that Shivs couldn’t see her.

“It wasn’t me, it was TillyTilly,” she explained.

“Come here and put your hand on my head,” Shivs ordered.

Jess moved across and placed her hand on Shiv’s tumbled head of hair.

“All right, now tell TillyTilly to do it again. Open and close the door, I mean.”

TillyTilly shook her head belligerently, and made an exaggerated bored expression, but went back over to the door when Jess looked at her pleadingly and nodded her on. She opened the door and slammed it shut.

“Oh,” Shivs said wonderingly. “Oh.”

“You two better stop slamming that door,” Jess’s mum shouted from next door.

Shivs giggled at that. “You three, more like,” she said.

Jess took her hand away from Siobhan’s head and moved back again.

“Can I talk to her?” Shivs asked.

TillyTilly shook her head at Jess, waving her hands violently to indicate that she would not be persuaded on this one.

“She doesn’t want to talk,” Jess told Shivs. How rubbish was this?

“Oh,” Shivs said, sounding crestfallen before coming up with another idea. “Will she come and sit beside me?”

Jess looked at TillyTilly, who held up a finger to her to indicate that she shouldn’t say anything, then began walking in a wide circle around Shivs, noiselessly climbing up onto the bed and jumping down again when she had to walk behind her. She was looking at Shivs carefully, unsmiling, almost grim-faced. Jess, watching, was briefly worried that TillyTilly might break her promise and do something, but she showed no sign of any such intention.

Siobhan was struck by how cold she felt, but it was a constantly moving coldness, sometimes giving way to normal air, as if it was expanding all around her. She feared that it might tighten, and she longed to rub her arms, but didn’t dare drop them in case she saw TillyTilly. She didn’t want to see her at all: from the moment that Tilly had come into the room, Shivs had felt a . . .
badness
. It was the only way to describe it: it was like being sick and hearing rattling in your ears that wasn’t really there; it was slow, bottomless, soundless, creeping . . . and it wasn’t just inside her stomach, but inside her head as well, slowly building in pressure. She’d had to make sure that she wasn’t imagining it, she’d needed the security of Jess’s touch to ensure that she wasn’t alone in the room with this . . . thing. This was not another girl. This was not the kind of imaginary friend that you’d mistakenly sit on. She was a cycle of glacial ice.

“She’s walking around me in a circle,” Shivs whispered slowly, trying not to let her arms tremble. She heard Jess let out a little cry of amazement and was seized with a sudden, irrational fear that this thing would stop moving and dart out a sly, fleeting touch that would take her away forever and ever.

She almost shouted out, almost. But she didn’t—she was tougher than that, and anyway, she realised with a breathtaking suddenness, this was not her fear to hold but Jess’s. This thing meant to harm Jess, punish her in a bad way, the worst way, maybe. Siobhan was scared that Jess was going to die. She had to tell her.

“Jess, this—”

Jess moved forward towards Siobhan, who was fighting the quivering of her own lips to speak. She wanted to touch her, but TillyTilly, still unsmiling, put up a cautionary finger indicating that she should go no nearer. She had now stopped directly in front of Shivs, close enough to touch her. Shivs stammered senselessly for another half second as Jess watched, baffled and uneasy.

“This. It’s not... good. SHE’S . . . not good. You need to—”

Glancing quickly at TillyTilly, who was by now backing away towards the door, looking as bewildered as Jess, Jess approached Siobhan and hugged her, listening for the almost inaudible words that she was whispering, “This is so, so bad. She doesn’t have to be here, Jess. You don’t have to see her. You know that, don’t you?”

“I—”

TillyTilly had gone. It felt as if she had fled.

And half an hour later, Shivs had fled too; everyone was fleeing away from her. Shivs had called her father to come and pick her up to take her home.

“It’s my fault, isn’t it?” Jess cried, following Shivs down the stairs and outside to the waiting car. Shivs was pale, why was she so pale? Why was she so scared of TillyTilly when she wasn’t the one who’d been caught in the glass, and she wasn’t the one who’d lain whimpering in the dark with an unknown wetness dripping on her back? Shivs wasn’t supposed to be scared.

“It’s not your fault, duh,” Shivs said, lightheartedly. It was almost convincing, but only almost. She waved at her dad, and climbed into the backseat of the car, busily doing up her seat belt.

Jess leaned in and peered at Siobhan.

“What was so scary?”

Shivs glowered at her when Dr. McKenzie turned around and asked, “What was so scary about what?”

“Nothing,” they both said hastily, and he laughed.

“Well, I’m sorry I’m so nosy, then! Shivs, ready to go?”

Shivs nodded, and Jess leaned back out of the car and slammed the door shut.

“Don’t tell ANYONE,” Jess mouthed, waving, and Shivs nodded, licked her finger and held it up for answer.

That was partly what made it so bad that Shivs told on her, that she’d sworn. It seemed that she’d only held out for one night, because on Monday afternoon, Jess was sitting in the kitchen eating a ham and peanut butter sandwich, with TillyTilly idly dipping her finger into the jam, when the phone rang. As soon as it did, Tilly leapt up, her eyes meeting Jess’s.

“McKenzie,” she hissed. “Siobhan TOLD him about me! I told you that she wasn’t a good friend, Jessy.”

The phone rang for ages; finally, her mum picked it up.

Jess put down her sandwich and stared back at Tilly as they both tried to listen to what was being said.

“No way,” Jess said forcefully, but when her mum came into the kitchen and tersely told her to grab her coat because Dr. McKenzie wanted to see them, she was forced to take it back.

“I hope Daniel’s feeling a bit better,” Dr. McKenzie said to Jess’s mum when they got there. He said this over Jess’s head, and she sneaked a glance upwards to see her mum shaking her head with the corners of her mouth tremblingly downturned.

“I’ll talk to you about it later,” Sarah told him, infuriating Jess, because what was this? She was acting as if Jess didn’t know about being sick, as if there was something
left
to know beyond the constant, aching wish for the sickness to just go away. So she started off in a bad mood anyway.

Dr. McKenzie must have been able to tell, because he began tentatively.

“Jess. You know what I was talking about before, about things being real in different ways?”

Folding her arms, Jess let herself fill up to the very top with indignation at what Siobhan had done. Why couldn’t she just
shut up
? If it had been Jess, she’d have kept the secret, she’d have kept it even if . . . even if she was shut in the basement for years and years. Shivs thought that her dad could fix anything, but Jess already knew and could have told her for free that parents fix nothing—they only pushed things to the bottom limits of
worse
. What was going to happen now?

Dr. McKenzie continued talking in spite of Jess’s stubborn silence.

“Now I’ve been thinking about our last talk, about your friend Tilly, and I thought of something—”
(Oh, such a shameful lie, Dr. McKenzie, the truth shall set you free.
We both know Shivs told you.)

“Sometimes the different types of being real can be the same thing with people. There are some things, people, that can
seem
very real, especially to you, Jess, because you have a big imagination. But sometimes they aren’t real in the same way that I am, or your mother is. For example, if you had no one to play with, you might . . . meet a friend that’s exactly the type of friend that you wanted in every way—”

“TillyTilly isn’t imaginary, you know!”

“Why is she so shy, Jess? Why have neither of your parents met her even though she plays with you all the time?”

Jess gave him her foulest stare, waiting for him to finish making his point, acutely aware of her mother’s own stern glare at her. She’d get told off later for being rude.

“TillyTilly isn’t imaginary,” she growled at him.

Dr. McKenzie didn’t skip a beat.

“I know she’s not imaginary. She’s real because she’s a part of you.”

Jess threw her hands up in the air in frustration at his stupidity.

“She’s NOT! What’s the MATTER with you?”

“Jessamy, don’t you shout at Dr. McKenzie,” Sarah told Jess, pleasantly but with an undertone of steel running in her voice.

Jess folded her arms again and stared at her mother, then at Dr. McKenzie, who was picking up the little bowl of Jelly Babies.

“I’m not having one of those, either.”

He put them down, not taking one himself this time. He began talking to her mother instead of her.

“Of course, I’d have to see if Jess will talk to me more about... TillyTilly before I diagnose anything, but it might be worth your taking a look at some of this material, Sarah.”

Jess watched as he handed her mother a sheet of paper with some names and titles scribbled on it. Dr. McKenzie glanced at Jess to see if she was still in her sulk.

“It’s possible that TillyTilly is an alter ego, although she could also be an internalised imaginary companion. It seems as if we have a situation where Jess has discovered a need of an outlet for emotions that she doesn’t want to show. She may have kind of . . . created, for lack of a better word, a personality that is very markedly different from her own—”

Sarah interrupted him. She folded the piece of paper over and over, trying to understand what he was saying.

“So TillyTilly isn’t real—I mean, objectively real,” she added, looking at Jess, who was scowling massively.

“But . . . the way she used to talk about her! You should have heard her—they had a picnic, and they wrote a poem—”

She turned to Jess. “D’you still have that poem?”

Jess shook her head.

“Well, I feel silly. I should have, well,
known
.” Sarah played with the fringed ends of her scarf and chewed thoughtfully at her lip as she looked at Jess.

But Jess was looking over Dr. McKenzie’s shoulder, at where TillyTilly was moving an egg-shaped glass paperweight around on his desk. When Jess caught her eye, Tilly shook her head sorrowfully, but said nothing.

“What’s an alter ego?” Jess asked abruptly, her eyes still on Tilly.

“It’s . . . a different side to you that you normally keep hidden because it only comes out when you’re scared or angry,” Dr. McKenzie told her.

“So you mean . . . when Jess screams, and when she breaks things, that’s a side of her that she calls TillyTilly?” Sarah broke in.

Dr. McKenzie nodded briefly.