Close Your Pretty Eyes (11 page)

THE TUESDAY MOON

And as if Amelia wasn't enough to deal with, I
still
had to go to school.

School was boring. The other kids did work. I didn't. I didn't get why anyone would spend all day letting some stupid lady boss them about, making them learn stupid numbers off by heart. I never did. I just wailed and moaned and told her it was too hard, and made such a fuss she was pleased when I stopped complaining and spent the lesson drawing pictures instead.

Harriet still hadn't found any better friends. I worried about that a bit, because what would she do when I was gone? I tried to explain this to her, but she didn't get it.

“You aren't
going
anywhere, Olivia,” she said. “You're going to live with us for ever.”

“Yeah, until your dad chucks me out,” I said. “And even if I did stay – which I won't – I'll be in Big School next year. So you have to stop letting them boss you about. Or get better friends.”

Not that I could talk. No one wanted to be friends with me. It didn't matter though, because I didn't need friends. At break time, I played football with the boys. I was good at football. The boys didn't care what sort of shoes you wore, or what magazines you read or what bands you liked, they just cared about whether you could kick a ball or not.

They didn't like me, though. When we had to pick partners in class, they always picked each other instead of me.

I didn't care. There didn't seem much point in making friends. Sometimes when you moved families they paid for a taxi, so you could keep going to your old school, but Jim's house was so far into the middle of nowhere that I knew when I left, I'd have to go somewhere new.

 

Stupid therapy with Helen was the other thing that happened. Therapy sessions were mostly useless. Helen asked me stupid questions, and I gave her stupid answers. It was none of her
business
what I thought about things. What I thought was
private
.

Helen was mostly OK with this, but sometimes, if I tried really hard, I could see her getting annoyed. One day, after I'd been living with Jim for about five months, I got her really annoyed.

She was asking about flashbacks. Jim had obviously told her I was having them, because I hadn't. That was a bad sign. It meant he was worrying about me.

“Tell me what happens,” she said.

“Nothing,” I said. “Nothing happens. Can I draw pictures now?”

“No,” said Helen. “Tell me about your flashbacks. How do they make you feel?”

“Happy,” I said. “Drunk. Like I'm made of rubber. Like the man in the moon on Tuesdays. The Tuesday Moon.”

Helen sucked in her breath. “Do you
like
living like this?” she said.

I shrugged. “I'm
fine
,” I said.

“Are you?” said Helen. “When was the last time you slept through the night?”

“I'm being haunted by a Victorian murderess!” I yelled.

“Before that, Olivia.”

I didn't say anything. Never, was the answer.

“When was the last time you felt relaxed?”

“I'm not a relaxed sort of person,” I said, which was something Grumpy Annabel said about me once. Only she practically spat it.

“Would you like to be?” said Helen. I gave another shrug. Relaxed sounded dangerous. Bad things might come after you and you wouldn't notice, because you'd be too busy being asleep on a beach or something.

“Do you like being scared all the time?” Helen said.

“I'm not scared all the time!” I shouted. “I'm
never
scared!” Helen gave me her I-know-better-than-you-do look. I wanted to punch her.

“I'm fine!” I shouted. “I'm just me. I
like
being me!”

“Do you like the way you live right now?” Helen said calmly. “All these different families?” I didn't even bother answering. Of
course
I didn't like it. But it wasn't my fault if people keep dumping me, was it?

“Do you think,” said Helen, “if you felt a bit safer, you might find it easier to make connections with people?”

“It's not
my
fault I don't feel safe!” I said. “People keep chucking me out!”

“Mm-mm,” said Helen. What that meant was,
Of course it's your fault. If you were a nice little girl like Harriet, everyone would want to keep you.

“Olivia,” Helen said, “you weren't born like this. All these problems . . . flashbacks, dissociating, hyper-vigilance . . . they're just symptoms. Your body developed them as a way of coping with the situation you lived in when you were little. I know they help you feel safe and that's important, Olivia, but you don't need them any more. They're all things you can change, but you have to do the work. If you just come here every week and glare at me, we aren't going to get anywhere.”

I glared at her. Problems! They weren't problems. They were
superpowers
. I wanted to smack her so hard I broke her nose, but I sort of knew she was a bit right too. Helen had said things like this before, but never so clearly. I honestly wasn't sure what I thought. Part of me really, really wanted to be a dopey little girl like Harriet. But the other part of me – the bigger part – knew that I wasn't safe here, not now, not ever. I probably wouldn't be truly safe until I was grown up, and maybe not even then. So how could I possibly relax?

 

“If you could have any superpower in the world,” I asked Liz, that Saturday, “what would it be?”

“Can I have a TARDIS and a sonic screwdriver?” said Liz, which was cheating. Doctor Who is not a superpower.

Harriet said she would do magic like Harry Potter and fly like Mary Poppins. I told her she could only pick one, so she said she would do magic, and one of the magics she would do would be flying like Mary Poppins. Daniel said he would fly and be invisible and be super strong.

“That's not one superpower!” I said. “That's three! That's cheating!”

Daniel said in that case he would have the power to grant unlimited wishes to anyone, including himself.

Grace said if Harriet was going to be Harry Potter, she was going to be God.

“Being God is
not
a superpower,” I told her. “If you ask for God you get nothing.”

Grace said in that case, she would have the power to change “the underlying economic underpinnings of society”.

“The what?”

“The way the rich have everything and the poor have nothing. I'd make it so people couldn't earn billions of pounds, and if they did, they'd have to give it away to people who had nothing. I'd magically take the money out of their bank accounts and give it to Amnesty International or someone.”

“That's stealing,” I said. I didn't think superheroes should steal. Probably.

“Yeah,” said Grace. “But how would anyone ever know it was me?”

“They would if they asked me,” said Daniel. “I'd have to tell them. Then you'd be screwed.”

“No, you wouldn't,” said Harriet. “
I'd
save you.”

Jim was the only one who took it seriously. He thought for ages, then he said he would have the power to heal people.

“You should have been a doctor if you wanted to heal people!” I said. “Not an IT consultant!”

But Jim said there were already plenty of doctors healing the sort of things doctors healed. “I'd heal the things that don't have real-life cures,” he said. “The people who are sad and scared and lost. I'd let them be the people they were meant to be all along.”

“Eugh!” I pulled a face. What a yucky superpower!

Jim smiled a little sadly and put his arm around my waist.

“What would you pick then, SuperOlivia?”

“Laser deathrays,” I said.

But I wouldn't. I'd pick the ability to make people do whatever I wanted them to. I'd make Jim and Liz love me like a real daughter and adopt me, and Daniel and Harriet like me and do whatever I told them to and never argue, and Violet jump off a big cliff into shark-infested water, and my mum come home and love me like she loved Hayley and Jamie, and Hayley ditch her new mum and dad and be my sister, and no one ever hurt me ever, ever again.

Mine was obviously the best superpower, but I didn't want to say in case someone else stole it. I didn't think it would work if more than one person had it, because what would happen if we wanted the same person to do different things? The universe would probably explode, is what.

HOW DO YOU MAKE SOMEONE LOVE YOU?

School broke up for summer. The long holidays started. Grace stopped stressing about exams and started stressing about exam results, which was nearly as bad.

Jim was going camping in Cornwall for a week. Harriet told me all about it. They went every year, apparently, and there was a beach and a disco and an island with puffins on it. At first, I wasn't sure if I was invited or not, because sometimes foster families dump you in respite when they go on holiday. Apparently I was, though, and so were Grace and Maisy. But before that, there were five long, empty weeks of summer.

Summer frightened me. Islands with puffins on them frightened me. I knew I wouldn't get to keep them.

 

I used to watch Daniel and Jim, trying to work out if they hated me yet and if so, how much. Sometimes, when I was bored, I'd go up to Daniel's room and try and get him to talk to me. Most of the time, he'd come and do things with me, but sometimes he'd be drawing or reading or something, and he wouldn't want to. I couldn't bear it.

“Daniel,” I'd say. “Dan-iel. Do you want to come out on your bike?”

“No,” Daniel would say, and carry on with whatever he was doing. I'd feel the cold fear sink into the bottom of my stomach.

“Come
on
,” I'd say.
“
Let's play on skateboards. Let's watch a DVD. Let's go and annoy Grace. Let's—”

“Not now,” Daniel would say. “I'm reading.”

And I'd start to feel sick.

He hates you, but he's too nice to say so. He's always hated you.

Why wouldn't he?
I'd
hate me, if I had to live with me.

 

I hate being on my own. I told you that, didn't I? I start thinking everyone's forgotten me, and I'll probably just keel over and die of bubonic plague or something. No one will even notice. Or maybe they'll notice how much nicer it is without me and decide they don't want me in their family any more, or they'll suddenly go off on a hot-air balloon ride without me, or take a boat to Africa or something. I'm not just being stupid saying that, either. My mum went off and forgot about us loads of times. And I've been in plenty of foster families who used to dump me in respite care and then go on holiday without me. Sometimes they wouldn't even tell me they were going to do it, either. I'd just get home from school and my bags would be packed and everyone else would be off to Disneyland without me.

So when Daniel and Harriet were busy, I used to go and bug Jim. Jim didn't like me any more than Daniel did, but he had to be polite because he was supposed to be my dad.

This time, Jim was in the kitchen, chopping things.

“What are you making?” I said.

I could see what he was making – spaghetti bolognese. But I wanted him to talk to me.

“What do you think I'm making?” he said.

“Ice cream sundae,” I told him.

“That sounds nice,” he said. “Maybe you could make us some for pudding?”

“Why should I when you're already making it?” I said, and Jim smiled.

“Of course. Silly me. Is this the sort of sundae you like?”

He was laughing at me. I hate it when people laugh at me.

“Why are you putting mushrooms in ice cream?” I said. If I'd asked Grumpy Annabel something stupid like that, we'd have had this whole argument:

“I'm making spaghetti bolognese.”

“No, you're not. That's ice cream.”

“It's mince, Olivia!”

“And that's sprinkles.”

“They're onions! And this is a tin of bloody tomatoes.”

But Jim just smiled and said, “What do you think the answer is?”

Stupid Jim pretending to be clever. I didn't say anything.

There was an awful empty silence. Jim went
chop, chop, chop
like I wasn't even there.

“Why do you have that rubbish beard?” I said.

“Why do you think?”

“How should I know?
I
wouldn't have a beard like that if you paid me.”

“You'd look a bit silly with a beard,” said Jim.

I scowled. “You always look silly,” I said. “You look like an idiot. I'd hate to look like you. I'd rather look like a sea monster than look like you. I'd rather be dead!”

Jim didn't answer, but I could smell him readying himself for something bad to happen. He was afraid. Or – not afraid, but wary. Like I was a bad thing he'd rather not deal with.

I
hated
him.

 

“Why are you so horrible to Dad?” Daniel said. We were sitting in the tree house, legs dangling over the edge. He didn't say it in a mean way. More . . . just curious.

“I'm not horrible!” I said. “He's horrible to
me
! He's the one who's always telling me to go sit in the dining room!”

But I could see Daniel didn't believe me. I didn't believe me either, really. I wanted to explain it properly, so he'd understand and maybe not hate me. But I wasn't sure it made sense to anyone who wasn't me. I didn't think even Daniel – who was about the most understandingest person I'd ever met, after Liz – would get it, and that would prove I really
was
crazy.

What I'd have liked to have said was:

“I don't have power over
anything
. Not where I live, not whether I get to keep my stuff when I move, not who my mum and dad are, not
anything
. And it's horrible. It's . . . like panicking, all the time. So anything I can do to make me feel safe, I do. And having power, being in control of
something
, even if it's just how pissed off Jim is with me, feels safer than feeling like I'm about to sink.

“Because there's nothing in my life that's solid. I don't have a home. I don't have a family. I don't have anyone who loves me. So I have to have something to hold on to, or I'll drown.”

 

Jim didn't love me. I knew he didn't. I watched him, dancing Maisy round the room.

“Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.”

Maisy swayed from side to side in his arms, dancing along. She looked happy. Happy and loved.

“Why does Grace love Maisy?” I said.

“Because she's her mum,” said Jim.

It wasn't a good enough answer. Not all mums love their kids.

“Would Grace still love Maisy if Maisy was evil?” I said. “If she was a killer psycho baby?”

“Babies aren't evil,” said Jim. But he was wrong.
I
was an evil baby. I made my mum sick, and screamed all night and threw up over her stuff. She told me about it. Often.

“Maisy's dad doesn't love her,” I said. “He's never come and visited, not even once.”

“I don't think Maisy's dad is any of your business, do you?” said Jim.

“Yes, he
is
,” I said. “Because if Maisy's dad doesn't love her, why does
Grace
?”

“Well,” said Jim. “Because when a baby is born, a mother's body releases chemicals which help her love the child. Those same chemicals get released when Grace plays with Maisy, or feeds her, or holds her. And also – well, love is a good thing, Olivia. Grace gets a lot of joy from loving Maisy. Most people want to love, and be loved.”

I didn't. I didn't want to love anyone, ever, ever, ever. Love was for wimps. If you loved someone, then when they stopped loving you, they destroyed you. I was never going to love anyone ever again. But I would have liked someone to love me like Grace loved Maisy. If you could make someone love you and never leave you – make sure they never stopped loving you – I'd like that. That's what Maisy and Daniel and Harriet had, I reckoned.

“Do you love me?” I asked Jim.

“Well,” he said. “Love takes a while to develop.” He tried to put the arm that wasn't holding Maisy around me, but I wriggled away.

“I like you,” he said, but I didn't believe him.

“How do you make someone love you?” I said.

“You can't,” said Jim. “It's just something that happens. Though not throwing food in their face certainly helps.”

Huh.