The Tearsmith, page 11
‘We’re all sold out!’ she exclaimed, wiping the back of her hand across her forehead. ‘But you can take that one in the window!’
She went up to the mannequin and delicately slid the dress off it.
‘The last one left! Here you go,’ she handed it to me and I gazed at it for a moment, enraptured. ‘The fitting rooms are this way, follow me!’
Anna gestured for me to follow and took the bags off me. I saw Norman coming in through the door, and behind him, briefly, glimpsed Rigel.
I followed the sales assistant to the fitting rooms, in a corner hidden from view in the back of the store. I slipped into the one furthest away from the door.
I made sure that the curtain was properly closed and got undressed. I lifted the dress over my head, getting it caught in my hair. I’d never been particularly skilled at getting dressed, maybe because the clothes I used to wear at The Grave were always too big and baggy, or maybe because the few times that I’d put on good clothes I had always been too euphoric to wear them in front of anyone else.
The dress fit tightly over my chest and clung to my body down to my waist. I got slightly embarrassed by the way that it so perfectly hugged my breasts and revealed so much of my legs. I stared at it, unable to look up.
I tried to zip it up at the back but couldn’t reach.
‘Anna?’ I called hesitantly. ‘Anna, I can’t zip it up…’
‘Oh, no problem,’ her voice replied from just outside. ‘Come here? I’ll help you.’
She reached a hand through the curtain and pulled up the zipper. Then, before I could do anything else, she pulled open the curtain, taking me totally by surprise.
‘Wow!’ she smiled ecstatically as soon as she saw me. ‘It looks amazing on you! Oh, Nica, you look so pretty!’
I cringed as she looked at me with shining, wonderstruck eyes.
‘It’s like it was made just for you! Have you seen how great you look? It suits you so well!’
She came to stand at my side, and I saw that my face had turned red from embarrassment.
‘How’s it going?’ the sales assistant asked after a moment, then froze when she saw me. ‘Oh!’ She came up to me with her mouth hanging open, happy and admiring. ‘You look incredible! Like an angel!’
Anna turned to her. ‘Doesn’t she just?’
‘You just need the wings!’ the girl joked, and I flinched when I heard other people coming into the store. I scratched my cheek, looking at the floor.
‘Oh, I…’
‘Do you like it?’ Anna asked.
‘Do you like it?’
‘Nica, how could I not like it? Look at yourself!’
I looked at myself.
I lifted my face and looked at myself. I looked at myself properly.
In my doubtful eyes, there was a glimmer I never thought I would see. There was something in my gaze that even I didn’t know how to interpret.
Something alive.
Delicate.
Light.
It was me.
It was me, wearing the sky like I’d always wanted. It was me, shining on the inside, as if one of my dreams had been sewn onto my skin. As if I would never again have to rub flowers onto myself to feel less dirty…
‘Nica?’ Anna called me, and I looked down.
My eyes were stinging. I hoped that she wouldn’t hear me sniffling as I touched the hem of the dress. I whispered, ‘I like it…I like it so much. Thank you.’
Anna squeezed my shoulder so softly that I wanted to feel her next to me all the time. She was giving me so much…too much for a soft heart like mine. I could no longer even consider the possibility of losing her. If something in the adoption process went wrong, I’d never see her again.
‘We’ll take it,’ I heard her declare.
I headed back into the fitting room. I touched the dress with my fingers, the line of little white buttons following the curve of my chest.
It was so cute…
But then I remembered I wouldn’t be able to take it off alone.
‘Anna, sorry, please could you give me a hand?’ I asked. I moved aside the fitting room curtain just enough to reveal my back. I waited patiently. She said nothing, but I could sense her presence behind me. I gathered my hair over to one side, moving it off my back so it wouldn’t get in the way.
‘The zipper, Anna,’ I specified awkwardly. ‘Sorry, I can’t reach it. Can you help me?’
There was a long silence.
Then, after a moment, I heard the sound of footsteps slowly walking towards me.
One hand held the collar, the other shuffled to clasp the zipper. Slowly, she pulled it down.
My ears filled with the quiet metallic zwip and the dress fell open.
‘Okay, thank you,’ I said, when it was undone down to my shoulder blades.
But she didn’t stop there.
The dress continued to be unzipped with a disarming slowness, and I felt a shiver down my spine.
‘Anna, that’s fine,’ I reassured her gently, but the fingers tightened on the collar and the zipper continued downwards.
Right down, down to the waist, then just under the small of my back. The dress opened like a beetle’s wings to reveal my skin, and my voice came out higher.
‘Anna…’
Then the click of the zipper arriving at the bottom. The dress was completely undone. I turned to stare at my reflection with my arms wrapped around my chest to keep it from sliding off me.
I could now take it off easily. I blinked, moving my lips into a slight smile.
‘Oh, er…thanks…’ I murmured, before pulling the curtain closed.
I shook my head, letting the dress fall to my feet, and stood there in my underwear. I put my clothes back on and left the fitting room.
There was no one standing outside.
I looked for Anna but couldn’t see her, and when I came back into the store, I found her close to the counter holding her phone. Norman was outside, looking into the store windows.
‘All good?’ she asked.
‘Yes, thanks…’ I smiled, clutching the dress. ‘I wouldn’t have been able to take it off without your help.’
Anna lifted a hand to her chest and looked at me apologetically.
‘Oh, I’m sorry, Nica, I got a phone call and completely forgot! It wasn’t a lot of hassle, was it? You managed to undo it?’
I looked at her with that smile still on my lips. I didn’t understand.
‘Yes…thanks to you,’ I said again.
Her confusion made me feel even more alienated. A strange feeling arose inside of me, and then, suddenly, I was overcome by a sense of foreboding.
My gaze swung to look outside.
Rigel was leaning against a pillar. His piercing eyes were looking around. He looked almost bored, and his arms were folded over his chest.
No…What was I thinking?
‘Here we are!’ The sales assistant approached and looked at me happily. ‘So, you’re taking it, are you? Great decision.’ She smiled. ‘It looks so good on you!’
‘Thanks,’ I said, embarrassed and blushing a little. She looked at me enthusiastically.
‘And it’ll go with just about anything, you could even wear it as part of a more casual outfit…Look.’ She picked something up from a hanger. ‘Even just one of these…see how cute that looks?’
I realised only too late that she was holding a belt.
She put it around me, but my arms were still dangling at my sides so the leather brushed against my skin.
It all happened very quickly.
I felt it on my flesh.
I felt it chafing.
I felt it pressing, squeezing, closing around me, constraining me…
I violently tore away. I jerked backwards, eyes wide. The sales assistant stared at me, stupefied, her hands still outstretched, and I carried on moving back until I collided with the counter. My body contracted. My icy heart started beating wildly, fit to burst. I tried to control it but my hands were shaking and I had to grab on to the side to keep hold of reality.
‘What’s happening?’ Anna asked, coming back from looking for Norman. She saw me shaking and immediately got worried. ‘Nica, what’s wrong?’
My skin felt tight. I absolutely had to calm down, to fight those sensations, keep them under control…I looked at Anna’s face. I didn’t want her to see me like this. I wanted her only to see me as the perfect girl wearing the pretty dress.
As a girl she’d want beside her.
A girl who would never annoy or bore her.
‘Nothing,’ I whispered, trying to seem convincing, but my vocal cords took no pity on me. I swallowed, trying to keep my body’s reactions under control, but in vain.
‘Do you feel unwell?’ she asked, looking at me with concern. She came closer and her eyes looked enormous and overwhelming, like magnifying glasses.
Things got worse. I felt a visceral, pathological need to cover my body, to hide, to run far away from her gaze, to disappear.
Don’t look at me, something inside of me prayed. Uncontrollable anxiety coursed through me, made me feel wrong, small, disgusting and guilty. My heart was pumping furiously, and I fell at breakneck speed into my fears, trying desperately to hold Anna’s gaze.
She would throw me away.
She’d throw me out with the garbage because that was what I deserved.
That was where I belonged.
That’s where people like me ended up.
I would never have that fairy tale.
I would never have my happy ending.
There were no princesses in this story.
There were no fairies, or mermaids.
There was just a little girl…
Who had never been good enough.
9. Thorns and Roses
You know what makes roses so beautiful?
The thorns.
There’s nothing as magnificent
As something you cannot hold.
Light-headedness, from the heat and the emotion. The feeling that I was going to pass out.
That was how I explained what had happened in the mall, hiding my reactions the best I could.
I had tried to suppress my body’s panic, I had tried with everything I had to contain myself. I reassured Anna multiple times, and in the end, she believed me.
I didn’t like lying to her, but there was nothing else I could do. The idea of telling her the truth made me feel so nauseous that I couldn’t breathe. I just couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t tell her what had caused those feelings, because they came from so deep down in me that even I didn’t want to probe there.
‘Nica?’ I heard on Monday morning.
Anna was standing in the doorway to my room. Her eyes were still as clear as a cloudless sky. I hoped she’d never see me like that again.
‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, watching me rummage through my desk. I knew that she had accepted what I told her as true, but this hadn’t stopped her worrying about me.
‘Oh, nothing, just…a photo,’ I murmured as she came near. ‘My friend gave me one the other day and…I can’t find it.’
I couldn’t believe it. Billie had only just given it to me and I’d already lost it?
‘Have you looked on the kitchen table?’
I nodded, tucking my hair behind my ears.
‘You’ll find it, I’m sure. It won’t be lost.’
She tilted her head and tidied a lock of hair on my collarbone. As she looked me in the eyes, I felt a surge of affection for her warming my chest.
‘I’ve got something for you.’
A small box appeared under my nose.
I came back to my senses and looked at the wrapping paper, unsure what to say. When I opened it, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
‘I know it’s a bit old,’ Anna commented as I pulled away the wrapping. ‘It’s definitely not the latest model, but…well, this way I can always know where you and Rigel are. I gave him one too.’
A cell phone. Anna was giving me a cell phone. I stared at her, utterly speechless.
‘It’s already got a SIM, and I’ve put my number in the contacts,’ she explained calmly. ‘You can reach me at any time. I’ve put Norman’s number in there too.’
I was unable to express what I was feeling at that moment, with something so important in my hands.
I thought about all the times I’d daydreamed about exchanging numbers with a friend, or hearing my phone ringing somewhere, knowing that someone was looking for me, that someone wanted to speak specifically with me…
‘I…Anna, I, I can’t…’ I stammered. I looked at her, enraptured, overwhelmed with gratitude. ‘Thank you…’
It was surreal. I had never had anything of my own, except for that caterpillar plushie…
Why did Anna go so out of her way for me? Why did she give me clothes, underwear, such long-lasting things? I knew I shouldn’t delude myself. I knew that nothing was for certain yet…And yet I couldn’t help but hope.
Hope that she wanted to keep me with her.
Hope that we could stay together, that she was starting to care about me as much as I cared about her…
‘I know that girls your age all have the latest model, but…’
‘It’s perfect,’ I whispered, savouring the moment. ‘It’s so perfect, Anna. Thank you.’
She smiled affectionately, then put a hand on my head. My heart felt warm.
‘Oh, Nica…Why don’t you put on those new clothes we bought?’ She looked at me a little sadly. ‘Don’t you like them any more?’
‘No,’ I replied urgently. ‘The opposite…I love them!’
Too much, in truth.
When I came to put them away, I hadn’t been able to see them together in the same drawer with my old clothes. So, I left them in their bags, tidy and safe like holy relics.
‘I was just waiting for the right moment to wear them. I didn’t want to ruin them for nothing,’ I murmured quietly.
‘But they’re clothes,’ Anna pointed out. ‘They’re made for wearing. Don’t you want to wear all those colourful socks we got together?’
I nodded vigorously, feeling a bit like a little girl.
‘So what are you waiting for?’ She stroked my hair and I lowered my face.
She had given me another bit of herself, and I couldn’t help but feel happy. With that conversation, once again, Anna had offered me a piece of the normality that I had always dreamt of.
* * *
—
That morning, I walked to school alone.
Changing my outfit had made me late, and I didn’t need to see the empty hook on the coat rack to know that Rigel hadn’t bothered waiting for me.
It was better that way. At the end of the day, I had promised myself that I’d keep well away from him.
When Billie had told me about Garden Day the previous Friday, I had imagined a day of pure romance. I had always thought that Valentine’s Day would be intimate and personal, that there would be no need for grand, showy gestures as love reveals itself in secret, private ways.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
The yard outside school was thronging like an anthill. The atmosphere was so electric that everyone was as jumpy as grasshoppers.
I was surrounded by a gaudy mosaic swarming with yellow, pink, blue and white roses, devoid of thorns but full of meaning.
There were some students roaming around with baskets bursting with bouquets and reading the little labels attached to them. When they approached a group of girls, they all held their breath, then exploded into giggles when the chosen one was handed a rose. The others hid grimaces of disappointment or sighs of restless anticipation.
I tried to get to the entrance without ending up in the middle of some big scene. I had to agree with Billie. It was a day full of drama.
Some girls exchanged pink roses as a symbol of their friendship, while others would point fingers and hurl insults at them. Jealous girlfriends accused their boyfriends of having sent a scarlet rose to some other girl, and then forgot to say thanks for the flowers that they themselves were holding.
I recognised one of my classmates – he ran towards a dark-skinned girl and hugged her from behind, flourishing a bunch of flowers in front of her face, which made her smile.
I stood watching them affectionately, before a cheerleader shoved into me. She was furious, to say the least.
‘Pink? Pink? After everything we’ve done together, that’s all I am to you? Just a friend?’ she raged at some guy who scratched his head awkwardly.
‘Hmm…well, Karen…in a way…’
‘Friends, my ass!’ she screamed at him. I slipped away with wide eyes, slightly terrified.
In the distance, I glimpsed an unmistakable mane of blonde curls.
‘Billie, hey,’ I groaned, approaching her. ‘Sorry, can I get through…’
Her face lit up as I practically fell at her feet.
‘Nica, just at the right moment! It’s all kicking off!’
I saw Miki sourly stuffing two roses into her locker. They were a beautiful, bright red.
‘I hate Garden Day,’ she grumbled gloomily.
‘Hello, Miki,’ I greeted her sweetly. She glanced at me distractedly like she did every morning, but this time I noticed a hint of tenderness in her eyes.
‘Two red roses already, and it’s not even first period,’ Billie teased her as I opened my locker. ‘I bet there are more on their way too…what do you think, Nica?’
She elbowed me, turning towards me with a smile.
‘Hey, you’re looking so colourful today!’ she commented, looking at me.
I pulled at the sleeves of my new shirt, happy to be wearing something other than grey.
