Descended, page 3
He reached for her and she recoiled. He suddenly understood why she was the way she was. It made sense to him now, all of it, her nastiness, her inability to open herself up, to let others in. To let him in. It wasn’t anything to do with him or what he was.
Hurt people hurt other people.
“Do you want me to go?”
Her face collapsed then and she shook her head as the tears started again.
“Please don’t go,” she whispered, “please don’t ever go.”
He pulled her into his arms while she sobbed, rocking her gently and whispering to her. His heart went out to her. He could hardly break it off with her now. Instead, he’d stay. Because, for the first time in his life, someone needed him.
Indigo was lounging with his mates in his usual lunchtime spot on the wide sandstone steps of the fountain on the school’s back lawn, when he noticed the boy from the corner of his eye. Praying-mantis-lanky and tall, the boy would start to approach, his eyes fixed on Indigo, then veer off at the last minute only to circle back around and attempt his approach again. Indigo and Drew had ditched the class before lunch for a choof in the gardener’s shed and he was still a little stoned. He glanced at his mates, some sitting on the staggered steps, others on the grass at the fountain’s base, but none of them seemed to have noticed the boy.
He felt a slow smile stretch his face as he watched the boy. He was in the year below, Indigo knew that, and his name was Robbie. Robbie Carlisle. He seemed a nice enough bloke, a little awkward, sure, but there was something about him that Indigo warmed to. He couldn’t put his finger on it, but Robbie was different and Indigo had always had a soft spot for different.
Indigo eased himself up onto his elbows, his eyes trained on Robbie who now seemed to be muttering to himself. He held a fistful of paper in one hand as he circled round the back of a building, only to emerge on the other side of the fountain.
Indigo sat up and made eye contact with him and Robbie stopped dead, a blush blooming from his cheeks to the tips of his ears. Indigo lifted a hand and beckoned him over. Robbie stared at him for a moment or two, then glanced over his shoulder, then looked back at Indigo. “Me?” he mouthed, pointing at his chest.
Indigo nodded. “Come here.”
Robbie hesitated for only a moment before he began his slow approach, this time coming in for landing. He stopped in front of Indigo and stared at him dumbly. Drew sniggered. Indigo elbowed him. “What’s up, mate?” he asked.
Robbie opened his mouth, but nothing came out. He reddened further. He thrust his hand out towards Indigo, who saw the paper Robbie was carrying was a stack of invitations. Indigo reached for them. The minute his fingers closed around the edges, Robbie turned tail and bolted. The boys all burst out laughing.
“Give him a break, guys,” Indigo chastised, staring after Robbie. He’d barely glanced at the invites when Harper appeared. “Hey, Harps,” he said, stuffing the invitations in the pocket of his navy school blazer. She wordlessly poured herself onto his lap to straddle him, twining her fingers through his hair and kissing him in a way that made everyone in the vicinity shift uncomfortably and look away.
“Get a room,” Drew muttered.
“Are you high?” she asked, extracting her lips from his and staring into his eyes, which he knew were probably still a little red-rimmed.
He shrugged. “Barely.”
She rolled her eyes. “When are you going to grow out of this bullshit, Indi? You’re so boring when you’re stoned. Why do you do this to yourself?”
He gazed at her silently. He knew exactly why. But he couldn’t tell her the truth – anyone the truth – without giving himself away. It wasn’t just something he told people. He liked that people liked being around him, and if he told them, well, they might decide they didn’t actually like him. Sure, like wasn’t love, but at least he wasn’t alone. Indigo was certainly never short of mates. Although it did keep him up at night, wondering how it was possible to have so many friends yet still be so desperately lonely.
Because whenever he was alone, the anger and the sadness and the darkness crept back in. He felt constantly disappointed in himself, like he wasn’t good enough, and that was a thought that played in a loop inside his head. He worried a lot, alone in his big bed in his enormous room in the small hours of the morning. He worried about who he was and why he was here and what the point of his life was and if it was ever meant to be easy.
Indigo had grown adept at being who everyone else wanted him to be. He was good at smiling, good at fun, good at making others feel good. But then there were days he was too exhausted to keep up the charade, and on those days, he’d lay his head down on his school desk and close his eyes and wish the world away. Such behaviour would often earn him a chalkboard eraser to the head and an express pass to the headmaster’s office, so he tried his hardest to minimise it at school. These days, he only skipped school when the pain he felt in his body was unbearable.
The thing was, to be around people, he had to numb himself. He hated having to feel what everyone else was fucking feeling all the fucking time. Walking down crowded school corridors and feeling the emotions, the pain of every single person he walked past, sitting in class and absorbing his classmates’ aches and agonies, at times it was too much. The weed, it helped with that.
The day he realised he had the power to shut it all off was a Saturday arvo when he was thirteen. Drew had nicked one of his older brother’s bongs and their stash of weed and brought them over, declaring, “Let’s get radical!” with a mischievous grin. They’d waited for Edita to go out, then sat in the pool house, the bifolds thrown wide and spent the afternoon punching cones. At first it was hard not to cough as that deluge of sweet-scented smoke consumed his lungs, but once Indigo mastered that, he’d really liked the way it made him feel, the heavy relaxation that melted through him as the weed descended upon his mind and body with its mellowing caress. It stopped him overthinking. It stopped the judgement playing over and over in his head, the emotion perpetually bombarding his body, leaving only a lazy detachment. It worked much better than booze. When he was stoned his only worry was the quality of snacks available as he and his mates had a laugh over the latest episodes of Seinfeld or Married… With Children, as they lazed around his pool house, solving the problems of the world.
But Harper hated it. Since that day two months ago he’d learnt the truth about her family, things had shifted between them. It was like her opening up to him had flipped some sort of switch inside of her. He was now officially her boyfriend and that apparently meant he was at her beck and call twenty-four seven. Some days it felt like now he knew her secrets he was irrevocably tied to her ‘til the end of time, whether he liked it or not.
“I’ll see you at the gates at three, mon chéri?” Harper said, climbing off his lap.
“Yeah nah, I was gonna go for a surf with the boys,” Indigo told her, wincing, waiting for the fall-out.
She tilted her chin and set her jaw, her eyes boring into his. Most days after school, they went back to her place to hang in the boathouse at the bottom of the sprawling waterfront property. But he’d missed his morning surf and he went crazy if he didn’t get in the ocean every day.
Indigo sighed. He knew that look. It meant they were about to have a major blow-out. Nothing unusual about that these days, though. Harper was used to getting her way and when she didn’t she lost her shit.
“Did you just sigh at me, Indigo Wolfe?” she demanded, eyes narrowing lethally.
His mates had stopped talking, glancing between him and Harper in wary anticipation. They all knew how this would go. A screaming match followed by her publicly dumping him, followed by her ignoring him for the rest of the week, followed by her finding out which parties he’d be going to that weekend and turning up with some hot older guy. She’d then fawn all over her date in Indigo’s eyeline ‘til he couldn’t take it anymore, at which point he’d try to leave and she’d follow him, grab him and drag him into the nearest empty bedroom to make up. And so the cycle would begin all over again.
Drew asked him regularly why he always took her back. But Drew didn’t understand. He didn’t know the truth, that she needed him, that she was more than what she seemed. Sure, he didn’t like pissing her off because the fights that followed totally sucked. But mostly, he wanted to help lessen the hurt inside of her. It was her sadness that had eroded her heart and made her mean. But when they were alone together, she smiled more; she relaxed and opened up. And she wasn’t as mean these days. He made a difference to her.
He stood then, taking her hand and leading her away from prying eyes.
“Listen, Harps,” he said, stopping under the shade of a Norfolk pine in the far corner of the schoolyard, reaching for her other hand, “we’ve talked about this. We can’t be together all day, every day. I need time to hang with the boys, to surf. You need to not take that personally.”
She stared sullenly at the ground, refusing to meet his eye. He squeezed her hands, craned his neck to catch her gaze. “You didn’t come over yesterday either,” she said softly, blinking hard. She finally lifted her eyes to his and they were hard as stone. “I saw you, you know, in the carpark. With that bitch.”
He exhaled heavily. Great.
“She’s not that bad, Harper,” he said, struggling to keep his tone even, “and what did you want me to do? It was pouring with rain and she’s like, pushing seventy.” He dropped her hands, crossed his arms.
“Not that bad?” she snapped, voice rising. “What about what she did to us last week? The frigid old dyke! I bet she’s never blown anyone in her life!” A group of year sevens walking past gaped at them, then fell all over each other, giggling as they scurried away.
“Can you keep your voice down?” he said through clenched teeth.
She glared after the year sevens, then turned back to him. In a quieter voice she said, “Well, it’s true. If I can’t get into the library, Indi, I can’t finish my assignments and then I’ll fail. But that’s what the old cow wants, isn’t it?” Mrs Critchard, the school’s ancient librarian had banned the two of them from the library for life after she’d caught Harper on her knees doing apparently filthy things to him under the portrait of Captain Cook.
Late yesterday arvo when Indigo had been leaving school, he’d seen Mrs Critchard standing by her car in the torrential rain, wringing her gnarled hands and looking bewildered. The carpark had been deserted. He’d stayed back to help a kid from class with his maths homework and was meant to be heading to Harper’s. He was already late, but he couldn’t just leave the woman standing there. Night was falling and the rain was only getting heavier. As he’d approached Mrs Critchard, he’d been able to feel her rising panic.
“Everything okay, ma’am?” he’d called. A raincoat swathed her bulky frame and a scarf covered her head, but neither seemed to be doing much of a job of keeping her dry.
Relief had flooded her eyes as they landed on him. “Oh! Oh, Indigo, no, it’s not. I seem to have procured a flat tyre,” she’d said, kicking at the wheel, which he could now see was completely deflated. “There’s a spare in my trunk but with my hands…” She’d trailed off as his eyes wandered to her knuckles, swollen and waxy white. His hands tingled and he’d winced, understanding how much hers throbbed.
He’d pushed his soaking hair out of his eyes. He’d forgotten his umbrella again. “Pop the boot for me, will you?” he’d said, moving round the back of the car.
“Oh, are you sure?” she’d asked, following him to unlatch it. He’d quickly located the jack and the spare, hoisting them out and chucking them on the ground.
He’d shrugged his school blazer off, handing it to her to hold.
“Where’s your brolly? You’re soaked to the bone, you’ll catch your death in this,” she’d said as he’d knelt down and positioned the jack beneath the car.
His shirt was already drenched through, sticking to his skin. He’d grinned up at her, “I think that ship has sailed. It’s not possible for me to get any wetter right now, ma’am.”
He hadn’t realised Harper had been there, that she’d seen him. But she had, and for some reason, him helping Mrs Critchard had pissed her off royally.
“I came to get you,” she said now, “I knew you were staying late and when it started raining, I asked Jack to drive me back to school to pick you up.” Jack was the Valentines’ chauffeur. He picked Harper and Indigo up most afternoons. “But when I got there, I saw you. With her.”
“What, so you just bailed?”
She stared him down.
He pressed his lips together and glanced away, pocketing his hands. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her he’d sweet-talked the librarian into lifting their ban, but he couldn’t bring himself to give her the good news. He knew she was hurt he hadn’t turned up at her place last night, but by the time he’d finished with the tyre he’d been filthy and chilled to the bone and all he’d wanted was a hot shower and an Edita dinner. He’d called to tell her he wasn’t coming, but she’d refused to come to the phone.
The bell rang, signalling it was time to get to class. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow, then,” Harper said. Her voice was soft, but there was venom in her tone. She spun on her heel and stormed off. He wished for the umpteenth time he could feel what she was feeling.
“I’ll stop by your place later on, okay?” he called after her. “After my surf.”
“Don’t do me any favours,” she snapped over her shoulder, “far be it from me to force my boyfriend to want to see me.”
He sighed again. She seemed to bring that out in him. His fingers brushed the invitations he’d stuffed into his pocket earlier. He extracted them, unfolding the top one so he could read it. And as he did, he immediately knew he really wanted to go to this party.
Because Robbie’s name wasn’t the only one on the invitation.
chapter two
like a prayer
harbord, new south wales, june, 1990
cordelia
She ducked through the weathered stone doorway and out into the baking sunshine. In her hands was an earthen bowl of food covered by a cloth. She smiled to herself, knowing how pleased he’d be with what she’d prepared for him. She loved nothing more than making him happy. She rubbed her swollen belly as she walked, thinking how much happier they were soon to become, if that were possible. As she approached the apiary she saw him, bent over one of the hives, his back to her. She smiled, as she slipped her shoes off, all the better to sneak up and surprise him. She was so focused on his shirtless form, the muscles straining in his brown back, that when the sharp pain came she cried out, dropping the bowl and grabbing her foot, rubbing at the stinger the bee had left behind. She coughed, clearing her throat because suddenly there was something lodged there. She coughed again as whatever it was, grew, constricting and tightening. And her hands. Her arms. Large red welts were growing and spreading. No air. Her lungs burnt. He was coming. She heard him yelling. And then she was in his arms, and they were on the ground, and he was yelling and he was crying, but her throat was swollen shut and there was no air and then, the black…
The door flew open with a bang and Cordelia jerked awake, heart hammering, eyes wide. It took her a moment to clock her bearings, to realise she was safe at home in her bed, to see Robbie hovering there in her doorway, eyebrow raised, lip curled.
“What the…? Were you sleeping?”
“Mmmm…” she mumbled, foggy, disoriented, “I-I was just resting my eyes.” She eased herself up onto her elbows, blinking the drowsiness away.
“Well come on, Cora, they’ll all be here soon,” he said excitedly, his mood quickly chameleoning, “you need to start getting ready!”
“I am ready,” she said, smoothing the creases from her white turtleneck crop top.
His delicate nose wrinkled. “Ew. That’s not seriously what you’re wearing?”
She shot him her most withering look as she slid off the bed, padding over to the full-length mirror on her wardrobe door, head tilted to one side as she examined her reflection. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”
“Jeans, Cordelia? To our thirteenth birthday party? Ew. I can’t believe I once shared a womb with you.” He pushed his lanky body through the door, deftly stepping over piles of discarded clothes and dog-eared books and magazines and cassette tapes to stand in front of her. He crossed his arms, his brown eyes sweeping her from head to toe. His hair was so crunchy with gel it didn’t waver a millimetre despite the vigour with which he clucked his tongue and shook his head.
She clenched her jaw. They were pretty great jeans. “You’re the one who insisted I spend all my allowance on them,” she sighed as she sank back down onto the end of her bed, a plush confection of ivory and white.
“Well, yes, Calvin Klein warrants every last cent of your savings,” he declared, striding to her wardrobe. “Okay, I can work with the jeans. But that top, it’s gotta go.”
He rummaged through the hangers, muttering under his breath. He yanked out a black bodysuit with a flourish. It was low at the front with a three-quarter sleeve and sat just off the shoulder. “Try this,” he ordered, turning his back so she could change.
“Much better,” he nodded when he turned a moment later. He made a beeline for her shoe-rack, hands on hips as his eyes moved back and forth past Converse sneakers and thongs and Doc Martens before landing on a pair of black platform heels, totteringly high. He handed them to her, then leant back to study her, chin in hand. “What are we doing about that bed-head?” he asked, reaching to finger the treacle-blonde tresses that tumbled down her back in tangled waves.
She pulled away, narrowing her eyes. “You just get your dirty mitts off my hair.” She bit her lip to keep from smiling.
