“Will you just leave me alone?” Calli screamed at Declan as he caught her up at the end of the tussocky grass.
“Not until you explain,” he countered, looking equally as stubborn as her.
Refusing to back down, he marched alongside her, as Calli postured and gritted her teeth in rage. “What’s to explain?” she hissed angrily as they reached the pavement. “Your little girlfriend saw you smile at me and has been looking at me with daggers ever since. Call yourselves Christians? You make me sick!”
“She is not my girlfriend,” Declan’s eyes flashed, his fury equaling Calli’s.
“Well, she thinks she is!” Calli yelled, drawing the attention of passers-by, mothers walking their small children home from school. “She shoved the toilet door into me and couldn’t care less.”
“So you wet her?” Declan wasn’t getting it.
“No, I didn’t, but that gang of Year 13’s bloody did. And I’m not sorry, she asked for it.”
Calli’s back throbbed and she felt hot and angry. She wished the day would hurry up and finish. It had been rotten from beginning to end. “God, it hurts!” she groaned, rubbing again at her spine as they hurried the last hundred metres to the primary school’s gates. Declan winced as Calli blasphemed and it gave her an irrational pleasure. She wished she could think of an excuse to say it again, but the look of disappointment on his dark features expunged the idea as quickly as it arrived.
The school gate was wide open, swinging on its hinges as Declan stood back to let Calli through first. “After you.”
She glared at him before walking ahead, tossing her head defiantly and causing her hair to swing elegantly in its ponytail. Tendrils of dark curls wrestled themselves free of the hair tie and hung either side of her face, framing it with a softness that made Declan’s eyes grow glassy and wide. He wouldn’t ask her out. Calli knew she was too feisty and unreliable, born of a raw and naked worldliness that frightened him. Besides which, she wasn’t a believer and his mother would probably kill him. Calli looked back at him slyly and correctly read the emotions in his face. He liked her - a lot, but she wasn’t good enough for him.
The implied rejection was compounded by all the times her own mother pushed her away and it drove a stake through the girl’s tender heart. She was rubbish, unworthy trash who deserved nothing good out of her life.
The teenagers picked up their respective charges and began the long walk home. Jase and Levi joined hands and puttered along happily, Sadie skipping ahead and ignoring Calli’s frequent reprimands when she got too far ahead. “Why won’t that child listen to me?” Calli groaned in frustration as Sadie deliberately skipped near the edge of the path.
Declan walked sadly along next to Calli, his eyes raking the concrete pavements as though looking for some lost treasure in the fabric of each separate grey block. “How’s your back?” he asked eventually, when it became clear Calli wasn’t going to initiate communication directly with him.
“Hurts like hell,” she grumbled, pleased when Declan grimaced again.
A scream from Sadie brought both of them up short, rushing ahead to see what the problem was. Jase and Levi caught her up and stared down at a tiny shape on the ground. Jase laughed, a happy chortling sound as he saw what had happened and Sadie turned on her heel and slapped him hard across the face. Declan looked shocked and Calli’s remaining grains of patience plummeted deeper into her guts. “Don’t you dare hit him, you brat!” Calli snapped.
“I skipped on the snail,” Sadie wailed, standing on one bare foot whilst examining the mess on the pink sole of the other. Jase and Levi giggled and sniggered and even Declan’s severe glare didn’t assuage them.
“She skipped on the snail and smushed it,” Jase snorted, rewarded by a banshee screech from his sister.
“Shut up, you fat git!” Sadie screamed and Levi stopped laughing and looked quickly at Declan.
“Om er,” he whispered. “Your sister done swearing. That’s naughty innit?”
“Wipe it on the grass,” Calli said, pushing the child toward the verge and pulling her long pigtails back from her tear streaked face. “And apologise to everyone for swearing.”
“Noooo!” Sadie squealed, stopping short of the grass. “I don’t wanna!”
Calli let go of the child so abruptly the little girl almost pitched backwards as her sister’s strength disappeared from behind her. “Do what you want, Sadie,” Calli said coldly, grabbing Jase’s hand and walking hurriedly away. Sadie squealed again at the thought of being left and tripped after her siblings, bawling falsely all the way up the street.
Levi looked up at his big brother and rolled his eyes comically. “She’s real bad aye?” he chortled, more fact than question.
Declan nodded and pitied Calli as she bustled along the street, Jase skipping and bounding quickly next to her. “She slapped me and sweared at me,” he grumbled, excitement in his tone. “I’m tellin’ Mummy.”
“No, don’t. Please?” Calli’s face held panic. “She’ll get cross with me instead.”
“Ok then,” he acceded with speed. “She will aye?” The little boy tripped, giggling as his sister raised her arm high into the air to prevent his bare knees touching the unforgiving concrete and she paused to set him upright on his feet. Calli felt mortified as Sadie whined and whined along behind them, knowing Declan could both see and hear her total humiliation. Hot tears slid down the girl’s face as she strode briskly home, but she refused to allow another set of waterworks to be seen by the boy next door, relieved and chagrined when he hung back and let her go ahead.
“I am so gonna kill her,” she muttered to Jase and he grew silent, his eyes round and wide in anticipation of the promised fireworks.
“You can if you want. I won’t tell,” he whispered. “She’s a meanie.”
Five minutes after she unlocked their green front door and hurried a hungry Jase and now tearful Sadie inside, Calli saw Declan and Levi stroll past her front window. She screened herself behind the curtain as the worried brown eyes with their dark curtain of lashes, cast her way and frowned.
Calli knew Declan couldn’t see her; the tinted windows and long, dark blue drapes safely hid her from view. She viewed the boys loping up the incline towards their brightly painted home. It always looked so fresh and sunny, compared to hers. Her eyes looked around the lounge disconsolately. Marcia had chosen dark colours, navy and bottle green and the tint on the windows kept the sunshine out. It wasn’t a happy home and that made a difference to the aura of the place. It was just somewhere to exist, a ‘to’ place until something better came along. The house was built in a back-to-front L shape, with the living areas at the front and the bedrooms leading from a long hallway at the back. The lounge ran parallel with the street, running through an archway into a wide kitchen and dining room behind. Everyone else slept down the long hallway, with a bathroom and toilet located nearby, but Calli’s room was what should have been an office and led off the lounge. It made it difficult to go to sleep sometimes as the TV mounted on the back of her bedroom wall caused vibrations and base noises to seep through. When Simon switched from nights to days, it screwed his body clock up for a day or so and he would stay up late, watching loud action films and snacking. It also meant Jase’s foray into Calli’s room to fetch her would be delayed until Simon went to bed and Calli was into her deepest sleep, making her exhausted next day for school. The view from the front was the street, which helped to make her at least feel connected to someone, but a tiny side window faced the pale orange tones of next door’s garage wall. If Calli craned her head whilst sitting at her desk, she could just about see the windowsill of Declan’s kitchen high above on the first floor.
Calli sighed heavily, tired and fed up. She knew at some point the little boy would sleep right through on his own, not needing her to come and lie in his bed with him for the rest of the night. But that time wasn’t showing any sign of coming soon. Calli had managed to get her last year’s exams endorsed with excellence, despite working late into the night and then having to decamp and lie in Jase’s bed. She would fall asleep exhausted, snuggled up to the back of his fluffy blonde hair, her arms wrapped tightly round him, exactly how he wanted them. If she even tried to move, the child would stir and complain loudly, making sleep virtually impossible as her limbs atrophied and ached from lack of blood circulation.
“Why are you hiding behind the curtains?”
Calli hadn’t heard her father come in through the garage. She jumped and looked guilty. “I saw those boys next door walking up the street.”
His eyes narrowed at her, “Don’t get any ideas. Your mother would have a cow. She was yelling about them this morning. I keep telling her it was possum muck, not dog. She doesn’t listen.”
Calli tutted angrily, feeling caught out even though she hadn’t done anything wrong. “I don’t know what you’re inferring. I don’t even know him.” Calli stalked across the living room to her bedroom doorway, halting under the jamb as Simon made his next tired sounding statement. “They’ve denied my leave for next week and the case your mother’s on is probably going to run into the holidays. You’ll have to look after the others. I’ll give you money for activities each day and...”
“No!” Calli swung round, indignant. “You agreed. I’ve got my biology project and report to finish, I need to spend the whole holidays working on that. I won’t have time to go running around the city on buses, trying to keep Jase and bloody, whining Sadie happy. You promised you would take them, so you sort it out!”
“Callister!” Simon’s tone was sharp and uncompromising. “If they won’t let me have the time off, then there’s nothing I can do about it. You don’t have a choice!”
“Yes I do!” Calli countered. “They’re your kids, you wanted them so you look after them. I’m sick of being your free child minder. I’ll be gone after next year, just think of it as practice for then!”
Calli slammed her bedroom door and leaned against it, nervous tension building in her chest. The urge to run away was overwhelming. She honestly didn’t know if she could bear another eighteen months of this. It was as though, the nearer the door to complete freedom got, the harder the incline there and the more the stakes became loaded against her. Not for the first time, Callister Rhodes wondered why God hated her so very much, because he did, there was no doubt about it.
Her door burst open, smacking Calli on the back of her head and whacking her already sore back. Sadie stood in the gap with her hands on her hips. “Mum’s back. She said, ‘What have you done about dinner?’ And I want to know too. I’m hungry.”
It was the flaming match which lit the blue touch paper. “What have I done about dinner?” Calli yelled in Sadie’s face. “What do you think I’ve done about dinner? I had to walk miles out of my way to get you from school, you ungrateful little brat! Get out of my room!”
Sadie’s face crumpled in shock and the counterfeit tears, guaranteed to get Calli into even more trouble, dribbled from her blue eyes, leaking down her freckles and making her resemble a distraught angel-child. Hatred blossomed in Calli’s chest and she slammed her door in the girl’s face as a safer alternative to strangling her. “I can’t do this anymore,” she repeated to herself on a loop as she paced around her bedroom, listening to Sadie milking the debacle with every acting bone in her body.
Simon went out and got take-away from the Chinese shop at Flagstaff. He took Jase and arrived back with everything slathered in sweet and sour sauce, which Calli knew contained gluten as it made her ill before. With a heavy heart, while Simon helped his wife shower the little kids, Calli slunk out and poured herself a bowl of the disgusting rice pops, hurrying back to her room to eat in peace. They were disgusting and she only managed a few tablespoons before her hungry stomach objected and threatened to throw the lot back into the bowl. With even her body rebelling against her, Calli resorted to drinking the milk out of the bottom, trying not to choke on the horrid bits of something floating around in it. She slunk back out and washed her bowl and spoon up, to prevent Marcia’s barbed tongue commenting on her wasting a perfectly good take-away and snacking instead.
Frustration built in Calli’s brain, obscuring the maths figures in front of her and making them dance around the page until she needed to close her eyes to eradicate the image. Her fingers rested on the tiny tin of treasures on the top of her desk and she pulled it toward her, not sure at first what she was looking for. Marcia’s parents always disliked their granddaughter, not that Calli ever understood why, but Simon’s mother acted sweet to her, treating her as kindly as she had Danny. Everyone called her Queenie and Calli often stopped off at the tiny cemetery on the outskirts of Flagstaff, to put daisies and other wild flowers on her grave. She found of late that she needed to go there more and more to contact the gentle spirit of her grandmother, drawn there by some strange pull which she didn’t understand. When she got there and located the mound of unkempt soil with the grey headstone, she just sat on the grass and watched clouds scud across the sky. Danny’s grave was elsewhere, in a graveyard out by Gordonton. Calli couldn’t get there on foot. It was too far. “Say hi to Dan for me Granny Queenie,” Calli would beg. “And ask that God you believe in to help me. He hasn’t yet.”
In her will, Queenie left Calli a brooch, naming her and demanding the executors hand it over to her personally. It was a small, silver figure, a guardian angel with perfect silver wings cascading from its back. It probably wasn’t real silver, but some other inferior metal but the girl treasured it nonetheless. Calli examined it once with a magnifying glass and the wings were made up of tiny feathers, realistic even under scrutiny. It wasn’t the usual depiction of an angel - all flowing robes, robust cherubic face and silky hair. This angel was a man. A Roman soldier, he wore a shield and a huge sword which came from his hand and seemed to rest in front of his left foot. Calli never wore the brooch. It was too precious firstly, but also a bit weird and gothic. If the brooch was a real person, her angel would be a ten foot, armour clad, left-handed Roman soldier with wings - not your average cherub. Instead, Calli kept it safe in her box and got him out sometimes when she felt depressed and wanted the security of her grandmother. She was in no doubt there was a message in the gift, but she had no idea what it was. Queenie died when Calli was eight, the year Sadie appeared. Calli lost a beautiful, generous granny and gained a blonde brat for a sister. Hardly a fair trade.
Calli fingered the brooch bitterly, imagining her grandmother’s gentle smell of roses and her soft, crinkled face as she held the small Calli tightly on her knee and made her feel special with delicate, freely given kisses. Queenie couldn’t help her now, no more than Danny could. Calli’s eyes fell on the flash of metal in the tin. The razor blade rested on top of a tattered ticket from a visit to the zoo, which had been a cheerful day out when she was small. Calli couldn’t remember what was happy about it, or even who was present, but looking at the ticket made her feel the essence of the day and so she kept it safe down the years. Her fingers strayed to the blade, feeling its sharp edges and the thinness of its form. She had tossed its plastic casing into the bathroom bin and still needed to get another one out of the cupboard in the hallway for tomorrow. Calli twirled the object in her fingers, switching it between different fingers and her thumb, knowing it was going to cut her at some point.
When it did, she dropped it, watching it bounce once before settling on her maths homework. “Ouch! That was dumb.” Blood pooled in the cut, oozing gently through the gap in her skin like a bear coming out of hibernation, cautiously, slowly feeling its way out into the light. Calli watched the process avidly as the air scabbed the blood and sealed it tightly shut, solidifying the drop into a jellified layer of protection. “Amazing.” Calli loved biology best of all her subjects. It revealed how utterly baffling the human body was and how incredibly well designed the natural world seemed.
At fifteen, Danny told her he was in no doubt there was a Creator God and that science pointed straight at him. It was only mankind, in his arrogance would rather look elsewhere for the answers. “Honest, Cal,” he laughed, his bright smile filling her with confidence. “It all makes sense...”
The nick in her finger was dry and a little sore. Calli realised as she watched her own healing process, all her pent up frustration and the gnawing loss of Danny and Queenie left her. Focusing on it, she felt it return like a tide crawling up the beach of her humanity, eager to overrun the quiet peace which resulted from her concentration. Eager to dispel it again and without properly thinking it through, Calli turned her right arm over and drew the blade longwise down the forearm. Her left hand never faltered in its dread task, running for a good twenty centimetres before coming to a halt alongside a pulsing blue vein. A loud voice in her head screamed for her to stop and she managed it, just in time.
At first there was nothing to see. Then suddenly, blood appeared at the edges of the divide, shocking Calli with its appearance, as though she hadn’t expected the inevitable outcome. The creamy flesh of her inner arm was softer than the hard pads of her fingers and the blade ran deeper than she planned - not that she had planned anything. It just happened almost on autopilot. The cut wasn’t deep, but it was long and fear burgeoned in Calli’s mind. Yes, it stung but worse; it would be hard to hide from everyone. Cursing her stupidity, Calli unwound a length of toilet paper from the roll in her desk drawer. She wrapped it round and round her forearm, completely engrossed in what she was busily doing. The cut stopped weeping finally and her sad emotions returned, but she had discovered something important.
Cutting herself gave Calli control momentarily. She could hold back the tide of misery for a while, a respite of peace amongst the clamouring of emotional pain and the fact gave her hope in a guilty kind of way. She knew it was wrong and she shouldn’t be doing it. She also knew if she hadn’t stopped herself when she did, it would have gone straight through the pulsing blue vein. The thought scared her, particularly because she knew in a different moment, she may not care and instead, fully allow herself to follow through.
Calli wiped the razorblade on the tissue and slipped it into the tin with the angel. She wouldn’t do anymore now. The long cut smarted as it closed and produced the liquid seal inside, but it distracted her enough to try to go to bed. The bottom of her back ached, but it didn’t take the same comfort as the self-inflicted wound. Calli fleetingly wondered why, but failed to work it out, hugging the knowledge to herself that finally, she had found something of her own, a secret thing that neither Marcia nor Simon could spoil, an abdication from suffering she could access any time she liked.
As she lay down looking for sleep that night, Calli knew something significant had snapped in her soul. Her family had destroyed her and sent her over the edge into the arena of drastic medications for their cruelty. She couldn’t take any more of living with people that clearly didn’t like or value her; and who thought of her more as a glorified au pair. She missed Danny with a tangible ache, which tore at her insides and reminded her painfully of his absence. They were allies, confidants and companions and his loss overtook her more than it ever did before. More even than when he first died and the recognition that he was gone began to sink into her psyche with a steady, rhythmic beat. Calli hated Danny for his inaccessibility. “You promised you’d never leave,” Calli whispered into the empty bedroom. “But you did. You left me here, with them.”
Marcia visited a spiritualist and claimed she had seen her son, happy and well and wishing her only the best for the future. The grieving mother seemed at peace for a while, gradually accepting the death of her flagship, until someone rubbished the spiritualist and Marcia realised she had paid a fake, a ghoul who preyed on the grieving and gave them false hope.
Simon raised a Catholic, was livid at his wife for going, but Calli secretly laughed, knowing Danny would never have shown up at such a juncture, dead or alive. He ridiculed such things, heavily into his youth group and the little church out at Gordonton. He cycled there each Sunday morning, arriving home mid-afternoon, having scored lunch at some congregation member’s house and he begged for lifts to the meetings on weeknights, laid back and relaxed in his simple faith. Calli had almost been convinced Danny was right, that there was a Jesus-person who loved him and would love her too. Almost. She agreed to cycle to church with him the next Sunday but never made it. Danny was dead by Friday tea time.
Maybe that’s my problem with Declan, Calli thought to herself. He’s a lot like Danny.
Calli focused on the sharp, spiking pain from her arm and the lesser one from her back, blocking out the unwanted emotions that could keep her awake all night if she didn’t control them.
She fell asleep late, woken by Jase’s familiar tapping on the side of her head. “Calliiiiii!” he grumbled as she struggled to wake. “I need you.”