Parados

Sylvie joined our school in the year before final exams. Graceful and etheric, dressed in a pale, simple frock, white cotton gloves and clutching an old-fashioned leather satchel, she looked like a creature from another time. She was quiet in class, didn’t play sport, kept herself to herself.

She was hardly the first out-of-place teenager at Blackworth High School. There’d always been a steady turnover of tree-changer offspring, dragged to the mountains by parents fleeing the bustle of city life. These kids knew they were different from us, knew they stood out. They went out of their way to ingratiate themselves—coarsened their accents, roughened their polished city edges, fell too quickly in line with the will of the schoolyard leaders. But not Sylvie. She made no effort to connect, spoke always in the same soft, cultivated tone, was forever daydreaming, always preoccupied. Her lack of deference did not go unnoticed.

Tansy Rimer and her gang of pretties sniffed around for a week or two but gave up in disgust, told everyone Sylvie was a stuck-up bitch with tickets on herself. The quiet boys watched and pined, too afraid to approach the sweet new girl with her distant warmth and faraway eyes. Tommy Payne and his thugs jostled and joshed whenever she passed, made mucky remarks and filthy gestures, their laughter echoing down the corridors.

I saw her, sometimes, beneath the stands of conifer trees, drifting along the edge of the oval, while the other kids pushed and yelled, playing soccer or basketball. Sylvie had a note that kept her off all games, inside and outside, and this escape—from what to most was school’s central purpose and to the rest was its central humiliation—only served to alienate her further.

I didn’t go in for sport much either, spending break and afternoon games in the library. There’s only so many times you can endure the indignity of being picked last, the look of revulsion on Tansy’s face or the faces of her lieutenant bitches, the nauseated groans when they lost the lottery and had to have me on their team. They used to yell at me as I lumbered around the field, tripped me if I ever came near the ball. They sang “Georgie Porgie” and changed the words, tried to make me cry.

The library was my escape. I didn’t read all that much, but I liked to handle the books, liked the smell of them, the quiet. Miss Terry, the librarian, was always kind to me, always called me George. Never my hated name. I helped her with the catalog, stuck new labels on the inside pages, wheeled the trolley of returns up and down the fluorescent-lit aisles. I liked sorting the books into piles, into subjects, into alphabetical order, then slipping them back onto the shelves, always in just the right spot. Each one of them had a home, a place where it and no other belonged. It gave me a good feeling to know that, in at least this one corner of the world, I brought some semblance of order to what would otherwise be chaos. Here, at least, there was something I could control.

I watched Sylvie from the library window, watched her float round the edges of the courtyard. Perhaps I saw something in her that reminded me of myself; on the surface we couldn’t have been more unalike, but in our isolation, in our status as outsiders, we were very much the same. I’d watch her drift out beyond the thresholds of the playing field, as though pulled by some invisible thread, guided by inaudible voices.

•

At the farthest corner of the oval, out where the monkey puzzle trees met the train tracks, there was a derelict maintenance shed. It had been abandoned since the school got its extension and was all but empty, with the only reminders to its intended purpose rolls of chain-link fence and a heap of star pickets. It was hidden from most of the school buildings, tucked round to the side. The only place you could see it from inside was the window in the library storeroom.

Everyone knew Tommy took girls back there to do things. More than once I’d been loading the trolley with returns, had seen from the window one or another Year Ten girl come out from behind that old shed with her hair in a tangle, tugging at her undies or wiping at her skirt. Sometimes there were tears. Always there’d be a plume of bluish smoke that rose from behind the shed, before Tommy Payne—sometimes Darren and Boz too—would come swaggering out and back to school.

I never understood why they went there, those girls, whether stripping naked for Tommy in the lee of that old shed was a choice they made themselves, or one that was made for them. No matter how much of a shit we all knew Tommy to be, he never wanted for admirers. There was always some half-broken waif from the year below who’d fall into a trance when Tommy strode down the corridor. Often it was those same girls coming out from behind the shed, making that walk of shame. Sometimes there were photos. The boys would load them to the Internet, or everybody’s phones would beep and there’d be sniggers and jeers. One time, after, a girl killed herself and we—all of us—pretended not to know the reason.

It made me boil to think of it, what Tommy and his boys got away with, knowing what was happening and having no power to do anything. I often pictured it—wheeling the trolley from aisle to aisle, or making space on the shelves for the new editions—pictured what I’d do to them. But that only made me boil all the more, made my scars sing, knowing pictures were all they’d ever be and that nobody would make those boys stop. Me, least of all.

•

It was November when it happened, the first hot days after a long, cold spring. For weeks before, the mountain had been pressed under a blanket of fog and drizzle, breaking only to erupt into storms of wild rain, black clouds that roiled and tumbled in from the valley and thunder that shook every weatherboard along the ridge. That morning, though, the rain cleared and by first break the sun had burned away the last of the milky fog. By lunch, it was like the past weeks had never been. There was no moisture in the air; the heat was oppressive. Just walking between classes had me sweating so bad that my school shirt was sodden and I had to pull on my morning sweater to cover the stains spreading around my armpits. The heat was unbearable beneath that scratchy wool, but better to be hot than seen. It was an enormous relief to get into the library, out of the sunlight, away from the taunts, to be slowly cooled by occasional gusts from the air conditioner.

I pushed the book trolley over to my favorite spot by the window. From there I could shuffle the books around, lay them out in order before wheeling them to their stacks. I could keep one eye on the world outside, maybe catch a glimpse of Sylvie. I’d got used to seeing her pass beneath the covered walkway outside the library windows, past the Principal’s office and the portable classrooms, out to the edge of the oval and the chain-link fence and the train tracks beyond. I’d come to look forward to the moment when she’d drift past, buoyant, as though afloat in some sublime ether only she could perceive. Those moments for me felt eternal, frozen in time. The light was perfect as a dream. My heart would blaze and my scars sing, and my true body would tingle and vibrate with an aliveness so intense it made me dizzy, made me almost believe I could burst free from this prison of flesh.

That day, when Sylvie passed, I pretended to be engrossed in the trolley, in slipping the unread copy of Ulysses in beside the dog-eared Nancy Drews. When I looked up, there she was, crossing the oval, her head in the clouds. She was so lost in herself that she didn’t notice Tommy Payne and his boys sneaking behind her, following her out to the edge of the grounds, out toward the derelict maintenance shed.

Then they passed beyond the corner of the school and I lost sight of them.

I stuffed the books I’d been sorting onto the shelves at random, pushed the still-full trolley out to the back of the library, into the storeroom and over to the window. There was the shed, and there was Sylvie, drifting, oblivious. Tommy Payne was closing the gap, Darren and Boz behind, clowning, making dirty gestures, laughing silently. I lurched away from the trolley, caught it with my thigh as I turned and the books went flying, James Joyce and Carolyn Keene and all the rest of them.

“George?” said Miss Terry. But I didn’t answer, didn’t have the breath.

Out of the doors, across the courtyard and onto the oval. I couldn’t see Sylvie or Tommy or any of them anywhere. I felt sick to my guts, suddenly desperate for the loo. I lumbered over the grass, a stitch burning in my chest, sweat pouring off me so thick it was in my eyes, my ears. I heard voices from behind the shed, cruel laughter, and jeering. As I passed the heaps of coiled fencing, I snatched up a star picket, hefting it like a club. With no idea what I was doing or why I was doing it, I stepped round the side of the shed to face them.

“Leave her alone,” I said, trying to make my voice as deep and threatening as a boy’s.

“Fuck me,” said Tommy. “It’s the Hulk.”

Darren and Boz turned and both of them laughed. Tommy had Sylvie against the wall of the shed, gripping her bare arm. She recoiled from the touch, her face crumpled. I saw she was missing a glove.

“I said leave her alone.” I took a step toward them, tried to lift the picket but I was so scared my arms were like jelly.

Tommy sneered. “Or what, lezzer? You’ll drown us in blubber?”

“Yeah,” said Darren and they laughed again. “Fuck off, ya fat cunt.”

Maybe it was that word, or their sneering grins, or the helpless look on Sylvie’s face, but something in me flashed, as fierce and frenzied as a bushfire. I roared and swung the picket at Tommy. It was heavier than I thought and my aim was off, so I missed him by a mile. The picket struck the hard ground, bounced up and into Boz’s shin. He buckled, yelled. Tommy lowered his brows, growled, dropped Sylvie’s arm. He stepped away from the shed, fists clenched like hammers.

“You try that again,” said Tommy, stepping toward me. “You just try that again, you rug-munching bitch.”

Darren was coming at me from the left, Tommy from the front. I dragged the picket up in a ponderous arc, slammed the sharp end into Tommy’s privates. He dropped, howling. Darren grabbed me from behind and I arched, felt his nose crack off the back of my head. I whirled, spun the picket up and out, felt the vibration all the way up my arms as it struck the side of Boz’s head like a bell. He pitched forward, blood bursting from his ear. I lifted the picket and smacked it down on Tommy, still rolling at my feet, cupping his balls. I raised it again and would’ve slammed it down again, would’ve smashed it and kept on smashing, turned that rotten bugger’s skull into watermelon—if it weren’t for Sylvie. I felt a soft tugging at my sleeve and she was beside me.

“Come on,” she said. “We need to go.”

I dropped the picket and stumbled after her—away from the boys groaning in the dirt behind the shed, hands pressed to noses, ears and nuts—followed her back toward the school and our afternoon class.

•

That night, after helping Mum into bed and turning out the lights all through the house, I locked myself in the bathroom, popped the lid on the old tobacco tin and laid out all my treasures along the edge of the bath. They glinted sweetly and my scars sang. But I didn’t pick one. I just sat there on the edge of the loo, my clothes heaped by the bathroom door.

After a time, I picked up the tin, put back the treasures one by one. I tucked the tin away in the space beneath the bath, replaced the loose tile to cover it, tossed my clothes in the laundry bin and went back to my bedroom.

I dreamed of fences and an empty house beyond the train tracks.

•

It wasn’t the perfect way to start a friendship, but it did bring us together. I walked Sylvie home after school that day, back to the antique shop; that was when she showed me the ring and the telescope, told me all those strange things.

I’d felt sick to my guts all afternoon, couldn’t focus on a word in double history. I kept waiting for the door to fly open, for the Principal to come in and stop the class, beckon me with a finger. Tommy’s chair was empty. Neither he nor Darren nor Boz showed up for the rest of that day. Nor the day after that. The worry that I had done them serious damage grew into anxiety that they were lying in wait, planning retribution.

In the days and weeks to come, that feeling stretched as fine and taut as my nerves. I never told anyone about it. Only Sylvie knew what really happened that day. The boys never told either, too embarrassed maybe that it was me that did them over. When they came back to school, they laughed it off, said they’d got into a fight in town. But in class, I felt the tingle of Tommy’s eyes boring into me. Walking to and from school, either alone, or with Sylvie on the way up the High Street toward her father’s shop, I’d cast glances over my shoulder, jerk my head at any unexpected movement. But I never did catch sight of Tommy or his boys.

Friendship with Sylvie was like a balm that settled the churning in my belly, soothed my agitation; her small, unbidden gestures of tenderness, her sweet and powdery scent. I was a stranger to intimacy and this new closeness ignited a flame that flickered deep within my ribcage, a true-body flame that warmed me even through all those layers of meat and bone.

•

One Saturday, toward the end of term, I met Sylvie at the edge of town and we took a path through the woods to the reservoir. At the eastern end, there was a car park and a playground with barbecues and picnic tables. At the other, a wood crisscrossed with paths where, by day, locals came to walk their dogs and, by night, lonely men roamed in search of one another. Cutting through those trees, you came out on the furthest corner of the lake, where a steep wooded slope met the water’s edge at a concrete storm drain.

We lay side by side on top of the outlet, watching clouds commingle, drifting together, congealing into a thick gray blanket in the sky above. We listened to the echoey drips from deep in the storm drain, the gentle lap of water against the bank. We heard, in the distance, the sound of children, playground sounds, shouts, tears. Someone paddled an inflatable dinghy at the other end of the reservoir.

“So what do they sound like?” I asked. “The voices. When you hear them.”

Sylvie lay beside me so close I could almost feel her, feel her proximity like an electric current. My hand burned to reach for her, my little finger edging, edging, longing to connect. She seemed so small beside me, so compact; there was not one bit more of her than she needed, and not even that much. My fingers stretched and recoiled, daring then afraid, expanding and contracting like some skittish undersea creature; the kind of thing that dwells in shadow on the ocean floor, its hideous misshapen body an insult to nature.

“It’s not a sound,” Sylvie said, “so much as an . . . everything. An everything all at once. And all of them different. No two the same. Some smell like cold water, all silver and smoke. Some taste like rust with a shape like tree roots or seaweed. Others are all colors, all the colors all at once, only invisible, soundless, the taste of color and the smell of silence.”

I laughed, not mean, just . . . bewildered. “That makes no sense,” I said. “I don’t even understand one word you just said.”

“It’s hard to explain,” she said. “It’s not like words or pictures. The room is just full of . . . of everything, that all-at-once everything that’s a taste and a smell and a sound and then I touch it and I just know. Then it’s inside me.”

Above us, the clouds were thickening, the air close and metallic. From beyond the lake, the first rumble of thunder, like someone dragging a heavy box. My searching finger made contact, found the soft warmth of the edge of Sylvie’s hand. I goose-pimpled, felt inside-out shivery. Sylvie snapped her head round to look at me, so quick it was like she’d been electrocuted.

“I’m sorry,” I croaked and turned away, my brows knitted so tight they ached. “I didn’t mean—”

Sylvie laid a hand on my chest. I glanced back and she had turned toward me, was looking right at me, unblinking. I pinched the skin of my wrist between two fingernails, pinched and pinched until the sharp pain pulled me up from the bottomless ache in my heart.

“Don’t be sorry,” she said. “Don’t ever be sorry. You’re beautiful, George. You’re tree roots and fresh mown grass and the smell of rocks and apples. What’s inside you is so real, so alive. It’s burning you up.”

At that moment the rumbling rolled right over us and the mountain shook with an explosion of thunder. Mist clung to the water and the first drops fell. I could see the rain across the lake like a dark curtain dragged toward us. In a moment, the air was filled with water and we were laughing and scrabbling down the side of the storm drain and into the wood, soaked through.

Sylvie ran ahead, a forest sprite flitting before me along the path. I panted behind, losing ground with each thump and slap of my feet on the sodden earth.

•

Mum wasn’t sick back then. She wasn’t well either, but she was still up and about most days, pottering around our place, cooking dinners, dusting shelves, making sure I was all right. I always worried when I left her alone too long.

But that day I didn’t think of her at all, just followed Sylvie through the sheets of rain, through the dark of that afternoon storm, back into town and stumbling, scrabbling in through the back door of the antique shop, drenched and laughing. It was perfect. Everything about it was perfect. Sylvie’s clothes clung to her, crumpled and translucent. I was shivering, but not from the cold.

She took me up the back stairs, creaky wooden steps, painted at the edges but bare in the middle where the carpet had been pulled up and never replaced. The parched wood darkened as we passed, soaked by rainwater that puddled with each footfall. At the stair-top, Sylvie pulled towels from a cupboard and pushed me into the bathroom. She locked the door behind us and began to peel away her clothes. I stood there, mute and frozen, staring as she sloughed her garments like a wet pelt, revealing goose-pimpled skin, pink from the cold. Water dripped from my pants, from my nose, from the tips of my fingers, puddled at my feet.

Sylvie stepped into the porcelain tub and drew back the curtain. Water struck the material and steam filled the room. Her silhouette turned and turned, and I imagined the water streaming down her nakedness in silvery runnels, spiraling down the plug-hole beneath her toes. She poked her head round the edge of the curtain.

“Are you going to stand there shivering all day?”

My fists clenched and unclenched. I reached a hand under my sodden top and pinched my side until the pain brought tears to my eyes, brought me back to the room. I turned away from Sylvie and began methodically to take off my clothes. I should have been cold, but I was burning, inside and out. I didn’t want her to see me. My eyes stung with tears.

First, I unbuttoned then peeled away my shirt, let it drop to the floor at my feet. Then I pulled my T-shirt over my head, shrinking from the clammy feel of cotton dragged across bare skin. I unbuckled my belt and slid down my pants. They gathered around my ankles, snagged by the boots I’d forgotten to remove. I crouched awkwardly, terrified to bend, so ashamed to be this exposed, flushing so hot that the moisture came off me as steam. I pulled at the laces, ripped at the double-knot that had seemed so sensible when I’d tied them that morning.

By the time I’d tugged my jeans, all bunched and tangled, from around my ankles, Sylvie was stepping out of the shower, wrapping a towel around her. I felt a warm hand on my shoulder and shuddered.

Sylvie crouched, put her arms around me, rested her head against my shoulder blade, her hair still warm and wet from the shower.

“It’s okay,” she said to me, again and again. “It’s okay, George. It’s okay.”

When I stood up, when I turned around, head drooped, so heavy with shame, burning, she didn’t gasp as I’d expected. She didn’t turn away. When she saw the scars, she didn’t flinch. And for that I will love her forever.

Instead, she reached out to me, warm shower water still dripping from the dark tendrils of her hair. She looked up at me, looked without turning away; her brown eyes, murky pools that I felt myself falling into. I sucked in breath when she touched me, her pale bony fingertips tracing the calligraphy of half-healed cuts and gashes. The shower roared and roared. The bathroom filled with steam. When she placed a hand over my heart, I shook. And the tears would not stop.

•

The dryer rumbled on the other side of the attic, a dim and cluttered space, packed to overflowing with unmarked stock from the shop downstairs. We sat on tufted velvet dining chairs. I was alert and upright, clenching and unclenching my fists in my lap, while Sylvie lay semi-slumped against a mahogany dresser, her hair still wrapped in a towel. She had rummaged through an old tea chest for the clothes I now wore: a gentleman’s funeral suit that pinched at the armpits, chafed at the waist and smelled strongly of mothballs and dust; still I liked the shape of it, liked the way it held me stiff and erect. A fan heater blew dry breaths toward the ceiling. The naked light bulb dangling from the rafters stirred in gentle arcs, obscure gyrations that made the shadows swell and recede.

It would be impossible to describe how I felt at that moment. Happy would be too simple. Ashamed would be unfair. Embarrassed wouldn’t be the half of it. It was complicated, and it boiled within me—in the beating of my heart, in the tingling of my bare skin, in the sick heavy feeling of my body, my prison of flesh.

I reached for a silver pocket watch on the shelf beside me, held it out toward Sylvie.

“What about this one?” I asked.

Sylvie held open her hand and I lowered the watch onto her palm. She closed her eyes. The lids fluttered. “This watch was an heirloom, passed down between generations from father to son. But that’s not all that was passed on. There’s shame. There’s disappointment, the feeling of never being good enough. The last son pawned the watch to pay for drugs.”

“And this?” I passed her a toy racing car, pressed tin, burnished silver and red, with a winding key poking out the back.

“This,” she said, “this was a treasure. To the boy that owned this car, it was a comfort and a friend. He kept this toy his whole life, to remind him of his mother, of his poor childhood. When he died in the nursing home, this car was his only possession.”

“How about this?” I said, pointing to a navy blue commemorative tin, a scratched photo of a very young Charles and Diana.

“That one?” Sylvie said, without reaching for it. “The family that owned that one used it to store biscuits.”

She laughed and I saw she was teasing. I flushed.

“You really don’t feel it?” she asked. “When you touch them. You don’t get that . . . taste?”

I turned an alabaster owl figurine around and around in my hands. It felt cool, smooth, heavy. I knew I liked it. I laughed and shook my head.

“To me,” I said, “it’s just a . . . whatever this is. It’s whatever it is right now, here, with none of that other stuff.”

Sylvie nodded gravely. I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed or what, if I’d maybe failed some kind of test. She lay her head back down on the dresser and I noticed how careful she was to rest her hands in her lap, not touching anything around her.

I imagined running my fingertips down her bare arm, watching the skin prickle and rise.

In the corner of the attic, the dryer rattled and shook.

•

It was late when I left, and dark. I’d called Mum from the shop to let her know where I was, but I still felt guilty at having not been home to help her to bed. And the guilt was all mixed up with the confused wonder of my night with Sylvie. When the dryer finally came to a stop, I got back into my own clothes reluctantly. They seemed so baggy and formless, so wrong somehow. When I stepped outside, the streets were still soaked and steaming, though the rain had long since passed. The night was humid but not close and there was a freshness to things as of some great revelation, some buried secret brought finally to light.

The antique shop was near the center of town, just down the road from the main bus stop. There were cafés, a couple of bookshops, a designer homewares store, all for the tourists, all closed and dark. The slick wet streets distorted the night-time sounds, made them reverberate oddly, crisply. Echoes of voices in the quiet, of harsh laughter. A plume of bluish cigarette smoke rose from the bus shelter.

I crossed to the other side of the street. A can landed, clattering against the curb beside me. There were footsteps. I walked faster.

I didn’t want to look around, didn’t want to show my fear, but I couldn’t help myself. I glanced over my shoulder and saw behind me one, two, three hooded silhouettes, quickly gaining. One of them lashed out with a foot and another can clattered, cracked against the storefront beside me. I ran, my labored, wheezing breaths loud in my ears, my heart crashing in my chest like a bursting thing. The footfalls behind me were faster, louder, gaining. I caught some movement out of the corner of my eye, and something slammed into me and I tripped, sprawled against the doorway of a darkened shop selling Italian stationery. I caught glimpses of red and orange and yellow leather, of plump round brightly colored fountain pens, before my head smashed against the door handle and I collapsed into the street. A foot swung out of the dark and into my gut. Light burst behind my eyes. I couldn’t breathe.

“Well, well,” said Tommy. “What have we here? A beached fucking whale.”

Laughter echoed in the dead silence of the street. Darren and Boz. Distant tires on wet tarmac, out toward the highway. A mile away. An infinity.

“Get her legs,” said Tommy and I was grabbed, hands, feet, dragged across the pavement and into the dark laneway.

“Fuck me,” said Boz. “What a porker.”

“S’all them pies,” said Darren and they laughed.

“Fucking disgusting,” said Tommy. He let go of my wrists and dropped me in stinking wetness. Then feet were coming from everywhere and I covered my face, curled up to protect myself.

“Pull her up,” said Tommy. The kicking ceased and Darren and Boz grabbed me by the collar, yanked me upright and back against the wall, legs splayed across the filthy cobbles. My shirt ripped and I felt cold air on skin, on the raw places their feet had stomped.

“You owe us, cunt,” snarled Tommy. “You fucken owe us.”

“S’right,” sneered Darren.

I felt so sick, I thought I’d spew. I’d been kicked so hard in so many places that nothing hurt, just burned like I was glowing, like I was on fire. My face was streaked with tears but I wasn’t about to cry. It would only make it worse.

“What d’ya reckon, Tommy?” said Boz. “How’ll it be to fuck The Blob?”

“Reckon you’d be lucky to find a fucken hole in that lot,” said Darren and he kicked me in the side so hard I doubled over.

Tommy began to unbuckle his pants. “You know me, boys. Any hole is a goal.”

I pushed myself up, back to the wall, looked up at Tommy through smeared vision. “They all tell,” I said. My voice was a croak but clear enough in the quiet of the alley. “The girls. They all tell me what it’s like to have sex with Tommy. They laugh when they tell me. Call you ‘Tommy the Prawn.’” I waggled my little finger.

Tommy growled, smashed his fist into my nose. I heard it crunch. Fireworks exploded behind my eyes.

I forced a laugh, spat blood. “Little Tommy, they say. Little Tommy with his little prawn cocktail—”

Tommy reached into his back pocket, opened a small, mean-looking knife. The blade was viciously serrated and did not glint so much as glow. My stomach flip-flopped.

“Hold her down,” he said.

I closed my eyes, clenched my teeth, knowing exactly what was about to come, how it would feel as that wicked blade sliced into me. But the hands never grabbed me. The knife never plunged. Someone was crying. And it wasn’t me.

I looked up, saw Darren and Boz staggering about the alley, clutching at their heads. Tommy was on his knees, mouth gaping, staring up into the dark with rolled-back eyes. He was clawing at his face, making a gargling sound like he was choking. Then Boz was yelling, smashing at his head with his palms. Darren wailed, ran off down the alley toward the street.

Silhouetted against the orange streetlights, Sylvie stood in the alley mouth. Her hands were thrust down at her sides, balled into fists. She didn’t move, didn’t flinch as first Darren, then Boz, tripped past her, bounced off the walls and into the street, tearing at their hair.

Sylvie moved toward Tommy, her steps slow and measured. Tommy was blubbering. He whimpered. As Sylvie approached, he writhed, convulsing, pressing his fingers so deep into his temples, into the sockets of his eyes, that the tips disappeared. He looked like he was trying to tear his face from his skull.

Sylvie’s face was in darkness, her eyes shadowed. Perhaps it was a trick of the streetlights, of the moisture in the air, but the last thing I remember seeing was a kind of halo around her head.

No. Not a halo. More like a crown. A crown of snakes, of black smoke that poured from her head and into Tommy, twitching on the wet cobbles of the alley.