It’s quiet in Woodleigh when all the others are at school. I’ve been here by myself before, when I caught a bug and had to stay home for a couple of days, but I guess I wasn’t well enough to notice the contrast. In the evenings, the place throbs with noise. There are eight of us here, not counting the staff, and someone’s always doing something loud. Watching television at maximum volume. Laughing and screaming. Getting into a slanging match in the hall. Even in my own room with the door closed, I hear them.
I’ve been here nearly two years. To start with they tried placing me in a series of foster homes, but none of them worked out. So when I turned fourteen, they found me a bedroom here. Woodleigh House. From the outside, it’s a big sandy-coloured family home with a compact garden, like all the others on the street, but on the inside … no family. Just the leftover bits of other people’s.
Still. If I can’t have the real thing, I’d rather have nothing. At least here there’s no one pretending to love me.
I’d learned my lesson by the time I came here. I keep my head down and my mouth shut. Leave the other kids alone so they’ll do the same for me. Most of them go to Lakeview, so they’re aware of my reputation, but none of them are in my class. They don’t care enough about me to bother making my life a misery. And as far as the staff are concerned, I’m doing great. Polite, no trouble, grades as impressive as can be expected for a girl who didn’t remember anything about the world four years ago …
Until this.
I don’t think they knew what to make of it, when they got the call from Ms Bolt telling them I’d been suspended for assaulting another student. In the end, they just added their voices to the chorus telling me to see the therapist. Which was hardly a surprise – they’re all card-carrying members of the Talking Solves Everything club. Sometimes they hold group sessions downstairs where everyone vents about what’s bothering them. I’ve always given those a miss, and for a long time they’ve let me. But not any more. No doubt it will all start again, the encouragements to socialise, the coaxing me out of my burrow like an elusive wild animal. They never seem to understand that we don’t all need friends. Some of us have imagination to keep us company.
Or did, before even that turned dark.
I glance around my room: worn carpet, thin curtains, off-white walls. Stuck above my tiny desk are a couple of art prints, a few of my own sketches and an old band poster that the last girl left behind. None of it is as fancy as some of the bedrooms I stayed in when I was in the foster system. One had a computer, a TV, its own bathroom, everything. But at least here I don’t feel like my continued presence depends on my normality. I have a lockable drawer. I have clothes I picked out myself. I can paint what I like without being worried someone will see it. And no one is meant to enter my room without my permission.
Tapping my pen against my teeth, I bend back over the piece of paper in front of me. As well as the whole therapist thing, I was given the task of composing a letter of apology to Colin before I’m allowed to rejoin my classes. My first instinct was to tell the school where they could shove it, but after a bit of consideration, I’ve decided to take a different approach.
Dear Colin,
I’m sorry you have nothing better to do with your life than harass me. I’m sorry you’ve teased me since we were twelve years old and I was just a shy, lost girl with no home or family. I’m sorry you nagged and bullied Peter until he gave up on me for good, and I’m sorry you felt the need to spread rumours about me all over school –
My pen falters; that wound is still sore. It was a week or so after Peter had stopped meeting me for coffee, suddenly and without warning. A week after the day I started forward to greet him, only to receive a look of contempt and a turned shoulder. On this occasion I rounded a corner, spotted him laughing with Colin and retreated before they could notice me. Still raw with loss, I had to stop to catch my breath – and so I heard their conversation quite clearly.
“What the fuck were you doing, hanging around with someone like her?” Colin demanded. I caught the scuff of Peter’s feet against the floor.
“Well, I …”
“Seriously, Pete! This is Alyssia Gale we’re talking about. The only reason you could possibly want to spend time with her is if you were getting laid, and even then …”
His voice trailed off. When he spoke again, it was with a note of prurient glee.
“You were, weren’t you? You were screwing her. Oh, man, this is brilliant. Come on, you gotta tell me everything …”
I didn’t wait to hear any more. I slipped further down the corridor and out of earshot, blinded by tears that would never be shed. But that didn’t prevent me from hearing plenty over the days that followed: rumours about me and Peter and what we did and where. How he only put up with me because I was a slut who’d do anything he wanted. How he dropped me for getting too clingy, for believing we were a couple – as if anyone would want to call her their girlfriend! And the fact that Peter and I had simply been friends who’d once attempted a half-hearted kiss before laughingly dismissing it as a mistake … well, no one was interested in that. No one cared that I’d lost the first real friend I’d ever made.
Maybe what Peter gave them next was his attempt to fix it. I hope so. Because it didn’t take long for a new set of rumours to start circulating. Peter didn’t ditch me because I was too clingy. He ditched me because I wouldn’t have sex with him. Because I was a man-hating lesbian. Because I cheated on him with a girl. Equally untrue, but I knew where the idea had come from. It had come from a moment five minutes after that silly kiss, when he asked me about my ideal man, and I said – feigning nonchalance, but with my heart banging against my ribcage – Man or woman. I mean … it could equally well be either.
The rumours themselves didn’t matter to me. What mattered was that he’d taken the secret I gave him and turned it into ammunition. That was when the scenes I’d been conjuring up of Oriana and Ifor and their perfect courtship turned a sharp corner into something far darker … and I don’t need a therapist to point out the parallel there.
Most of all, I finish my letter, stabbing at the paper as if it’s Colin’s face, I’m sorry you’re such an utter loser. Because you’re going to have to live with yourself for the rest of your pathetic little life.
I sign it with a flourish – Alyssia Gale, the school weirdo – then push it aside. It was cathartic to write, but there’s no way the school will ever accept it. I suppose I’d better swallow my resentment and find a way to fake repentance.
I look down at the new page –
Toralé looks down at the sheet of paper in front of him. The words dance before his eyes, a nonsensical blur.
“I don’t understand.” His voice is cracked and hoarse, as though he hasn’t used it for months – which could be true. He has no way to keep track of time. “What is this?”
They don’t answer. They are waiting in the shadows around the edges of the room, ready to take him back to his prison as soon as he gives in and signs his name. No colour to them, no emotion, only a writhing darkness. His chest tightens as the force of their collective will presses in on him; the wounds on his arms throb and sting. They won’t stop torturing him until they get what they want.
He looks at the paper again. His head aches, but he concentrates until he can make out individual characters. Very slowly, they begin to form into sentences.
This is the confession of Toralé Silversword, born on the twenty-second day of the month of Sun in the year 1393 as counted by the righteous, lately of Ilemane, the Isles.
To all these treasons I confess:
That since my birth I have been trained as an enemy of the North.
That I have sought the destruction of Northfell, and that in so seeking I have committed violent, foul and unnatural acts.
That I have plotted to murder innocents in order to sow dissension and distrust.
That I have repeatedly lied to those who have questioned me on these matters.
That until this moment, I have resisted the fair and honest penalties imposed upon me by the law and right of Northfell, penalties that must be paid for my deception and treachery.
I submit my will to justice.
Then a space, before the final words: Castle Retreat, 15 Moon 1411. Toralé stares at that space, a perfect blank surface waiting for an admission of guilt. Above it, the stark lines of black ink accuse him. All lies, of course, but it makes very little difference. They will keep him here whether he is guilty or not.
The pen trembles in his fingers as he sets it to the paper. With careful precision, like a child forming the letters for the first time, he adds his name at the bottom of the page.
Alyssia Gale. I’m Alyssia Gale …
… and I almost knew that already, because Toralé is easier to come back from than the others.
Well. I say easier. My hands are shaking, my stomach churning. And though I never cry – not any more – tears burn my eyes. Every time I see him, I have to try very hard not to think about what his life is like. I have to remind myself, over and over, that none of it is real. All lies. But at least I don’t get so confused about who I really am. I think it’s because he doesn’t appear anything like as often as the others, and when he does, it’s brief and frightening, like a waking nightmare. I don’t know why my brain even conjures him up – it isn’t as if I’ve ever been able to take consolation in him as an imaginary friend or a different life – but maybe my new therapist will answer that one for me. If I ever show up.
Once I’ve scribbled it all down, I unlock the top drawer of my desk and slip the pages inside. Beneath them lie my other private things: pens and pencils, old diaries, a battered paint box. And my paintings, a handful of images that lingered in my mind even after their context had faded out of memory: a sheathed sword, a white flower, a section of the Citadel bathed in blue Sapphire light. I showed some of them to Peter, once. Not here, of course – thankfully I never lost enough sense of self-preservation to bring him back to Woodleigh – but I added them to my art portfolio before I let him leaf through it.
These are pretty good, he said. I wish I could draw.
At the time those words glowed like a genuine compliment, but now they’re marred by what I imagine him saying to Colin. You should have seen it, mate. All this surreal fantasy shit. Anyone would think she was still a child …
I shake my head, briskly, like a dog emerging from water. Then I re-lock the drawer and change into the T-shirt and shorts I wear to go running. My muscles still ache from the tension of Toralé’s experience, but as I go through my warm-up, they begin to ease. By the time I leave my room and head downstairs, all vestiges of my latest seeing are gone.
“Alyssia?” Jenny, one of the staff, comes out of the common room as I arrive in the hall. “Where are you going?”
“For a run. I’ll only be half an hour.”
“OK.” She hesitates, then adds, “Have you decided yet? Whether to see the therapist?”
I shrug. “Maybe I’ll just quit school.”
“And give up your future, simply because you don’t like the idea of therapy?”
Oh, come on. Why is everyone so obsessed with my so-called future? I say nothing, but I let the expression on my face speak for me.
“You can’t leave school, Alyssia,” she says. “Not until the end of the year. You know that.”
Right. It’s the law. Plus, living in Woodleigh comes with the expectation that you’re still in education. And it isn’t as if I want to quit, not really. I like learning. The interesting bits, anyway. I just don’t like the requirement to interact with other people to get it.
“I know,” I mutter.
“So you’ll go?”
“I guess.”
“Great.” She smiles at me, and lets me out of the door. I set myself a steady pace, heading for the bridge across the river. The path is slippery with winter rain and there are few other people about, save only the occasional walker muffled in scarf and gloves. I take a deep breath, letting the chill breeze cleanse me of doubt and replace it with icy intent. My appointment with Dr Whyte is tomorrow. I’ll take him my notes, tell him what’s happening to me, and agree to whatever course of therapy he thinks is needed to end it. Because Peter was right, even if he never actually said the words I imagined: I’m not a child any more.
It’s time to start the rest of my life.