POLUNSKY UNIT (DEATH ROW)
LIVINGSTON, TEXAS 77351
USA
April 1
My dear Stu,
In the end, I told Sandra I couldn’t do the speech at the memorial service. I ran around to her house and battered down the door and sprinted into the sunroom, roaring the word “No!”
Sandra looked up from the photos with narrowed eyes. “What?”
“No. Just no!” I shouted, and I even pointed my trembling finger in her face. “No.”
April Fools’, Stu.
Sometimes at night, I pretend that the past few months have been a big joke. Lying in the darkness, I tell myself that this is not my life. All I have to do is wait until 12 PM and Sandra will turn around and shout “Got you!” and a voice in the coffin will say “April Fools’!” and I will laugh and laugh and laugh until tears fall down my face. The prison guards will open up your cell and you will dance out of Death Row with the lightest heart you’ve ever had in your chest and your wife will be waiting for you at home with no stab wounds to speak of.
Let’s pretend for just one moment that could actually happen. You close your eyes and I’ll close mine, and let’s dream the same dream across the Atlantic, lighting up the darkness between us. Can you see it, Stu? Can you see us up there, shining in all the black?
Me, neither.
I hate to say it, but I don’t think the nun’s going to come to your rescue, even though the letter that I sent was six sides of A4. I mean, perhaps I’m wrong, but I haven’t seen anything about a protest on Google. Maybe I never really believed it would happen, because I don’t feel that shocked that she’s not standing outside the prison with a petition. Maybe I never expected us to have a happy ending. At least we’ve got each other, Stu, for the next few days. That means a lot to me and I hope it means a lot to you, and I suppose I should get on, so let’s start where we left off, with wet toes in soggy shoes squelching back to the library.
We had it all worked out by the time we said good-bye in the foyer. Aaron was going to explain everything to Max that weekend before I saw him in school, where I would talk to him, too. Then me and Aaron were going to take it slow and not rub his nose in it, waiting for Max to move on before I came around to the house. By the end of my shift, I’d convinced myself that Max would get over it in probably less than two weeks, choosing one of the thousands of other girls at school who were interested.
“You look happy,” Mum said when I climbed into the car.
My whole face seemed to twinkle as I grinned. “My shift was very rewarding.”
“Come off it! A look like that can only mean one thing.”
“Mum!”
“I remember what it was like to be young, you know.Vaguely, anyway. Who is he, then?”
“No one!” I cried, the tips of my ears pink.
“No one must be very nice indeed,” she said, checking her mirrors before setting off. “Be careful, though, won’t you? I don’t really like the idea of you getting distracted by boys.”
“I’m not getting distracted by anyone.”
“Good. Because boys come and go, you know. Not like exam grades. They’ll stay with you forever.”
“Romantic,” I muttered as we pulled out onto the road. The rain had stopped, but the tires splashed through puddles, and I loved the noise it made, and the gray sky lurking above the trees, and the traffic, and the shops, and the whole ordinary extraordinary world.
“It’s the truth, my love. There’ll be time for boys in the future, but you’ve got one chance at school and—” She stopped herself when I sighed. “Sorry.”
I glanced at her, surprised. “It’s okay.”
“No, it isn’t.” She blew out her cheeks. “Maybe… oh, I don’t know… Maybe your dad had a point about me.” She tapped my knee. “Don’t tell him I said that, though.”
We drove the rest of the way in silence, both of us lost in thought. As we parked outside the house, Soph peeped out of her bedroom window but completely ignored my wave, swiping her curtains closed.
“What’s up with her?” I asked, stepping out onto the driveway.
“I’m afraid she isn’t in the best of moods,” Mum said. “Those girls at school…”
“Are they getting worse?”
Mum shook her head. “Not exactly.” She opened the trunk and handed me a birthday cake for Dot in a big white box. “Don’t drop that! It was expensive.” She picked up three more bags and followed me into the house, telling me to take off my shoes at the door. “I spoke to Soph’s teacher yesterday.”
“Did you tell her about Portia?”
“I did.”
“And what did she say?”
Mum lowered her voice. “That there isn’t a Portia in Soph’s class.”
“Well, she must be in a different—”
“And there isn’t one in the whole school,” Mum finished as the white box almost ended up on the carpet. “She made it up, Zo. All of it.”
Before I could take this in, Dot charged out of the living room in her new crown, signing excitedly.
“Is that my princess cake?”
“Just as you ordered!” Mum replied. “How’s my special birthday girl?”
“Let me see! Let me see!”
Mum put down the bags and lifted the lid of the white box. Dot’s eyes shone as she gazed at the pink icing then she shot upstairs, bursting into Soph’s room.
“Get out!” Soph roared.
“Goodness, she can be so moody,” Mum muttered. “Not a wonder, really, with all the lies she’s been telling. Confronted her this morning. She admitted that she’d made it all up. Wouldn’t tell me why she’d done it, though.”
I made my way into the kitchen and put the box on the table, talking over my shoulder. “Well, that bit is obvious. She’s jealous, isn’t she?”
“Of what?” Mum asked, grabbing six candles, stopping to admire the cake.
“Dot.”
Mum looked up quickly. “Why would she be jealous of her?”
I shrugged. “You spend all your time with her.”
Mum held out a candle to push into the cake then paused with her arm outstretched. “I have to, Zoe. She can’t hear….”
“You don’t need to explain to me. I get it,” I said, and for the first time, I thought I actually did. “It’s hard to see Dot struggle.”
Mum swallowed, clutching the candles tighter. “Exactly.”
“But Soph’s struggling too, Mum. If you’re not dealing with Dot, you’re arguing with Dad about Grandpa or jobs or money, and it’s hard listening to you fight all the time. I’m sorry,” I said quickly, thinking I’d said far too much.
Mum sat down suddenly, staring at the candles in her hand. I made to leave, but before I could walk out of the kitchen, she said, “Tell Soph I want to talk to her, will you?”
I have no idea what was said, but Soph’s eyes were red and puffy when we ate lunch. The lasagna was perfect, the cheese crispy and golden on top. Giggling and snorting and signing like mad, Dot was high as a kite, excited about her bowling party the following day, wondering what presents her friends would buy and looking forward to wearing the special bowling shoes.
“Do I get to keep them?” she signed.
Dad laughed. “No, silly! You have to give them back. But they’re yours for two hours.”
“Two whole hours?”
“Two whole hours,” Dad repeated, tickling her chin.
“Kids,” Mum whispered to Soph, whose face broke into a grin.
Now Stu you’re probably wondering what was going on at Aaron’s house, and believe me, I was thinking exactly the same thing, full of birthday cake, sprawled on the sofa as Mum and Dad had a long discussion in the kitchen. Who knows what they were going on about, but for once they weren’t shouting so I could brood about the brothers in peace. Sort-of peace. If peace feels like pleasant pins and needles in your stomach. There was fear tingling in there. Excitement, too. For the hundredth time, I checked my phone to find nothing but a picture of Dot as my screen saver, which she’d taken of herself without me knowing, sticking out her tongue with her eyes rolled backward, pushing up her nose so I could see inside her nostrils.
Nothing passed the time, not flicking through a magazine or writing Bizzle the Bazzlebog or tidying my room until even my DVDs were in alphabetical order. There was nothing left to do except crawl under my duvet and wait. I organized it like a tent over my head, blocking out the universe, and that’s precisely where I was when my phone started ringing. I stared at the screen as Aaron’s name lit up my world.
“Hey,” I said, ridiculously pleased to hear from him.
“Hey,” he replied in the opposite tone.
“How did it go? Was he mad? Did he punch you?” There was no response. “Oh God! He did, didn’t he? Are you okay?”
Aaron exhaled noisily. “I was going to do it, I promise you.”
“What do you mean, was going to? Didn’t you say anything?”
“I couldn’t, Zo. Honestly. We had to meet up with my dad. He was out with his girlfriend Tuesday so he asked to see us this afternoon instead. Had something important to tell us about her.”
I closed my eyes, scared of where the conversation was heading. “Which was?”
“Put it this way, they aren’t splitting up.”
“She’s pregnant?”
“Nope. They’re getting married. He proposed on Valentine’s Day. The wedding’s in April.”
“April? Isn’t that a bit soon?”
“They don’t see the point in waiting. You should have heard him,” Aaron said, sounding revolted. “He’s properly loved up.”
“Are you okay?”
“I am, but Max… He managed to keep it in when we were with my dad, but when he got home, he threw a fit.”
I pulled the duvet off my head, suddenly needing air. “We still have to tell him.” Aaron didn’t reply. Rolling onto my back, I stared at the ceiling with my hand on my forehead. “We can’t hide this. Not after today. We have to tell him.” The phone buzzed with the sound of nothing. “Aaron? Please say something.”
“I’m sorry.”
I swallowed, fear welling up inside me. “What do you mean?”
“He needs me, Zo. He needs you.”
“But I can’t pretend,” I said, my eyes filling with tears. “I can’t go into school on Monday and not mention what happened at the library.”
“Please,” Aaron begged. “Give us some time to think about what to do.”
“Are you honestly saying you want me to walk up to him and kiss him and act like nothing’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. Look, can I see you tomorrow?” he asked, so I told him about Dot’s party, and how I would have the house to myself for a few hours because Mum was making me stay behind to study for a science test. “I’ll come over and we’ll talk about it,” he said. “We’ll sort something out. I promise you.”
“Okay.”
There was silence for a while, and then the quietest of whispers.
“I don’t regret it, Zo. Maybe I should, but I don’t.”
I gripped the phone. “Me, neither. Not one bit.”
“Your voice changes when you smile.”
I grinned even harder. “So does yours.”
“This is messed up.”
“Yeah.”
“But we’ll sort it out.”
“I know.”
“And then…”
“And then.”
“S’long, Bird Girl.”
“S’long.”
The following day I was pretending to study my notes on magnetism when there was a knock on the door. Aaron was standing on my porch in a pair of blue jeans and a green hoodie, holding a tennis racket.
“Can I have my ball back, please?” he said like a small boy, and I did this daft girly sort of squeal, jumping into his arms, suddenly understanding the principles of magnetism a whole lot better than I ever had in class. “I still need my ball,” Aaron said as I pulled him into my house. My house, Stu. Aaron was inside my house, his sneakers on my carpet, his smell mixing with Mum’s polish.
“Did you actually throw a ball into my garden?”
“I hit one over your roof,” Aaron said, pretending to serve and accidentally hitting the lamp shade with his racket.
We tore through the house, bursting into the back garden to hunt for the ball. It became a competition, a mad race to be the first to find the ball, and we both spotted it at the exact same moment near a plant pot. With a spectacular dive, I grabbed it before Aaron did and sprinted off at top speed, cheering with the ball above my head. Aaron caught up with me, clutching my waist and lifting me high into the air.
“All hail, Bird Girl!” he announced, carrying me across the garden as I waved to my cheering fans, and then we both fell onto the wet grass. “Well done.”
“Thank you,” I replied, pretending to take a bow. We flopped onto our backs with our hands touching but not holding because there were rules that we had to obey and a conversation we had to have.
“So, what are we going to do?” Aaron asked, his voice becoming serious.
“Not yet,” I groaned. “Not right now. Let’s just lie here for a minute.” Out of nowhere a bird burst into song, and I sat up, staring all around for the source of the noise.
“Swallow?” Aaron asked.
I giggled. “Just a house sparrow. The swallows are still in Africa. Probably having a crazy adventure.” I lay back on the grass, and this time Aaron took my hand.
“That’s what I’m going to do,” Aaron said, squinting as the sparrow took off with a noise that sounded like freedom. “Travel the world.”
“I’ll go with you. When we’ve told Max and I’ve finished school and Mum can’t stop me. I’ll save up all my money from the library and we’ll go to—”
“London? Manchester? Leeds?” Aaron teased. “Wouldn’t get very far on your wages.”
“You’ve got the money from your dad,” I said. “You could take us both on an adventure.”
Aaron pulled me onto his chest, my legs dangling between his as our hearts thumped on top of each other. “You’re on,” he whispered, his breath tickling my ear. “South America or somewhere.” He pecked my forehead. And then my eyelids. And then my lips, opening his mouth, his tongue darting against mine. Pulling away, I waggled my finger in his face.
“Naughty! We’re not supposed to be doing anything bad.”
Aaron rolled on top of me, blocking out the sun.
“Sometimes there are good reasons to do bad things,” he muttered. “Just ask Guy Fawkes.”
“Cheesy.”
“You love it!”
“I love you,” I whispered, putting my hands on either side of his jaw and drawing him close, covering his face with tiny kisses, my lips finding the hard bridge of his nose and the soft fuzz of his eyebrows and the prickly stubble of his chin as he mouthed me, too.
The heavier things got, the lighter I felt until honest truth I was right up there with the sparrow, swooping and darting high above cloud nine. When it started to drizzle, Aaron pulled me to my feet and Stu we couldn’t stop kissing, moving into the shed in a blur of mouths and hands and stumbling feet, stepping over tools and squeezing past the box of tiles, our actions growing more urgent as our love steamed up the windows and formed dew on the spiderwebs, glistening on the silk.
Aaron cleared a space in the junk and took Dad’s old jacket off a peg, spreading it on the dusty floor. My fingers found the bottom of his hoodie, and I pulled it up, needing to see him to feel him to be close to his skin, and there it was, firm and smooth, and I stroked every last inch of it as he gasped without sound, his mouth opening as my thumb brushed the brown hair curling in soft spirals beneath his belly button.
He wrapped one hand around both of mine and raised my arms into the air, pulling my top over my head, my hair lifting up up up in the material then swooshing back down onto my bare shoulders. His eyes said You’re beautiful and I felt it, too, as he took off my bra, slowly slowly, like he was scared of doing it wrong. Hardly breathing now, I pulled him down onto the coat, and we wrapped ourselves up in it as best we could, our bodies tangling together in a knot that no one could undo. My skin was on his skin, his body warmer than mine. He scooped his arm under my head. We blinked in unison. Inhaled the same air. And just as our lips were about to touch, there was a deafening
RING RING
RING RING
RING RING
Aaron reached into his back pocket, and I knew from his expression who was calling.
“Should I speak to him?” he asked, panic in his voice. Before I could reply, Max rang off. Dropping my head onto Aaron’s arm, I exhaled loudly—only to breathe right back in again as my own phone buzzed in my pocket. “You’d better answer that, Zo.”
“I can’t!” I said, but I pressed a button anyway, leaning up on my elbow and turning away from Aaron.
We spoke, Stu, and I can barely write it down because Max was so upset about his dad’s engagement and I was just trying to get him off the phone, muttering words I didn’t mean as his brother lay next to me, his bare chest rising and falling as he listened to the conversation, his hands covering his eyes.
“What you up to, anyway?” Max asked eventually, and my throat tightened. I cleared it. Twice.
“Nothing much. Just studying for that science exam,” I managed, and Aaron threw Dad’s jacket to one side, standing up abruptly.
Max sighed through the phone. “I need to do some work for that. Do you want to come over? I’ve got the house to myself. Mum’s out shopping with Fiona, and I don’t know where my brother is.”
I screwed up my face. “I should stay here,” I said as Aaron pulled on his hoodie, yanking it over his head and shoving his arms through the sleeves. “Sorry. I have to concentrate.”
“Please?” he said in a voice I didn’t recognize. “I need to see you.”
“Sorry,” I said, apologizing for things he would never have believed. “I should go.”
It took a while to get rid of him, and when I finally lowered the phone, I felt sick with shame.
“You did what you had to,” Aaron said at last, but he was staring at the lawn mower rather than me, all the tenderness gone from his voice. “This is my fault,” he muttered, sorting out his hair with jabbing fingers. “I should never have come.”
“Don’t say that. Please don’t say that.”
He sat down on the box of tiles, a look of self-loathing on his face. “What are we doing, Zoe? This is bad. This is really bad.” Scrambling to my knees, I pressed my chest against his legs. Aaron put his hand on my bare back as I rested my head on his lap. “It can’t happen again.”
“I know.”
“We have to tell him the truth.”
I looked up at him. “Yeah. When, though?”
“I dunno. We have to wait for the right time, I guess.”
“There is no right time,” I whispered. “It’s going to be awful whenever we do it. Horrible.” He rubbed my shoulder as I started to cry, and I hated myself for being weak, but I couldn’t stop the tears. “Let’s wait till after the wedding at least. What you said on the phone yesterday. He needs you. And me. We can’t—”
“But that’s ages away, Zo.”
We stared at each other helplessly. I sniffed, trying to be strong. “It’s only a few weeks. A few weeks, that’s all.” I held his hands in mine, wiping my face with my arm. “We should set a date for telling him. I don’t know. May first or something.”
Aaron kissed my forehead. “All right. May first.”
So that’s how we decided, Stu, choosing the date at random, and I don’t want to talk about what happened on that night, not now or ever. I don’t want to talk about the rain or the trees or the disappearing hand or the blue sirens or the sobs or the lies or the coffin or the guilt the guilt the guilt that I feel every single minute of every single day. And if I have to write it all down, I want to do it in pencil so I can rub it straight back out again, erasing that whole part of my life so it smudges into nothing and I can start again, drawing myself the way I want to be with a free smile and a pure heart and a name that I can write in block capitals because I’m not afraid to reveal it in a letter scribbled in a garden shed.
Love,
Zoe xxx
1 Fiction Road
Bath, UK