Authors: Melody John
‘You all right?’ David asked Dmitri in a low voice.
Dmitri nodded. ‘Yeah. Doesn’t matter.’
David touched Dmitri’s elbow briefly, then got inside the van and opened the other side door. I reached in and grabbed some of the pillows and quilts.
‘Here,’ Dmitri said, and between us we draped them over the railings.
‘Jamie’s a tool,’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ Dmitri said. ‘I know.’ He looked up and gave me a quick smile. ‘But thanks. It’s nice to know other people think that as well.’
I smiled back, and managed to hold his gaze for a few seconds longer than usual before going back to the van and fetching more bedding.
It took a long time to air all of the bedding, and even then, the smell of weed still hung about the van like a cartoon stink cloud. Back in college there had been a bunch of people who went to the Tesco car park at break time to smoke weed, and I’d heard a lot of horror stories about how they’d been failing all of their classes and losing their memories and stuff like that. One of them who I’d known a bit had been really into the piano, but in his second year he had realised that he was forgetting all of the stuff he knew—he’d been preparing to take his Grade 5 exam, but when the time came, he had failed quite spectacularly. That had scared off a lot of potential smokers, but there were still a devoted few who kept on going to the car park and threw shady looks at everyone walking by.
‘God, I don’t know why you’re all making such a fuss,’ Jamie grumbled as we settled down in the slightly less stinky van. ‘It’s not like it’s anything deadly.’
‘Haemorrhoids aren’t deadly,’ Laura retorted. ‘They’re still a pain in the ass.’
‘I’ll give you a pain in the ass,’ he said.
‘The only thing you’re giving me is a headache,’ she snapped. ‘So do us all a favour and shut your face.’
I was a little taken aback by her vehemence. But Jamie did have a history of being a jerk towards her, so I guessed her attitude was understandable.
David and Dmitri had dried themselves off, and David was now wearing one of Dmitri’s shirts and a pair of his jeans. They didn’t fit him very well—David was a beanpole, where Dmitri was shorter and had a stronger build, so the shirt was too short and too wide. He still managed to look adorable, though, and I tried not to dwell on the image of the two of them lying with each other on the backseat.
Laura wrapped her quilt around her and leaned against the window. I poked her gently with my foot. ‘You all right?’
She looked around and smiled at me. ‘Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine.’
‘Good.’ I smiled at her, then looked over at the back seats. David already had his eyes closed, his head half-buried in his pillow. Dmitri was looking down at him, and there was an odd, tender expression on his face that was so unlike his usual stoicism that I was quite startled, and then felt ashamed, as though I were witnessing an intimate moment between them.
I looked away, and snuggled down in my own quilt. ‘Goodnight,’ I said.
‘Goodnight,’ Laura echoed.
‘Goodnight, John Boy,’ David said sleepily. ‘Oh Mama, what will we be if we follow in our father’s footsteps?’
‘You’ll be a fine man, son,’ I said, grinning at the ceiling.
David laughed softly.
‘What are you on about?’ Jamie demanded.
‘There was a marathon of
The Waltons
the other week,’ I said. ‘You didn’t see it?’ It was a rhetorical question. I couldn’t imagine Jamie watching
The Waltons
—he’d probably be more likely to watch
My Little Pony
.
‘Nah,’ Jamie said. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Such a shame,’ Laura said drily. ‘You probably could have benefited from Pa Walton’s wise words of wisdom.’
Jamie snorted. ‘Whatever.’
My pillow still smelled of weed. I turned on my side, and stared at the backs of the seats in front of me. They had a very faint pattern of black on grey. Houndstooth? Staring at it made my vision blur, and then my lids grew heavier and heavier. The pattern smudged, and I closed my eyes and slept.
*
I was dreaming. I knew I was dreaming, but as though only with half of my brain—I knew I was dreaming, but I still couldn’t wake up.
I was standing in front of a classroom of people. I didn’t know what class it was, but I saw Dmitri sitting at one of the desks. Tariq was sitting next to him, and so was Jamie. I knew I had to do something—a presentation, a speech, something—but I couldn’t remember what it was.
Out of desperation, I began to levitate the whiteboard behind me. I crooked my fingers into claws and twisted my wrist, and the whiteboard rattled and scraped across the floor, then rose unsteadily into the air.
‘No,’ Dmitri called. ‘That’s not how you do it.’
‘I told you girls couldn’t levitate properly,’ Tariq said to Jamie, then yelled, ‘Fake!’
The whiteboard began to swing back and forth in the air, like a clock pendulum. The pens rolled off and onto the floor, then bounced away under the desks. The lights began to flicker, and then the desks and chairs rose up until the audience were bobbing about near the ceiling like helium balloons.
‘God, this is so stupid,’ Jamie said.
‘Fake mutant!’ Tariq yelled. ‘Fake geek girl! Fake!’
‘This isn’t how you do it,’ Dmitri said. ‘This isn’t how you make mistakes. You’ve got to make judgements and snap decisions. Plaster the labels everywhere. Come on, you know how to do this.’
‘Fake! Fake! Fake!’
‘Seriously, she’s not even a five. I’d never tap anything less than a seven.’
‘You can trust me,’ Dmitri said.
‘Fake! Fake! Fake!’
David appeared in the classroom doorway. He was leaning against the wall, and smiling. ‘Hey, Lizzie.’
‘David,’ I tried to say, but no words came out.
David smiled and looked at Dmitri. They gazed at each other, and I felt a great sense of urgency, as though I were just about to remember the thing I had to do, the reason why I was standing here in front of everybody. Just one second more, and I would know. I would know everything.
But there was a dark shadow growing at the back of the classroom. It grew and grew, and unfurled its wings, and it was dark and terrible, and it paralysed me. The fear of it crawled down my throat and knotted itself around my stomach. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t look away.
‘Lizzie,’ the darkness said.
I tried to speak, tried to scream. But I had no voice left.
*
I came awake with a start.
The van was silent, apart from a few snuffling, snoring noises coming from the front seat. It was still dark; the street lamps outside still illuminated the street with their sugary orange glow, but the sky was black.
I could make out a vague shady heap at the end of the seat that was Laura tucked up in her quilt. I eased myself up and peeked over the back seats. David and Dmitri were fast asleep, Dmitri resting his head on David’s chest, his sandy hair falling over his forehead, and David’s arm draped over Dmitri’s shoulder. One of David’s feet had stretched out of the quilt, and his bare toes were white in the shadows. Dmitri’s wings were still tucked closely onto his back, as they always were, but they had relaxed a little in sleep, and the tip of his left wing had unfolded enough to brush against David’s outstretched foot.
I looked away quickly, again experiencing that guilty feeling that I was spying on something private. I settled back down again in my quilt, and closed my eyes. My pillow still smelled of weed, but I was too sleepy to care very much, so I lay half on my back, my face turned towards the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to breathe it in. I stretched down my arm and felt about for my bag on the floor, then fumbled inside it for my phone. I pulled it out and checked the time: 2:41.
I yawned, and drew my knees up to my chest, and fell into a heavy, dreamless sleep.
When I woke again, daylight was pouring in through the van windows onto my face. I groaned and wriggled away back into the shade.
‘Lizzie?’ Dmitri said.
‘Mmm.’
‘You awake?’
‘Mmm.’
‘Ugh,’ came David’s voice. ‘Whose bright idea was it to sleep in a
van
?’
‘Um, yours?’ Dmitri said.
‘Well in that case, I’m a moron.’ He groaned, and there was a shuffling noise. ‘God, my back hurts. I feel like an old man.’
‘You are an old man.’
‘Pff, an old man who can wrestle you into the sea.’
‘In your dreams, old man.’
I heard the seats creak as David sat up. He yawned. Then he said, ‘Where’s Laura?’
‘Mmph?’ I opened my eyes and squinted down. The other end of the seat was empty, with Laura’s quilt rucked up and empty on the floor. ‘Dunno.’
‘Ted?’ David called. ‘
Ted
.’
There was a long, garbled groaning noise from the front seats.
‘Ted,’ David called again. ‘Come on, man. Did you hear Laura go out somewhere?’
The groaning noise came again, then Ted hauled himself up into a sitting position. His hair was sticking up in all directions, and he scratched his chin, yawning widely. ‘Wha’?’
‘Laura,’ David repeated patiently. ‘Did you hear her go out anywhere?’
‘Nah.’ He blinked slowly. His eyes focused on me, and he frowned. ‘Yeah, but she’s here, in’t she?’
‘Ted,’ I said, ‘I’m not Laura. I’m Lizzie.’
Ted yawned again, and collapsed back onto the seat. ‘Goblin men,’ he mumbled. ‘We must not look at goblin men, we must not buy their fruits. Who knows upon what soil they fed those hungry, thirsty roots.’
‘Oh wait,’ Dmitri said. ‘I know that. It’s from
Doctor Who
.’
Ted groaned loudly. ‘Oh, my god. Save me from lower mortals.’
‘It is too from
Doctor Who
,’ I said, feeling that Laura hadn’t been wrong when she said that Ted was too Kerouac for her tastes. He seemed like a right pretentious git. Even when he was singing the
Spongebob Squarepants
theme song, it was done with a kind of hipsterish affectation.
‘It may have been used in Doctor Who to introduce people to high culture,’ Ted said, ‘but it’s actually from a poem by Christina Rosetti, who I’m sure would be rolling in her grave at the combined ignorance shown here.’
‘Ugh, shut up,’ I said, and rolled over and buried my face in the pillow, then came up choking and breathless. ‘Oh my god, my pillow stinks.’
‘Oh yeah,’ Ted said. ‘Jamie’s gone as well.’
‘What?’ I sat up.
‘Yeah.’ Ted looked over at the passenger seat as though expecting Jamie to miraculously appear there. ‘Like… you know.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘
I
don’t know.’
I looked over at David. He was frowning a little. ‘It’s a bit weird they didn’t tell us where they were going. No one’s got a text from them, have they?’
There was a moment where we all scrambled for our phones. No one had any texts; David had a missed call, but that turned out to be his service provider telling him about a great offer on his tariff.
‘Eh, they’ll be back,’ Ted said. ‘There’s nowhere to go here anyway.’
I supposed that was true. The road that the van was parked on seemed to go on for ages, just houses and houses, and then the park stretching away into the distance. Laura’s phone rang and rang until it went to voicemail, and it turned out that Jamie had left his phone in the car.
‘Are they on the beach?’ Dmitri suggested.
I fumbled under the seat for my shoes and shoved them on, then stumbled out of the van. The air was freezing cold, and I hadn’t realised just how stuffy and airless the van had become. I ran across the road to peer over the railings. The beach was empty, the sand white in the cold morning light, and draped with black seaweed. The sea hushed and sighed, the water a dark grey that looked bottomless.
‘She’s not there.’ David and Dmitri had followed me, and David was looking up and down the street.
I wrapped my arms around myself against the wind. ‘I don’t like this.’ I didn’t mean for my voice to sound so pathetic, but I was worried. ‘I don’t understand why she would leave the van.’
‘We don’t know why,’ Dmitri said comfortingly. ‘She must have had a good reason. She’ll probably be back soon.’
‘Yeah, and then we can make ourselves feel better by yelling at her.’ David touched my arm briefly. ‘It’s probably nothing to worry about.’
‘Yeah,’ I said, trying to smile.
We went back to the van. ‘Not there?’ Ted asked.
David shook his head.
‘No Jamie either?’
‘No,’ I said.
I sat on the seat, and David and Dmitri still stood outside. It was cold, but the atmosphere in the van was heavy, and I could still smell the faint lingering fug of weed. It was making me feel a bit sick. ‘But what are we going to do?’ I asked, trying not to sound as panicky as I felt.
David and Dmitri looked at each other.
‘We’ll wait here,’ Dmitri said. ‘See if she comes back. If she’s not here in an hour or so, some of us will go into the town and look for her.’
‘I can’t help but notice that you’re forgetting Jamie,’ Ted said in a patronising tone. ‘Don’t forget that he’s missing as well.’
Yeah, but Jamie’s an obnoxious tool. I didn’t say it, but it was clear from the others’ expressions that that was what they were thinking as well.
Ted snorted. ‘Jeez, remind me not to have you guys for friends.’
‘Jamie isn’t our friend,’ Dmitri said. ‘Laura is.’