Unbelievable, Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven: Becoming

My ears had been roaring, roaring with the sound of bubbles, magnified a million times. I had sat, gripping the strong drink in the cut crystal glass, concentrating on the sound of the fizzing lest my head exploded with the bomb of information Maggie had just dropped on me.

Seconds stretched into minutes and we’d sat, a silent duo, her sipping her gin, me staring into mine. And then the glass had imploded.

There was gin and tonic and ice and lemon all over me. There were shards of crystal and drops of blood. I shook my cold, wet fingers as the deep cuts healed in the blink of an eye. I think I might have uttered an expletive. That must have been why Maggie had looked so shocked; I’d certainly never heard her swear and I was pretty sure she’d never heard me use a societally taboo word.

I didn’t hesitate. I was up off the sofa and out of the front door faster than a hare before a whippet. In one swift sweep, I had my coat and boots on and was halfway down the street before the echo of the front door slamming had faded into the dark of the night.

I headed for civilisation, the orange aura of streetlights from the town above me beckoning. At first, I did not know where I was headed, just kept walking on and on and on along the lanes. The night was curious, and it flooded around me, pressing against my face, seeking answers to the vibes I sent out into it. Confusion. Anger. Shock. Horror. My skin crawled with new information, and half-revelations. The new knowledge that Maggie had imparted had only served to highlight what I already knew about both myself and my ‘family’, if you could call my mother that. A hundred tiny, forgettable incidents from the past fit together in an instant like a jigsaw puzzle, like a film of a plate smashing played backwards. The finger pricks as she sewed my name into my school uniform that never bled, healing almost before she noticed them; the there-and-gone-again lumpy bruise on her head from the tree falling on her, the year she nailed the Catherine wheel to a rotten trunk; her oddly bent arm, that she had wrenched back into place, hammer still in hand.

The largest piece was the oldest, and it came out of nowhere, as if placed in my head suddenly by the force of the night, remembering for me:

Mum in her high heels, crashing through the glass-plated hall door, Dad standing behind her, his face locked on mine as he noticed me, banister in hand, paused at the top of the stairs, one knee bent to descend. The babysitter asleep in front of the television had heard nothing. He let her out the back way, so she wouldn’t see. Mum in her pool of blood, seeping into the carpet that had disappeared by morning, putting herself back together like Lego.

How does the mind suppress, and keep its secrets from us? Of course I had always known the difference between my best friend Phoebe’s plastered arm, six weeks in a cast followed by physiotherapy, and my own three days off school with a ‘cold’. Of course, I had never had a cold in my life. I knew that now. I had always viewed the past as if through misted glass, through a spider’s web of lies and stories and cover-ups, through the weave in the blanket of ‘normality’ that my mother had thrown, carefully, smothering my perceptions. The glass was clear now, freshly wiped, a revelation.

That must have been the night he left. Later than I’d imagined. I must have been five or so…

I stopped dead at the edge of the water. It was dark and calm here down by the river, down on the towpath. X marks the spot. My foot nudged the roughened patch where I had thrown myself earlier. It was too dark to see any traces of blood. I dropped to my haunches, feeling the ground for reassurance. It was hard and cold, preparing for frost as the temperature dropped.

The water was dark and secretive, revealing nothing below the surface. As I watched, the moon drifted from behind scant cloud cover and studied her shimmering reflection. I caught a hint of an echo of laughter from a dinner date leaving the pub, and shuddered. Why had I brought myself back here? Perhaps I needed to force myself to face things. If you run, you must go back. I watched the water slide past.

‘Will I ever be brave enough?’ I whispered to myself, imagining the cold, dark depths rising around my cold, pale flesh.

‘It’s not a question of brave,’ a familiar voice shocked me. ‘It’s a question of trust. Do you trust yourself to survive? Do you trust the gift you have?’

Arun stepped forward to stand beside me, lighting a rolled-up cigarette. A familiar scent assaulted my nostrils and I swayed, momentarily lulled. It was the same tobacco that David used to smoke.

‘It’s a case of self-knowledge, you see?’ he reasoned, blowing out smoke in a soft, long breath. ‘You have to ask yourself whether you want to know your own limits, or if you’re content not knowing.’

‘What do you mean?’ I recovered myself, holding out an absent hand for a drag. He put the cigarette between my fingers, and I sucked gently on the small, white stick, filling my lungs with memories and painful little ticks.

‘You could leave it alone. You’ll inevitably have accidents; you’ll be able to heal from those. You could live your whole life in a safe little bubble, pretending to be human.’

I coughed, as the word struck home. The word that Maggie had played with earlier. It was as if they were conspiring to make me feel even more like Frankenstein’s creation, a being devoid of all knowledge, having to pick up the crumbs that others threw.

‘And the alternative?’ I sighed, regulating my breathing, drawing again on the cigarette.

‘Becoming. Becoming who you are, which you can only do once you know yourself entirely. Discover your limits, and your power will be absolute.’

‘What if I don’t want that power?’ I argued, turning to face him, passing back the tiny, smoking wand.

‘You don’t have a choice: the power is yours; do you want to know how you can use it, or not?’ Arun smiled, taking a last draw, stubbing out the cigarette in the palm of his hand. Not a mark.

‘What good will it do?’ I shot.

‘You already know,’ he laughed. ‘You said it yourself earlier: you could have saved your friends, if you’d known, if you’d developed it, if you’d learnt your own limits.’

That shut me up.

‘Imagine there was another accident. There will be; humans are very accident-prone. Imagine Tienna needed your help, or even a stranger; imagine you had it within your power to save a life, and you didn’t.’

‘But the risk of discovery…’ I mused.

‘Is so very great, but simply because you are afraid of something, does that stop you?’

I turned back to the river. It waited as I watched it, inviting. The apples were ripening. The serpent was patient.

‘Was Elyssa right? Can it touch me? Am I waterproof?’ I demanded, of the river or Arun, I wasn’t sure.

‘Only one way to find out!’ he chuckled. ‘Do you want to jump, or shall I push?’

I stepped back involuntarily, worried that he might be true to his word.
‘I’m not ready, not tonight. Too much in my head to concentrate.’ I made my excuses as he rolled another cigarette.

‘That stuff’ll kill you,’ I prodded, but he only smiled.

‘No, it won’t,’ he sounded so sure. ‘It won’t kill you, either,’ he offered the finished roll-up to me, and I took it as he began to construct another. ‘Let me walk you home.’

‘Are you worried I’ll get hurt?’ I half-joked, aware that while I could heal, getting hurt first would not be pleasant.

‘You’re not strong yet,’ he explained. ‘You will be, I can sense it. Then you can walk home alone.’

‘So what were you doing out here late at night?’ I demanded as, cigarettes lit, we started to walk back towards the bridge and the pub.

‘Waiting for you,’ he glanced at me, sideways, his fringe shading his expression as he looked through it, down to me.

I giggled, unsure. ‘You’re serious?’ I qualified.

‘I knew you’d come,’ he shook his head. ‘Besides, I like it down here, I often walk down by the river when everyone else has gone to bed or just plain gone home.’

‘Are you and Elyssa…the same? The same as me, I mean?’ I had to know, now. ‘Earlier, I was so obsessed with my own…gift, that your obviously more superior…talents…went a little…uncommented on.’ I was finding it hard to construct the sentence tactfully.

‘I’m not sure, yet,’ Arun answered, shrugging his tall, thin shoulders. ‘We’ve always been…the way we are. Not like you, I mean, with the healing ability; just tough, unbreakable.’

‘Even when you were children?’ I was curious.

‘You’re getting stronger, rapidly, aren’t you?’ he dodged the question by asking another of his own.

‘Maggie…I mean, my grandmother, says I’ll reach maturity at eighteen. And I’m nearly seventeen now. The healing’s getting faster, anyway.’
He nodded, listening intently, pondering my words.

‘Do you think I’ll end up like you?’ the thought instantly, gleefully, filled me. I imagined how glorious it would be to be…unbreakable. No pain, however quickly it was over; earlier, the bone breaks had been torture, excruciating, like being plunged into an incinerator.

‘I hope not,’ Arun’s reply was instant, almost reactionary, but then he laughed, making a joke of it.

I wasn’t sure, but I could sense an almost imperceptible shift as his laughter died into the air, and the night crept back a bit, cautious now, where before it had been friendly.

‘Another time, another conversation. When you’ve experimented a bit more. When you trust enough.’ he promised, his eyes serious as he flicked his fringe back and properly looked at me. We halted as his dark eyes shone in the streetlights.

‘When I know the boundaries of what I’m becoming?’ I asked.

‘Finding the edges,’ he nodded. ‘That’s the first step, but bear in mind that those edges won’t be fixed yet.’

As we continued walking, I willed the moons and months to come more quickly. Eighteen suddenly held more promise than the legal perks I had hitherto craved.