This Cold Place Where I Wait

I was always that girl.

You know the one.  Replicated through every high school in every city, in every little town, and for all I know in every country.  The girl they don’t like.  And maybe you can’t even press them into saying why exactly they don’t like her.  They don’t know, not precisely, they just know that her exclusion is their inclusion, her vulnerability is their armour.  The focus on her is focus not on them.

And I was her.

I remember this from almost as long as I have memories.  And I guess, I suppose, it’s just because they saw me as odd. Saw me as awkward.  Maybe a little bit deformed.

The foot was the thing.  Never quite right.  A bit too big, and not quite straight.  I’d been like that from birth. And then with a face that didn’t conform – too flat, and with the eyes too wide, and the over-height of the cheeks. Dark eyes that could have been pretty in some other context, but just seemed creepy to the point of demonic in the harsh landscape where they were embedded.

So it goes, right?

And I learnt to cringe away, to fear them, to fear being touched, looked at, laughed at.  I shrank away into as much obscurity as I could manage.

#

I was invisible at home.

I suppose, in a way, it made things easier.  There was nobody who might think to ask about “how was school?” or “did you have a nice day?”  Two parents, embroiled in each other, in their causes and projects, never having intended to have a child, not understanding the different between that and having a cat or a goldfish.  A novelty that quickly wore off.  Back to those pursuits that could truly shake the earth.

#

There were times when they’d lay in wait for me.  A group of girls who’d taken a brief and intensive disliking.  I walked the long way as I always did, bag draped over one shoulder, one of my shoes refusing to fit, the other, overcompensating, looking awkward and ill-fitting as well.  I was twelve, my shoulders had grown at a different rate to the rest of my body, jutting out like a metal frame, torso too long for legs, but not for arms.

Freak.  Freak.  Freak.

There was fear in it.  I knew that, even if maybe they didn’t.

They inflated their courage with numbers, pooled it until they had enough to make their move.  The magic number was eight.  Eight against one.  That’s where their courage peaked, that was the threshold.  And I stumbled into their snare, unknowing, caught up in my own footsteps.  And what did I think about in those days?  What plans, or hopes, or dreams?  I remember an empty mind, the plodding of foot after foot after foot.  Get through another day, sleep another night, get up and face more of the same.  And them, swarming out from their hiding placing and grabbing me around the shoulders.

“Make her kneel!  Make her kneel!”

On my knees, head held down.  A couple of them rubbed glue in my hair.  The rest were laughing.  Taunting.

“I like your hairstyle, Wendy!”

“It really suits you!”

“Really suits… you!”

Squawking like mad birds.

When I could lift my head up I faced them, I looked at them, reaching for their eyes with my own.  And why not, when the harm was done, and any hope of rapprochement, acceptance, neutrality long since blown away on the wind?  So, whatever.  I looked at them, asked them, “Why?” and no more than that.

There were no answers, just expressions on predatory faces as if they simply didn’t understand the question.

#

There was a boy.

When I was fourteen.

I don’t know if I should blame him or not.  As confused as I was, maybe.  And me: stranded here in this territory I never thought I’d find myself in, had resigned myself so firmly to remaining outside of.  And then, there he was waylaying me after school.

“Hey, Wendy.”

Head down, blushing, squirming: “Hi.”

“Can I walk with you?”

“Okay.”

“Do you have any friends?”

“No.”

“What about a boyfriend?”

“No.”

“Do you want to be kissed?”

“I… um…”

“Nobody else will.”

I shrugged.  I wanted him to go, to leave me alone.  Didn’t dare tell him to go, because that would just prove to them all that my treatment was my own fault.  I was unfriendly and only had myself to blame.  Spurning them was like a great big crate of ammunition, and I got that.  That much of things I did understand.

“Behind the dairy?”

I nodded. Confused.

Behind the dairy, he wanted more than kisses.  He presented the kiss he’d offered, but then his hands were suddenly everywhere, pressing me towards a wall, reaching into my blouse, fumbling with buttons, the other hand sliding down my back, snaking beneath the waistband of my skirt, seeking, burrowing.

I knew what he wanted.  But I knew why.  I was just a body, a lump of warm flesh with the right parts.  A biological fit.  Someone so friendless and desperate that they wouldn’t turn him down, and then he wouldn’t be a virgin anymore, and then mission accomplished.  He could run off, freed from his inconvenient innocence.  Member of a misty, borderless club that he longed to join and didn’t really know why.

I was his sex doll.

That’s why I pulled back.  Not because I didn’t desire him – though I didn’t – or because of the dangers – which I didn’t think of, didn’t care about, not really – but because I could see myself through his eyes, see the object I was making off myself.  See his body somehow stripping away my humanity.

“Bitch,” he said.

Head hung.  “Sorry.  I don’t want to.”

“You’re just a bloody tease.  Your loss anyway.  Nobody else will.  Ever.”

I believed him.

And I braced for the next day, the whispers, the jeering.  The way he’d spin this with his friends, the way they’d call out to me, the taunts that didn’t quite make sense.  I’d be a slut and a prude at the same time.  Just a misfit, in a place where everyone must fit.

I was just that girl.

#

That was before the wings grew.

They didn’t frighten me.  Not exactly.  And I can’t explain that.  I felt them at first as a puckering of the skin along my shoulder blades and down my back.  I felt the skin tightening, and when I reached with my hands I felt the twin bulges.  I was alone – of course – when they broke through my skin.  When there was blood and feathers and tearing pain.  I had a place between the roofs of two buildings, a place where I’d hide from the world.  Hide from it and watch it.  I was there, on my knees, retching and howling, unheard, unmissed.  I was dizzied by the height and briefly afraid of falling.

And then I knew I couldn’t.

I was more freakish that even I’d known.  And in the same instant I was free. I stood up, spread these new limbs out wide, felt the wind as it floated under them, tugging me towards the clouds.  How high?  I didn’t know.  Or if I’d fall.  And I told myself I didn’t care. I was reborn and I could cast away that other skin, that other self. I could soar.

And I did.

The first moment was the terrifying moment.  I hadn’t known I could feel such fear.  Terror was too intense, too passionate a feeling to ever have thought to attach to myself.  It was too tangled up in hope and promise.  All my fears had been stolid, tired, predictable, their power stripped and muted by a grim inevitability.  But there was nothing certain about this moment, no guarantee of life or death, float or fall, no guarantee where these beautiful things on my warped frame could take me.

To the wind with that.  I ran.  I jumped.

I flew.

#

I didn’t belong to the world after that.  Less so than I ever have.  I couldn’t go home to my family and present this new glory to them.  Far from it. I crept. I bundled my wings up against my back, pulled my jersey over them and went home after dark.  There was nobody up at that hour, no-one to notice me.  I went to bed, sleeping badly, listening to noises I had no idea the night could make.

I ate breakfast in a corner, unnoticed.  Their conversation flowed over me, around me.  There was no point of intersection.  Mum and Dad discussed their dinner plans – out on the town; important, glittery people to wow – and told me that’d be back around ten.  Don’t use all the bandwidth please.  Do the dishes.  And then they were gone.

And that’s how I knew I could do this. That I’d have a bed to come back to in daylight, a fridge to raid, that no-one would mind and no-one would notice.

#

School was gone though.

I was a target amongst those people.  Visible because of it.

Oh, I fantasised about spreading my wings.  About launching myself off the cafeteria roof and coming to land on the shoulders of one of those girls.  Landing hard.  Flatten the bitch.  I looked at my hands, where the claws were developing, imagining how I could tear a hole in her face, gash out her cheek with my fingers, leaving a blood-filled impression, a tiny lake.  I could.  And then be gone.

But I wouldn’t.

That place held nothing for me.  It had no point.

I made sunset my dawn.  Rose with it.  At breakfast and climbed up onto the roof.  I took to the skies and I soared.  I reached for the sun and moon, nearly touching them, feeling the wind flap madly in my hair.  My hair – changing, thickening, turning a colour that was both silver and purple.  In an abandoned building, with a mirror intact, I watched my face change as well.  This unparalleled dappling that was alien and other but still something beautiful, the real me, peeking out from beneath the shell. My discarded skin meaning nothing.  Long gone.

I listened to the girls as they walked beneath me.  The self-same bullies.  Women by now – such as time passed – laughing and teasing.  Drinking too much.  Their low necklines and skin hugging jeans.  The men who hung off them.

A girl on her cell phone.  I remembered her name being Jemma, shortened at fourth form to Jem.  “Are you coming out tonight, Stan?  Tell me you are.”

“Is he coming?”

“Stan, you said you would – I won’t get that drunk – You never told me that. – Stan…”

“Did he just hang up on you?”

“Shut up.”

“Screw him.”

“Yeah, we’ll find you someone. You’re getting laid tonight.  See how much he likes that.”

Tears.  Cheering. A bottle of champagne that was passed among them.

Me: a forgotten thing.  Something that could disappear.  That could melt into the night.

#

And so I did.  And so I have.

I belong to the night now. I belong to the world of werewolves and vampires, of incubi and faerie.  I belong to this world now where the shadows have eyes.  Where the alleyways have predators.  Where the dead live again.

I belong to a world seen only by homeless drunks and alley cats.  And them, only for seconds at a time, for glimpses.

I could prey on them.  But I don’t.

I’ve hidden in the cold all my life. I hide in the shadows now, in the dark, where it can be cold, but where it can also be bold, fiery, sensuous, alive.  I reach out for those who’re most like me.  We brush wings, fangs, claws.  The vampires have cold hands; and the werewolves hot breath.  I swoop down to stroke an alley cat, to let it crawl up briefly in my arms. I reach out to let a raven perch on my arm.

I don’t know what this life means for me.  Where it can take me.  I just know that I’m other, that I’m silenced by the daylight.  That I live at last.  And that I’m free.

Picture credit/discredit - author's own work