Page 15

It’s a nickname, going back to the time when they shared a room, a bed, when Alice liked to sleep with her knees curled into her chest, so some sharp edge was always poking Catty in the side, the back, and she would shove a pillow between them, muttering that Alice was all bones.

“Needed some fresh air.”

Catty slumps forward, resting her elbows on the wall, and Alice pads forward like her sister’s not a girl at all, but one of those nervy dogs that is always on the verge of startling.

“It’s nicer out here anyway,” she adds, even though it’s not, it’s cold, and windy, and wet, and there was cake inside, chocolate with vanilla icing.

But Alice only nods, and says, “Yeah,” running her palm along the top of the wall.

(This one isn’t on their property, but that didn’t stop Catty from declaring it hers—“See, right there, a C stamped into one of the stones”—and Eloise once explained to Alice that it’s because the stones came from the old church before the town built a new one, and that letter was just a maker’s mark, but she didn’t tell Catty because it doesn’t hurt anyone, to let her have it.)

Her sister swings her legs over the wall, and Alice climbs up beside her, shivering as the cold soaks like damp into her jeans.

The sun’s going down, shadows growing dense around them, but up here they can see most of Hoxburn—which admittedly isn’t much, but it looks even smaller now, and kind of quaint, like it could fit inside a snow globe, or an open hand, and Catty must be having one of her psychic moments because she lifts her hand and squints, and Alice can picture her cupping the whole town in her palm.

Catty closes her fist. Lets it fall.

She sighs, and then stretches out along the wall like it’s a bed, and it’s too narrow for them to lie side by side, so Alice twists round and lies so they’re head to head. Cheek to cheek.

Sisters, staring up at the darkening sky.

On paper, they look the same.

Fair skin, blond hair, blue eyes.

But Alice’s skin is too pale, burns in summer, where Catty’s is dusted with freckles. Alice’s hair is a lifeless shade, Catty’s the color of melted butter. Alice’s blue eyes are tinged with gray and green, Catty’s the cold, clear shade of winter mornings.

They don’t talk about the dinner, or the fact that when Catty bolted, it was Eloise who stood up first, meaning to go after her, but Dad caught her hand and told her not to bother, to let the daft girl go.

They don’t talk at all.

Alice sucks a breath, wishes she knew what to say to make Catty happy, or at least to make her hurt less.

But she knows that the wrong words will make things even worse, and she’s still searching for the right ones when Catty pulls out her phone and shoves an earbud in one ear.

She offers the other one to Alice and taps the screen and the music comes spilling out, and Alice exhales.

She knows the song, recognizes it just by that opening beat, which isn’t a drum, exactly, but the primal thud of a palm striking wood, a summons.

It’s always made Alice think of the Pied Piper, it has the same strange effect of pulling you along in its wake.

Sure enough Catty starts rapping her knuckles on the wall in time with the beat, and Alice feels her own pulse work to match the rhythm.

It is stripped bare, this song, a simple, hypnotizing thing. The beat never rises, but after eight counts, a girl’s voice kicks in, haunting and high, carrying the air of incantation.

“When I was a child / I got lost in the woods

The trees parted for me / made such a clear trail

Then closed up behind me / now I’m turned around

Been trying so long now / to find a way out.”

They don’t sing along, it’s not that kind of song, would never show up on someone’s karaoke list. Instead, they simply lie there, and let it wash over them.

“The woods want to keep me / the ground wants to eat me

The trees want to hold me / can’t find my way home .

The night’s getting dark now / the air’s getting cold

So tired of walking / can’t find my way home.”

The music unfurls over them like a tent, and it isn’t comfortable, bits of loose rock dig into Alice’s back, but this is an enchanted moment, and she knows better than to ruin it by moving. It’s almost over now, anyway, the drumbeat slowing like a tired heart as the voice becomes higher and softer.

“I live in these woods now / the trees hold me close

The voice is a whisper as it gets to the last line.

“No longer lost now / I found my way—”

But before the last word, Catty taps the screen and the song starts over. Alice fidgets. By now, the sun’s gone down, the shadows growing dense, and she’s cold, and Eloise and her friends are probably gone, and they really should go back, go home, but when Alice brings it up, Catty says Yeah .

Says Sure .

Says We will , we will , as soon as the song is done .

And Alice wants to believe her, so she stays there, sprawled on the cooling rock beside her sister as the music unravels again.

Holds her breath and waits, sure that if the voice can just get out that final word, the spell will break, the world will come unstuck, and Catty will agree to get up with her, to come home.

But the end comes around again, and Alice knows what’s going to happen, and sure enough, when the voice hits the last line, Catty taps the screen and starts the song over. And over. And over.

“ No longer lost now / I found my way—”

“No longer lost now / I found my way—”

“No longer lost now / I found my way—”

Alice hits the phone, silencing the alarm a second before the singer says the word home.

“Bloody hell,” says Lizbeth from the doorway. “I thought you were dead.”

Alice groans. The sun is gone, but her skull is still pounding, and her jaw aches as if she’s been clenching her teeth in her sleep.

“That alarm’s been going off for ages,” adds her roommate curtly. “I had to study in the common room.”

Alice frowns, head spinning. She’s always been a light sleeper, usually wakes up somewhere around the second verse, but she was buried somewhere deep, had to climb up through layer after layer of sleep, the panic rising as some distant part of her heard the lyrics passing by, carrying her close to the end.

She stares at the screen now, trying to understand how it’s somehow still nine o’clock, until she realizes that it’s now nine at night (she must have nudged the AM/PM button when she turned it off before) which means she’s gone and slept through all her classes and now she has a whole new reason to feel sick.

(Catty used to ditch class all the time, but Alice never missed a day of school unless she was well and truly ill, and even then, she made sure she could borrow someone’s notes so she wouldn’t fall behind, and now, three weeks into her first year of four, the professors will have it out for her, and and and—)

Alice is well along the panic spiral when she remembers that it’s still Sunday.

She heaves a strangled breath and slumps back into bed.

“No offense,” adds Lizbeth, hooking her backpack on the edge of her chair, which is never a good way to start, “but you look wretched.”

Alice tries to answer, but her throat is full of cobwebs and her skull is full of rocks and her tongue is a useless mass inside her mouth, so it takes two tries to manage a bone-dry “Thanks.”

“Are you ill?” she asks, but there’s no real caring in the question, only a prodding worry and a measure of distrust. She might as well be poking Alice with a stick.

“I’m dying,” answers Alice, because hangovers require a measure of hyperbole, and because she has truly never felt so awful.

The words come scraping out, leaving a horrible taste in her mouth, and Lizbeth starts packing a bag and explaining that she really can’t afford to be getting sick, with her courseload being what it is, and it’s no problem, really, she will stay with Jeremy.

(Jeremy, who was assigned to show Lizbeth around campus when she came to visit that spring, after she’d been let in, and “he must have been smitten” because they kept in touch all summer, and now that they’re in the same place they’re attached at the hip—“making up for lost time” she likes to add, as if he’s been in a war and not studying biology).

The phone slides between Alice’s fingers as she starts to shiver again, and she wishes there were a kettle in the room, but she hasn’t got around to buying one and Lizbeth is one of those rare English monsters who for some reason favors coffee over tea, and insists on getting it made fresh by someone else.

Lizbeth scurries out, and Alice thinks of folding herself back into the nest of her duvet, but her whole body aches from lying down so long, and what Alice really wants in that moment is El.

(She resists the urge to call her Mum, even now, even just in her head, Catty’s glare pinging like a pebble against the side of her skull.) Dad was never any good when his daughters were sick, all awkward head pats and there, there s, but El always knew exactly what was needed, a hot water bottle or a ginger tea, a day in bed or a bit of fresh air.

Fresh air.

The thought suddenly feels better than lying in this sweat-soaked bed in this too-small room, the air around her close and stale.

Alice flings the covers off, gets to her feet, instantly regretting the sudden rise as her limbs tremble and the whole room dips like a cheap ride.

She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for space to steady before she attempts the daunting task of getting dressed.

Her jeans are sitting in a pile on the floor, still rain damp, which is just as well because the thought of anything tight against her skin makes her nauseous.

Alice fumbles in the drawers for a pair of sweats and an oversized jumper.

Catches her face in the mirror on the closet door and pauses long enough to see the remains of last night’s makeup streaked black around her eyes, making them look sunken, hollow, the irises fever bright, the only time they look pure blue.

Her hair has dried wild, a gorse-like tangle, her fringe askew, but she doesn’t have the energy to scrape it back—her arms feel too heavy when she tries—so she settles for scrubbing at her face with the cuff of the jumper, and leaving it at that.

Alice stumbles out into the suite common room, and she must truly look as shit as she feels, because Rachel physically startles at the sight of her, and Jana looks up from the sofa and says, “Uh-oh, do you need a burrito or a bucket?”

Her stomach twists, the way it does when part of you is hungry and the other part is sick, and your insides can’t agree on what should go down and what should come up, so Alice keeps her mouth clamped shut as she shakes her head, and soldiers out into the hall.

Students pass, their voices echoing, too loud, inside her battered skull, and twice on the stairs she has to stop and brace herself against the banister. Each time she looks down and half expects to see the trail she and Lottie made the night before.

But it was water, only water, and has dried to nothing now, leaving only Alice, who sighs and shoves open the door, hoping a bit of fresh air will set her straight.