Page 22 of Sad Girl Hours

Chapter Twenty-two

Saffron

Nell nods, glancing round the room. None of the staff are facing our way; they’re preoccupied trying to confiscate a bottle of vodka from a boy in the corner. “This way,” she says, grabbing my hand and leading me – us – through one of the doors.

“We’re not meant to be in here,” I say, looking down at our joined hands ( and we’re not meant to be this close ) as we walk down a much more modern-looking corridor.

“No,” Nell says. “But we were just looking for a toilet and got a bit lost. They can’t punish us for that.”

“The toilets were immediately off the hall. They told us that at the beginning along with the fire regs.”

Nell stops and turns to face me. “Listen to me. You needed to get out. We’re out. If you think I’m not willing to do slightly-against-the-rules things to get you what you need, then you’re mistaken.”

I need you to stop being so perfect .

A clanging sound from further down the corridor makes us both jump.

“Erm…” Nell whips round, velvet jacket swooping round with her, raven bobbing on her shoulder. “In here.”

She tries a door but no luck – it’s locked. She storms away a little more and finds one that’s been propped open. “Aha! OK, in here .”

I stay standing there.

Footsteps echo round the corridor.

“Saffron,” Nell urges. “Quick.”

I step inside, pulling the door shut behind me just as the shadowy outline of a staff member turns the corner and blurs past the glass.

Looking around, I realise we’re in some kind of storage room – filing cabinets line one wall, shelves with stationery and cleaning supplies are on the other, a small desk in between.

“This is cosy.” Nell strolls around, poking various items on the shelves.

“Very.”

Nell seems to focus at the sound of my voice, directing all her attention back to me. “So, what’s up? What can I do to help?”

“Nothing.”

The scare/thrill of nearly getting caught has made me feel less like crying. Less like anything really. I just feel empty.

“To which question?”

“Both. I’m fine.”

“ Saffron .” I can hear the soft italics in the way she says my name.

“Really.” I turn away from her. “I’m good. Now, we should probably—”

I push on the door. It remains very much locked.

Oh, God.

“Ah.” Nell comes over to give it a go and achieves the same result. She scans the door. There’s a keyhole but no key.

“Bit ironic really,” Nell says casually, slapping the door once and then stepping back to just stare at it. “We did pay to be locked in. And now we’re more locked in than we actually were in the dungeon.”

She’s trying to make light of the situation, but I’m not feeling very light. This is pretty much the last thing I wanted.

“I can see the irony,” I say. “But I’m not sure I’m enjoying it as much as you.”

“Ahh, come on,” Nell says. “We’ll figure this out. I’ll just—” She tugs her phone out of her suit pocket. “Oh. No service or data. Should have expected that really. We are in a dungeon.”

I glance at mine. The same. No service. No data. Oh, God .

Nell sees the panic in my expression. “It’ll be OK. We’ll just listen out for someone coming, then we’ll bang on the door and fess up to our crimes. I’m sure someone’ll be along again shortly.”

But half an hour later and we’ve not heard a sound, apart from a distant scream from the hall.

“They must have turned the lights off again,” Nell notes from the floor. She’s made herself comfy against a stack of blue roll in the corner. “Come sit. We can listen just as well from here.”

“No, thank you,” I say. “I’ll stay here.”

“Whatever.” Nell shrugs. There are ten glorious/infuriating seconds of silence before she talks again.

“Have I done something?” She’s quieter now. “Because I’m sorry if I have. But I can’t fix it if you don’t talk to me.”

“Done something?” I’m aware my voice is bordering on incredulity as I stare down at her. “What would you have done?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Nell says. “That’s kind of the point. But you’ve missed all our plans; you didn’t answer my messages. You’ve barely spoken to me all evening. It’s a lot of weird coincidences if I haven’t upset you somehow.”

I definitely don’t feel numb any more. My stomach wrenches itself into a sailor’s knot and I feel more trapped than ever. “You’ve not done anything.”

“Right.” Her expression betrays how little she believes me.

I sit on the ground in front of her. “Nell,” I say, making sure my voice is sturdy with sincerity, “you’ve not done anything . I promise.”

Her disbelief fades into something gentler. “Then what is it? And don’t say ‘nothing’ because we both know that’s not true.”

I stare down at my hands in my lap. I don’t know what to say, what I can say.

“Saffron, I love you—”

The words tug the knot inside me tighter from both ends.

“—you’re one of my best friends in the world. I want you to be able to tell me things. Like why you’ve been acting differently recently.”

“I’m sorry,” I say automatically and guiltily.

Nell just looks at me. “For what?”

“Acting differently.”

She shakes her head as if to dismiss my words. “You don’t have to be sorry, but I would like it if you let me help you with whatever it is. Or even just talked to me about it.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“Can’t,” I say decisively, wringing my hands together.

“OK,” Nell says. I look at her to see whether she means ‘OK, I’m dropping it’ or ‘OK, but I don’t know why you’re being like this and I’m starting to think you’re not worth the effort’.

Thankfully, when I meet her gaze, she shrugs. “I’m not going to pressure you to talk about anything you’re not ready to. But if and when you are, I’m here. Talking helps. Trust me.”

I say the words without thinking. “Not always.”

Nell scans my face, before breaking away and staring at the wall opposite us, fiddling absent-mindedly with her too-long cuffs. “You know, I didn’t used to talk about things either.”

“You talk about everything,” I say, trying to inject some levity into the situation with some fond teasing.

“Now, yes. Not always. In fact, I used to keep everything in.”

“I can’t imagine that.”

“No, well. Neither can I any more really. When I think back to that version of Nell, she seems like a stranger. Sometimes I forget that that’s what I was like.”

“What were you like?” I ask, apprehensive but curious.

“Someone that was being hurt so much just by existing in the world that she felt like she had to hurt herself instead to take back control. Someone who knew she was different but didn’t have the language to bridge the gap, so instead she had to stare at the void between the person she was and the person she thought she was meant to be and hope that she’d either figure things out or fall into it before anyone noticed. ”

The air in the room feels close. “What … what do you mean?”

Nell smiles sadly at me. “Look. I know I’m mostly very comfy with who I am today, but I definitely wasn’t when I was younger.

Even more than most teenagers, I mean,” she adds.

“I didn’t get diagnosed as autistic until I was seventeen.

Before then, I just thought I was weird, like my energy never matched the people around me.

I was either too high or too low. I didn’t dress like everyone else.

I was interested in my own weird things.

I tried to be like everyone else. I tried not to care about or feel things too much, but I couldn’t do it.

So, when I was about fifteen, I started hurting myself. ”

I imagine the walls of the room crumbling with the force of how upset that image makes me.

“I couldn’t control how people reacted to me or how intensely I felt things most of the time, but I could control that.

It hurt but it was me doing the hurting this time.

I was in control. It started small, just a couple of scratches, but it got worse.

My dads found out when I was sixteen and got me into therapy, where I had no choice but to either sit in silence – which I’m not great with—”

“I know,” I say with quiet affection.

Nell grins. “Or actually talk about things. From there, we started to piece together why I’d been feeling the way I had. They referred me to the local autism team. I went, successfully passed the autism test, got my congrats on the ’tism certificate and everything started getting a little better.”

“Just like that?”

“Not exactly. I was in therapy for two and a bit years – I did a few sessions last autumn so I had support for the transition to uni. It wasn’t as simple as getting my diagnosis and being cured of the way I felt or anything, but it all definitely helped.

I had more information. I knew that the issue wasn’t with me or my brain: it was with how the rest of the world interacted with it.

And I got to choose whether to be ashamed or proud of who I was. ”

“And you chose proud.”

“I did,” Nell says simply.

“And you don’t … hurt yourself any more?”

Nell shakes her head with vigour. “God, no. I have better ways of coping now. I was really lucky that I got the help I needed to stop that before things got any worse.”

“I’m really glad you did,” I say. “I hate that you ever felt that low. You didn’t deserve that. Not at all.”

“No,” Nell says. “I didn’t. No one does.”

I don’t know whether I’m imagining it or not, but the silence that follows feels pointed.

I hope Nell’s not equating whatever I’m feeling to anything like her – clearly worse – history.

But I can’t be as open with her as she’s just been with me and clarify things.

She’s on the other side of it. My feelings, while not as acute as hers, are very much ongoing.

I can’t burden her with something I’m still in the middle of.

When nothing else fills the silence, Nell decides to try again. “Are you tired?”

“Of what?”

She smiles sleepily and I realise it was a simpler question than I first thought. “Just physically. It’s pretty late. My heart’s going crazy.” She leans further back into the blue-roll wall, slumping down a little.

I shift down further too so I’m not so far above her. “Is it?”

Nell nods. “Here, feel.” She takes my hand and places it over her chest. My hand lingers there lightly, too scared to press down.

Nell rolls her eyes. “You’re not going to feel anything like that.

Here.” She places her hand over mine and presses it into her.

It is racing fast. Really fast. My own heart seems to use this knowledge to instigate a race, my hand still resting on her shirt.

“See?” Nell says, removing her hand.

Mine flies back to my lap. I stretch my fingers out, trying to rid them of whatever they’re feeling. I gulp. “Yes. Very fast. Are you OK?”

“Yeah, it’ll simmer down soon, I’m sure. It’s probably just because I’m tired.”

“You should rest. I’ll let you know if I hear anyone.”

“You should sleep too,” Nell says. “Here.” She flails around a bit, taking off her velvet jacket and tossing it over our legs.

I shuffle closer so I’m under it properly.

“And if it gets chillier, at least we can wrap ourselves in some of this.” She nods towards the blue roll. “Might be a bit hard to explain why we mummified ourselves to whoever comes to rescue us, but I’m willing to risk it.”

I crack a smile. “Hopefully it won’t come to that.”

“Hopefully. It’s a good job our friends will definitely raise the alarm if we’re not back soon. I’d hate to have to resort to cannibalism in the morning when I start to get peckish.”

“It would only take twelve hours for you to resort to cannibalism?”

“Listen, if I don’t get my breakfast, I’m cranky all day. You don’t want to see that,” Nell bats back.

“Well, luckily, I wouldn’t have to, given that you’d have EATEN ME.”

“Hmm, very true. Silver linings and all that.” She snuggles down further, leaning her head on my arm. “Sleepy.”

“Go to sleep then,” I say. “And, hopefully, when you wake up, we’ll have been rescued by someone and I’ll get to live another day.”

“That’d be nice,” Nell says with a touch of delirium, eyes closed.

I think it would be too, if it could always be like this – just the two of us, released from the pressure of everything else.