Under Rose-Tainted Skies Read online

  Unfortunately, right now studying is about as likely as skipping to the store.

  Instead, I hack at my keyboard until my restless mind composes a passable tune before I drag my butt off to bed.

  Ilie awake worrying about the party all night, like it’s some crazed serial killer terrorizing our small suburban neighbourhood.

  Anxiety has anchored itself to my stomach and sits like concrete on top of the cheese sandwich I ate twelve hours ago. From my waist down to my knees, everything has been twisted tight. It’s all the pain of getting your period without actually getting your period.

  My mattress is made of bricks, and my sheets keep snaking up around my body. I’m almost certain they’re trying to strangle me.

  At six-thirty, I stop trying to sleep and drag my frustrated bones out of bed. I wrap my duvet around my shoulders and head to the front door. Sometimes, seeing beyond the confines of these four walls is a necessary evil. For me, this means spending a lot of time sitting in the hall watching the world wake up through an open front door.

  The morning smells like cut grass and honeysuckle. I ball up in a cocoon as the rising sun paints the sky various shades of pink, yellow, and purple.

  The clock is just kissing 7.00 when an olive-green Volkswagen camper turns into Triangle Crescent. It crawls along the kerb, pauses for the briefest of seconds in front of each house on the other side of the road.

  My mental camera is quick and candid.

  I only have to look at it for a second, and every tiny detail about the foreign vehicle is embedded in my brain. From the license plate number to the burnt-orange rust eating away at the rear-wheel arch. It cruises around the dead-end bend and back up the road, this time surveying the houses on our side.

  The man driving has a thick brown beard and a mop of dark curly hair. There are tons of stickers covering one of the side windows. Souvenir stickers. The kind that are shaped like famous landmarks. I recognize the Empire State Building and Disney’s princess palace.

  The guy sees me, stops, and rolls down his window. He’s all smiles as I slide back on my butt, ready to retreat and slam the door shut, when someone shouts, ‘Dad!’

  It’s Luke.

  He’s standing by the boxwood bush, body on display, waving both arms in the air like he’s trying to park a plane. I look away, bite my bottom lip as the camper parks next door.

  I didn’t know Luke had a dad. That’s dumb. I mean, obviously I knew Luke had a dad, I just didn’t realize he was still around.

  They collide in the middle of the driveway and wrap each other in a solid embrace. It’s the kind of hug that makes me think I’m witnessing a reunion. I don’t mean to stare, but my no-touch rule is craving attention, and I’m trying to remember what it feels like to hold someone without worrying what kind of disease you could catch.

  I’ve arrived at Ebola. I’m so busy considering the science of spreading that I miss the moment the pair break apart. I don’t have time to snatch my senses and look away before Luke sees me staring.

  ‘Norah,’ he greets me, looking all kinds of sheepish with his chin tucked into his chest. His dad looks at me expectantly, then back at Luke, then back at me again. But instead of offering an introduction, Luke scuttles into his house. His dad follows, but not before throwing a confused glance my way.

  Interesting.

  My mind is a rabbit hole that I fall down repeatedly for the next hour. I wonder why Luke got squirrelly at the idea of introducing his dad to me. I blame myself, being scrunched up in a blanket and sitting in my hallway like it’s the norm. What’s left of my fingernails pays the ultimate price for my feelings of inadequacy.

  Sometime after eight, Luke emerges from his house, twirling car keys around his finger and carrying his school backpack. I turn away, fix my sights on a monarch butterfly that’s flirting with the flowers.

  ‘Hey, Neighbour.’ My head snaps around. Luke is standing by the boxwood, smiling at me, almost a different guy from the one who was here before.

  I summon enough enthusiasm to smile back.

  ‘Hi.’

  ‘Don’t suppose you need a ride to school?’ He shakes his keys at me.

  ‘I’m good. But thank you.’

  ‘Any time.’ There’s a brief pause during which I attempt to braid my fingers. ‘Did you get my invite?’ he asks.

  ‘Yes.’ It takes a huge amount of effort to stop myself from wincing. Or, you know, start weeping and begging him to cancel for the sake of my sanity.

  ‘You’re coming, right?’ He laughs, all nerves. ‘You have to come. Yours will be the only name I know.’ He plucks leaves off the boxwood. I pluck threads from my duvet.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to come.’ Awkwardness bleeds into my tone.

  ‘Ah. You have other plans,’ he concludes with a nod of his head.

  ‘No. It’s not that at all.’ This is not an absurd assumption for him to make, but I raise my voice and respond like it is. Relief flashes across his face, and I lift my chin a little higher. ‘It’s just . . . I still have this cold . . .’ But that’s not enough. A slight case of the sniffles doesn’t stop normal teenagers from having a good time. ‘Then there’s this important French assignment I have to finish . . .’

  ‘I didn’t think they were still teaching French at Cardinal.’

  Double crap. They’re not. Cardinal is the third school in the state to swap French for Chinese. It happened the summer after I left. There was a ceremony. Police Chief Zhang Yong gave a speech about diversity that made Vice Principal Turner ugly-cry. I know all this because someone took her picture, posted it on The Hub, and the thing was circulated for what felt like half a century.

  What a dumb mistake to make. I’m not thinking straight. The space outside seems to be swelling. My head is begging me to kill this conversation, slip back inside, and close the door. Like a toddler tugging on my apron strings, it’s demanding, forcing me to think about everything. It wants me to slink back, seamlessly, into our routine. It’s getting twitchy at the idea of human conversation or, worse, human contact. In complete contrast, the only thing my heart’s wondering right now is: How well do you have to know someone before you can call them a friend?

  ‘It’s this extracurricular after-school thingy,’ I reply. Eventually.

  ‘Ah. Well, in that case, bonne chance.’ He speaks French? It’s boxy, and clunky, and butchered by his American accent, but I’m pretty sure it was French.

  ‘Parlez-vous Français?’

  His eyes narrow. He clears his throat and snorts a nervous laugh. ‘This is kind of awkward.’

  ‘Oh. You don’t speak French?’

  ‘Busted.’ He grimaces and I giggle. Then he does something I’m not expecting and hops over the boxwood.

  No. Don’t come over. Please don’t come over.

  Yes. Come over. Please come over.

  He’s coming over.

  I slide back a little on my butt so I can be more inside without shutting him out. I don’t know. I feel safer this way. I sit up straighter, suddenly wishing I’d slept in pyjama bottoms instead of board shorts. My legs look atrocious, too skinny, too pale, too covered in purple scabs from all the scratching.

  Before Luke gets too close, I tug the duvet from my shoulders and throw it across the parts of my body that I don’t want him to see.

  ‘You caught me,’ he continues, perching on the porch steps. ‘I can’t speak French, but I’ve been there, so it still counts as cultured, right?’

  ‘You’ve been to France?’

  ‘Yeah. A couple of times. You?’

  No. Never. Not once.

  I hate him. I mean, I don’t hate him, but jealousy squirms like a nest of snakes in the pit of my stomach. The fake smile I throw his way makes my cheeks sting.

  I thought for sure I’d reached my inadequacy limit when he didn’t introduce me to his dad. I was wrong. Feeling intimidated is nothing new to me, but this overwhelming urge to fudge my skill set just so I can impress him is a
ll new. It makes me feel cold, uncomfortable, like I’m two-feet tall standing in front of a skyscraper. I’m not going to lie. Lying just trips me up, but I can’t say no either.

  ‘I’m going to study architecture over there.’ That was the plan. That had been the plan since middle school. Since Mom bought me plastic bricks one Christmas and Gran helped me build a castle with them.

  ‘Wow. Impressive.’ His eyes widen; he leans back, looks at me like I just invented time travel. And for the briefest second I feel substantial, more than medical terms and mental health. Made of blood and bone, instead of just head-brain-mind. Then I remember that France is a world away and I can’t even step beyond my front door.

  I swallow back a lump of sorrow. ‘What about you? What do you want to do after you graduate?’

  ‘Hmm.’ He looks at his dad’s camper and contemplates. ‘I’m still undecided. As long as it doesn’t involve travel.’

  ‘Really? Why?’ Maybe that’s too personal a question, but I’m having trouble understanding why anybody who can travel wouldn’t want to.

  He hesitates. ‘My mom’s a flight attendant. We used to take a lot of trips. I guess years of jumping on and off planes has me craving something solid.’

  ‘What does your dad do?’

  He glances at the camper again, grimaces, and I wonder what it is he sees beyond the ageing paint job and souvenir stickers. What is it he sees in his memories that makes his face crumple in painful contemplation?

  ‘He disappears,’ Luke mumbles. He startles at the sound of his own voice, the depth of his honesty, the revelation in his response. Something. The only thing I’m certain of is he’s wishing he hadn’t said it.

  ‘Luke?’ his dad calls from the front door. ‘Your mom says, isn’t there somewhere you’re supposed to be?’

  ‘Right!’ Luke leaps up, relieved, I think, that he has an excuse to escape further scrutiny. ‘I gotta get to school,’ he tells me, already sprinting back towards his truck. ‘But you’ll give the party some more thought, right?’

  I nod. He can’t see me, but it doesn’t matter. The only thing he’s focused on now is getting the hell out of here. If Luke knew me better, he’d realize that it doesn’t matter how far or how fast he runs away from his comment; he said it, and my brain needs to know more like the body needs blood.

  Friday happens, despite my spending all of Thursday wishing for a Sleeping Beauty–style reprieve, for the world to fall into unconsciousness and wake up on Monday with zero memory of Luke’s party or why it didn’t happen.

  That would be magical.

  Alas, magic is for stories and shampoo that doesn’t sting when it gets in your eyes. Mom calls just before breakfast, and for the first time since records began, I let the machine pick it up. My voice doesn’t feel very steady, and there’s a numbness lingering on my lips that I’m almost certain will warp my words. I don’t want to slow down her recovery any more than I already have with unnecessary stress.

  I remember once, when the panic attacks started happening more often, I asked her how she felt about the whole thing. She whispered, ‘Helpless.’ Told me it was like watching her kid drown inside a transparent box that she couldn’t break into. I cried that day, hated myself.

  Besides, she’s said all she can say and my brain obviously isn’t willing to believe it. I have no choice but to handle this one on my own.

  The machine chimes three times before the sound of her voice fills the house. It makes me smile. ‘Hey, baby. Just calling to check in. See how you’re holding up. Hoping you’re still in bed. I hate it when you don’t pick up the phone. Call me back, okay?’

  Three more chimes and the machine goes dead.

  And then . . .

  One second passes . . .

  In a thoroughly predictable fashion . . .

  Two seconds . . .

  The message tone of my cell squawks from inside my pocket. It’s Mom, saying the exact same thing, only this time by text. I knew she would. Texting works. I litter my reply with half-truths and smiling emojis so she can carry on recuperating.

  Meanwhile, in real life, calm is trying its best to stay above the surface while I mope around the house, eyeing the trash can in the kitchen like it’s a giant spider commandeering that corner of the room. The invite is still in there, so naturally the trash can has become enemy number one.

  It stalks me incessantly. See, anxiety doesn’t just stop. You can have nice moments, minutes where it shrinks, but it doesn’t leave. It lurks in the background like a shadow, like that important assignment you have to do but keep putting off or the dull ache that follows a three-day migraine. The best you can hope for is to contain it, make it as small as possible so it stops being intrusive. Am I coping? Yes, but it’s taking a monumental amount of effort to keep the dynamite inside my stomach from exploding.

  The party isn’t until tonight, 7.30, the invite said, but I decide to take action early.

  It takes me less than ten minutes to turn my room into a bunker.

  I close my curtains, use stuffed toys and two towers of six books, all of them 332 pages thick, to conceal any cracks. I grab a glass of water, then another – you’ve got to have a backup – and set them both on my nightstand.

  I don’t need snacks; eating is out of the question since my stomach is already too tight to fit food in. I put a new paper bag on my dresser, just in case, and break out my spare pair of noise-cancelling headphones. Standing back, I admire the space I’ve somehow managed to make smaller.

  I. Am. Crazy. I have to laugh at myself.

  It’s times like this when I’m glad no one knows the things I do to make myself feel safe.

  I promise myself that I’m not going to hide in my room until it gets dark. Instead, I slip into the study, hit play on the stereo, and listen to Marie Miraz talk irregular French verbs.

  ‘Do you understand?’ Marie asks in the same condescending tone she’s been using since lesson one.

  ‘J’ai compris,’ I tell her. She rambles on, instructs me to follow, but movement next door has caught my attention. Luke’s parents.

  His mom is on the doorstep in her nightgown. His dad, standing just outside, leans in and kisses her hard on the mouth. It looks as if he’s leaving.

  He is leaving, grinning from ear-to-ear as he trots off down the driveway. But she, Luke’s mom, in complete contrast, is swiping what look like tears of anguish off her cheeks.

  I shouldn’t be staring.

  I wish I could offer her a tissue.

  I need to stop staring.

  Right. I dash to the stereo, put Marie on pause, and flee the study.

  For the following hours I ferment on the couch and try to submerge myself in talk shows. I’m cringing at the sight of jilted spouses beating up their toothless exes when I hear an engine growl outside.

  Ignore it.

  The car pulls up next door, and I find myself second-guessing the party’s start time. It’s just before four. They wouldn’t start now . . . would they?

  Ignore it.

  But what if something is happening that I need to know about?

  Ignore it.

  Of course I can’t ignore it, because there is a certain amount of safety in knowing everything there is to know about a situation. I mean, you wouldn’t throw yourself out of a plane before making sure your pack contained a parachute, would you? I only need to hide from the party itself; the planning of it is fair game.

  On bended knees, I make my way over to the window. A truck covered in dust with the words Clean me and a cartoon penis sketched on the side is parked in the road. Luke skips out of his house, greets the guy driving with a high five. It’s not enough. The driver, a casual blond mop of muscle and chiselled cheeks, pulls him in for a hug. They slap each other on the back, hard, and for a second I wonder if I might have missed one or both of them choking.

  I kneel on the floor, peep up from beneath the porch windowsill, and watch as the two carry pieces of antique furniture out of Luke’s
house and over to the garage.

  ‘What are they doing?’ I ask the air.

  It clicks when Luke’s mom appears at the door lugging a big glass vase decorated with gold flowers. Blond Guy hurries over, grabs it from her, and pretends to drop it. Poor Luke’s mom clutches her chest; a look of horror flashes across her face before she realizes he’s teasing.

  They’re trying to avoid collateral damage from the party; locking all the valuables away in the garage so they don’t get damaged. I don’t imagine regurgitated beer is easy to get out of vintage upholstery, and I don’t imagine they’ll be able to replace that vase at the Shop ’n’ Save either. That’s pretty smart. This bodes well for me; at the very least, Luke is a forward thinker.

  The two guys laugh and talk a lot. And they keep finding opportunities to punch each other. I see bear cubs play-fighting.

  At 5.37 they crash in the front yard, lie on the ground, and soak up the late-afternoon rays. Luke pulls on a pair of aviators, and my heart sighs.

  The animated conversation they’re having dies when Luke’s mom walks out of the house dragging a small suitcase behind her. The weeping woman from this morning is nowhere in sight. This woman smiles as if she were walking the stage at a Miss America pageant. She’s wearing a crisp black flight attendant’s uniform and a coat of shimmering pink lipstick. She makes me think of Hollywood in the fifties. Blond Guy whistles, and Luke promptly socks him in the arm. She ruffles Luke’s hair and gives him a kiss on the cheek. I think I see her mouth the word Behave before climbing into a silver SUV. His mom is not only going to be gone for this party, she’s going to be thirty thousand feet in the air. Noted.

  A little after six, a beat-up Nissan chugs into view. The guy driving is a toothpick with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and a pair of too-big horn-rimmed glasses perched on his nose. I know him. At least, I recognize his face from my Hub feed. I want to say his name is Simon, and a few weeks back he was photographed at a football game wearing a Cardinal Cocks jersey and kissing a redhead. It’s possible we said hi while passing each other in the school hall. But that was all so long ago, I can’t be certain.