Perfectly Preventable Deaths

11 Alder

Catlin isn’t in her bed when I get up. I’ve slept through my alarm. I’m so late. I throw my horrid polyester on and run downstairs. Catlin and Mam are sipping coffee at the kitchen table, like two women in an ad for espresso. Their hair is sleek, their faces are made up. A shaft of sunlight caresses their beautiful heads. I have a hole in my tights, I realise. Visible leg hair furzing through it.

‘What took you?’ asks Mam. Her tone is off. There’s something forced about it. Over-happy. Catlin’s face is casual. They have been talking about me, I realise. My mouth is open. I need to say something.

‘I didn’t sleep,’ I tell her, and leave it at that. Mam butters me a slice of toast. I stuff it in my mouth, and grab my bag. ‘Maybe I’m coming down with whatever Catlin had.’ My voice comes out more bitchy than I mean.

‘I feel much better,’ Catlin says to me. She’s dressed for school as well. Her uniform looks tailored on her body. Mine has an actual leaf sticking to it. I don’t know where it came from. Mam peels it off and puts it in the bin.

‘The state of you.’ I amn’t in the mood. Her face is softer though. ‘Maybe you aren’t well. We might have to give you some of Mamó’s special tea.’

I snort and shove my lunch into my bag.

On the walk to the bus stop, I ask Catlin what Mam and her were saying.

‘Nothing,’ she tells me, but she has a mask on, so I ask again.

‘Look,’ she says, ‘I think you know. She found it and she’s angry. But we have school, so you can’t get upset right now, OK?’

‘I can’t control when I get upset,’ I tell her. ‘That’s not a thing.’

‘I know,’ she says. ‘But it’s the usual nonsense about making a mess and being weird and do you need to see a counsellor and stuff. We’ve heard it all before.’

‘We have.’ I sigh, and Catlin’s eyes meet mine. The same shape and colour, but very different souls that live behind them. I can see her worry about me. Not the salt stuff – she doesn’t really judge me for that – but the conflict.

I hate the knowledge that a difficult conversation is coming. It’s like a handful of copper coins shoved down my throat. The weight inside my stomach, the tang of something awful coming soon. I swallow hard. I need to change the subject. Happy things, before I start to cry. I tell Catlin about Oona. How pretty and sound she is, and how she swims.

‘She sounds painful,’ Catlin tells me blithely.

‘Well, she’s not,’ I say. ‘I actually spoke to people around her. And they listened!’ It is sad that I say this so triumphantly. But here we are.

My twin glints at this.

‘Progress! I’m proud of you. Anything strange?’

‘Apparently Lon runs a youth club. With trampolines and drink?’ I screw my mouth into a very, very small mouth indeed, trying to communicate how excited I am not about the youth club.

Catlin is checking her phone. All her friends in Cork are fighting now that she is gone. Catlin was the cool glue that stopped everyone getting with each other and/or becoming enemies, apparently. Factions have emerged, and they’re all trying to get her onside. It’s like her Christmas. I watch as her fingers swipe and tap and press. She takes a picture of her outraged face. There is a pause.

‘Drink?’ she asks. My sister is predictable.

‘Drink, Catlin,’ I confirm. ‘Look at you. All gagging for the sauce.’

‘The hot, hot sauce,’ she says. And does a little dance. We have a hot-sauce dance. It is very graceful.

‘We need to join this … What’s it called?’ She looks at me.

‘The youth club.’

‘Urgh,’ she says. ‘It needs a better name. Like, something edgy.’

Oh, Catlin, I think. Please do not be the worst.

‘Yes,’ I tell her, ‘because Mam will love us going to the Doom Doom Hell Orgy Association.’

‘That’s not a very good name. Too many words.’

‘We could call it the Doom Doom Room for short,’ I snap at her.

‘That’s almost good.’ She grins. ‘We definitely have to join though. Unless there are, like, matching hoodies. Because those are terrible.’

Charley won’t like that, I think. It’s weird what a difference a few days make.

‘What have you got against hoodies?’ I ask her. ‘You have, like, four of them.’

‘I like the zippy ones,’ she says, making a zip with her hands, as if I don’t know what a zip can do. ‘But we wouldn’t get to pick the colour. Plus I hate being like everybody else.’

‘You really do,’ I tell her. ‘I like a hoody, me. It makes me feel all warm and safe like a fleecy tortoise. Ballyfrann could do with being cosier.’

‘I hate this stupid frost. Look at these, like, ice-trees. What even are they? WHAT ARE YOU, TREES?’ She gives a tree a kick. It’s pretty rude.

She looks at me. And in that moment I know that we are going to join the youth club. And that I will probably hate it.

I sigh. ‘The trees are fine, Catlin. They’re just being trees. Don’t mind her, noble oak.’ I rub its trunk. We’re almost at the end of the driveway.

‘I know they are,’ she says. ‘We kind of have to join, Maddy. We can’t just languish in the castle. Like ghost brides.’ She tosses her hair. ‘I don’t have the right nightdress to be a ghost bride. You can’t phone that shit in.’

‘You have a point.’ I shove my hands deeper into my pockets. ‘It just seems like so much work. All this, with people.’ I gesture at Layla’s back. ‘Like, look at this. LOOK AT IT.’

Layla turns. ‘What?’

Catlin distracts her with Cork drama. Layla listens politely to tales of people she doesn’t know making each other very unhappy but pretending to each other’s faces that they’re OK. In case they offend anyone.

When Oona gets on the bus, I am sitting beside Catlin, so she sits in front of us, leaning over the back of her chair until the driver growls at her to put on her seat belt. She rolls her eyes and obeys.

Catlin mouths the word painful at me and I mouth the words shut and up back at her. I wonder how she missed how great Oona is, like did she not see her face and hair and hear her voice and words? Oona’s hair is damp, and I see her running her fingers through it, and then wiping them off on her school skirt. It doesn’t really matter what Catlin thinks of her. I don’t like everyone Catlin likes.

A lanky case in point is lurking like a spider at our stop as the bus pulls in. Catlin smiles and nudges past everyone to get to him, like he’s made of concert tickets and chocolate cake. The way they look at each other makes me feel uncomfortable. It’s very hungry or something. And, no more than my morning-time anxiety, surely that kind of thing is private. She doesn’t even notice me filing past her with the rest of them. I sigh, and save her the seat beside me anyway. It’s fine.

The kind of fine that’s pronounced fiiiiiiiii‌iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.

Classes pass without much drama, and when lunchtime comes, Catlin runs out the door to Lon, who is waiting at the school gates for her like an actual paedophile. I am not party to their chats, but they must be good because she comes back looking all flushed and grinny. He’s there again when school lets out, and he gives her a big, long, lingering hug before she gets on the bus. They maintain eye contact as the bus pulls away and it’s oddly sexual and thoroughly off-putting. I sacrifice a seat beside lovely Oona to sit beside Catlin, and she messages Lon all the way home and barely says two words to me. I take out my book, and try to focus on the words thorough a cloud of grumpy. Oona catches my eye between the seats, like, You OK?

I nod and roll my eyes like, she always does this.

And it’s true. I have been ignored at house parties, in parks and once on her friend John’s cousin’s boat while Catlin was off being Catlin. This is partly why I always bring a book and a spare book, but … I don’t know … I had my own friends too and my own life, and there was never anyone at the end of the day who mattered to her more than me, I knew. And I feel like Lon is beginning to matter to her in that strong way, that important-person way. And it’s not anything I can put into words, but there’s a feeling of being left behind. And it’s really stupid, because nothing has happened between them that I can put my finger on. But she’s never had an every day boy before. A boy who was more interesting to talk to than about. And that’s what worries me. Because without her here? I’ll be alone.

But I can’t say any of this because it would be moaning, and I need her on my side for the inevitable conversation about how flawed I am with Mam. And I am flawed. But nature is imperfect. The bus pulls in, and myself, Catlin and Layla get off.

‘Would you like to come up to the castle for a cup of tea or something?’ I ask, surprising myself.

Layla looks at me, with clear, dark eyes. ‘No,’ she says. ‘Sorry, I have plans.’

‘Another time,’ I say.

‘Yeah.’ She grins at me and turns down the pathway to her house. She walks so quickly with her long legs that it seems unnatural. Fiachra and Cathal are still biking in and out, though it must be dangerous with the frost filming the mountain roads. I wouldn’t like it, I think, pressing on.

Catlin is still staring at her phone. I don’t think she even registered the conversation.

‘Catlin?’ I say.

‘Mmm?’ she murmurs back. And, ‘Just a second.’

She types away as we move down the path beside each other but not with each other. I look at a sycamore leaf, desiccated, hanging by a fibre from a tree. It’s hunched like it’s in pain. Like it is hanging. I reach up to the branch and pluck it off.

It’s too weak to resist.