Perfectly Preventable Deaths

34 Skullcap

Catlin smiles at me across the table. It’s not a friendly smile. She looks like a predator, or a competitor. I’ve seen that smile before directed at other girls. People who don’t matter to my sister. I am now included in their ranks, and it feels horrible. Any ground I break by listening seems to grow right back within the hour.

Catlin is smiling because she is smug about being allowed to get the bus today. It’s been a week, and Mam is getting tired of giving lifts. Lon won’t be waiting at the stop with coffee. Brian has made him promise. He’s asked him to back off, and apparently Lon told him that he would. And Brian trusts him in the way that all stepdads should totally trust lanky older men who hang around playgrounds chatting up their brand-new teenage daughters.

It’s the kitten thing all over again.

At least Button wants to be my pal, I think. He has not weed on me since the only time he weed on me, and that makes him my favourite person in the house right now. I wish all people were small, fat kittens who drink too much kitten milk and then fall asleep and their little pink mouths loll open and a bit of tongue falls out between their teeny fangs.

‘Meep,’ says Button, looking at his bowl.

‘Shut up, Button, nobody cares about you,’ Catlin says, and I actually gasp. I hope he doesn’t internalise her tone. I was doing some research and it’s important to be sound to your kitten. Formative soundness is key.

I think about glaring at her, like she deserves, but I just say, ‘Time to go,’ and grab my bag. I can tell her about how to love a kitten when she has learned how to not love an idiot. It will bring us closer together and everything will go back to normal and I won’t ever have to tell anyone that I’m a lesbian witch who isn’t using her powers of witchcraft or lesbianing right now because it’s all far too stressful to be dealing with.

‘I was thinking about refusing to go to school,’ she is saying now, ‘but it’s the closest I can be to him.’

‘Makes sense,’ I say.

She’s munching on a bright red apple. She usually has toast. I grab a yogurt and we leave the house. Our feet crunch on the driveway. I’m in boots and she is wearing delicate little pumps.

‘I’m still angry at you, you know,’ she tells me. ‘You’re still a bitch for doing what you did. It’s just – I need someone to talk to. And you’re my closest friend. Apart from Lon.’

Her smile’s still forced, but it feels realer this time. I try to smile back. But Lon is more important than her family. Her blood.

‘OK,’ I tell her. I can’t think of anything to say to that. I don’t want her to only have Lon to lean on. She needs to know we’re here for her as well. I’ve been reading up on how to support people in abusive relationships. Scrolling through the Internet for tips. Mostly it’s just be there, be there, be there.

I walk in silence. Catlin is smoking a cigarette. The orange spark of it fox-bright. A burning thing. I wince. She speaks of Lon.

‘He doesn’t like when people bring it up. The Helen thing. It makes him feel persecuted. He comes across as confident, Madeline, but he can be quite sensitive deep down.’

She takes a long drag. We’re at the bus stop. The smoke is blue-grey and it hurts my eyes. There’s something strange about it. The way it curls. The air is sharp today. I feel the bite of cold and pull my coat a little tighter round.

Layla runs towards us just as the bus pulls up, her jumper inside out. She looks so tired. Everyone is weighted down today. And suddenly, like an unexpected dick pic, there Lon is, spread across the back seat of the bus, reading Bukowski. Prince Charmless. How did they even let him on? It’s highly inappropriate. I glare at the bus driver, who stares blankly at me, as if I’m being unreasonable somehow. I start to say something, but Catlin, lit up with her Christmas-morning smile, pulls my arm. I find a seat, and she walks right down past me, loops her hands around him, snuggles in. I don’t know whether or not to text Mam about it. What can he do? I think. We’re on a bus.

The mountains roll on by, as I sit by myself, eyes out the window, panicking and wondering what to do. I wish there was a bell that you could ring in this situation. For the unsexy sort of forbidden love. But suddenly it’s hard to think about Catlin and Lon because Oona has returned, and is curled up on the seat beside Charley, flicking through something on her phone. I wonder what. I hope it’s a YouTube tutorial on fancying me back.

I feel a sigh welling up inside me, and swallow it down. I have enough on without being visibly lovelorn on the bus.

‘Welcome back, Oona,’ I say.

She smiles at me. I’m glad she’s reappeared, but I wish she’d chosen the seat beside me. We haven’t really spoken since that night. I wonder if she feels that tension too. I open my mouth to say something, but Charley gets there first. Which is probably no bad thing, in fairness.

‘Were you not well?’

‘My mother needed me at home,’ she says.

‘For what?’

‘Family things mostly. We painted the sitting room. It’s blue.’ She gets her phone to show us.

‘Look,’ says Fiachra. ‘Your sister’s letting Lon go under the blouse.’

‘Catlin!’ I say, and I have never sounded more like a middle-aged nun. I am a pleated midi-skirt and a sensible cardigan away from a bossy, lonely future, and everyone can sense it. My face flushes. But also … I am right. Brian and Mam would lock her in the dungeon if they knew. I should tell them. I should. I will. Just not right now. Ringing your mam because you are your sister’s designated sex police is not a good way to impress a girl. I know because I am a girl and it would not impress me.

‘Sorry, Maddy,’ my twin calls, giggling. ‘It’s just that ours is a forbidden love.’

Lon doesn’t even move his head to look at anyone. His eyes are fixed on Catlin, following her every little jolt.

School passes in a fugue.

‘I thought they were supposed to be forbidden,’ Layla says to me at break time. ‘They don’t look even a little bit forbidden.’

‘It isn’t really working out that well,’ I tell her. ‘Catlin doesn’t like rules.’

‘And Lon makes his own. But the rate she’s going, she’ll probably have a family of five before her eighteenth birthday. Brian won’t like that at all. Not that I’m judging.’

She totally is judging. I am too. People always are, and we can’t help it. I don’t like her saying that about Catlin though. I’m kind of perturbed by the idea that everyone assumes they’re at it. I mean, it hasn’t been that long. Enough time to fall in love, I know. But what about falling in trust?

Oona sits with Cathal in double Irish. She looks tired. I hope that she has got a broken heart. I know you probably shouldn’t wish sadness on people that you fall for. But I want her to be free to be with me. To like me back.

Catlin hops the fence at lunchtime – off to Donoghue’s to look for Lon. I have a weird feeling she’s going to end up pregnant out of spite. My fingers twist at loose strands of dark thread on my sleeves, and I think again about throwing Mam a quick message. Nothing alarmist. Just a quick ‘So Catlin’s off looking for her boyfriend the former murder suspect who was by the way on the bus this morning and I didn’t contact you about it because I was worried about not seeming fun to this girl I can’t stop thinking about. I am the sensible twin. Thank you bye.’

But I don’t want to worry her.

Or to get in trouble.

Or be yelled at by Catlin.

I push my hair behind my ears, and plaster on a smile as though I have been paying attention to what was going on around me, instead of having a head-debate. Everything is quiet at the desks we’ve pushed together into a mega-desk so we can eat our sandwiches while staring at each other. I feel like I am auditioning for Strictly Come Friending. Say something, I think. Make it less awkward. Long car journeys. Questions in the back.

‘If you could be any kind of animal, what would you be?’ I ask, thinking of Button. Small, innocent Button who has also managed to annoy Catlin by just existing.

‘What does that have to do with anything?’ snaps Eddie. Layla, Cathal and Fiachra glare as well.

‘Jesus, Madeline.’ Charley rolls her eyes, like I’m the worst.

‘Sorry?’ I offer. It was a little random, I suppose.

Layla touches my arm, lowers her voice.

‘Those kinds of questions don’t go down well here, Madeline.’

‘Um … thanks for telling me?’

‘You’re welcome. Do you have any pictures of Button on your phone?’

OF COURSE I do. It’s fine again – we’re off. Charley has some photos of Button from when he was even littler than he is now, and I have some from when he climbed into a teacup and just sat there for a while, chilling out.

‘He would bring a tear to your eye,’ says Cathal.

‘We only have outdoor cats at ours,’ says Charley. ‘And they can be really mean. Like Catlin.’

‘What?’ I ask. ‘What did she say to you?’ But before I get an answer, a smooth voice rings through the classroom.

‘Madeline?’ I hadn’t heard him creep up behind me. It is Lon. He’s slouching in his battered leather jacket. I square my shoulders. ‘We need to talk. Come with me, little one.’

‘Don’t call me that.’ I feel as if he is trying to lessen me. I am small, but I am big enough to hurt him if he does anything to her that I don’t like.

‘It’s accurate.’ He grins and shrugs, like it is no big deal.

‘Shut up, Lon.’ I rise to my full height. ‘Why are you even in school? Aren’t there, like, rules about this sort of thing?’

‘I play by my own rules,’ he says with a little laugh, but then his voice loops into something deeper, more serious. ‘Look. I wanted to –’ he sighs, like the effort of talking to a girl he doesn’t want to grope is a 200lb dumb-bell – ‘explain some things to you. For Catlin’s sake. She asked me to. So, please?’

I sigh back, like I am doing him a massive, massive favour, which I am, and follow him around the back of the school building. We sit on the lip of an abandoned prefab.

He smiles at me. The chasm of his mouth. His coin eyes cold.

‘I wanted to apologise. If we have gotten off on the wrong foot,’ he offers.

I glare at him. ‘Lon. I don’t care.’

‘It was ages ago,’ he says, ‘and it didn’t happen like they said. I broke her heart and she told loads of lies. Unrequited love can do things to a person’s soul.’

He looks at me. I think of Oona’s face. The moonlit lake.

‘It can,’ I say. ‘But can you see how I would be worried for Catlin? I don’t want to see her hurt.’

‘Listen,’ he says, and I can see the ropey muscles tensing in his neck. His long arms covered with thin black cotton fabric, fingers twining round his ribs like vines of flesh. ‘Listen to me, Madeline. I love your sister. I love her. I will keep her safe. I love her.’ He stares at me, as if he’s willing what he’s saying true. He has moved closer to me, close enough that I’m beginning to feel cornered. I square my shoulders and inhale sharply. I will not be intimidated by someone who regularly wears an ankh.

‘OK, Lon.’ I roll my eyes. I don’t believe a word. And I don’t think that he does either. He’s lying to himself as well as to me, I think. I glare at him. A mouse beside a cat. He lifts his hands from off his knees and puts one on my shoulder and I jolt.

This is a dangerous thing. And not a man.

‘Look … What do I need to do to make you believe that I am a decent human being? Nothing was proven.’ His voice is angry.

‘Catlin said that too. About the proof. But there are things I know that she does not. I see you, Lon Delacroix. I see you, what you are.’ My voice is strange. It doesn’t feel like mine. ‘You should be careful. There are bigger things than you inside the woods. I’ve sensed them and they are hungry.’

‘I don’t know,’ Lon says. ‘I’m pretty big. Little One.’ The chasm of his mouth so red and wide. What big teeth he has, I think. I swallow hard and straighten my spine.

‘Don’t be a prick, Lon.’ He moves closer to me, his arms snaking on my shoulder. Knee. I amn’t scared. I won’t ask him to stop. I amn’t scared. His eyes. I’m looking in his eyes. They aren’t real.

‘Don’t hate me for no reason.’ He sounds so reasoned, with his corpse’s face. There is a greedy thing inside of him. It’s waking. I can feel the heat bounce off me.

‘There are reasons.’ I tilt my face to his. I glare. I’m not afraid.

I’m not afraid of Lon.

Only I am. I focus on his eyes. I put a cold hand up to the side of his face. If I could touch him, maybe I could work out who he is and what that means.

‘Madeline,’ he says. His breath on mine. And there is panic surging through my gut.

Getoutgetoutgetout.

Catlin rounds the corner, looks at us. Staring at each other. Touching. Flushed.

‘Oh my God. You were right about her.’ Her mouth is opening and closing. A fish upon the shore. ‘I couldn’t find you in the flat,’ she says.

‘I came to try to make things easier for you. For us,’ he tells her. ‘I know how much you care about Madeline. I wanted to explain. But she …’ He shrugs helplessly, a victim of his own sexiness, apparently.

I want to vomit. Acid. In his face.

‘Catlin …’ I begin, and I really want to tell her that it’s not what it looks like but that’s exactly what I would say if it were what it looked like and my head starts going in panic circles. It’s happening too fast for me to clear my head, to make it right.

‘You fancy him.’ She runs towards me, and her eyes are wild. ‘How could you?’

‘What?’ I squeak.

‘Don’t deny it. I can see it, written on your face.’ She looks at Lon. ‘I love you.’

‘She’s your sister. I couldn’t push her off. She’s only small.’ He looks at Catlin, all outraged and plausible. ‘No matter what they say, I don’t hurt women.’ He doesn’t glare at me; he doesn’t have to.

‘He’s the one who put his hands on me.’

‘You seemed to like it.’ There’s that smile again, the friendly shark.

‘You need to leave,’ says Catlin. ‘You need to leave right now before I slap you.’

She means me, not him. He is the one whose story she believes. It isn’t fair. Her face is brimming with anger, spilling over with it.

‘Just go, Madelina,’ says Lon. And he must have known that using that would break her. She runs at me, and scratches at my face. I hold my hands in front of my eyes. Her fingers in my hair. She’s screeching, pulling. An owl with claws. She knows just where to hurt.

She is not my sister. She is someone else who’s doing this to me. ‘I love him,’ Catlin shrieks. ‘I hate you and I love him and I hate you.’

This needs to stop. She isn’t making sense. I try to push her off but she wants to hurt me. I close my eyes.

‘Girls, girls,’ says Lon, doing nothing to help. ‘Control yourselves.’

His voice is very smug. But Catlin stops.

‘I didn’t mean to get out of control. I’m sorry, Lon.’ Her voice is humble, so apologetic.

‘It’s OK, love. You do not have to worry. You’re the one I want. My little doe. Be gentle.’

She stumbles to him, his knuckles shift beneath the skin. His hand moves to wipe her face. Adjust the collar on her uniform as though she were a helpless, messy child.

‘Catlin,’ I say, and I can hear the piercing whine of me. She doesn’t even turn. ‘I didn’t – I wouldn’t. Catlin, you know me.’

She moves then, her back against Lon’s chest.

‘I thought I did. But then we came here, and you changed. And now –’ her face crumples – ‘I don’t know who you are any more. You used to be on my side. On our side. And now it’s you and them. And Lon and me.’

That stings more than her nails against my cheek. I look at them, but they have turned away. A door has closed. This is the end of something.

I look back once before I turn the corner. He is holding her to him; like yin to yang they fit beside each other. Her head on his collarbone. His chin on her head. His arms encircle her so tightly. His face is calm. I cannot see her face.