Thyla (6 page)

I didn’t sleep very much that first night, but when I did, I dreamed again one of my odd, unsettling dreams.

I was floating in the sky overlooking a large building in the middle of a wide, green valley guarded by craggy hills.

As I slowly drifted down towards it, I saw that nestled in the valley was a thin snake of buildings coiling around flat, muddy courtyards. The courtyards reminded me of the yard out the front of Cascade Falls, where you had stopped your car, and the trees seemed familiar too. The buildings I knew also, but it was a hazy memory. I felt strangely as though I had seen them on our car journey and yet I knew they did not look like any of the buildings you pointed out to me.

They did not look like they were part of your world.

As I flew farther down, I saw a young girl sitting hunched against the wall of one of the buildings. She was dressed very differently from the girls here at Cascade Falls – in a long pale cotton dress and a cloth cap.

Her head was bowed and her face was hidden by her long hair.

Her hands were grasping at the cloth of her dress, wringing it and then smoothing it out, over and over again.

She sniffed loudly and looked up, her face angled away from me and still obscured by hair. I could see only part of a cheek, slick with tears.

‘Stop it!’ she whispered. ‘Stop crying! You don’t cry!’

She rubbed at her face, roughly, then shook her head so suddenly that my dream self was startled. ‘It’s not true,’ she said. ‘It’s not true. They’re lying to me again. It can’t be true. It’s not true.’

She looked up and off to the left, and I could feel that another presence was there. I tried to turn and see who it was, but my eyes were fixed on the girl.

‘Is it true? What they say? That she’s gone?’ she asked, her voice gritty. Then she shook her head again, her hair hanging in front of her face like a mourning veil.

‘No!’ she growled. ‘No, it’s not. It’s not …’

Sobs took her body captive, and she tried to rock herself free.

When she spoke again, all traces of her girlish voice had gone, and the sound was like a howl. ‘Please,’ she begged the invisible one. ‘I’m all alone now. I have seen what you have done! I know what you can do! Do it to me. I will join you. I will help you! Please! If you don’t take me with you … if I am here alone, I will die. I am strong. I will prove it. I know you think I am weak, but that is only what she wanted you to think. She wanted to protect me, can’t you see? I would have joined you long ago! Please don’t leave me here like this!’

The girl pushed herself to her feet and I could feel the pain searing her palms as the jagged gravel bit and scratched them. She didn’t seem to notice.

She walked quickly towards me, towards the invisible one, and as she did so, the edges of my vision began to blur. Shadows crept in and I began to drift away.

I was floating above her, far away, when I heard her final cry.

‘Please!’

I was up in the sky now. The moon was full and plump and the stars gave me just enough light to see the girl. Another shape moved towards her; fast and taut and terrifying. It was a monster. Even from so far away, I could see that it was a monster, and I opened my mouth and let out a silent scream.

The girl didn’t scream, though. She just stood there and watched as the monster leapt at her, and made her disappear.

I shook and shuddered, and the sky around me bubbled and quaked and then, all of a sudden, there was light, blinding and piercing and horrible, and I couldn’t see anything any more.

And the air was full of my screaming.

When I opened my eyes, a pale face filled my vision.

Of course, I screamed blue murder! And, of course, the other girl screamed too. It would have seemed very comical from the outside. From the inside, it was wholly terrifying!

Then, the other girl stopped screaming and started laughing hysterically.

And then I recognised her face. ‘Rhiannah?’ I said.

She nodded. She was still laughing so hard that tears were streaming down her face. ‘I’m so sorry, love. It’s just –’ She broke off as giggles took over again. Despite myself, I could feel the corners of my mouth begin to push upwards.

‘What?’ I said.

Rhiannah took a deep breath and opened her dark eyes wide. ‘Right, Rin. Focus. Tessa, I’m sorry for scaring the crap out of you. I didn’t mean to. You were just making funny noises and I was worried. Sorry.’

Her lips twitched but she controlled them.

‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I think I was just having a bad dream.’

Rhiannah offered a hand to help me up. ‘Whoa. That’s some grip you’ve got there,’ she said, shaking her hand. ‘I noticed it yesterday. Did you do bodybuilding at your old school?’

I looked down at my hand, flexing it. I tried to ignore the memory of last night’s hallucination; the one where my hands had become paws. My hands were normal. I had thought Rhiannah’s grip strong as well. If
my
strength was abnormal, then hers was equally so.

‘Hey, it’s okay. I’m just teasing,’ said Rhiannah, smiling. ‘I’m pretty fit myself. It’s not a bad thing. You wanna tell me what your nightmare was about?’

I shook my head. Part of me wanted to tell her about the monster and the screaming but another part of me worried she might not understand. She was an ordinary girl. I was sure she did not dream of beasts and howling. My face flushed as I lied, ‘I’m not really sure.’

Rhiannah grinned. ‘Yeah, I have dreams like that all the time. Isn’t it frustrating when you wake up and you can’t remember a single thing? You okay now, roomie?’

‘I’m okay now, roomie,’ I replied. I liked the way the word felt in my mouth. It felt friendly. I couldn’t imagine Charlotte Lord saying ‘roomie’.

Rhiannah grabbed a bunch of her thick, dark hair and shoved it roughly behind her ear. I noticed that she had a small scratch on her forehead just below her hairline and a streak of mud above her nose.

‘Did you hurt yourself on your bushwalk?’ I asked.

‘What?’ Rhiannah’s hand rushed to her forehead. ‘Oh. Yeah, I guess so. Those bushwalks can get pretty rowdy!’

And right then I wanted to ask, ‘How rowdy can they get? Was it rowdy on the day Connolly’s daughter disappeared?’

But maybe it was too soon.

Maybe I should wait for a little while before I asked. Rhiannah seemed very nice, but I should get to know her a little bit better before I decided whether I could trust her.

Rhiannah grinned. Then she put a hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Listen, mate, I’m sorry I wasn’t here to, you know, welcome you to Casa Rhiannah and all.’

‘Casa Rhiannah?’

She rolled her eyes. ‘It’s what my mates Harriet and Sara started calling it, because I lived here alone. Like a weird, crazy old loser hermit! I guess now we can call it Casa Rhiannah Tessa. Has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?’

‘Yes,’ I replied, shyly.

‘So anyway,’ Rhiannah went on, smiling, ‘It’s getting pretty close to breakfast time, so we should think about heading. I’m totally stuffed. I didn’t get in ’til two, and you were dead to the world with no blankets on. You don’t like blankets?’

‘I was too hot.’

‘Yeah, they overheat the crap out of these rooms. I have no idea why. Maybe Princess Charlotte complained about it being too cold once.’

‘You call her that, too?’ I asked. ‘Erin called her that.’

‘
Everybody
calls her that. Charlotte Lord is the biggest princess this side of England. I feel so sorry for you, having to have her as your mentor.’

‘She’s not so bad,’ I said, feeling like I should defend Charlotte. After all, she had been very helpful to me yesterday, showing me where everything was, and where to go, and how to act, and introducing me to people I should know.

‘She’s not so bad because you haven’t got on her bad
side
yet. And, trust me, that’s really easy to do. Charlotte has very … particular ideas about what she likes and doesn’t like. It’s very easy to piss her off.’

‘Piss her off?’

I hadn’t heard that expression before. I mean, I had heard the word ‘piss’ used as another word for urination, but I assumed (and hoped) that Rhiannah
wasn’t
talking about urination. That would be rather odd. And unsanitary.

‘You know, make her angry,’ said Rhiannah.

‘Strange expression,’ I murmured.

‘Yeah, I suppose it is.’ She nodded thoughtfully. ‘Anyway, enough about Her Royal Up-herself-ness. Just take the warning on board, okay? If you want to be all matey mate with her, that’s your choice and I won’t think any less of you, but just, you know, be careful. And I would also advise against telling her anything personal. That girl might only be a princess in most ways, but she is definitely the
queen
of gossip at Cascade Falls. Be a bit wary, okay?’

‘I will,’ I said, nodding.

‘Right! Now we’ve sorted that one out, what is your stance on waffles?’

‘Waffles?’

Another word I didn’t know. I wondered if it had something to do with urination too. I hoped not.

‘Oh, geez! Wow. You don’t know waffles? Seriously? Okay, mate. Here’s the plan: we get up, we go and shower –’

‘Shower?’

I could feel the scars on my back begin to burn and throb. I winced. They’d hurt before, but not like this. The pain was bad, but my anxiety was worse.

I didn’t want to shower.

I didn’t want anybody else to see my scars.

I didn’t want them to think I was
strange
.

My heart started beating very quickly and the palms of my hands felt sticky with sweat. ‘Do we … I mean … the showers …’

‘Oh, they’re really good showers here, don’t worry!’ said Rhiannah. ‘If you’ve been to other boarding schools, with cold water, or water that cuts out after a minute or, you know, no shower curtains or whatever, this is not like that. You get your very own big stall, and those posh nozzles where you can change the water pressure, and they have swanky smelly shampoo and soap and moisturiser in these pump things that stick on the wall, and heated towel racks and everything! It’s heaven!’

‘So, it’s private?’ I asked. I didn’t care about water pressure or pump things or hot towels. All I wanted to know was that nobody else was going to see my scars.

‘Oh, yeah!’ said Rhiannah, smiling. ‘No ripping back the curtains to check you’re washing properly here. I mean, you have a timer so you don’t waste water, but that’s about it. So, plan? Shower time and then waffle time?’

‘I really do want to know what a waffle
is
before I say it is waffle time,’ I said, firmly. I didn’t want to get myself into anything unsavoury.

Rhiannah rolled her eyes. ‘Can’t you just trust me? No? Okay, it’s a breakfast item. And it’s good. That’s all I’m going to tell you. Is that enough?’

I nodded. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Well, thank Mother Earth for that. Shall we go?’

Rhiannah held out a pale hand to me and I took it. I watched as the copper bangle slid down her arm and settled on her wrist. Her eyes followed me. ‘It’s a family thing,’ she said, very casually considering the way she had reacted yesterday. ‘An heirloom. You really like it, don’t you?’

I nodded.

‘That’s a worry,’ she said.

Have you ever had waffles, Connolly?

If you haven’t, and I mean this with the utmost fervour and seriousness, you really
must do it!

Waffles are just the most wondrous thing that was ever invented! They are crunchy and yet soft; sweet and yet savoury; filling and yet oh, so very light and I loved them so much I had four! With ice cream as well! The smell of them hit me long before I reached the dining hall (the
cafeteria
). ‘Oh, they smell wonderful!’ I exclaimed.

‘You can smell them already?’ asked Rhiannah, her eyebrows raised, and I was reminded yet again how things – sights, smells, noises – happen more powerfully for me than for others. I was embarrassed again, but the feeling faded as soon as I took my first bite. I swear to you, Connolly, I had never eaten anything so heavenly. If it wasn’t for the fear that I might get fat, and
weak,
I would have eaten
five
waffles!

As I ate, I looked about the cafeteria at my new schoolmates. I was disconcerted to see that some of them were looking back at me. Some smiled when I caught their eye. Some looked away quickly and whispered to their friends.

‘They’re just interested in you ’cos you’re new,’ said Rhiannah’s friend Harriet. ‘It was the same when
we
started. Don’t worry about it. They’ll get sick of you.’

I nodded mutely. I could feel my heart quickening, and a prickle of sweat on the back of my neck. The cafeteria was just a bit too busy. There were too many people. I was used to quiet.

The hospital was quiet.

And maybe I had liked quiet
before
as well. My aversion to the bustle and clatter seemed to come from deep within me.

I am Tessa. I like quiet.

‘Of course, you know they’re completely bad for you,’ said Rhiannah, pointing at the waffle suspended midway to my mouth. ‘You’ll be as round as a wombat if you eat even one more. And then Princess Charlotte will definitely hate you. Although, to be honest, I actually don’t think she likes you all that much right now. Not that that’s a bad thing.’

‘Why doesn’t she like me?’ I asked, swinging my head around to look for Charlotte’s table.

Sure enough, Charlotte and every single one of her pretty friends were very obviously glowering at me. It was quite a terrifying sight.

‘What did I do wrong?’ I asked, looking back at Rhiannah and her friends.

‘You sat with us instead of her,’ said Harriet, shrugging and looking at me as though I were stupid for not realising this myself.

Harriet was one of Rhiannah’s two best friends. She had dark hair, like Rhiannah’s, but hers had sunny streaks running through the black. Her eyes were lighter than Rhiannah’s – a sort of golden brown. Her features were all quite sharp, but her face was friendly. She was taller than Rhiannah, and very thin and wiry. She looked like she should be a long distance runner. ‘Field sports, actually,’ she’d said, smiling, when I asked. ‘Long jump, javelin, triple jump. You name it. I’m not really all that into shot put. I don’t have the leg strength for it. But, apart from that, if it’s a field sport, it’s my bag.’

‘Your bag?’ I asked, wondering how a sport could also be a bag.

‘My
thing
, you know? I love it!’ She grinned so hard I thought her face would break in two, and I liked her immediately, nearly as much as Rhiannah.

Rhiannah’s other best friend was called Sara. Sara wore thick-framed glasses and wore her black ringlets in pigtail bunches on the sides of her head. Her face was rounder than Harriet’s, and softer, and it wore a permanently perplexed and anxious expression. When she talked, it was at a pace so rapid I sometimes had trouble making out one word from another.

I immediately noticed that both of the girls were wearing copper bangles like Rhiannah’s, but with slightly different patterns on them. I loved those bangles. I wanted one very badly. I wondered if perhaps, should I become very good friends with Rhiannah and the others, they might let me have one too.

But Rhiannah had said that her bangle was a family heirloom.

Perhaps Rhiannah and Harriet and Sara were related. Perhaps they were cousins, and the bangles were some sort of family tradition. The girls did all look quite similar, with their pale skin and dark hair and eyes. I asked Rhiannah.

‘Nope,’ she said. ‘It’s just that all the best people have black hair.’

My hand shot up to my own sandy crop, and Rhiannah laughed and said, ‘Well, apart from you, obviously! Though, you know, a couple of shades lighter and you’d be in Princess Charlotte territory, and we really don’t wanna go there.’

I could feel Princess Charlotte’s eyes stabbing two large holes in the back of my head, like icicle daggers.

‘Is that really it?’ I asked. ‘Is she glaring because I am sitting with you? Because she didn’t seem to mind at all when I asked her.’

Charlotte had just cocked her pretty head to one side and said, ‘Really? Rhiannah? You’d prefer to sit with her?’

‘She’s my roommate,’ I replied. ‘And she promised to teach me about waffles. If you would prefer me to sit with you …’

‘No, no! Of course! You sit with Rhiannah, if that’s what you
really
want,’ Charlotte said, smiling, as usual, with her mouth and not her eyes.

‘Thanks!’ I said, and dashed off to Rhiannah and my waffles.

At the time, it seemed like everything was fine. As I thought back, though, I could hear a tiny hint of scorn in Charlotte’s voice; a tenseness to her smile.

‘She’s not going to act hurt in front of her friends, is she?’ said Rhiannah. ‘That wouldn’t be cool. That would make her look like she cared about you which, obviously, if you are going to hang out with us, she won’t any more.’

‘Why would that be so?’ I asked, feeling quite bewildered.

‘Because Charlotte knows what she likes, and she doesn’t like us. She likes pink, and she likes Sarah Brightman and Vanessa Mae, and she likes maths and science, but she’s not very keen on any of the arty subjects, and she likes her hair in a bun, or in a braid, and she likes tinned peaches but not waffles, and she thinks reading anything other than books for school is a waste of time, and she is allowed to have a television in her room because the people in her common room were getting sick of her only wanting to watch English period dramas, and she doesn’t like us because we’re not perfect, and so if you hang around with us
you
won’t be perfect either, and also, you would have betrayed her by choosing to be with us instead of her and her friends, and so she will probably hate you,’ said Sara.

She said it without taking one single breath, and I felt as if my brain was going to explode from absorbing so many words in so little time.

‘Was your old school really small?’ asked Harriet. ‘I mean, this stuff is “clique 101”: “Don’t mess with the in-crowd or they will mess you back”. It’s the first thing you learn in high school. I’m guessing your old school was small, so you didn’t have cliques?’

‘Yes,’ I said, not trusting myself to elaborate more.

‘Right,’ said Sara, smiling. ‘I was wondering why you were so clueless.’

I turned around and looked at Charlotte again.

She was still staring at me and I felt cold all over.

Part of me wanted to walk straight over to her and say, ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte. I shouldn’t have sat with Harriet and Sara and Rhiannah. I will definitely sit with you from now on. Just please, stop glaring at me like that. It’s scary.’

A bigger part, though, thought of how Charlotte and her friends didn’t smile with their eyes, and how they only talked about boys and makeup and clothes, and how it bored me, and how sitting with Harriet and Sara and Rhiannah and eating waffles was much more fun.

If I
had
sat with Charlotte, I might not have been allowed to eat waffles. And that would have been a tragedy.

I also didn’t really think I
wanted
to be friends with someone who wouldn’t let me be friends with anyone except the people she
told
me I could be friends with.

And I definitely didn’t want to be friends with someone who wanted perfection. I thought of my scars, and the way my instincts sometimes told me to do strange things – to bay and howl. I thought of my lost memories. I thought of the memories I
did
have, about being discovered on a mountain looking like a cave-person. If Charlotte knew all that, I was certain she would not think me perfect.

I looked away from Charlotte’s table back towards Rhiannah and her friends, and I smiled at them. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘I don’t mind if she hates me. As long as I have waffles everything will be okay.’

Rhiannah snorted. ‘You’re hilarious!’ she said. She put a pale hand on my forearm. ‘Seriously, though, mate, you’ll have us as well, okay? You’re my roommate. I’ve got your back.’

‘My back?’ I blurted, feeling my heart quicken and my muscles tense.

‘Yeah, you know. We’ll look out for you,’ said Harriet.

My body melted with relief.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

Rhiannah put squeezed my arm. ‘We’ll protect you from the evil princess,’ she said. ‘We can be pretty tough, when we want to be.’