Zelah Green (6 page)

‘Come in,’ she says, smoothing down her orange dress and fixing me with her bright, assessing smile.

The room is painted in careful tones of grey and beige. There is a wooden desk by the window and a tall metal filing cabinet up against the wall.

The Doc is not sitting behind the desk but in
front of it in a black chair with a big circular back. She has slipped off her roman sandals and is rubbing one foot against the other on the rough grey carpet.

Dirt Alert
.

This bothers me. All that crap she must be picking up on the soles of her feet.

She sees my look and puts her shoes back on again, sits up straight.

‘Take a seat,’ she says, gesturing towards a smaller version of her black chair.

I produce a sheet of A4 and lay it over the seat of the chair.

I see her noting all this as I sink on to the crackle of paper. She doesn’t write it down, but you can see her brain computing it, storing the file away to be clicked upon and reopened later.

‘OK,’ she says. ‘First session is about talking. I’m not going to make you do anything. We’re just going to plan out your treatment.’

I twiddle with the frizzy ends of my hair. It feels like a matted scouring brush. I like the Doc, and all that, but I still don’t really know what I’m doing in this place.

My eye alights upon a small dark smudge of something on the pale wall ahead. There are tissues in my pocket. I itch to get them out. I grit my teeth and sit on my hands.

The Doc is watching me with her head tipped to one side.

‘If it makes you feel better, go and wipe it off,’ she says.

I get up, go over to the wall, wipe off the offending smudge and wrap the dirty tissues in a clean one.

The Doc waits until I’m settled back on to my sheet of paper and then leans forward in her chair so that I can see all the tiny crinkles around her eyes.

‘Zelah,’ she says. ‘Do you ever wish that you
could be free of your rituals?’

I consider this for a moment but it’s like she’s asking whether aliens are likely to land in a shopping centre and kit themselves out in TopShop. It’s not something I’ve ever really thought about in any great detail. I mean – my rituals are just part of my life. They’ll be there forever. Won’t they?

‘Not necessarily,’ says The Doc.

I’ve said the last part out loud. ‘If you want,’ she says, ‘we can work on ways together to get rid of them.’

I feel that great whooshing sense of panic again, like the floorboards have been pulled up under my feet, the ceiling is about to splinter into dust and plaster and I’m going to be sucked up through the open roof into a great, dark, hostile sky.

‘Maybe I don’t want to get rid of them,’ I say. My voice has gone hoarse and my breath comes
out in funny little jerks. I fold my arms tight across my chest in an effort to stop shaking.

I want to go and jump, thousands and thousands of good jumps, until I feel better. My body is itching to run to the stairs.

The Doc is still smiling. A flicker of anger passes through me. Why is she always smiling? Doesn’t anything ever rile her? Like the fact that I’m shitting myself about being in therapy, for starters?

‘I didn’t ask to come here,’ I manage, through tight lips. ‘There’s nothing wrong with me,’ I add. ‘Until I came here I coped with everything fine.’

The Doc is still nodding, smiling.

‘Perhaps we’ll draw this session to a close,’ she says. ‘I can see you’ve had enough.’

I’m standing up now.

‘You’re right there,’ I say. It comes out as a bitter, hissing spit of anger. ‘I’ve had enough of
this place already. You and those screwed-up kids.’

I fling open the door until it bangs against the wall and leaves another black mark, but I’m past caring. For all I know, the Doc might have put the first smudge there on purpose. Testing me. Finding out how bad my ‘little problem’ really was. The only problem I really have is being stuck in this place. I have to get out.

I make a plan to contact Heather and ask her to come and get me.

I storm out of the office and run up the tiny flight of stairs to my attic room.

Then I lie face down on a towel on my bed and howl.

*

I must have fallen asleep because I wake up in a pile of warm dribble with a mouthful of wet cotton.

Someone is saying my name in a low voice.

‘Mum?’ I say, still half asleep.

I struggle into a sitting position. My head feels clogged and heavy, as if I’ve been asleep for hours.

At first I can’t see anyone in the room.

She’s sitting over by the door, her back up against it.

Caro.

‘O
CD, you can snore for England,’ she says. Her sleeves are pulled down over her skinny wrists and her black eyeliner is more pronounced than ever.

‘It’s you,’ I say. Stupid. Of course it’s her. It couldn’t really be anyone else, not with that foul mouth, blonde hair and grumpy expression.

Caro gets up.

She sits on the edge of my bed and looks down at her narrow fingers with their diamond-studded black nails and then into my hot, plump, red-cheeked face.

I’m wary of her, remembering what I saw
earlier. I need to wash my hands and face, but I don’t want to do my rituals in front of this girl.

‘So, OCD,’ she says, ‘why didn’t you tell the Doc what you saw me doing?’

I shrug.

‘Not my business,’ I say. ‘All I want to do is get out of this place.’

The girl laughs, a husky sound that turns into a smoker’s cough.

‘Yeah, right,’ she says. ‘Everyone says that. Nobody thinks that they’ve got anything wrong at all. Blah blah blah.’

I draw myself up until I am sitting, straight, rigid.

‘I’m quite happy,’ I say. ‘I don’t need to be here.’

Caro raises her dark eyebrows at me, amused.

‘You’ve got serious issues, man,’ she says.

That’s rich, coming from a girl whose arms look like pink Shredded Wheat
.

As she’s being so blunt with me, I decide to be blunt back.

‘Why were you screaming on the night I arrived?’ I say.

Caro becomes very interested in picking out bits of dirt from behind her fingernails.
Dirt Alert
. I shift away from her, trying to track where it ends up.

‘Josh took away my sketchbook,’ she says. ‘They’re always encouraging me to express myself, but then they don’t like what I draw. Can’t win.’

‘Can I see your sketches?’ I say, surprising myself.

She fiddles with the frayed edges of her khaki top.

‘Erm, maybe later,’ she says. ‘It’s kind of personal.’

‘OK,’ I say. My tears have dried to a crispy fug on my cheeks.

‘I designed these,’ says Caro, holding out her fingernails for me to inspect.

We exchange miniscule smiles. Well, mine’s a smile. Caro’s is more like a cheek-twitch, as if she’s shrugging off a persistent moth.

She stands up to leave.

‘Can I ask a favour?’ I say.

‘Well, I suppose I owe you one for not telling the Doc about me,’ she says. ‘Shoot.’

‘Could you keep the Marilyn Manson down a bit?’

Caro turns to me with a glower.

‘Can’t do that,’ she says. ‘Manson is my number one therapy.’

‘Sounds like a mess to me,’ I say.

‘Naah,’ says Caro.

She jumps up and heads for the door. She stops in the doorway and without turning round says, ‘His lyrics are all about people who don’t fit in.’

Two days later and there’s still no word from Fran.

There’s a new face at the supper table.

A boy is sitting opposite me, shovelling up spaghetti and gulping it down without lifting his head.

Josh is leaning back in his chair with a lazy smile on his features, sipping beer from a bottle. He always looks as if he’s either just got out of bed or is longing to get back into it. I wonder if there’s ever an hour in the day when his eyes open to their full capacity and he walks with purpose. I’ve only ever seen him slope about in his sandals, yawning and bestowing his kindly smile upon us.

The Doc is eating with her elbows propped up on the table and her gold bangles slithering down her brown arm. She has her beady eyes fixed upon the boy.

‘Sol,’ she says. ‘This is Zelah. Say hello.’

Lib, sitting to my right, sniggers at this and becomes the victim of one of the Doc’s frowns.

‘Sorry,’ she says. ‘It’s just, well, you know.’

I concentrate on winding strings of pasta round my fork. I wish that Caro was here but she’s still confined to her room.

Sol lifts his head and gives me a brief glance and a nod. His eyes are unsmiling, dark brown with huge pupils. His head is shaved to a black shadow and his skin is about fifteen shades darker than my own pasty variety.

The Doc is refilling glasses with wine, beer and juice.

‘Sol doesn’t always feel like talking,’ she says. ‘But that’s fine.’

‘And Lib more than makes up for it,’ says Alice, who is huddled over a small portion of food with her thin wings of hair dipping on to the table.

I’m still looking at Sol. He has the most beautiful face I’ve ever seen. I can’t imagine now how I thought that Josh was so good-looking. Next to Sol he’s just an old bearded guy in silly shorts.

‘Omigod,’ says Lib. ‘I think our Princess has got a crush.’

I flush and become very interested in my empty plate.

‘Don’t tease,’ says the Doc. She passes a small pot of yoghurt to Alice. Alice scrapes her chair back and glides out of the kitchen.

She slips the pot into the swing-bin on the way out.

Lib rolls her eyes and shakes her head.

Sol works his way through a bowl of chocolate ice cream without once looking up.

Josh yawns and runs his hands through his floppy brown hair.

‘Do you want this on your own plate?’ the
Doc asks me, dipping an ice-cream scoop into hot water and plunging it into the tub.

I nod.

My eyes have filled up with tears.

I’m stuck here with all these weirdos but I just want to go home.

If only I knew where ‘home’ actually was.

I check my phone about a hundred times, but there’s still no message from Fran or Dad. I put it down on the drawers by my bed and walk over to the door. Then I walk back and check it again. I lie on the bed. I sit up and check it again. I switch it off and on just in case the battery’s gone dead. I take the little orange card out of the back and snap it back in again, slide the phone cover back on.

Nothing.

I even go into voicemail just to check that I’ve set it up right.

My own pre-Forest-Hill-House voice chirps back at me.

‘Hi, this is Zelah. Can’t get to you at the moment as I’m probably out having A Life somewhere, but leave me a message and I might call you back.’

The message was recorded before Dad disappeared. He gave me the phone last birthday. Silver, tiny, with one of those display screens so you can see who’s calling.

Fran’s definitely got the number. She used to text me all the time, even when we were sitting next to each other at school. She’d text under the desk, her thumb moving demon-fast, her innocent face concentrating on what the teacher was saying.

I look at the phone lying quiet and dark by my bed.

‘Fran, where are you?’ I whisper.

The silence is huge.

I’m almost glad when Caro puts on her Marilyn Manson and the walls start to vibrate.

My rituals go on for ages that night.

They’ve not been that bad for a long time.

I figure that if I double the number of face and hand scrubs, Fran might text me.

I wrap a tissue round the taps and turn on the hot water, wait till it heats up to scalding.

I plunge my right hand under it and wash it sixty-two times, soaping and rinsing over and over. The pain makes me gasp and swear, but Caro’s music does a good job of drowning that out.

I sniff my red-raw hand. Clean.

I put my left hand under the tap and wash it sixty-two times.

I check the fingernails for any last trace of dirt. Clean.

I stare at my puffy cheeks in the mirror.

‘If I can scrub my face one hundred times in less than five minutes, Fran will ring,’ I say.

I fill the sink and find my nailbrush. I rub the bristles into the soap until it looks as if it is coated in white cream.

I wait until the minute hand on my clock hits twelve.

I scrub my right cheek fifty times with my right hand.

Then I do my left cheek fifty times with my left hand.

I splosh the water up over my face until all the soap has gone.

Five minutes and three seconds. Damn.

Fran won’t ring now.

I rinse the soap scum out of the sink and leave the hot tap running.

There’s only one thing to do.

I unwrap another bar of soap.

*

It takes me ages to get comfortable in bed. My face and hands are so raw that I can’t rest them on the sheet for more than a few seconds.

I end up lying on my back with my arms straight down beside my body and my hands placed palm upwards. From above I must look as if I’m lying in state like a carved marble soldier on a tomb in a big cathedral. All I need is a small dog lying at my feet and a suit of armour on my noble, war-ravaged body.

I erase the dog from this picture.

Dogs carry a lot of germs.

I’m woken by the sound of tapping on my bedroom door.

‘Are you asleep, Zelah?’ says the Doc. Fat chance. She says this in a loud theatrical whisper accompanied by the rustling of skirts, the jangling of bracelets and the continual creak of the floorboard she’s standing on.

‘Not any more,’ I say. I reach for my bedside lamp and glance at my mobile. Still nothing.

‘Sorry,’ says the Doc. ‘I just wanted to remind you that you’re booked in for another therapy session after breakfast tomorrow.’

I’m wide awake now.

‘Just a very small step in the right direction,’ she says. ‘We’re going to pick one thing you feel compelled to do and we’re going to apply some logic.’

Her tall frame moves in shadow back towards the light in the hallway outside.

‘Night,’ she says.

I lie awake for three hours with my palms and face throbbing.