Zelah Green (9 page)

And she’s done it!
shrieks the commentator.
Zelah Green wins the gold medal for toilet touching!

Next thing I know I’m sprawled on the cold bathroom floor retching and gagging and the Doc is trying to help me up without handling me.

‘Good girl, good girl,’ she says. ‘No, don’t do that,’ as she sees me heading towards the sink with a purposeful glint in my eye.

Me, the Doc and my soiled hand go back into the bedroom.

‘Out of ten now?’ she asks.

‘Ten,’ I say, straight away. This is without
doubt the most stressful thing I’ve ever done in my life.

The Doc ferrets around in her bedside drawer and comes up with a squashy pack of organic chewing gum.

‘Want one?’ she says, offering the green tube.

I reach towards it with my left hand. She shakes her head.

‘I want you to take it with the right hand,’ she says.

‘But that’s the – oh, crap,’ I say. Of course she wants me to take it with the contaminated hand.

I take a sliver of wrapped gum from the packet and drop it like a hot potato.

‘Pick it up and unwrap it,’ commands the Doc.

She’s got to be kidding, right?

‘My stress level is now off the scale,’ I say, but I pick up the piece of gum, unwrap it with my dirty right hand and hold the greying strip
up for her inspection. I can’t believe I’m doing all this, but I am.

‘Do you like chewing gum?’ says the Doc.

‘No,’ I say. I think of all the horrid cold hard lumps of masticated gum stuck underneath my desk at school and how I would try not to let the underside of the desk touch my school skirt.

‘That’s a shame,’ she says. ‘Because I want you to put that gum in your mouth and chew it for ten seconds, please.’

What???

I’ve touched the revolting gum with my horrid germ-infested finger and now she wants me to put the whole death-inducing combination inside my nice mint-fresh mouth where it will seep into the sanitised temple that is my body and cause undue havoc and destruction.

The Doc pops a stick of gum on to her own tongue, using her unwashed hand, and chews with her mouth open whilst staring me straight
in the eye. The stick-stick noise of her chewing reminds me of the boys at school.

I fight it, but I feel a giggle coming on.

She winks and carries on.
Stick-stick-stick
.

‘Oh, what the heck,’ I say.

I shove the mint stick in, close my eyes and chew as hard as I can. The Doc counts down from ten seconds to one. I’m sure I can taste the germs.

‘You’re done,’ she says.

I projectile-spit the gum out into her bin and run to the bathroom where I wash my hands thirty-one times on each side and rinse my mouth out until my teeth ache.

When I come out, we go back to the office and sit down. She says, ‘Stress levels, out of ten?’

The strange thing is, I don’t feel all that bad. Shaky, yes, but not as sick as I thought I would be.

‘Six,’ I say. ‘And a half.’

‘Good,’ says the Doc. ‘And remember – nothing bad will happen because of what you just did.’

I nod.

A faint glimmer of hope is trying to push through the big grey fug of fears and rituals.

Just as I’m getting up to leave, there’s a tap on the door.

‘Sorry to interrupt,’ says Josh. ‘There’s a visitor for you, Zelah.’

Before I have a chance to ask who it is, he gestures someone through into the room.

Someone in high-heeled spiky boots, wearing a red leather jacket with sunglasses perched on her highlighted hair and a big soppy grin.

‘Heather!’

‘Got a surprise for you, kiddo,’ she says.

Heather steps aside. Another, smaller person steps into the room and beams at me, a freckle-faced
person with brown plaits wearing a pink sundress and a neat denim jacket.

Fran!

T
he Doc, Josh and Heather do this really obvious thing of winking and gesturing and shuffling out of the office, closing the door behind them.

Fran and I are left facing one another.

I’m grinning so hard that my mouth feels bigger than my face.

‘You’re alive, then,’ I say. Stupid comment but it’s the only thing that comes into my head.

Fran. My best friend, standing in the middle of the office in her pale pink dress and denim jacket. I look at her shiny plaits and snub nose. She’s even cleaner and neater than I
remembered. Her flip-flops match the darker pink flowers on the dress and her toenails are done to perfection in scarlet.

‘Let’s go to my room,’ I say.

We head upstairs. Lib’s door is shut and I can hear the Arctic Monkeys and the whine of a hairdryer.

Sol’s back, sitting on the edge of his bed and muttering into a mobile. He looks up with a glare as we go by and then does a double take as he sees Fran tripping along behind me like a small, glossy pony.

Something in me shrugs, sighs and withers.

I forgot that when Fran is about, I become invisible.

We sit on the bed, not touching of course, but close. She’s bought me a bag of unnatural-looking pink shiny apples.

‘I’m not ill,’ I say. ‘But cheers anyway.’ I run
an apple under the tap, even though I hate their nasty cold hardness.

Fran observes her small feet in their pretty shoes, tipping up the toes towards her body with a critical frown and then releasing them.

I can see her trying to summon up the energy to speak over the crash of Caro’s music. The volume’s up louder than usual. I wonder if Caro has seen Fran come in and is doing this on purpose.

‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘You don’t notice it after a while. Like seagulls in Cornwall.’

Fran looks doubtful. Her family go on holiday to exotic castles in Europe.

‘Doesn’t it give you a headache?’ she says.

I try to explain about the lyrics and how they mean something to a person like Caro. I talk about music being a release and a therapy and an expression of how a person is feeling, but I can see her glazing over and allowing her eyes
to wander around my room, the bare walls, the white floor and the tiny bookcase.

‘So,’ I say, to get her attention back. ‘How come you didn’t reply to any of my texts for nearly two weeks?’

Fran is now fiddling with the pink cancer wristband she’s wearing. I wonder if she put the band on because of my mum. A nasty little voice in my head says,
She probably just likes the colour
.

‘Mum told me not to text you,’ she mumbles.

Her mum?

‘I thought she understood my, erm, problem,’ I say. I still hate using the proper name for it.

‘Yeah, she just thought we should let you get on with the treatment,’ says Fran. She’s shifting on the bed and avoiding my eye.

‘Does my stepmother know where I am?’ I say.

Fran looks even more uncomfortable.

‘Well, erm, the apples are from her, actually,’ she says.

As she says this I’m taking a bite. I spit out the mouthful of pink flesh into a tissue and chuck it in the bin. My stepmother has probably injected each apple with a syringe packed with dirt, just to spite me. Now I come to think of it, the apples do look a bit too perfect.

Through the wall Marilyn Manson is singing low and menacing, something about a long road out of hell.

Just as I’m wondering what on earth to say to my best friend’s admission that she got all my texts and ignored them, or that my stepmother knows where I am and may turn up at any time, the door bursts open and Lib’s untidy figure flies in, green Parka slung over one arm and blonde hair sticking up with new red tips. Behind her hovers Alice, dressed as usual in
baggy jumper and shapeless trousers, despite the sunny weather.

Lib stops dead when she sees I have company.

‘Oh,’ she says. ‘Sorry – me and Alice are going into town and we wondered if you wanted to come?’

I glance at Fran. She’s looking at Lib’s green combats, black sleeveless vest and baseball boots with something bordering upon disgust.

If Lib had asked me to go shopping this time last week, I’d have shuddered in horror and made some excuse to get out of it.

I look at her wide, friendly face and inhale the earthy smell of fags, canvas shoes and soap.

My body wants to leap up, grab a jacket and follow Lib and Alice to the shopping precinct.

My mouth does the polite, sensible thing.

‘Fran’s come a long way to visit,’ I say. ‘So I’d better stay in. But thanks for asking.’

Lib laughs her great guffaw.

‘Princess, your manners are perfect,’ she says. ‘You’ve been well dragged up, I’ll give you that.’

‘My mum was strict about manners,’ I say, surprising myself. Since she died, I haven’t spoken about Mum without being prompted.

Lib starts to shut the door.

‘Your mum sounds all right,’ she says. ‘Better than the binge-drinking waste of space that I grew up with.’

The door clicks behind her.

A few minutes later I see them, arm in arm, walking down the front path outside, doing a silly dance because they’re excited that The Doc has allowed them a day out.

Something inside me flips with pain.

I turn back to Fran.

‘How’s school?’ I say, even though I don’t really care.

‘Yeah, it’s fine, but we’ve got a trip to France coming up and I so don’t want to go,’ says Fran.
‘We’ve got to share a coach with Bradford Boys’ School. Can you imagine?’

I can imagine. I can see it clear as anything: Fran tossing her plaits and ignoring great crowds of lusty, leering, jostling schoolboys as they vie for her attention, burying her pert nose in yet another volume of Shakespeare.

For the first time it occurs to me that Fran might actually get off on all the attention. I correct myself.

She’s my best friend, after all.

She wouldn’t act all devious like that, Fran.

Would she?

T
hings go from bad to worse.

‘When are you getting out of here?’ Fran’s saying.

We’ve been up in my room for over two hours now, struggling to find things to say to one another. We never used to have this problem at school. At school we got told off for whispering in the back of the biology lab. There was always so much to say. Lessons got in the way of our need for constant communication. If we weren’t whispering, we were texting. If we weren’t texting, we were emailing.

Now I’m struggling to find anything in
common. Forest Hill House has got between us and thrown everything into a new light.

‘It must be like so annoying being stuck here with all these weird people,’ says Fran, just as I’m about to make some rubbish comment about the weather.

I flush. If they’re weird, then I must be weird too, because we’re all living together.

I glance out of the window. Lib and Alice appear as two small dots at the end of the road, on their way back to Forest Hill.

‘They might be weird, but they’re just people trying to sort out their issues,’ I say. ‘In the same way as I’m trying to sort out mine.’

‘Well, I hope you don’t mind me saying, but to be honest your habits were getting a bit much,’ says Fran.

I can hardly believe what I’m hearing.

‘I mean – all that stuff about not touching the seat on the bus and taking your own cutlery
everywhere. Everyone in class was talking about it.’

‘I thought . . .’ I begin. Tears are rising up, uninvited. I take a deep breath. ‘I thought you understood.’

‘Not really,’ says Fran. ‘I tried, but it was difficult hanging around the loos all the time waiting for you to wash your hands three million times.’

Oh
, I think.
Now it’s all coming out
.

By this point I’ve got off the bed and am standing by the window.

‘Slight exaggeration,’ I say. ‘I don’t wash anything three million times.’

Fran has stood up too. The air between us crackles, black and unfriendly.

Marilyn Manson is roaring something about life being shit next door.

Couldn’t have put it better myself, Mazza
, I think.

I look at my best friend in her expensive Gap
clothes and with her prudish, hurt expression and I want to scream and rip the dress off her and stamp on it. Except that that would involve bodily contact, of course.

I sink back on to the bed, exhausted. Perhaps she’s right. I am a weirdo. My stepmother’s thrown me out of the house. I can’t touch anything without a tissue being involved. I carry my own knife and fork in my jeans. I jump hundreds of times a day until my feet are swollen and I scrub my face until it’s bleeding.

The session with the Doc fades. I touched the Toilet of Doom and then Fran turned up and it was a different Fran, poking fun and being shallow.

The Doc has got it all wrong. I touched dirt and then this happened. I’ve screwed up – again.

‘I think you’d better go,’ I say to Fran.

Her eyes widen.

‘Me?’ she says. ‘But it’s not me who’s got the
problem. I came all this way to see you!’

‘Fran,’ I say, ‘you could have come from Bongo-Bongo land and I’d still be telling you to go.’

She edges towards the door, tears bubbling up in her eyes.

I swallow hard at this. I’ve hurt her, but not as much as she’s hurt me.

‘You are so going to regret this,’ she says.

‘I’m
so
telling you to get the hell out of my room,’ I shoot back at her.

I watch the last remnants of my old life crumble and die.

Then I go to the sink and scrub at my face until bits of soap and skin mingle with blood and turn pink on the brush.

Heather comes up ten minutes later.

‘Knock knock,’ she says, bouncing inside and giving me some ‘mwah mwah’ air-kisses. She
appraises my shredded face with a knowing nod.

‘Why are you pretending to knock when you’ve just barged in anyway?’ I say, coughing on clouds of Chanel.

I’m morphing into Caro with my new grumpy behaviour.

‘Watch it, kiddo,’ says Heather. ‘I’ve left a fashion editor screaming for my head on a plate so that I could get here.’

Today she’s wearing tight black leather trousers, the red leather jacket, bright red glass dangly earrings and the spike-heeled black boots.