Page 94 of Vying Girls
The headlights beam along the road, alighting the metal of both the pole and the useless barriers edging the water. If they’d crashed that way, they might have survived, the water dousing the fire instead of it ravaging them.
I nod at the pole. ‘This is where they crashed.’
She stares at the dented metal, everything it represents. ‘Were you in the car with them?’
‘Yup.’
She looks at me, sympathy racking her features. She reaches out to take my hand.
‘My fucking fault they were driving in the first place,’ I say hollowly.
She gives me a look that says I’m wrong. ‘How old were you?’
‘Eleven.’
I shake my head. I don’t even know where to begin. It was so fucked, just all of it, just soup in my brain whenever I think back.
‘They hadn’t wanted a kid, not even a little bit. They were drug addicts, the both of them. But the highly functioning kind, the kind that only took them at parties. Except the parties were every fucking night. At our house, at our neighbours’. I didn’t really get it back then, but now it’s just… They were swingers, all of them. Mine were the only ones with a kid. With all the drugs and the drinking and the protections they took, they never knew how it happened.’
I take a breath, feeling my mother’s accusing eyes like brands.
‘My mum grew up religious. She was atheist by adulthood, but I don’t think she ever really let that side of her life go. I thinkshe felt a lot of guilt for the lifestyle they led, just fucked it, shot it, drank it away. She used to call me the antichrist because of how miraculous my conception was, how much it fucked everything up for them. I couldn’t have been an accident, not to her. I dunno, maybe she was joking, but I don’t think she was.’ I breathe out a laugh. ‘She was fucking vicious.’
Tilda moves closer, wrapping both hands around the one of mine she holds.
‘Anyway, it wasn’t so bad all the time. They were out most nights and slept it off during the day. I was basically a housecat. I went out for school but that was it. They’d barely let me in the garden. Think they were embarrassed or ashamed or something. Like I was evidence of their fuck up, like they weren’t as fancy-free anymore. The neighbours used to make jokes. About me joining the parties when I was older.’
I hear Tilda gasp, but I don’t take my eyes off the pole, the mottled metal blurring in my vision.
‘Good job they fucking conked before then, hey? The night it happened, it was my dad’s birthday. They’d arranged some massive do with the neighbours over the road, the only thing they’d talked about all week. It was around one in the morning when the pain started.’ I put a hand on the side of my stomach, still able to recall the agony. ‘Didn’t know what it was. Thought maybe periods, you know? I hadn’t started yet. But it only got worse. Like, so much fucking worse. I never once bothered them, not for anything, but I was panicking so fucking bad that night. I rang them a billion time but they never picked up. In the end, I had to go find them.’ I grin, remembering the venom in their eyes as I staggered into the party, clothes and body parts and drugs everywhere. ‘They werepissed.But I was crying and whining on and they finally left and took me back to the house.
‘I think my mum started to get a bit worried when I started screaming. Dunno, maybe the pain was that bad or I was justgetting them to take it seriously. They called an ambulance anyway, but they said it would take around an hour to get there because of how far out we are and the weather. They thought they could get there quicker despite how fucked they were. I didn’t care; I just wanted the pain to stop. So they threw me in the car and throttled it down here. Wasn’t icy on the estate but it was here.’
I toe my shoe into the ground, remembering the sensation of the car slipping as my father steered it.
‘My dad was speeding. My mum kept looking back at me and saying shit in this weird hysterical voice. Like shecared.I was just lying there feeling like I was going to be sick or explode or something. Then they turned along this bit.’ I toss a hand at the road. ‘I don’t know how they were going that fast, but they were, and the car slipped and slammed into the pole and then’—I laugh again, the flames dancing before my eyes—‘the whole thing just fuckinglit up.In seconds, just fuck,flames everywhere. I remember there was silence and then screaming and then just this fuckingroaring.The fire, I think. I don’t even remember it being hot. I just remember passing out and waking up in a hospital with no appendix and no parents. And get this, Tilda.’ I lean in her face, grinning when she flinches.‘No burns.Nothing. Not even a fucking scratch.’ I fling up a hand. ‘How can that be, man? The fire was in the car, it killed them, the car was burnt to a fucking crisp, just completely devoured. But for me,nada.’
Tilda clears her throat. ‘How did you get to the hospital?’
‘That’s just it, how did I? No ambulance was called in the end, barely anyone used to come down this road, especially not at two in the fucking morning.’ I turn to Tilda, grabbing her to me roughly. ‘Do you know how? Because I do.’ I put my mouth to her ear, biting the lobe before whispering, ‘Because I’m the fucking antichrist, baby.’
She disentangles from me. ‘You don’t believe that.’
‘Proof’s in the pudding, don’t you think? Whole life I was their black little miracle. In death too. Kinda poetic if you think about it.’ I grab her hips again. ‘You stick around me, Tilda, and I’ll be your black miracle too.’
‘You’re my miracle, Haz, but there’s nothing black about you. And your parents’ crash wasnotyour fault. Them driving high was. Them neglecting you your whole life was.’
I don’t know what kind of expression I’ve got on my face, but I see Tilda swallow, eyes growing uneasy. I breathe against my anger, those words from her mouth subverting the narrative I’ve carried since birth.
‘Either way my brain’sfucked. All the drugs—she never stopped, you know, when she was pregnant. Think she was hoping to smoke me out. How I didn’t come out with two heads is anyone’s fucking guess. For eleven years, I was the curse in her life. Both of theirs. She didn’t understand why I never fought back, why I was so fuckingquietandamenable.She said I had no feelings, I was a demon. And it’s fucking true, man. I can’t be loved, can’t feel love—’
‘Stop.’Tilda releases a breath, getting right up in my space again. ‘You’re wrong. Oh my god, you are so wrong.’ She cups my cheeks with firm hands. ‘I care for you so much, you have no idea.’
‘Then you’re a fool.’
‘Yeah, but not when it comes to this. Not when it comes to you.’ She shakes her head. ‘I’ve known you less than a year and can give you ten million examples of how you’vecared.The first night we met, you saving me from Ryan, sticking up for me. Letting me live with you when Portia House got too much. Protecting me every chance you get. Giving me the option of fucking safe words!’ She strokes my cheeks, voice gentling. ‘The fact you won’t sleep with me because you’re so scared of meleaving you. Can you really say that’s the actions of someone who doesn’t have feelings?’
The headlights have her rimmed in light like some fucking angel. My fingers still grip her, thumbs finding the skin between her jeans and top.
