Chapter 21: Chapter 20

The room was messy and dusty as always.

The desk would have been handsome without all that chaos and the sticky rings of brandy stains. But it didn’t matter.

He kept his eyes lowered.

By now, Rigel knew the grain of the floorboards by heart.

‘Look at him. He’s a disaster.’

It had always been like this. Two adults in the room speaking about him as if he wasn’t there.

Maybe that’s just how you speak about problems. As if they aren’t there.

‘Look at him,’ the doctor said again to the woman. His voice reverberated with a hint of pity. This time, Rigel hated him with every fibre of his body.

He hated him for his sympathy. He didn’t want it.

He hated him because he made him feel even more wrong.

He hated him because he didn’t want to hate himself more than he already did.

But most of all, he hated him because he was right.

The disaster wasn’t in his dirty fingernails. It wasn’t behind his eyelids, that sometimes he wanted to tear away. It wasn’t in the blood on his hands.

The disaster was within him. It had taken such deep root that it was incurable.

‘You don’t have to accept it, Mrs Stoker. But the boy is clearly showing the early symptoms. His incapacity to relate to others is just one of the signs. And as for the rest…’

Rigel stopped listening, because it was the ‘rest’ that hurt him the most.

Why was he like this? Why wasn’t he like the others? These weren’t questions for a child, but he couldn’t help but ask them.

Maybe he would have been able to ask his parents. But they weren’t there.

And Rigel knew why.

Because no one likes disasters.

Disasters are inconvenient, useless and burdensome.

It’s easier to get rid of broken toys than keep them.

Who would ever want someone like him?

‘Nica?’

I blinked in surprise.

‘How have you translated number five?’

I searched through my translations, trying to concentrate.

‘ “He said goodbye”,’ I read from my notebook. ‘ “He said goodbye before leaving.” ’

‘See!’ Billie said triumphantly.

Next to her, Miki stopped chewing gum and looked at her sceptically from under her hood.

‘And who told you otherwise?’

‘You got it wrong!’ Billie accused her, pointing at her notebook. ‘Look!’

Miki stared stonily at the page.

‘It says “good buy”. Not “goodbye”.’

Billie scratched her head with the end of her pencil, doubtful.

‘Oh,’ she said, after some thought. ‘I thought…Your handwriting’s atrocious! Look at this, is that meant to be an e?’

Miki closed her eyes and Billie beamed at her.

‘Can I copy your other answers?’

‘No.’

I watched them squabbling, letting myself get lost in my thoughts again.

We had got together for a study session, but for some reason I couldn’t concentrate. My mind floated away at the slightest distraction.

I knew, really, that the distraction had eyes as dark as night and an impossible personality.

Rigel’s words were stuck in my head, and showed no sign of leaving.

Suddenly, the door to the porch opened and Billie’s grandma, covered in flour, made a grand entrance.

‘Wilhelmina!’ she boomed, making her granddaughter jump. ‘Did you forward that message about Saint Bartholomew that I sent you on your phone?’

Billie hid her face, trying not to show her exasperation.

‘No, Grandma…’

‘What are you waiting for?’

I didn’t understand what they were talking about, but when she saw my confused expression, Billie started to explain.

‘Grandma’s still convinced that chain messages bring you the saints’ protection…’

Billie jumped as her grandma, chest heaving, commanded, ‘Do it!’ She brandished the rolling pin at Miki. ‘Miki, you too! I’ve just sent it to you!’

‘Oh, come on, Grandma,’ Billie complained. ‘How many times have I told you that they don’t work?’

‘Baloney! They protect you!’

Billie looked up at the ceiling, then gave in and picked up her phone.

‘All right…Can we have a snack then though?’

Her grandma’s scowl melted into a smile.

‘By all means!’ She assumed an almost martial pose, slapping the rolling pin into her palm.

Billie, meanwhile, started texting fervently.

‘Okay, I’ve sent it to a few people…Oh, Nica, I’ll send it to you, too! That way we’ll all be safe and sound!’

Her grandma’s gaze whipped over to me and I winced, my shoulders hunching up to my ears.

‘To me?’

‘Yeah, why not? You’ve got to forward it to fifteen contacts,’ she explained and I swallowed, still in her grandma’s firing line.

Fifteen contacts? I didn’t even have fifteen contacts!

‘Done!’ Billie announced, and mine and Miki’s phones both vibrated. Her grandma looked at us proudly, her apron fluttering in the breeze.

‘I’ll go make you a snack,’ she said, turning back inside. Then she seemed to have second thoughts. ‘By the way, did you hear back from them?’

Billie glanced up, her shoulders slumped. ‘The call dropped again,’ she mumbled, and I realised that she was speaking about her parents. ‘But I think I heard a camel. They’re still in the Gobi desert.’

Her grandma nodded, and looked at her softly before heading back inside.

Silence fell over us like dust.

‘Any news?’

The question surprised me. Maybe because it had been Miki’s ever-indifferent voice which was asking it.

‘No.’

Billie didn’t look up. She was doodling listlessly on the corner of a page.

‘They postponed again. They’re not coming back at the end of the month any more.’

Suddenly, the image I had of Billie became nuanced. Her back was curved and her curls tumbled down her back like a trailing plant. The light that was always shining in her eyes had become but a glimmer trapped in her dulled gaze.

‘But…Dad told me that they’d take me to a wonderful photography exhibition. He promised. And a promise is a promise…right?’

She looked up at me.

‘Right,’ I said clearly. Billie tried to smile, but it seemed to be a huge effort. She blinked as Miki shoved her notebook under her nose. She glanced at her, then muttered, ‘Didn’t you want to copy the others?’

Billie looked at her for a moment, and slowly smiled.

—

Later on, Billie tried to contact her parents again. The call dropped a few times, but in the end, just as she was losing hope, someone picked up. Her face lit up with an incomparable joy when she heard her dad’s voice down the line.

Unfortunately, the call was interrupted, but she wasn’t disheartened as I had feared. She flopped backwards onto the bed, ecstatic, fantasising about all the exotic wonders her parents had told her about.

‘Such amazing places…’ she murmured, eyes closed. ‘One day I’ll go too! To watch the sunset from the tent, to see the dunes, the palm trees…together…to photograph the world…’

Her voice faded away into a whisper, and then into just a movement of her lips, and finally into nothing.

Just like that, Billie fell asleep, in the middle of the afternoon, her phone still in her hands and hope behind her eyes, lost in a cloud of curls.

I slid the phone from her hands and placed it on the bedside table, watching her sleep.

‘They seem like good people,’ I noted, speaking about her parents.

She had put them on loudspeaker, and they had said hello to us enthusiastically. I could see where Billie got her bubbliness from.

‘They are.’

Miki wasn’t looking at me. Her eyes were planted on her friend’s sleeping face.

Her gaze was as impenetrable as ever, but seemed to hold a tinge of melancholy.

‘She misses them more than she lets on. She’s only brave enough to admit it at night.’

‘At night?’

‘When she calls me,’ she murmured. ‘She dreams that they come back…Then she wakes up and they’re not there. She knows she overreacts sometimes. She knows it’s for work, that they’re, well…She’d never tell them, but she misses them. They’ve been away for a long time.’

Miki is really so sweet, I remembered Billie saying. So sensitive. Up until that point, I hadn’t been able to see it. But I pictured her, in the dead of night, after a day barricaded behind her poker face, falling asleep with her phone beside her, waiting for the moment when it would light up and she would become the only witness to the instances when Billie didn’t have the strength to smile.

Miki…was her family.

‘She’ll never be alone.’ I met Miki’s eyes and smiled sweetly. ‘She’s got you.’

Miki watched as I tucked Billie in.

‘I’m going to go get a glass of water,’ I announced, getting to my feet and straightening my rumpled top before tiptoeing out of the room. I hoped I wouldn’t inconvenience anyone by getting a glass from the kitchen, but then I remembered that Billie’s grandma had gone out to play bridge with friends.

Before heading down the stairs, I turned back and reopened the door to Billie’s bedroom.

‘Miki, sorry, did you also want a glass of –’

I didn’t finish the sentence.

The words withered in my mouth.

My eyes opened wide. A cascade of black hair intermingled with Billie’s curls. Miki was leaning over her, her lips on hers.

Time stopped.

I froze.

I stared as Miki slowly straightened up. Her eyes were so full of shock that they looked wild. Under the shadow of her hood, her lips were parted but her jaw was tense.

‘I…’ I stammered, trying to find the words. I opened my mouth several times, panting, but I couldn’t finish the sentence. Miki crashed towards me and pushed me out of the room.

She closed the door behind her and her eyes glinted threateningly like embers in the light of the landing. It seemed like they pierced me.

‘You,’ she hissed through gritted teeth, jabbing a finger in my chest. Her voice caught in her throat in a way I’d never heard before. ‘You…saw nothing.’

I was speechless. I closed my mouth and looked at the door behind her, the door to the room where Billie was sleeping. I looked back at her, standing stiffly in front of me.

Then, without batting an eyelid, I shrugged and said calmly, ‘Okay.’

Miki’s eyelid twitched.

‘…What?’

‘Okay,’ I repeated simply.

She stared at me, torn between anger and shock.

‘What do you mean, “okay”?’

‘I didn’t see a thing.’

‘Yes, you did see!’

‘See what?’

‘You know what!’

‘Nope.’

‘Don’t…’ she burst out, about to explode. She was still pointing at me and her face was red. ‘You…you didn’t…you…’

She gritted her teeth, balled her fists and let out an angry cry.

I waited in silence as Miki burned with a frustration that made her hands shake. For an interminable moment, the only sound was our breathing.

I really would pretend I hadn’t seen anything, I thought. If that was what she wanted, that was what I would do.

Miki was refusing to look at me, glowering with the expression of someone who would do anything to erase that moment. But, for the first time since I had met her, Miki didn’t leave. She had just snarled at me, and even though I knew it was only because she was having some sort of internal struggle, she was still there.

I couldn’t ignore her. Not like she wanted me to. Even though it might make her hate me, I asked, ‘Miki…do you like Billie?’ My voice was delicate and clear as water.

It was a stupid question, but I asked it all the same, because I wanted her to realise how straightforward this was.

Miki didn’t answer. Bitterness clamped her lips shut and knotted her throat.

‘There’s nothing wrong with it…’ I said softly, very softly, as if my vocal cords were shaping glass. I looked at her with clear eyes. ‘It’s a beautiful thing…’

‘You don’t understand,’ she spat out.

Frustration dripped from her eyes like wax, reaching her balled fists like a silent prayer.

I fell silent again, because maybe I really didn’t understand.

But Miki was there, and I had never wanted so much to catch a glimpse of her eyes from under her hood. I wanted them to show me some emotion – something I’d never before had the courage to ask for.

‘Maybe not,’ I murmured, lowering my gaze. ‘But if you…if you want to tell me…if you let me understand…you might find it’s simpler than you think…you might find that there’s nothing bad, inexplicable or wrong about it. Some things it’s better to talk about, some things make us feel better when someone else hears them.’

Miki pursed her lips. I looked at her with sincere eyes, my palms open towards her, my hands covered in Band-Aids.

‘If you want to explain, I promise I’ll try to understand. I’ll listen, in silence, without interrupting you, for as long as you want. If you try…I promise I’ll make it as easy as breathing, or drinking a glass of water.’

I looked at her earnestly, and her bright eyes flickered.

‘Miki…’ I whispered softly. ‘Do you fancy a glass of water?’

—

Miki and I sat on the ground near the French doors in the kitchen for a couple of hours. Even though there were chairs a few metres away, which would definitely have been more comfortable than the floor, we sat there with our glasses of water, in silence, watching the dappled light through the trees outside.

She didn’t say much. No soliloquy burst forth from her lips. She kept it all bottled up inside of her. We just sat next to each other quietly, keeping each other company.

‘It’s you…’ I said simply. ‘That white rose every Garden Day…that’s you.’

She said nothing.

After a while, I asked, ‘Why don’t you tell her?’

‘She doesn’t feel the same way.’

Miki stared at the ceiling.

‘You can’t know that…’

‘I don’t need to,’ she said sourly. ‘She doesn’t like…girls.’

I looked down. My relaxed, outstretched legs contrasted with hers, which were huddled to her chest.

Miki broodingly stubbed out yet another cigarette in the ashtray.

‘I can’t imagine what she’d think of me.’

‘She loves you. Nothing will change that.’

But she shook her head. She stared at the wall in front of her with despairing, hopeless eyes.

‘You don’t get it. That’s the whole point. I’m her best friend,’ she murmured, as if it was a condemnation that made her feel better and worse at the same time. ‘Our relationship…it’s important. It’s the most stable thing in both of our lives, it’s something we can both rely on. And if I told her the truth…it would disrupt all that. It would be impossible to go back to how we were before. I can’t bear to lose that. To lose her. I can’t…do without her.’

It was as if Miki was watching Billie from the outer wall of a fortress. A little door through which all she could glimpse was barbed wire. Whereas I saw a meadow of flowers wherever I looked.

I looked down at my hands. Silence fell between us, slow and unrelenting.

‘There’s a type of caterpillar,’ I said after a while. ‘A caterpillar which is different from all the others. Sometimes you see it on acanthus plants. You know…caterpillars know that they have to transform. There comes a moment when they spin their cocoons and turn into butterflies. Right? It’s simple. But this caterpillar…well, it doesn’t realise. It doesn’t know that it has to become a butterfly. If it doesn’t feel like forming a chrysalis, if it doesn’t…well…if it doesn’t believe enough…there’s no transformation. It doesn’t spin a cocoon. It stays a caterpillar forever.’

I stared down at my ruined hands.

‘Maybe it’s true that Billie doesn’t like girls. But…maybe she might like you. Sometimes, there are people who touch us so deeply that they stay within us, despite their…outer shell. They’re important, and can’t be replaced by anyone.’ I gazed calmly at the wall. ‘Maybe Billie hasn’t thought about you like that…maybe she never will, but…you’re the only person she wants by her side forever. And if you don’t tell her…if you don’t even try, Miki…you won’t ever find out if she feels the same way. And then nothing will change. And then Billie will never really see you. And then you’ll stay a caterpillar…forever.’

My words snuffed out like a candle flame.

I turned my head, and found Miki gazing at me, exposed and intent like I’d never seen her before. It was as if I’d somehow managed to breach her outer walls.

She looked away and tried to hide a little sniffle, but I heard it quite clearly.

‘You’re the last person,’ she muttered, ‘I ever thought I would tell.’

It didn’t sound like an insult. It sounded like she had just lost a small battle with herself. I felt like she had accepted me.

‘You’ve both always been alike in that way,’ she mumbled.

‘In what way?’

‘You and her…the way you see the world. You…you remind me of her sometimes.’

Miki shook her head with a little sigh. Then she lowered her hood and her face came into the light.

Her eyes were smudged with make-up and her black hair framed her angular face. I couldn’t help but notice the harmony of her high cheekbones and full lips.

Beneath her cargo pants and oversized hoodies, there was an unexpected beauty.

She noticed I was watching her, and threw me a wary look.

‘What?’

I smiled.

‘You’re beautiful, Miki.’

Her eyes opened wide. She quickly looked away, closed her mouth and hunched her shoulders. She wrapped her arms around her knees, fed up, but I thought I saw her cheeks flush an unusual pink for her complexion.

‘You and your…caterpillars,’ she muttered, surly and embarrassed. I couldn’t help but smile.

I laughed gently, my head leaning back against the wall and my eyes closed. I was sure I glimpsed Miki’s face next to me relax into a serene expression.

‘Hey…What’s up?’

We turned around. Billie was in the doorway, rubbing her eyes with her hand.

‘What are you doing there?’ she asked sleepily.

Miki looked down. She seemed almost on the verge of saying something, but stayed silent. I needed nothing else.

‘Don’t worry,’ I smiled at Billie. ‘We’re just having a glass of water together.’

—

I spent the rest of the day at Billie’s.

Nothing seemed to have changed. Even though I now knew Miki’s secret, it didn’t stop her rolling her eyes when Billie started teasing her. I was sure that she liked their way of being together. That was why she couldn’t do without her.

I had got a few messages while we were studying.

‘Who is it?’ Billie asked curiously, straining to look.

It was Lionel.

When I had been told to send the chain message to fifteen contacts, I had struggled a little.

I had sent it to the few people I had saved in my contacts: Anna, Norman, Miki and Billie again, the customer service number for my phone network, but then I came up short. I still needed to send it to ten more people, and my heart fell at the thought of disappointing Billie’s grandma. And so I had sent it to Lionel ten times in a row.

He was surprised, to say the least, by my religious devotion.

‘So?’ Billie asked, curious as a cat. ‘Who’s messaging you so often? Come on, give us a look!’

‘Oh, no one new…’ I replied. ‘It’s just…Lionel.’

‘Lionel? Oh, from lab…God! Do you chat?’

‘Well…yeah, every so often.’

‘Every so…how often?’

‘I…I don’t know,’ I replied. She was now watching me with fervent interest in her eyes. ‘Often, I’d say.’

Billie put her hand to her mouth emphatically and I jumped.

‘He’s flirting with you! He is, isn’t he? God, it’s obvious! Miki, did you hear?’ Billie nudged her sharply. ‘And you? Do you like him, Nica?’

I blinked at her candidly.

‘Well, yeah.’

Billie’s jaw dropped and she brought her palms to her cheeks. Before she could trill anything, however, Miki shoved her pencil between us.

‘She meant do you like like him,’ she clarified, pointing at my phone. ‘If you’re interested in this guy.’

I looked at her questioningly. When I finally understood, my eyes opened wide, my cheeks burned, and with a gulp I hurried to shake my head.

‘Oh, no, no, no!’ I corrected myself hurriedly. ‘No, I…I don’t like Lionel like that! We’re just friends!’

Billie looked at me wordlessly, her hands still planted to the side of her face.

‘…Just friends?’

‘Just friends.’

‘And does he know that?’

‘Huh? What do you mean?’

‘Oh, come on, let me see!’

She snatched my phone. With a genuine curiosity, she started to read my messages.

‘Wow,’ she exclaimed. ‘You speak almost every day! He messages you a lot…and here…here he’s messaged with some stupid excuse…ooh, and here…’

‘I’m sorry,’ Miki suddenly interrupted her. ‘But all this guy does is talk about himself.’

I was surprised to see that she had also leant over to read through the messages with a raised eyebrow. She gave me a sceptical, enquiring look.

‘Does he at least ask you how you’re doing?’

The question confused me.

‘Well, if I bump into him at school…’

‘Does he ask?’ she interrupted.

‘No…but I’m fine,’ I replied, not understanding what the issue was. Miki gave me a dark look before lowering her gaze back to my phone, arms folded across her chest.

‘He’s very proud of his achievements,’ Billie said slowly, scrolling through the messages, and I understood from her tone that something in our conversation hadn’t been what she was expecting.

‘Yeah,’ I agreed. ‘He is…’

‘Just to be clear,’ Miki burst out, once and for all, ‘do you talk about anything other than his tennis tournaments?’

I looked at them both, one of them suspicious, the other still holding my phone.

In truth, I couldn’t remember a single occasion when we hadn’t ended up chatting about something to do with him. I rifled through all my conversations with Lionel, our walks and the popsicles we’d shared, but I couldn’t find an exception.

Miki shook her head. ‘You’re too naïve. Can’t you see?’

Billie gave me my phone back with a hesitant, almost apologetic smile.

‘We don’t want to stick our noses in…I hope it doesn’t come across like that. But it’s only right that he asks how you are, don’t you think? Even though we don’t see each other every day, even I ask you that, because I care about the answer. Miki’s right on this one.’

‘He’s using you to flatter his ego,’ Miki declared, scowling. ‘And you’re so kind you don’t even notice.’ She hissed an insult as Billie elbowed her playfully.

‘Excuse her, Nica, she gets awfully grouchy in moments like these. It’s just her way of being worried about someone.’

Miki glared at her. Those words echoed around my head. I looked silently at Miki, brimming with emotion. Miki was worried about me?

‘Are we studying or not?’ she grumbled, lowering her head over her book again. Billie smiled.

‘Were there lots of sourpusses like her at your institute?’

Miki glowered and tried to give her a kick, while Billie playfully tried to hug her. I couldn’t remember anyone having been worried about me before.

Only one name came to mind. A dim candle that had been there ever since she went away.

Adeline.

Adeline, and her hands braiding my hair and cleaning my grazed knees. Adeline, who had always been a little bit older than me and the other children…

I smiled in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere.

‘No, no one who defended me quite so vehemently.’

I realised that I might not have expressed myself clearly when I saw the unspoken question on Billie’s face. I knew that she’d been wanting to ask me about the institute for a long time, but had always worried it wasn’t the right time.

‘What was it like?’

I hesitated. Billie seemed to instantly regret having asked such a direct question, as if it might offend me.

‘If…if you want to talk about it,’ she said, giving me a chance to avoid the subject.

She looked a little embarrassed, and I realised that she didn’t want to upset me.

‘It was…fine,’ I said reassuringly. ‘I was there for a long time.’

‘Really?’

I found myself nodding. One question after another, I began to paint a picture of the big gates, the overgrown garden, the occasional visits and the life I had lived there, alongside children coming and children going.

I hid the greyer details, burying them like dust under the carpet. In the end, all that was left was a rough and slightly shabby existence.

‘And you’d been there for twelve years? Before…Anna?’ Billie asked. Miki was listening attentively but silently.

I nodded again.

‘I was five when I arrived.’

‘Was your brother there for a long time as well?’ Billie pursed her lips. ‘Sorry. I know you don’t like him being called that. I said it automatically…Rigel, I mean.’

‘Yes,’ I murmured, lowering my gaze. ‘Rigel…was there before me. He never knew his parents. It was the matron who named him.’

Billie looked at me in surprise, as everyone did when they found that out. Even Miki, who up until that moment had had nothing to do with the conversation, was now looking at me with a note of curiosity.

‘Seriously?’ Billie was stunned. ‘He was there before you? You must know him really well.’

No. I didn’t know him.

But I knew everything about him.

It was a paradox.

Rigel was rooted in me, like a scent that lingers all your life.

‘It must have been hard for both of you,’ Billie murmured. ‘Your matron must have been very sad to see you go.’

A light breeze blew through my hair. I looked up at Billie. She was smiling gently.

‘She must have been really sad to say goodbye, no? After all, she watched you grow up, she’d known you practically your whole lives!’

I looked her in the eyes. They seemed bigger than normal. I could just about feel the breeze on my bare arms.

‘No,’ was all I said. ‘Mrs Fridge…hadn’t known us for all that time.’

Billie blinked, confused.

‘Sorry…didn’t you say she named Rigel when he arrived?’

‘No,’ I replied mechanically. I felt again the urge to scratch, but my fingernails were still. ‘That was the matron before her.’

Billie was amazed. Miki, next to her, stared at me. She was watching me carefully. I could feel her eyes piercing the distance between us, boring into my skin, imprinting onto my flesh.

‘The matron before her?’ I heard Billie saying. The breeze became a biting wind.

‘There were two matrons?’

I dug my fingernails into my thighs.

‘You never told us!’

Billie leant forward, her eyes large. I felt the pain from my fingernails sinking into my skin. Miki’s eyes were like two monstrous, insatiable bullets, devouring me bit by bit.

‘So,’ I heard again, my blood pounding in my ears. ‘You weren’t raised by Mrs…Fridge. That was her name, right? It was the woman before her?’

All my senses roared. My skin was tense and shaking. I felt cold and clammy. Thorns were stuck in my vocal cords. All I could do was nod, mechanically, like a lead soldier.

‘And how old were you when Mrs Fridge arrived?’

‘Twelve.’ I heard the answer as if it hadn’t been me who voiced it.

It was as if I wasn’t there, everything was amplified, all I could feel was my body on the brink of explosion. Then came the sweat, the anxiety, the rasping, the tearing at my heart, the terror that took my breath away. I withdrew, withheld, and swallowed, begging that someone would make everything stop, but Miki’s eyes were staring at me and I was crushed by dread. The thorns in my throat grew sharper, I was suffocating, my pupils dilated. Everything was pulsating and again, I heard that voice clawing monstrously at my soul.

‘You know what will happen if you tell anyone about this?’

Billie leant forward again, yet another question on her lips, but at just that moment, Miki accidentally knocked over her glass of juice.

It spilt all over the table, and Billie held back a yelp and leapt out the way. She grabbed the biology textbook before it got wet and scolded Miki for her clumsiness.

The conversation was over.

It was only then, when I was no longer at the mercy of their attention, that I lifted my hands and saw the marks my fingernails had left on the fabric of my pants.

—

That night, the house was quiet. It was just me and the glass in my hands.

‘Nica?’

Anna’s hair was a bit dishevelled. She held her bathrobe closed around her.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, coming into the kitchen.

‘I was thirsty.’

She gave me a long look, and I lowered my face.

She came up to me, slowly and silently. I tried not to look up at her, because I was scared of what she might see in my eyes. There was no light in my gaze, just the darkness I would never be able to get rid of.

‘It’s not the first time you’ve been awake in the middle of the night,’ she said softly. ‘Sometimes, when I go to the bathroom in the nighttime, I see a light on in the landing, coming from under your door. I sometimes hear you going downstairs…and fall back to sleep before you come back up.’

She hesitated, looking at me tenderly. ‘Nica…are you having trouble sleeping?’

There was kindness in her voice, but I couldn’t let it touch me.

I felt sore where her eyes fell.

I felt wounds that wouldn’t stop bleeding.

I felt nightmares where others had dreams, dark rooms and the smell of leather.

I felt that I had to be good.

I looked up to meet her eyes, then gave her an artificial smile.

‘It’s all okay, Anna. Sometimes I can’t sleep. There’s nothing to worry about.’

Good children don’t cry.

Good children don’t talk.

Good children hide their bruises and only lie when they’re told to.

I was no longer a child, but some part of me still spoke in the same, childish voice.

Anna stroked my hair. ‘You’re sure?’

I clung to her affection so desperately I shook. All it took was that sweetness for me to fall to pieces. I nodded, trying to smile more convincingly, and she started making chamomile tea. I declined when she offered me some. Eventually, I decided to say goodnight and return upstairs.

I felt the weight of my body with every step. I got to my room and reached for the door handle when a voice made me freeze.

‘I know why you can’t sleep.’

My empty gaze stayed fixed on the door. I didn’t have the strength to confront him, not at that moment.

I turned around, with dull eyes and the resigned calmness of someone who knows their demons and no longer tries to hide them.

‘You’re the only one who doesn’t know.’

Rigel was watching me from the doorway to his room, cloaked in darkness. He looked down.

‘You’re wrong.’

‘No,’ I whispered harshly.

‘Yes…’

‘She loved you!’

My throat burned with the effort of raising my voice. I realised my fists were clenched, and my hair was falling over my face.

The reaction was so unexpected, I wondered how it could have come from a gentle soul like mine. From me, who lived by tenderness, who caved in to fear in a frightening manner.

It was because of those memories. It was because of Her. It was because of the cracks with which she had marked my childhood, and the childhood of many others. The childhood that she gave to Rigel, the son of the stars, at the expense of everyone else.

‘You’ve never understood.’

At that moment, I wanted to hate how bound I felt to him. How he infected my thoughts. That feeling of sweet agony. I wanted to hate how I let him see me as no one else did, so vulnerable and covered in scratches that, for other people, I covered in Band-Aids.

He would never understand.

I went into my room and closed the door, as if I hoped to shut out all my pain.

As if I hoped to be able to shut it out again and again.

Hiding it, concealing it. Covering it with a smile.

I didn’t yet know that the following day…all my shields would shatter for good.