‘OK, Lon.’ I roll my eyes. I don’t believe a word. And I don’t think that he does either. He’s lying to himself as well as to me, I think. I glare at him. A mouse beside a cat. He lifts his hands from off his knees and puts one on my shoulder and I jolt.
This is a dangerous thing. And not a man.
‘Look … What do I need to do to make you believe that I am a decent human being? Nothing was proven.’ His voice is angry.
‘Catlin said that too. About the proof. But there are things I know that she does not. I see you, Lon Delacroix. I see you, what you are.’ My voice is strange. It doesn’t feel like mine. ‘You should be careful. There are bigger things than you inside the woods. I’ve sensed them and they are hungry.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lon says. ‘I’m pretty big. Little One.’ The chasm of his mouth so red and wide. What big teeth he has, I think. I swallow hard and straighten my spine.
‘Don’t be a prick, Lon.’ He moves closer to me, his arms snaking on my shoulder. Knee. I amn’t scared. I won’t ask him to stop. I amn’t scared. His eyes. I’m looking in his eyes. They aren’t real.
‘Don’t hate me for no reason.’ He sounds so reasoned, with his corpse’s face. There is a greedy thing inside of him. It’s waking. I can feel the heat bounce off me.
‘There are reasons.’ I tilt my face to his. I glare. I’m not afraid.
I’m not afraid of Lon.
Only I am. I focus on his eyes. I put a cold hand up to the side of his face. If I could touch him, maybe I could work out who he is and what that means.
‘Madeline,’ he says. His breath on mine. And there is panic surging through my gut.
Getoutgetoutgetout.
Catlin rounds the corner, looks at us. Staring at each other. Touching. Flushed.
‘Oh my God. You were right about her.’ Her mouth is opening and closing. A fish upon the shore. ‘I couldn’t find you in the flat,’ she says.
‘I came to try to make things easier for you. For us,’ he tells her. ‘I know how much you care about Madeline. I wanted to explain. But she …’ He shrugs helplessly, a victim of his own sexiness, apparently.
I want to vomit. Acid. In his face.
‘Catlin …’ I begin, and I really want to tell her that it’s not what it looks like but that’s exactly what I would say if it were what it looked like and my head starts going in panic circles. It’s happening too fast for me to clear my head, to make it right.
‘You fancy him.’ She runs towards me, and her eyes are wild. ‘How could you?’
‘What?’ I squeak.
‘Don’t deny it. I can see it, written on your face.’ She looks at Lon. ‘I love you.’
‘She’s your sister. I couldn’t push her off. She’s only small.’ He looks at Catlin, all outraged and plausible. ‘No matter what they say, I don’t hurt women.’ He doesn’t glare at me; he doesn’t have to.
‘He’s the one who put his hands on me.’
‘You seemed to like it.’ There’s that smile again, the friendly shark.
‘You need to leave,’ says Catlin. ‘You need to leave right now before I slap you.’
She means me, not him. He is the one whose story she believes. It isn’t fair. Her face is brimming with anger, spilling over with it.
‘Just go, Madelina,’ says Lon. And he must have known that using that would break her. She runs at me, and scratches at my face. I hold my hands in front of my eyes. Her fingers in my hair. She’s screeching, pulling. An owl with claws. She knows just where to hurt.
She is not my sister. She is someone else who’s doing this to me. ‘I love him,’ Catlin shrieks. ‘I hate you and I love him and I hate you.’
This needs to stop. She isn’t making sense. I try to push her off but she wants to hurt me. I close my eyes.
‘Girls, girls,’ says Lon, doing nothing to help. ‘Control yourselves.’
His voice is very smug. But Catlin stops.
‘I didn’t mean to get out of control. I’m sorry, Lon.’ Her voice is humble, so apologetic.
‘It’s OK, love. You do not have to worry. You’re the one I want. My little doe. Be gentle.’
She stumbles to him, his knuckles shift beneath the skin. His hand moves to wipe her face. Adjust the collar on her uniform as though she were a helpless, messy child.
‘Catlin,’ I say, and I can hear the piercing whine of me. She doesn’t even turn. ‘I didn’t – I wouldn’t. Catlin, you know me.’
She moves then, her back against Lon’s chest.
‘I thought I did. But then we came here, and you changed. And now –’ her face crumples – ‘I don’t know who you are any more. You used to be on my side. On our side. And now it’s you and them. And Lon and me.’
That stings more than her nails against my cheek. I look at them, but they have turned away. A door has closed. This is the end of something.
I look back once before I turn the corner. He is holding her to him; like yin to yang they fit beside each other. Her head on his collarbone. His chin on her head. His arms encircle her so tightly. His face is calm. I cannot see her face.
35
Self-Heal
Mam’s angry with me. I can tell, because of the pinch of her face and her tight grip, knuckles white against the steering wheel. When she meets my eye in the rear-view mirror, her eyes have that shuttered feel to them. Like I’m only seeing what she’s holding back.
I didn’t tell her. About what Lon did, putting his hands on me to score points on some imaginary scoreboard he uses to control girls like my sister. I think it broke her. It’s hard enough already, I think, looking at Catlin hunched over, shoulders heaving. She’s sobbing. Properly sobbing. Her face and body curled against the door. As far away from me as she can manage. Everything she had been keeping in is spilling out. All of the anger, sadness. This fight between us opened up a wound, and it’s infected. Something cruel has moved in, taken root.
‘Love, are you OK?’ asks Mam.
‘You don’t care,’ Catlin says. ‘I …’ and then she starts again. Tears clear as crystal, fat as ticks, crawling down her face, around her nose and into her mouth. I pass her a tissue, but she tells me to fuck off, and Mam doesn’t say anything.
The drive home seems to take much longer than usual. I feel so far away from both of them. Like we are reverse getting to know each other, slipping out of bonds that held us tight. Is this what love does to people? Brian, Oona, Lon. We fall in love and then we fall apart.
The mountains in the dusk are dark and spiky, pocked with little hollows. Pools and boggy wetlands in the dips. Not for turf, but ones that suck you in and keep you there like a secret for years.
We went to see a bogman once with school. He looked like shoe leather, beaten in the vague shape of a person. Not unlike Brian’s shrunken little head. I think of Catlin’s warmth leaching out into the earth. Her head misshaping, warping through with time. We’re only small. Easier to hide than other people. You’d hardly have to chop us up at all.
I can’t say anything. I mean, I try. I start to …
‘It wasn’t …’
and
‘I wouldn’t …’
and
‘He’s lying.’
She shuts me down. I am the villain here. Mam looks at me too. I see her eyes in the mirror, all clouded with suspicion. Questioning and different to mine. Dad’s eyes were green, like mine and Catlin’s are. At least they were, before he burned to death. Good people suffer. I don’t know if I’m good though. I’d like to think I am. I’d like to be. But how can you be sure?