f i f t e e n
Mikaela has probably reached a point where she knows she shouldn’t ask when I come home at five in the morning, pockets heavy with sand and sopping wet. I’m not hyperventilating so she knows I didn’t try to kill myself. I shower in our bathroom and she fixes me cereal in a plastic serving dish. I don’t ask why she’s awake at five, wandering around in a college sweatshirt and hipster bunny slippers. We sit in the kitchen and watch the sun rise. She asks me if I’m gonna start packing to go to Parnem. I say I’ll start today.
So I do. There’s not much to packing because I haven’t even unpacked our suitcases from college. I take one medium sized suitcase because I’m only gonna be gone a week – if I stay on for longer I guess I’ll just use the washing machine. As I pack I call and tell Aunt Evelyn that I’m coming – I know it’s early but I don’t know what else to do. I call Dr. Lemaiy too. He’s glad I’m going – “It’ll do you good, Evianna” – but he doesn’t understand what seeing her does to me, he doesn’t understand what being in that house does to me, he doesn’t understand why I have to force myself to go.
The traffic from Benna Lui to Parnem isn’t much by train – the ride is around two hours and stops at Caravel on the way. Mikaela offers to drive me but I say no – I’d rather have two hours of train silence than five hours of radio-filled awkwardness. It never used to be awkward with the two of us. I don’t know what’s changed but I don’t have a radar for this stuff so for all I know things could be perfectly normal and maybe I’ve changed so I see them differently. Or maybe things have always been awkward and I’m only just noticing. Whatever it is, it’s different.
The train leaves only at night, around seven. I stay at home the whole day. I consider telling Lola and Dexter that I’m going to Parnem but I don’t. Mikaela boils water for chicken Cup Noodles. We have a weird conversation about rent and how she needs to find a job. I tell her that Aunt Evelyn can easily just pay our rent for us but she refuses – “I don’t wanna fucking live on charity, Eve” – so I guess I have to find a job too. Or maybe Aunt Evelyn can just pay my share of the rent. She’d be more than willing. I don’t really give a fuck about charity or whatever. I mean, I don’t want to live, so I don’t think about how I’m living. Does that make sense?
Fuck making sense. My own thoughts don’t make sense to me anymore. After lunch Mikaela goes out without telling me where so I’m just left to wallow in myself and it’s strange, really, my thoughts are weird superimposed pictures and music and random pieces of conversation – I don’t know what other people’s thoughts are like but mine are weird. Like Freudian weird. I start thinking about this bakery in Parnem called Heritage Bakery and the road it’s on, Marcel Road, but at the same time I started thinking about The Belligerents but it’s sort of the same thing, like my brain is thinking about egg puffs and indie playlists at the same time like it’s no big deal, and at the same time I’m hearing Why here? over and over again, why here? why here? why here? why here? and the egg tastes so good and the puff is perfect and flaky and the drums in Ghost VS are amazing – but while all this is running through my head I’m sitting on our flea market sofa and staring at our TV and I feel like I’m not thinking about anything at all.
I take a bus to the station. 21H. It passes right through our area and goes straight to the station. The fare costs me thirty bucks. I sit in my seat, stick my knees together and look out of the window because that’s what you’re supposed to do on a bus. Sometimes I feel like I’m in some electro-pop music video because of the flashing neon lights – and I can be the depressed protagonist who eventually finds enlightenment in a nightclub. Ha.
The ticket to Parnem costs me four times my bus ticket.
I’m actually pretty good at travelling. The people used to give me anxiety. The guy at the counter for the tickets, the haggling taxi drivers, other passengers, teenagers hooked onto iPods and hassled families – but I just sort of don’t give a fuck anymore. I used to listen to music on public transport but I don’t anymore. It shuts out the world and that’s scary in a place full of people. I read somewhere that we walk past an average of six psychopaths every day. People with plugged ears make good targets. I don’t want to be a sitting duck, someone a psychopath may look at and decide to kidnap. I could save so much trouble if I just didn’t stay constantly plugged in like everyone else around me is.
The seat opposite me is taken by a guy and I can’t decide if he’s white or just a really, really pale local. He has a slightly paedophilic moustache but it’s not that bad. He’s wearing a light pink shirt and a white vest underneath, with jeans and Woodland hiker shoes like Lenny’s art teacher. He has a portfolio sort of thing near his feet so I guess he must be an architect or an artist or something. He’s got plugs in his ears too.
Everyone’s got plugs in their ears. Everyone’s escaping. No one likes the noise. No one likes the real world.
Well, the real world’s gonna fuck everyone over at some point in time. It’ll rudely wrench the plugs out of their ears, the books out of their hands, their heads out of the sand. The ostrich falls prey.
Or maybe it’s just me.
Anyway, I reach Parnem around seven. From there I take the metro to Trinity and then I guess I’ll walk it. On the metro there’s a gaggle of teenage girls in their school uniforms and an equally boisterous gaggle of boys from another school watching them. A few people look at me because non-locals are a less common sight here than in Benna Lui, which is permanently teeming with tourists. Then the furtive glances stop and I melt into the white seat behind me.
Aunt Evelyn’s highrise apartments are located at the edge of Trinity, just north of the Hard Rock Café which is ironically juxtaposed against the Bible Society on the other side of the road. I like the city itself, it’s big and bustling and people have better things to do than look at you. When I reach the gate of the apartments the moustached guard asks me who I am, what my purpose is, as well as my ID. I tell him all three but still Aunt Evelyn is summoned to confirm that I am indeed her niece and not an impostor with nothing better to do than try to break into a fifty-year old spinster’s apartment. She’s wearing a silk robe over a nightgown (yes, at eight pm) and her hair is up in a bun. As soon as I’m in the gate she hugs me and says, “Oh Evianna, it’s been so long. You look tired. Want something to eat?”
I tell her no but she feeds me anyway. Her cook has made a rich dinner of chicken in cashew nut gravy, some salad, and thin chapatis. Silliman, who recognizes me, sits at my feet and I feed him bits of chicken. I slip him a carrot once and he spits it out. What a spoiled bastard.
The chicken is too heavy. I force it down but once I’m in my room it all comes back up. I tell Aunt Evelyn that I’m sleepy and want to crash early. She nods quickly (“Very understandable, of course, of course, let me show you your rooms”) and tells me how to operate the shower I’ve bathed under a million times. I have a warm bath and get into bed in my underwear. My room is plush, like everything else in the house. My bed is a double, with expensive long-weave cotton bedspreads and multitudes of pillows. The desk pushed against one wall is a rich teak wood. There’s some bland watercolour framed above it. On the desk is a typewriter. That used to be mine. It bothers me that Aunt Evelyn never put it away. Today I sit in front of it for a while before going to bed. I stare at the keys and the slightly smudged A key and the almost broken R one. I remember how that used to slip under my fingers but I didn’t care because I was lost somewhere else.
I didn’t care because that feeling ruled everything.
I wonder what I would write about today, right now. I wonder if I could feel like that again but it’s dangerous to try so before I can bring myself to touch the thing again, I get into bed and clutch the bedsheets so I feel like I’m still capable of holding onto something.
*
Dexter will reappear, worry not. And his reappearance will be made with a bang.
