3) And it’s not like I was doing all the same things as before. Especially after my cleaning box was confiscated. I’d never touched street lights before. I’d never counted to six before. And think how dirty street lights are – I mean, dogs pee on them like literally every day. I was still touching them. Maybe this was a sign of progress? Maybe I was doing my very own exposures?
Maybe I should insert a joke here about Denial being a river in Egypt?
4) If it was back, I’d have to up my medication again. I’d failed. I’d always be on it. I’d never know who I was.
5) If it was back than all the therapy hadn’t worked. If it was back it meant it would never truly go away. If it was back I would always be like this. I would always have to fight, every day, to stop myself slipping down the slope to Crazysville. Just the thought of that was exhausting. If it wasn’t back, then I was cured. I was normal again. I was just like everybody else. Everybody else, with their easy lives and normal problems and lucky lucky lucky lucky lucky.
6) If it was back, my friends might find out. They might not want to be my friends any more. Like what happened with Jane.
“Evie? Evie? You all right?”
BAD THOUGHT
If I just run my finger around the whole rim of Jane’s mirror, tonight will go well.
“Evie?” Jane asked again.
“Huh?” I jolted back from my own reflection and spotted her in the corner.
“You all right, Evie?” Jane asked a second time. “You’ve been stroking my mirror.”
Amber catapulted into the reflection alongside me, slinging an arm around my neck.
“It’s because she looks so bloody gorgeous, don’t you, Evie?” she said.
I looked at Amber and me – we couldn’t be more different. She was so long and wild-haired, with clashing green eyeshadow smudged around her eyes. I was so short and curvy (well, used to be curvy), my blonde hair sleek as always, no matter how much I washed it with volumizing shampoo. Which was a lot at the moment.
“I…I’m fine, Jane, I’ve almost finished with it,” I said.
“Good,” Lottie butted in. Her face was more eyeliner than anything else. “I need to apply my all-important eighth coat of mascara.”
I didn’t know how to finish touching the mirror with them all looking so I reluctantly stepped away, letting Lottie have her turn.
BAD THOUGHT
You’ve ruined it, tonight is ruined now. Everything is going to go wrong.
No it won’t, I told myself. I’ll finish it when no one’s looking.
BAD THOUGHT
No, you have to do it now. Now now now now NOW.
I tip-tapped on my arm with my fingernails, letting them dance a nervous jig of scratches across my skin. “Have you decided what to wear yet?” I asked Jane, who’d been fretting all afternoon.
Jane shook her head mournfully. “No. I look fat in everything I try on.”
“You’re not fat, you idiot. Saying that is being really mean to actually-fat people.”
Jane had upheld her invite to all get ready for Battle of the Bands at her house. In a surprising turn of events, Amber and Lottie had agreed to come and we’d all eaten takeaway pizza together – I hid my share in my handbag. I mean, have you seen the grubbiness of people who make takeaway pizzas?
It was weird being back in Jane’s bedroom. I used to spend most days here, getting lost in her butterfly wall stickers, picking my way through her collection of musical instruments. Now, her butterflies had been replaced with angry black posters of hairy bands I’d never heard of. An electric guitar sat where her clarinet used to be. “Joel’s teaching me,” she’d said. The air hung thick with hairspray and perfume and not enough spare oxygen for everyone. I was desperate to open the window but it had been so cold walking here it’d hurt my lungs.
At least cold air is clean. And crisp. As air should be.
“I think you should wear the red top,” I offered.
“Won’t it clash with my new hair?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s a point.” Jane’s new do was blood red, which really didn’t match her blonde eyebrows and English Rose colouring. It really was a blood red too. I didn’t have the heart to tell her it looked like her head was bleeding. I probably would’ve told her in the past, but it would seem mean now…now that we weren’t really mates any more.
“Black? I could wear my black lacy top, I guess.”
“Yeah, that one’s really nice,” I said.
“I won’t really stand out for Joel in black though, will I?”
Amber rolled her eyes as she dowsed herself in perfume. “And that’s the whole point of the evening, isn’t it? To stand out for Joel.”
Jane bristled. “What band is your boyfriend in then?” she quipped.
“Girls, come on,” I groaned.
Amber ignored me. “I don’t judge my worth on having a boyfriend and what he does.”
“GIRLS.”
“Just as well,” Jane said.
“STOP IT. NOW.”
They did. But there was an awkward silence and at least two evils exchanged.
“Riiight,” Jane said. “Black top it is.” Her face was all pinched.
“It’s really lovely,” I said, glancing at the mirror again, wondering if I could get to it.
“Yeah, it is,” Amber said, surprising us all. I smiled a weak thank you at her and she smiled back meekly. “Sorry, Jane,” she added genuinely.
Jane looked relieved. “I’m sorry too.”
Lottie – who’d been ignoring the whole thing – threw her mascara wand back into her bag. “Voilá,” she declared. “Jane, we’ve got some wine. Do you have a bottle opener?”
Jane nodded, pulling her top over her head. I saw her marshmallow stomach – she had gained weight. Why hadn’t I noticed? “Yeah, downstairs in the kitchen,” she answered from inside her top.
“I’ll come with you,” Amber said. “We’ll bring up some glasses.”
They left. With Jane’s head still inside fabric, I saw my chance, jumped across the room and quickly trailed my hand over the circumference of the mirror. My stomach melted in relief and I savoured it for a second…before it knotted up again almost instantly.
BAD THOUGHT
And again. You need to touch the mirror again. Just in case.
I reached out to it, like that scene in Disney’s Sleeping Beauty when Princess Aurora keeps trancing out and trying to touch the spinning wheel.
“Evie?”
I whipped round. Jane was right behind me.
“Evie? Are you really okay?”
I dropped my hand guiltily. “I’m fine…” My voice squeaked. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
Jane’s eyebrows pulled together. “You seem…on edge. Twitchy. Is everything okay? You know?” She tapped her head. “In here?”
It was Jane’s old face, the one I remembered. Open and caring and chewing her lip as she worried about me. It would’ve been so easy to tell her then. To tell my best friend that I thought I was maybe losing it, that I didn’t know what to tell my parents. And that, more than anything, I couldn’t stop thinking about a silly boy. Guy Guy Guy Guy Guy, on a loop.
It may’ve been old Jane’s face, but it was still new Jane’s personality…
“I’m fine,” I said, in that halting way you deliberately use to say “I’m not fine!” – testing her.
Jane failed the test. She didn’t even press me on it, she just cast her eyes to her new black rug and said, “They hate me.”