And Brendan, watching silently, his eyes reflecting everything . . . In the bathroom, Patrick White was trying to revive his daughter. Breathe, dammit, baby, breathe! — accenting each word with a hard push aimed at the dead girl’s heart, as if, by the force of his own desire, he might somehow restart the mechanism. The pushes, increasingly desperate, degenerated into a series of blows as Patrick White lost control and began to flail at the dead girl, thumping her like a pillow.
Brendan pressed his hands to his chest.
‘Breathe, baby. Breathe!’
Brendan began to gasp for air.
‘Patrick!’ said Feather. ‘Stop it. She’s gone.’
‘No! I can do it! Emily! Breathe!’
Brendan leaned against the door. His face was pale and shiny with sweat; his breathing, rapid and shallow. I knew all about his condition, of course — the mirror-response that made him flinch at the sight of a graze on my knee, and which had caused him such distress the time his brother collapsed in St Oswald’s Chapel — but I’d never seen him like this before. It was like a kind of voodoo, I thought; as if, even though she was already dead, Emily was killing him —
Now I knew what I had to do. It was like in the fairy story, I thought, where the boy gets the ice mirror in his eye and can only see everything twisted and warped. The Snow Queen, that was the story’s name. And the little girl had to save him . . .
I took a step in front of him, blocking his view of Emily. Now it was I who was in his eyes, mirrored there in winter-blue. I could see myself: my little red coat; my bobbed hair, so like Emily’s.
‘Bren, it wasn’t your fault,’ I said.
He flung out a hand to ward me off. He looked very near to passing out.
‘Brendan, look at me,’ I said.
He closed his eyes.
‘I said look at me!’ I grabbed him by the shoulders and held on to him as hard as I could. I could hear him struggling to breathe —
‘Please! Just look at me, and breathe!’
For a moment I thought I’d lost him. His eyelids fluttered; his legs gave way, and we fell together against the door. And then he opened his eyes again, and Emily was gone from them. Instead there was only my face, reflected in miniature in his eyes. My face, and his eyes. The abyss of his eyes.
I held him at arms’ length and breathed, just breathed, steadily in and out, and gradually his breathing slowed and shifted gently to match my own, and the colour began to return to his face, and tears spilled from my eyes — and his — and I thought once again of the story where the girl’s tears melt the fragment of mirror and free the boy from the Snow Queen’s curse — I felt a surge of fierce joy.
I’d saved Brendan. I’d saved his life.
I was there now, in his eyes.
For a moment, I saw myself there, like a mote inside a teardrop. And then he pushed me away and said:
‘Emily’s dead. It should have been you.’
15
You are viewing the webjournal of Albertine.
Posted at: 00.40 on Friday, February 22
Status: restricted
Mood: intense
I really don’t remember much about the rest of that evening. I remember running outside in the snow; falling to my knees by the path; seeing the snow angel that Brendan had left by the front door. I ran to my room; lay down on my bed under the blue-eyed Jesus. I don’t know how long I stayed there. I was dead; a thing with no voice. My mind kept going back to the fact that Bren had chosen her, not me; that in spite of everything I’d done, Emily had beaten me.
And then I heard the music . . .
Perhaps that’s why I avoid it now. Music brings too many memories. Some mine, some hers, some belonging to both of us. Maybe it was the music that brought me back to life that day. The first movement of the Symphonie fantastique, played so loudly from inside the car — a dark-blue four-door Toyota sedan parked in the drive of the White house — that the windows trembled and bulged with the sound, like a heart that was close to breaking.
By then, the ambulance had gone. Feather must have gone with it. Mother was working late that night — something to do with the church, I think. Bren was nowhere to be seen, and the lights were out in Emily’s house. But then came this gust of music, like a black wind set to blow open all the padlocked doors in the world, and I stood up, put on my coat and went outside to the parked car. The engine was running, I noticed, and a rubber pipe fixed on to the exhaust led into the driver’s side window, and there was Emily’s father, sitting quietly in the driver’s seat; not crying, not ranting, just sitting there, listening to music and watching the night.
Through the car window, he looked like a ghost. So did I, against the glass; my pale face reflecting his. All around him, the music swelled. I remember that especially; the Berlioz that haunts me still, and the snow that covered everything.
And I realized that he, too, blamed himself; he thought that if things had been different, then maybe he could have saved Emily. If he hadn’t let me in; if he’d left Brendan outside in the snow; if someone else could have taken her place.
Emily’s dead. It should have been you.
And now I thought I understood. I saw how I could save us both. Perhaps I could make this my story, I thought, instead of it being Emily’s. The story of a girl who died, and somehow made it back from the dead. I had no thought of revenge — not then. I didn’t want to take her life. All I wanted was to start again, to turn on to a clean page and never think of that girl any more, the girl who had seen and heard too much.
Patrick White was looking at me. He had taken off his glasses, and without them, I thought he looked lost and confused. His eyes without the lenses were a bright — and oddly familiar — blue. Yesterday he had been someone’s daddy — someone who read stories, played games, gave kisses at bedtime, someone who was needed and loved — and who was he now? No one; nothing. A reject, an extra — just like me. Left on the pile while the story goes on somewhere else, without us.
I opened the passenger door on his side. The air was warm inside the car. It smelt of roads and motorways. The hose, attached to the car exhaust, fell out as I released the door.
The music stopped. The engine went off. Patrick was still looking at me. He seemed unable to speak, but his eyes told me all I needed to know.
I closed the door.
I said: ‘Daddy, let’s go.’
We drove away in silence.
16
You are viewing the webjournal of blueeyedboy.
Posted at: 01.09 on Friday, February 22
Status: restricted
Mood: contrite
Listening to: Pink Floyd: ‘The Final Cut’
No, it wasn’t exactly my finest hour. Don’t think I’m proud of what I said. But, in my own defence, let me say that I’d suffered a great deal already that day, and that suffering gets passed around in ever-increasing circles, like the ripples from a flung stone as it strikes the water’s surface —