She gave up.
In the darkness behind her eyelids, she could still see those words drawn by the unknown finger, drawn when her back had been turned, done noiselessly and quickly. Someone had been there, in the corridor, looking at her, knowing her name, writing her name. Then they had gone.
SIX
Jess was lying on the concrete floor at the bottom of the staircase that ran through the centre house, but she didn’t look up at the sky because she was concentrating on the patches of warmth that were playing along her face. She could feel her eyelashes trembling slightly. She felt the fuzzy light disappear as if someone had stepped in the way, felt a hand brush against her cheek and then withdraw. She mumbled an incoherent protest and prised her eyes open.
A girl was standing silently above her, looking down at her with narrow, dark eyes, so dark that, to Jess, lying on the ground, they seemed pupil-less. There was something about her that was out of proportion. Was she too tall and yet too. . small at the same time? Was her neck too long? Her fingers?
Jess hauled herself up, her hands dragging across the rough concrete, and shielded her eyes, squinting at the girl.
The girl had stepped back as if alarmed, although her face was calm. Her head was tipped to one side and she stood, thin legs apart, like a bird poised for flight; observing a dangerous animal that was about to lash out.
With the shade of her hand over her sun-dazed eyes, Jess realised that this was just an ordinary girl around her own age. She gave a huge, gusty sigh, feeling her shoulders moving back with the force of it.
“Hello, Jessy,” said the girl. Her voice was heavily accented.
Jess started, then scrambled to her feet.
“Y-you?” she managed to say.
The girl repeated, “Hello, Jessy.”
As if it was all that she knew how to say.
Jess looked at the girl carefully. She was slight, and her bushy hair was tied into two big, round, springy puffs, one behind each ear, with what looked like trailing, dirty white string. She was barefoot, and her toes and feet were whitened with gravel scratches and sand, and, Jess was sure, dust. Her dress was slightly too big for her and looked uncomfortable, the button-up collar tight around her neck but the brown-and-white, checked cloth hanging off her narrow shoulders and ballooning out around her until it trailed off just below her knees. The skin on her knees and elbows was ashen and greyish in patches.
The girl stared at her and did not smile.
Neither did Jess, but she felt a smile coming as her relief grew. So this was the person who knew her name, who had written it on the table, then sped shyly away on her small, light feet when she had seen her coming. The girl had probably heard Jess’s parents calling to her while she had been exploring the compound on her own. She smiled, finally, as the last piece of understanding fell into place. She took a few steps closer to the girl, to make herself better heard.
“Do you live in the Boys’ Quarters?”
The girl hesitated, as if listening for something, then said, very quickly, in an exact match of Jess’s voice, “D’you live in the Boys’ Quarters?”
She waited, eyeing Jess apprehensively, her mouth half open, breathing through her nostrils as if she had just made a great exertion. Jess laughed aloud with surprise, giggling into her hand as she took this in.
The girl continued to contemplate her seriously, standing still with her hands by her sides, although as Jess made the involuntary movement that accompanied her laughter, she saw the girl’s hand move slightly, as if she, too, wanted to put a hand to her mouth.
“D’you speak English?” Jess asked, as the thought suddenly occurred to her.
“D’you speak English?” the girl said, perfectly naturally, as if she was the one who had thought to say it first.
The feeling clung to Jess that she was being asked the questions, and that there was perhaps something more to them, that she was actually being asked something else entirely. Yet the girl’s face betrayed no flicker of understanding. Jess began to feel bewildered.
She swayed a little on her feet, tired from the sun, and sat down on the bottom step, looking thoughtfully at the girl. Clearly she had to ask something that would make her give an answer instead of another question.
“Where Do you live?” she asked, on impulse.
“Where Do you live?” It was said almost blithely, with a not-quite grin. A veritable Jessamy-echo.
Jess laughingly threw her hands up towards the sky. “What’s your name?”
Again, that listening pause, as if someone was saying something to her, someone speaking on a frequency just higher (or lower?) than Jess could hear, and Jess wondered if the girl had some kind of hearing difficulty. There had been a girl in her class who was partially deaf and had that same concentration and focus when listening to someone speak.
Then the girl spoke, almost without moving her mouth, as if reluctantly: “My name is Titiola.”
She shifted from foot to foot, then finally shone a smile as beautiful and fleeting as it was sudden. If Jess hadn’t kept her eyes fixed on her she would certainly have missed it, because that glow wasn’t waiting for anybody and had vanished in a millisecond, leaving the sober, solemn expression behind. Jess felt as if she was finally getting somewhere. She couldn’t help but smile in return as a sort of offering in homage to that now-absent radiance of the girl’s.
“Titi. . sorry, I don’t want to say it; I’ll say it wrong, and I know your name means something. Um. What’s your surname?”
Silence.
Jess spoke awkwardly now, feeling as if she wasn’t being understood. “I mean. . you know! My surname’s Harrison. And yours?”
Silence.
Except that this time the girl spread her hands in a strange gesture, her palms turned upwards, her hands stretched out flat. She didn’t look at Jessamy, but at her hands. Jess laughed because she didn’t know what else to do.
“Um. OK. I don’t know what to call you. Titiola?”
She pronounced it Tee-tee-yo-la, wincing as she said it, knowing that it sounded all wrong in her mouth, jarring.
The girl’s head snapped up, her eyes widening.
“Titiola,” she said sharply.
Jess could see that this wasn’t going very well. The girl didn’t seem to like her, and for some reason it was important to have her liking.
“How about,” she said, almost desperately, one hand rubbing against her leg, seeking out the drying mosquito bite, “I call you Tilly?”
The girl withdrew her palms and folded her thin arms, seemed to consider.
“Well, Titi doesn’t sound that much like Tilly. Tilly has all L’s and not enough T’s. .”
The girl watched her, the corners of her eyes wrinkled up as if she was about to smile again.
“TillyTilly? Can I call you that? TillyTilly, I mean? It has two T’s. . and I don’t want to get your real name wrong, and anyway, you call me Jessy when I’m actually Jessamy or just Jess, so Jessy isn’t really my real name either. .”
She trailed off as she realised that the girl was laughing. She didn’t laugh like the other kids in Jessamy’s class; her laugh was a dry, raspy chuckle that sounded like wheezing. Jess found that she liked it.
Jess laughed too, glad that the two of them were there, one standing, one sitting, in the sunshine, glad that she had been so eager to be friends with somebody for once. It was a peering through good and pretty coloured glass, this gladness, this feeling that someone had been around the compound, knowing who she was, and wanting to talk to her. She had never been sought out this way before. It was funny and pleasing, like a bubbling fizz growing in her stomach.