Under Rose-Tainted Skies(6)

It’s forever my intention to avoid social media on weekends, but a morbid sense of curiosity, or a subconscious desire for S & M, always convinces me to open the application when it calls. It’s like a siren’s song.

I click the button and am bombarded with selfies of Mercy, Cleo, Sarah and Jade getting ready for a night out at le cinéma. They’re blowing kisses to the camera and then they’re kissing each other, hugging, and voguing in a creative series of shots.

I scroll down, see more selfies of more former friends wearing make-up and looking much older since I last saw them in real life. Which was only four years ago but feels more like four centuries. Puberty: the ultimate makeover.

I push my hand against my chest. My heart suddenly feels ten times too heavy. I press down harder, trying to keep it from flopping out of its cavity and hitting the carpet with a ground-shaking splat.

I miss having friends. It seems babysitting your housebound BFF loses its appeal when your body turns banging and an active social life kicks in. They never really understood it, understood me when I got sick. We were only young, but I was surprised at how easy I was to forget.

I throw my phone on the table; it hits my cookie castle like a wrecking ball and totals the carefully constructed architecture.

It’s only five, but I trudge through the kitchen and lock myself in the box bathroom.

The most underrated room in the house, the box bathroom is so small, I can’t even spin a circle in there with my arms spread out to the sides. It feels like an afterthought, a room tacked on to the house once it had already been built. I like it. It’s cosy. The walls are bright yellow, and the faucets are shaped like dolphins. Plus, I feel weighted, and right now climbing the stairs is about as appealing as climbing Everest in my underwear.

I run a bath, dump my clothes in the hamper under the sink, and submerge myself. I keep my eyes open, staring through a milky mist at the ceiling above. The water is so warm it turns my pasty complexion red, but I feel cold to the bone. My body is covered in goosebumps. There’s a sob stuck in the bridge of my nose. It stings, but I stay under the water so it can’t escape without killing me.

The bath cools quickly, but I lie in it until my skin feels too tight for my skeleton. Then, with great reluctance, I climb out.

Depression can’t come in, I think, drawing a glass half-full in the condensation on the mirror. I’m already covering a multitude of colours on the mental health spectrum. Depression can’t come in.

The lines of my drawing drip and blend together. I can see myself in the glass. ‘You’re not missing much,’ I tell my reflection, then I slap a preppy-pink blush back into my cheeks. ‘You’re fine.’

I braid my hair over my shoulder, pull on the robe that’s hung on the back of the door, and step out into the hall, whistling while I walk, because everybody knows whistling induces an unshakeable delirium. I should probably stop watching Disney movies.

I’m caught between the kitchen and the hall when a noise stops me dead in my tracks.

‘Hello. Anyone home?’

My heart splutters to a standstill, and I slam my back up against the doorjamb.

The pot-bellied gremlin known as panic claws its way up my throat and clogs my airways. The cold air of the kitchen licks at the damp stretches of skin that my robe is too short to cover, but it doesn’t cool me. Fire burns through my blood as the fear takes hold.

I can’t see him because we own a fridge the size of Saturn and it’s blocking my line of sight, but I can hear his heavy feet padding against the laminate.

Fuck. I can’t feel my legs.

‘I’m looking for Norah.’

He’s here to rob me.

‘Norah Dean?’

I’m going to die.

My heart pounds against my ribcage; my knees curl in. I need help, I need help. I need stability because the floor is moving and I’m going to collapse, and then my robe will flop open, and then I’ll lose my towel, and then . . . oh God . . .

‘Yo.’ A shadow moves to my left. ‘Are you Norah?’

Can’t. Talk. Need. Oxygen.

‘I’m from Helping Hands. I’ve got a delivery for a Miss Norah Dean. That you?’

Helping Hands. I know them.

The tension in my neck recedes just enough so I can lift my head and look at the boy in my kitchen. A scrawny twig of a thing with a shaved head and ripped jeans. Just above the rips, about an inch below his side pocket, there are three skull patches, stitched on in no particular pattern, which bugs me way more than it should. He’s chewing gum like a cow chewing grass and looking at me with a poised brow.

‘Nice place you got here,’ he says. ‘Big.’

It’s not six o’clock. If it were, I would have been ready for him.

‘Hey. You okay?’ He extends an arm in my direction, and I avoid it as if it were a bullet. I have this thing about being touched. Unless it’s Mom or Dr Reeves, I can’t handle it.

‘What are you doing in my house?’ Teeth clenched, I glare at his outstretched hand. He drops it back by his side.

‘I’m. Here. From. Helping. Hands,’ he says slowly. ‘I have a delivery for Norah Dean.’

‘Yeah, I got that. What I want to know is why you’re inside my house.’

‘Knock-and-no-answer procedure. I’m just following the rules.’ A grin stretches across his lips.