Alyzon Whitestarr

  Then Sylvia asked in her slightly sneering voice what use newspapers were anyway. “Only old people read them. You see the news on television about a minute after it happens, so why would anybody bother with newspapers?”

  Gary Soloman answered, his voice cool and confident. “Newspapers offer some very specific advantages over television. The main thing is that you can take your time reading a newspaper story and think about what you’re reading. Television journalism mostly offers news as entertainment. It’s the news via Steven Spielberg.”

  One of the boys said loudly that it just meant he wasn’t good enough for television, and another boy said, “You mean he’s too ugly.”

  “That’s enough,” Mrs. Barker snapped. She thanked Gary Soloman for his time and herded us out, her face set in a stony expression.

  That night I caught the bus home with Mirandah because we came out of the school gates at the same time. I was late because of the detention Mrs. Barker had given the class, and Mirandah had been practicing in the gym with the jazz kids. We didn’t bother waiting for Serenity, who was always late but wouldn’t be seen dead coming home with anyone, let alone her sisters.

  Mirandah was in purple; she even had a purple rinse through her hair. Amethyst, she called it. She said it was a healing color, though I don’t know which part of her she thought needed healing. Before purple, it was green.

  I only wore dark colors, except for my jeans, mainly because you can’t see dirt on them, and also because I didn’t have to try to figure out what colors to wear together. Serenity wore black, but she wasn’t a Goth. She was just in mourning for the world.

  “What do you think of when I say evil?” Mirandah asked as we got off the bus.

  I shrugged and switched my bag to the other shoulder. “I guess it’s when people do things like kill one another.” I was thinking of the case the journalist had told us about, wondering if Gary Soloman would have been satisfied with the idea that the guy who had killed his brother was evil.

  “You think of murder as evil?” Mirandah sounded disappointed.

  “Well, I don’t think evil exists as a force. I think deeds can be evil—”

  “But what’s the difference between a bad or wrong thing and an evil thing?” she interrupted.

  “I think it’s evil when you know it’s bad and it will cause harm, and you want to do it anyway.”

  Mirandah shook her purple hair impatiently. “So are loggers evil when they push aside protesters and chop down an ancient tree?”

  “Mostly I think they just feel they’re in the right, and they want to let people know they’re angry.”

  “But can a person be evil?” Mirandah asked, sounding frustrated.

  “What, like a vampire or something?” I asked. The annoying thing about Mirandah in this sort of conversation is that you know she has the whole discussion mapped out in her head and when she asks a question it’s only to get the answer she expects, so that she can draw the conclusion she has already come to.

  “Idiot,” she said, sounding disgusted. “Vampires aren’t real.”

  “That’s what I mean. I think only fictional characters are evil. I think there are evil actions, not evil people.”

  “What about Ted Bundy, that serial killer?” Now she sounded triumphant.

  I mulled over that. “I think Ted Bundy was an anomaly. He was human, but some bit of him was something else and that was the bit that did all of the murdering.”

  Mirandah was silent for a while. Then she said, “The band says purple’s not the right look for jazz. They say I should wear black or sequins.”

  “What’s that got to do with evil?” I asked.

  She looked at me as if I were a fool. “What are you talking about?”

  I sighed and let it drop, although I thought the conversation about evil was a lot more interesting than the one about clothes. “Tell the band you’ll wear what you want. Where are they going to get another sax player as good as you?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. But I don’t like to take such an aggressive stance.”

  “Why don’t you ask Da?” I suggested.

  “Poor old Da,” Mirandah said, shaking her head fondly. “He’s not exactly with it musically.”

  “You shut up,” I said. “His music is great.”

  “Like you’d know,” Mirandah couldn’t help saying. I walked faster. “I’m sorry,” she said, catching up. “Stop galloping.”

  I slowed down, but I was still mad. I hated it when she talked that way about Da.

  “I said I was sorry,” she said impatiently. “Don’t be such a grump. I can’t help it if Da’s music’s just not where it’s at.”

  “Where what’s at?” I asked coldly.

  “Oh, come on, Aly. I just mean Da might be your knight in shining armor, but he’s never going to rock the world, that’s all.”

  I said nothing because we’d reached our front-yard gate. Mirandah pushed it open and went through. I lingered to close it, wanting to be away from her. By the time I climbed the steps and came through the door, Mirandah had gone upstairs to her room. I went down the hall to the kitchen to find Jess sautéing mushrooms in pesto and Da talking to Mel and Tich from his band about a gig they had been offered. He was feeding Luke, who was gurgling happily in his arms.

  “Well, I guess it’s a break for us,” Mel said in his usual gloomy way.

  “Fronting Urban Dingo is more than a break!” Tich protested. “Everyone’s saying they’re the next big thing. I can’t believe they’d ask us.”

  “Cost-cutting,” said Mel.

  “Giving local bands a go,” said Da. He noticed me and smiled. “Hello, Alyzon.”

  “Hi, everyone.” I felt angry at Da all of a sudden. Maybe Mirandah was right about him never breaking into the big time. He gave music everything he had, but it gave so little back and we had to live with that. How could he smile when he was a failure?

  “Bad day, Alyzon?” Da asked, as if he read my thoughts.

  I sighed. “Detention after school. An hour of watching the boys throw spitballs at the roof.”

  “What was the detention for?” Mel asked, pushing fluorescent orange dreadlocks out of his eyes.

  I shrugged. “Some of the kids were messing around on a field trip.”

  “Some of the kids?” Da asked gently.

  “I might have laughed a bit,” I admitted. We smiled at one another.

  “Typical,” Mel said. “Schools are outdated, fascist institutions. It would be much better if there weren’t any schools. We should all be teachers and students our whole life long ….”

  “Do you want me to have a word with the teacher?” Da asked.

  I kissed Luke. “’Course not. I’ll take Luke up and see if Mum’s awake,” I offered, shedding my bag.

  I scooped Luke up, feeling amazed all over again at how little he weighed. If I didn’t know better, I would think I was holding a bundle of blankets. I smelled his head, loving the milky, soapy scent of him.

  “He’ll be asleep if Zambia doesn’t hurry up,” Da said, giving me a smile.

  I was in my room after dinner writing a report for science when Serenity came in loaded with library books. I don’t know how many of them she reads, but Mirandah reckons it’s so we can tell her biographers how she used to lug around masses of heavy books.

  Serenity and I share a bedroom, so half of the room is decorated by me—which is to say, is not decorated. The other half of the room is painted black, and Serenity’s bed is draped in black satin. There are no pictures other than a magazine clipping that shows Sylvia Plath doing a reading. The mirror on her half of the room is always turned to the wall, and she has a vase with a single white lily on her bedside table.

  She put her books away and changed from her school uniform into black home clothes, then took out her cello and tightened the bow. Then she began to tune the cello. When she was satisfied, she laid the bow beside the cello and started gnawing ferociously at her nails.

  “Do
you have to do that?” I asked, disgusted. I could actually hear the little thunk as she chomped through another bit. “Much shorter and you’ll officially be a cannibal.”

  “You are such a nothing,” Serenity hissed, and stalked out of the room.

  Which left me feeling glum because it was pretty much how I saw myself.

  * * *

  I was reading an hour later, and daydreaming that Harlen was giving a flower to me, when Mirandah came in and gestured at me to come downstairs. As soon as I got into the hall, I heard snatches of a woman’s high-pitched voice: “… stupendous … reaction … marvelous …” The voice and the superlatives belonged to Mum’s agent, Rhona Wojcek. I grimaced.

  Jesse padded out of the bathroom still wearing his pajamas—and carrying his guitar. He played in the shower nook because, he said, the acoustics were good. Despite the fact that he could play well and practiced all the time, he always refused Da’s invitations to join the band, and he never tried out for any others.

  “Who is it?” he asked.

  “Rhona,” I said, wrinkling my nose. “She’s come for Mum’s paintings for the exhibition.”

  He rolled his eyes and went to his bedroom.

  Rhona was sitting at the kitchen table when I went in, incredibly tall, frighteningly skinny, with collarbones that stuck out far enough to stack books on. “Brilliant,” she was saying. “Such a wonderfully moody new series …” She glanced up from the sheet of slides as I entered and gave me the faintly puzzled look everyone gave me, as if wondering what I was there for.

  I wondered that, too.

  “Hi, Rhona,” I said, blinking a bit at her skintight pink dress and turban, thinking that if I had been a buyer, I wouldn’t have listened to a word she said about art. The only good thing about Rhona was her continued faith in Mum, which Mum treated as if it were a sort of slow wasting illness that she would probably die from someday.

  “That’s a stunning ensemble,” Rhona told Mirandah, who entered wearing purple boots, purple tights, and a violet tie-dyed petticoat with ragged lace. She looked at me. “You ought to wear a bit of color once in a while, Alyzon. It would brighten you up.”

  I ate a tomato, cheerfully thinking there was definitely hope for me if Rhona disliked how I looked. A picture of Harlen Sanderson crept into my mind and I felt my face grow hot. I felt Harlen was way out of my league in the human attraction stakes. But that didn’t stop me from daydreaming.

  Mum came into the room. No, strike that. Mum glided into the room wearing a long floating shift of green chiffon over black leggings. She had caught her hair up in a jeweled comb, but red curls were spilling artistically in all directions.

  “Daaarling,” Rhona shrilled, rising and holding her arms open wide. Da and I grinned at one another covertly as Mum went forward and allowed herself to be enfolded in long, thin, pink arms. It looked like some sort of carnivorous stick insect consuming a butterfly. “You look marvelous, Zambia.”

  “That’s very pink, Rhona,” Mum said. Luke started to fuss so she took him in her arms and rearranged her clothes to feed him. Rhona averted her eyes. She thought artists had no business breeding. Their work ought to be progeny enough, she had told Mum the previous year when she learned of the new pregnancy, thirteen years after the last. Then she had hinted about abortion.

  “Oh no,” Mum had said, blissfully dismissive. “But this will be the last. I sense it.”

  “I hope you sense yourself using contraception in the future.” Rhona had been shattered enough to be slightly acerbic, but it was wasted on Mum.

  “This one is needed in the world,” Mum had said dreamily.

  “Serenity. So much black,” Rhona said now, as Serenity came in.

  “Sybl,” Serenity corrected her coldly.

  We all trooped out to wrap and pack the paintings, leaving Mum in the kitchen feeding Luke. Rhona came along behind us, poking holes in the lawn with her stiletto heels.

  “She should use professional movers,” Rhona said, as usual.

  “We can’t afford it,” Da said, also as usual.

  It took almost an hour and there were just a couple of smaller paintings left to be fitted in when Mum asked me to take Luke and put him in his car seat in Rhona’s hatchback. It was just starting to rain as I came out carrying him. I noticed the back of the van was open and went round to see if the rain was getting in.

  That’s when it happened. Our cat, a monstrously overweight gray tabby called Wombat, jumped from the roof of the house onto the uplifted door of the van. It was designed to stay open, but once it started to close, it fell like a guillotine.

  I felt the rush of air, and some instinct made me step forward rather than back, so the door smashed down on my forehead with all the force of a falling piano—instead of on Luke’s. A rocket exploded with incredible, painful intensity inside my skull, and all the strength went out of my knees.

  “Luke,” I whispered fearfully as the darkness ate me.

  “Alyzon?” Someone shouted my name so loudly that it hurt. And I could smell roses so strongly it was as if someone had shoved them up my nose. Depression crawled like a mass of black beetles inside the smell. I wanted to speak, but it was too hard.

  * * *

  “Alyzon Whitestarr.” The same voice shouted at me, yelling my whole name like an incantation, stinking of flowers and wet dirt, pushing sorrow and roses down my throat and into my ears. I tried to open my eyes, but they were glued shut. I tried to speak, but I couldn’t find my mouth to let the words out.

  * * *

  “Alyzon. Come on, now. Wake up.” A hand lightly slapped a cheek that might be mine, if I could ever find it. The voice tasted of snot and tears and despair.

  I felt a finger on my eye, lifting the lid. Light speared into my brain, but the touch was worse. Despair leaked from the fingertips and burned into me. There was a flashing image of an older man lying in a bed, pale and emaciated. I tried to pull away, but the movement started an earthquake that threatened to tear my head apart.

  “Better not to move,” the rose-scented stranger shouted, taking the hand away. Then: “She’s awake.”

  “Alyzon.”

  Da’s voice. He was yelling, too. I turned my eyes toward the voice and was enveloped in the smell of fresh coffee grounds, which was weird because Da didn’t drink coffee. Mingled in with the smell of coffee was a sharp ammoniacal stink that filled me with a sick, tense apprehension. I opened my eyes properly, and the skull-splitting brightness resolved slowly into white faces around the edge of a suspended light. I didn’t understand until it occurred to me that I was lying down and they were leaning over me; Da and a woman with short dark hair.

  “Good,” the woman yelled, leaning nearer and touching my hand. The smell of roses and wet earth pressed in on me, along with a feeling of terrible exhausted grief. “Alyzon, you’re in the hospital. Do you remember what happened?”

  Fear gouged into my heart, sliced through the anxiety and grief and the oppressive smells. “Luke …” It came out as a rusty creak of sound.

  Da gave a sobbing, bellowing laugh. “He’s all right, love. You managed to fall with him on top of you.” Pride and love blazed out of his eyes at me, and the smells of coffee and ammonia were swallowed up by the smell of caramelized sugar and the pungent tang of pine needles.

  “Who is Luke?” the woman shouted.

  “Luke is our baby, Dr. Reed,” Da yelled at her. “She was holding him when it happened.”

  Of course, a doctor, I thought, as the woman leaned over me. I was afraid she would touch me again. I shrank back, and she frowned, a pulling together of black brows. I realized I could see all the hairs coming out of her skin as if I were looking at her through a magnifying glass. The pores on her face looked like gaping mouths. The smell of roses and wet earth pushed at me. I turned my head away from her to escape it. But I found myself looking at a row of other beds with patients in them, and doctors and visitors around the beds in little clots. A tidal wave of muddled smells fl
ooded toward me, forced its way down my throat, up my nose, through my eyes, my fingertips, choking me, blinding me, suffocating me. My stomach revolted. It punched the world out of me in a great vomiting gout, and I fell back, empty, into the silent darkness.

  * * *

  “Alyzon?” The woman’s voice again. It reached into the dark, caught me, and dragged me up out of the peaceful void.

  I opened my eyes in fear, but this time the room was dim and quiet. The doctor was seated in a chair beside my bed. I could still smell her wet earth and roses perfume, but nowhere near as strongly.

  “I’m Dr. Reed,” she said softly, and I relaxed slightly, relieved she wasn’t going to shout at me. “Do you remember hitting your head?”

  “Yes. Luke—”

  “Your little brother is fine,” she said. The slight smell of cloves drifted to me. “Your family will bring him in to visit as soon as I let them know you’ve woken.”

  “What … what’s wrong with me?” I asked.

  “Just a concussion from a very hard bump on the head.” She paused. “Alyzon, it seems as if your memory is intact. Can you tell me what happened just before you blacked out last time?”

  “I … I’m not sure. Everything seemed so bright and loud, and there was so much shouting and crying and all of these weird smells ….”

  She nodded as if she had expected the answer. “A hard bang on the head can cause your senses to become confused and magnified, and produce a lot of odd sensations. How is it now?”

  “I can still smell a lot of stuff that … well, that doesn’t seem to come from anything. But it’s not as bad as it was. No one is yelling.”

  “I had the nurses give you a drug to dull your senses slightly when I thought that might be the reason you were not waking up. But don’t worry, they will gradually go back to normal.”

  “How long have I been here?” I asked.