I’m not fine, I think.I feel like I’ve had wads of cotton stuffed into my throat.I tell myself not to be nervous—I mean really, after everything I’ve faced, how scary can a sixteen-year-old girl be?
“Hazel?”
Maria’s hair is growing out, becoming a soft fuzz around her ears. Today she wears jeans and a sweatshirt and a huge coat with a furred hood which she wraps around her skinny frame like a comforter. She’s putting on weight, but slowly. They’re worried about her bones, scurvy, rickets. She’s had a lot of tests and a lot of therapy. I’m paying. Joe sold the house last month, which has given me abit of money. Enough to recover, not enough to start over. I worry about that sometimes, but then again, who wouldn’t?
“Hi, honey. Sit down.”
Maria takes Cathy’s vacated seat, curling her legs up underneath her. Her eyes dart around. For the first weeks out of Bray Farm, she’d clung to me like glue, even when I’d been in critical care. Slowly, slowly, however, she is releasing her grip.
“I hear you’ve started school.”
“Yeah. Just a few afternoons. They told me I’d probably get tired and not to expect too much, but I’m doing okay. They were surprised at how much Andrew had been able to teach me.”
Silence.Ah, I think. In all the weeks that have passed, Maria hasn’t mentioned Andrew to me, not yet. But there it is, out in the sunlight. His name. I’m surprised to find it has no weight. No gut punch. It simply withers away to dust. Maria turns her head slightly and I notice the silver studs in her ears, the holes slightly swollen and clotted with blood.
“Uh-oh. You pierced them?”
“Danny did it with a needle and a lighter. I wanted him to.”
“Very punk rock of you. Make sure they don’t get infected, they look sore.”
Maria touches her finger to her ear self-consciously and I think how nice it must be for her to have somethingnormal, to feel like other girls her age. To be nagged, to rebel, to make dumb decisions.
“Your hair’s getting longer.”
She nods, giving me a shy smile.
“Yours too.”
“You can use my name, Hazel. The real one, I mean.”
“Ah. Bunny Miller.”
“It’s a dumb name, but—”
“—it suits you.”
“Yeah.” Bunny laughs. “It does. Danny said all the girls in his class have names like Ashley and Lily. There are three Jessicas. At least I’ll stand out.”
We are both silent, thinking about all that has happened, all that is still to come. I think about a hair wrapped around my vertebrae, knotted there, refusing to let go. I catch her eye and say, “A bunny is tough too. It has to be. It has to think fast and avoid danger.”
Bunny nods. There is a gleam about her that’s new. I wonder if it’s happiness. “I’ve been finding out a lot of stuff about my mum. Her name was Astrid. That means ‘beautiful like God.’ Isn’t that lovely?”
“Yes. It is.”
“When I was born, she thought I was cute and bunnies were cute, so that’s what she called me, Bunny. I laughed when the police told me.”
She’d found him in the buried box. Her bunny—the toy one, I mean. Magic, still with the ribbon tied around his throat. A serving-knee that had sat on the cusp of her memory for thirteen long years. She was still holding it on her knees in the snow when the emergency services arrived.
“I’ve forgotten so much,” she tells me, scratching her thumbnail into the wood of the table. “How the house looked, Andrew’s face. My therapist lady told me it’s normal—it’s just how my brain protects itself. It made me sad at first. I wish I’d kept a part of it, just to hold on to.”
I can’t pretend I know what she means. I think if I ever see another cereal bar, I’ll have a panic attack. I can’t imagine wanting to keep hold of bad memories, but then I remember the small plastic jar of knotted hair with my name on the top of it and I nod.
“What’s your social worker like?”
She pulls a face. “He’s trying. He wants me to go to art therapy.”
“You should do it.”