Missed call.
Missed call.
Text. Text. Text.
Incoming call from Erik. Sighing hard, my body fatigued and confused, I pick up.
“Where are you?” Erik is breathing heavily into the phone, each word coming out tight and forced.
But I can’t speak. My mouth opens and closes and opens again. I swallow tears.
It’s been seven hours. Traffic. Running.Hisface, but younger, flashing over and over in the blur of bus windows. Seven hours throughout the night, running towards the very thing I should be afraid of.
But there is comfort here, too.
There is connection and?—
I don’t know…
Now I’m walking, like my life depends on me being here as if I need to find him, save him. My feet sink into soft ground. Water seeps through my shoes. The daisies bend under me and spring back as I climb.
The hill I hate; I’m back on the hill I hate.
I squint at the sun. I’d forgotten how bright it is up here—how it cuts in low and sharp, like it’s trying to carve a piece of you out. My skin tingles with heat, but my teeth chatter. My body can’t decide how it feels. Neither can I. The hill rolls out in every direction, sloping downward, beautiful and unconcerned, the same as it has always been. I am not the same, though.
I get to the top. The view knocks the air from me. Daisies everywhere, left, right, down, wild and white against the green hill. I was told back then, back when I called this land home, that daisies are just weeds. That they were to be ploughed under to make way for things that mattered, things like crops. I watched them do it. The daisies always came back. I was secretly proud of them for that.
“I’m home,” I manage to say to Erik when I remember I’m on the phone. “I caught a bus. A train. Another bus. I went home.” I didn’t really think it through…Oh, God.
“Thathome?” His tone drops dangerously.
“Yes.” I wheeze for a few seconds as my body forgets how to breathe and how to swallow as I kneel on the spot—the spot that marks the entrance to a place only a few people could ever find... or have ever been.
“Just stay where you are,” Erik says, pain twisting through his voice. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
I lower the phone from my ear. It’s a long drive, Erik. The ground tilts. My ears ring. I stare at the patch of grass below my feet—the hatch, the stairs, the dark—and the memory of a boy and a girl pulls me towards it like a wave dragging screaming people out to sea.
“Blesk!” he yells.
I lift the handset to my ear, dazed. “Yes?”
“Don’t go in, Bebe.” He hangs up.
I hate that Erik is coming back here. I know what seeing this place will do to him.
I was nine years old when he first came here. He was thirteen. Our parents brought us to this hill, and we spent the day picking daisies, laying them by Liz’s favourite tree. Bymyfavourite tree. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was also, I think, the kindest thing.
The months before that had felt like a perpetual nightmare. No one could make it stop. I kept having the same nightmare—throwing bones at a boy dressed like a dog. This image mixed with the same distorted memory of me watching the television when suddenly a face appeared.Hisface. People cried. A mother cried. And then I knew, at once and all along, that the boy in the basement wasn’t my brother, or my dog, and he wasn’t supposed to be there.
I would wake up screaming.
Erik was there when I woke up, almost every time. He caught me between the nightmare and awake, held me until I understood where I was. Held me as I realised what I had done to that boy. Held me as I cried and cried. He whispered, ‘it’s over. Over. Over. For good.’ That I could let go. The boy was safe. I was safe. I washisnow.
Then Erik would curl up beside me, rocking me back and forth and hushing me tenderly as if it was his purpose in life. I could feel his heart racing; he was only a child himself. It was so unfair on him. Before me, the Bellamys lived easy and normal and wonderfully predictable lives. After me, my mother couldn’t sleep, my father couldn’t sleep, and my brotherwouldn’tsleep—I was to blame for their misery.
And that’s why we did it.
That's why we had to say goodbye to Liz.