Longcroft School, Beverley, East Riding of Yorkshire, 2021
The girl sits on her hands in therapy.
The lady tells her it’s a comfort thing, which makes some sense to her. The room is never cold enough, but she likes the warmth of her thighs on her knuckles; the hot, numb static that bites at her skin when the session ends and she stands, flexing her fingers back and forth. Counting them one by one. The lady smiles, as always – tries to make a joke. The girl pulls up her cheeks and looks at the ground. This is routine, familiar. It’s a comfort thing.
‘Greer, could you tell me what’s wrong?’
‘Please stop’.
‘I know it’s hard.
‘It isn’t. I don’t even remember what happened.’
‘Then why do you look so frightened? Greer, why do you look so frightened?’
‘I’d like to go now.’
She forgets about it every week, returning home to her lover. She wakes up first. He wakes up second. She smiles more than she used to, and he knows she doesn’t eat. It takes her three days to notice the dog died. Too tired to bury it, she puts up with the smell.
There’s something to the rhythm of the life she’s made. Like a slow, steady heartbeat pulsating, vomiting blood into the arteries and out through the veins. Long, muggy days and thin, lonely nights. How she counts his breaths like ragged sheep, until she blinks and wakes up in the morning. It’s soothing; reminds her of the way she would suck on her arms and lick away the bite marks as a child. That warm, numb, familiar feeling. A routine that she makes and she likes and she keeps.
She is very, very afraid.
The lady appears every week, and they talk, but she doesn’t really know what about. Her lover is there the rest of the time, but there’s only enough food for one in the house, and she never really eats it. Her bed is cramped; she’s sure he’d never fit. She misses his arms around her, so she buys three heavy blankets. Her lungs have to heave while she sleeps.
‘Greer, could you tell me what’s wrong?’
‘He left me.’
‘Who?’
‘And the house has maggots.’
‘Why is that?’
‘I’ve been sleeping better.’
‘Why is that? Greer, why is that?’
‘I’d like to go now.’
She decides that it’s time she buried the dog. Taking an afternoon and a shovel from the garage, she makes her hands busy for a while.
It’s easy, really. The aching push gives her focus, lets her see all the sharp edges. She can’t remember how long it’s been since he went. She doesn’t feel much different. She can’t even remember his name.
The blankets she bought are identical, the weights clipping her skin if she doesn’t take care. Carrying them around, she’s got some strength back, and it’s nice, but she wishes they were heavier. Still can’t afford to buy a fourth.
‘All I really want is to be small. If it all crushes in tight enough, maybe I’ll vanish.’
‘Greer, could you tell me what’s wrong?’
‘I’m lonely.’
‘What else?’
‘I’m tired.’
‘I see.’
‘Who are you?’
‘This isn’t about me. Greer, does it hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m too young to change it. I’m too old to want to.’
She sleeps in the garden now – in the pit she made. She walks around in the dark and stands for hours in heavy rain, washing herself. Engulfing. Comforting. She lives where the worms do: blind, frightened little creatures. Safe from the danger of the sun.
She walks to her neighbour’s pool at midnight. Swims to the bottom and sits there for hours. She doesn’t drown. Her lungs have swallowed things heavier than water, sharper than chlorine. In the garden, there’s a patch of grass that has grown thicker than the others, more vibrant. Where the dog used to be.
The beaches she visits are wide and vast and lonely. She gives in, buys tickets to an aquarium instead, stands in the glass tunnel, looks up at the water, the way it rests and barely sways like some slow, ancient creature.
She still can’t afford to buy a fourth blanket.
‘Greer, could you tell me what’s wrong?’
‘Do you enjoy this?’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t enjoy anything, really.’
Her hands have gone numb. She’ll never see this woman again.
‘Are you ready to leave?’
‘No. I will be though.’
She dreams of it often. Wakes up retching every time.
For her, there’s nowhere to go in the end. No way to hold every piece of herself in place long enough to move on. She’ll stay, for now. Keep the routine. Sit on her hands and drift through the days.
One day, she will swim and swim and swim to the bottom of the ocean; push past coral reefs and hulking shapes boasting lungs the size of her, old and slow; have her eyes turn soft and milky in the boundless black of the deep sea; reach the final sandy bank and lie there, safe.
Let the water be still and rest on her aching body. Carve a hold there, break her, make her into nothing. Where no one can hear her. No one can see her.
No one will ever find her again.
