Bite Me

After a few moments on the floor, I finally gathered my wits and stood up.

“Mum! I’m home!” I shouted.

She didn’t answer me, but I wasn’t expecting her to. I doubted she had even gotten out of her bed. I dropped my backpack down and slipped off my shoes. Out of habit I reached up to run my fingers through my hair, and it was only then that I realized it was still covered in clay. I sighed in frustration and walked to the bathroom to take a shower. I blushed when I realized I had been shouting my head off while looking like I was off my nut, as well as sounding like it.

Twenty minutes later, I stepped out of the bathroom steam. I threw on a pair of shorts and one of Da’s old jumpers and wandered into the kitchen to get supper started. I plugged my iTouch into its speakers and clicked ‘Shuffle’ while I got out the ingredients to make pasta. The water on the stove came to a boil just as my favourite song began blasting through the speakers. I dumped the bowties into the water and reached for a wooden spoon. I started dancing around the kitchen.

“Henrietta we got no flowers for you!” I sang badly into the spoon. “Just these three miserable cunts sittin on the backseat turnin on the offbeat!”

I mumbled my way through the rest of the first verse, my attention redirected back to the pasta, and didn’t even notice when the music cut off right before the chorus. I didn’t notice that the water had stopped spitting either. I was too busy singing into my spoon again.

“Give us a kiss and maybe we can go out! It’s hard to miss you when you follow us abou-ou-ou-out! Buy us some shoes and maybe take us for cola, we’ll get you there in some filthy big gondola! And it’s clean out the bank, and bump off your daddy, you can come live with us against the has-beens and the addicts! These are crazy times down at Costello music, you can answer the phone and talk nice any way you choose it, come on!”

I was just about to start in on the next verse when I made a turn and saw him again. I stopped abruptly and my wet hair fell down violently against my cheeks causing a waterfall of water droplets to slam against the walls. In the absence of my terrible singing, the room was eerily quiet. My spine filled with ice and I shuddered. I tried to convince myself that it was just a hallucination brought on by the incident in Skylar’s car earlier but the fact that, yet again, we were the only two active things in the house was hard to ignore. There was a small smile on his face and I scowled. I ripped a band off my wrist and tied my dripping hair into a bun. His eyes held some kind of emotion I couldn’t understand. All of Skylar’s warnings went straight out the window as my anger bubbled up again.

“Oi! What the fuck are you doing in my house! Did that box to your ear turn you daft? Or was that too subtle for you?”

He didn’t move and I felt my face getting hot. I was shaking and I couldn’t help what I did next. I marched right up to him and smacked him across the face. He screamed and my eyes widened when I saw what had happened. There was a hand print mark, which didn’t surprise me – I knew I could hit – but there was also a smattering of blisters. I stumbled backwards until I hit the counter, my anger evaporating. He just stared at me, completely shocked.

“I think you should leave.” I mumbled, looking down.

“They were right.” He whispered in awe.

I snapped up to meet his violet eyes. Who the fuck had violet eyes in the first place? My anger flared.

“Fuck off!” I screeched, pinning my arms to my sides to stop from hurting him again. “I don’t want anything to do with you! You’re fucking weird and you’re always breaking into places like a proper chav and you disgust me! Get out of my house!”

“You shouldn’t want anything to do with me. And I should leave. But there’s something special about you. You draw me in.” He seemed to be talking to himself more than me.

I stepped closer to him again, my face contorted with rage. My arms were no longer trapped at my sides, and my fists clenched. Knowledge and alarm danced across his eyes and he quickly snapped his fingers, vanishing yet again.

The Fratellis came blasting through the speakers again and the water started hissing at me once more. Instinctively, I reached out and turned the music off and the heat under the pot down. My anger died in the absence of the annoying git and I finished the pasta. I quickly threw the sauce together, but my appetite was gone. Something about Michael just had me off kilter. I couldn’t even begin to try and understand him or his family. I could barely begin to understand this town. And I didn’t really want to either.

I took a bowl of supper into Mum’s room. She was staring blankly at the wall in complete darkness, like every other day. I gently nudged her arm with my hip. Her vacant eyes met mine, pain the only emotion evident.

“Hey, Mum.” I whispered soothingly. “I brought you some supper. You don’t have to eat it right now, but I’ll set it down for when you’re hungry. Try to have at least a couple bites, yeah?”

She nodded and sat up a little. I watched her nibble at the edges of the bowties as she looked into my eyes, trying to appease me.

“That’s good, Mum. Just take little bites.”

She looked down again and I kissed the top of her head before leaving her in to her solitude. I walked back to the kitchen and began sealing up the rest of supper in plastic containers before placing them in the refrigerator. I turned off the lights and dragged myself into my bedroom, exhausted. I stripped down to my knickers and slipped under the covers. I rolled into a ball, clutching the jumper to my chest.

My mind was running on hyper speed after fighting with Michael in the kitchen and the whole entire mess surrounding Skye. I didn’t even want to try to understand this whirlwind I was calling my life anymore. I tried to clear my brain of everything. I shut my eyes and thought about when Da was still alive and we still lived in Liverpool. Hopefully, that would be enough to stave off the nightmares tonight.