A Hole in the World (10 page)

She’s sitting, sucking on a cherry lollipop, Cory watching her intently, when Daisy says, ‘We should take her to a theme park. She’d love that.’

‘If you can afford that, feel free,’ Bianca says, ‘but I blew all my allowance today on this.’

‘Cory!’ Daisy grins at him.

‘No.’ Cory shakes his head. ‘I’m not allowed to spend any large amount of money until July. Something about spending way too much on my guitar.’

‘Damn.’ Daisy looks displeased.

‘That’s okay, we can do it another time,’ Scotty suggests, cheerfully.

 ‘Sure.’ Daisy lounges back on the grass and checks her phone. ‘It’s getting late,’ she says. ‘Mum’ll be wondering where I am. Oh, wait. No she won’t.’

‘Dais...’ says Cory.

Daisy shrugs. ‘Hey, at least neglectful parents is something we all have in common, right?’ She laughs. ‘Hand me the chocolate.’

She breaks off a large strip of milk chocolate and savours it as Bianca watches. ‘Is that how you guys became friends?’ Bianca asks the group. ‘You bonded over your mutual issues with parents.’

‘Nah, I became friends with Daisy because she broke my leg in drama,’ Cory says.

Bianca blinks. ‘You what?’

‘We were doing a rehearsal and she slipped, landed on top of me, pinned my leg wrong and
snap
. She felt so bad she went with me to hospital and kept coming to my house with movies and chocolates.’ Cory eats a truffle, as though to illustrate. ‘We bonded.’

‘I’m sure there’s a word for ‘bonding’ with someone who abuses you...’ Bianca muses. Daisy hits her on the shoulder and she laughs.

‘Daisy’s right, though,’ Cory says. ‘We probably
should
go home. Else the parents will choose this one time to notice our absence.’

‘Yeah, you’re right. And I have to smuggle a princess and a whole lot of chocolate into my room without my mum noticing,’ Bianca says.

‘That won’t be too hard,’ Scotty replies.  They laugh for a moment and then, as a group, stand up. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘I’ll walk you home.’

*

Once they’re home and Alexandra and Bianca have changed out of their uniforms, the two girls sit on Bianca’s bed and go through the sweets some more.

‘Try some Smarties.’ Bianca proffers them in Alexandra’s direction and the princess spends the next ten minutes sucking the chocolate out of the middle of each one individually and then eating the shell.

Bianca finds this adorable and very amusing. ‘You’re a strange one,’ she says, with a smile.

‘I am normal,’ Alexandra says, completely seriously. ‘It is your world that is strange and unusual. You have such peculiar customs and mannerisms. You touch and attack each other without provocation but without meaning harm... and you accept me so readily.’

‘You’re lucky my friends are accepting people,’ Bianca says, finding it strange that all of a sudden Scotty’s friends are her friends, too. ‘A lot of kids wouldn’t be so accepting. They’d think you are weird and treat you badly.’

‘I have been considered ‘weird’ for a lot of my life,’ Alexandra says, quietly. ‘I have always dreamed of a prince who will come to me, of a person I could be with forever, of a world with no conflict, united beneath my gentle rule. Most people do not understand this.’

‘You gonna be Queen Alexandra some day?’ Bianca enquires, tucking in to a piece of shortbread.

Alexandra nods. ‘I am,’ she says. ‘And you shall be Queen Bianca.’

Bianca chokes on her shortbread. ‘I...
what
?!’

‘As my Prince Charming, you will one day rule at my side.’ Alexandra smiles. ‘You will be a wonderful Queen, I believe.’

‘Look,’ Biance says, softly. ‘Not only do you seem to have some major issues with getting genders confused, here, but also you aren’t listening. I’m
not
your Prince Charming. One day, I’m sure, your prince will come, but Alexandra... I’m not him, I’m sorry.’

Alexandra looks down and nibbles on the strip of chocolate. There are tears in her eyes, so Bianca determinedly looks away, wishing she could make Alexandra understand and not have to upset her.

‘I think you are my Prince Charming,’ Alexandra says, quietly, not looking back up or meeting Bianca’s eyes. ‘Whether you say you are, or whether another may call himself such. I will always believe this.’

Bianca sighs and she’s about to argue some more when she notices Alexandra looking at her again and smiling. The atmosphere has changed, so she lets it go.

‘Thank you, Bianca,’ Alexandra says.

‘What for?’ Bianca says.

‘Today. Missing a day of your ‘school’ to give me a day full of enjoyment and adventure.’ Alexandra leans across, kisses Bianca’s cheek and rocks back onto her heels. ‘This day meant much to me. I will remember it always.’

‘Hey, it wasn’t just me,’ Bianca says, trying valiantly not to blush. ‘Scotty, Cory, Daisy... they helped too.’

‘And tomorrow I shall thank them, also,’ says Alexandra. ‘But for tonight, my thanks belongs to you, and only you.’

Bianca smiles. ‘You’re welcome, Alexandra, you really are.’

Two weeks after Alexandra’s unexpected arrival into the world, Bianca wakes up, yawns, and turns over. Despite the fact that for fourteen days she’s woken up and found Alexandra beside her, she still wakes up and expects to find the bed empty and to discover it was all a truly crazy dream.

Once more, however, she finds her bed not empty and Alexandra is there, curled up in a ball on the other side of her bed, wearing Bianca’s
Hello Kitty
pyjamas. Her palm is beneath her cheek, her hair is fanned out over the pillow and her lips are slightly parted as she sleeps soundly. There’s about two feet between the two girls on the mattress, a respectable distance agreed upon by both of them the first night.

It occurs to Bianca as she watches the blonde sleep beside her that she really has no idea how she’s managed to hide Alexandra’s presence in her house from her parents for this long.

She takes a moment to muse this and figure it out. Every morning, the two of them shower, dress and come downstairs. By the time Julia rouses, it appears like Alexandra has merely arrived to walk to school and Julia never asks or even wonders, nor does she get up early enough to make sure her daughter is up for school and find Alexandra in her bed. Every evening, Bianca sneaks the other girl upstairs, then comes thundering back down the stairs to announce her arrival back home. Every night before sleep, Bianca sneaks some food upstairs and they have a mini picnic on her bed. None of her family notice this, either, and although it hurts a bit, she figures it’s better this way.

Her time in boarding school impressed a need for privacy on her long ago and because of this, after all of one argument, Julia never walks into Bianca’s room without knocking and when she knocks Bianca stuffs Alexandra into the wardrobe so fast the blonde’s head spins. Despite that, Alexandra always stays completely silent and Julia never notices anything wrong in the room.

She doesn’t come in very often.

So far they haven’t been caught, and this is exactly how Bianca plans for it to stay.

She turns away from Alexandra in the dark and towards the clock. If she’s lucky – very, very lucky – it’ll be three, maybe four in the morning and she can get another few hours of well-deserved rest before Alexandra-the-Rooster crows and all hope of sleep is lost. Her eyes land on the clock, which proudly proclaims in large red numbers that is it five fifty nine, which means it will go off in...

As soon as that thought enters her mind, the alarm does just that with an ear piercing series of high-pitched beeps. Bianca groans and slams her hand into the off button, praying to all that is good in the world that she turned it off and
not
onto snooze.

Alexandra stirs and turns onto her back, staring up at the ceiling with bleary eyes.

For a moment, Bianca thinks she might doze off again and they can just be late for school because she
needs
some more sleep. She just does. It’s, like, a necessity at this point. This wonderful thought disappears almost immediately, however, when Alexandra
bounces
to her feet, rushes towards the window, throws open the curtains and exclaims, ‘Good
morning
, world!’

Bianca turns away from the horrifically bright, violent, very, very horrible light and groans, throwing her pillow over her head.

Sometimes she
hates
Alexandra and wishes she had never, ever come into her life.

She pokes her head out from under the pillow, bravely, and lays eyes on the princess as she perches, daintily, at the end of the bed and brushes her golden hair.

Okay, Bianca only hates her on when it’s morning and early. The rest of the time...

She emerges a little more and eyes Alexandra as the blonde gives her the largest, most heartfelt smile she has ever had the pleasure of witnessing, and returns to the brushing of her hair.

Yeah, the rest of the time she’s really quite fond of this girl.

*

‘So, we have the party tonight,’ Bianca announces, as she pours cereal into a bowl for herself and watches Alexandra butter and apply marmalade to a slice of toast with the skill and precision of a girl who’s been doing it all her life, not just a couple of weeks.

‘We do?’ Alexandra enquires, looking up with her big eyes shining with interest. She takes a bite of the toast and Bianca smiles, fondly. Out of
everything
Bianca has given her to try, toast and marmalade is the thing that has become Alexandra’s favourite food.

‘Yeah, didn’t you hear the conversation on Friday? Cory’s having his sixteenth birthday party tonight. Some club around the corner. His mum – they’re rich gits, to be honest – booked the place for the whole night and we’re invited. Both of us.’

She doesn’t add that Cory’s exact words were, ‘You’ll come, right Alexandra? Right? Right?
Right
? Oh, and you, too, Bianca.’ Alexandra was just too busy admiring the marvel that was a pen to really notice and Bianca really didn’t want to draw attention to it.

‘That sounds simply marvellous!’ Alexandra announces. She claps her hands together and Bianca wonders where the toast disappeared off to. ‘Whatever shall we
wear
?’

She seems to already be planning ball gowns in her head, so Bianca interrupts her thoughts, quickly, with, ‘I have two party dresses. There’s a green one and a pink one. I gather you’d like the pink one?’ She laughs and Alexandra follows suit, smiling from ear to ear.

‘Pink
is
my colour,’ she says, happily. ‘Oh, this will be an excellent night! I cannot wait! Your friend, Cory, is such a
gentleman
.’

Bianca snorts at this, knowing full well that Cory is
not
a gentleman. At least... not around
Bianca
. She sobers when Alexandra gives her a wide-eyed and honestly confused look.

‘I mean... he’s not
my
friend,’ she corrects, quickly. ‘He’s
our
friend. He knows you as well as he knows me...’ She pauses. ‘In fact, I think he knows you better. You
do
spend an awful lot of time talking to him...’

‘Cory and I possess a lot of interests in common,’ Alexandra says, brushing crumbs from her hands and standing up from the table, walking into the kitchen. Bianca wants to ask what time, exactly, Alexandra has
spent
playing endless hours of
Call of Duty
, since that’s the only interest she’s aware of that Cory
has
. ‘Our conversations are always pleasurable.’

Bianca raises an eyebrow. ‘Just
how
pleasurable?’

‘He is quite the conversationalist!’ Alexandra exclaims, as she pulls two plastic boxes from the cupboard. ‘We discuss art, literature... Did you know your world creates those amazing moving-pictures based on the works of your scribes?!’

‘Authors...’ Bianca says, absently, as she clears up her bowl.

‘He is
wonderful
company. I feel myself so privileged to have become his friend!’ Alexandra claps her hands together and Bianca glowers darkly at her.

‘I do hope you ladies are talking about
me
,’ Scotty says, entering through the back door and taking a seat at the table, already reaching for the nearest food stuff and giving Bianca a goofy grin.

‘No; Cory, actually,’ Bianca says. She pushes the jug of milk towards her friend to go with the cereal he nicked and stands up to clear away her own plate and glass. She joins Alexandra in the kitchen, turning on the tap and running the plate under the flow of water. Alexandra smiles at her as she spreads lunch meat across the bread she fetched from the bread bin, already making lunch for herself and Bianca. Bianca smiles back because not so many days before, Alexandra would stare in wonder at the tap and ask many a question as to how such a miraculous thing could work.

‘Cory wonderful company?’ Scotty says. ‘Now I’ve heard it all!’

‘He is quite the polite fellow and has a wide range of interests we discuss during lunch.’ Alexandra smiles across at Scotty. ‘Good morning, by the way.’ She stumbles over the last three words, as though still trying to grow accustomed to normal speech and Scotty grins at her.