Being Lara
being
Lara
LOLA JAYE
For Nanno
Prologue
Now
L
ara was now an alien.
Her transformation had been swift and had appeared on the evening of her thirtieth birthday party, around six and a half minutes after blowing out thirty candles stuck into the top of a huge yellow cake.
“You have to close your eyes before you blow them out!” commands Agnes. So Lara squeezes them shut. She thinks she can hear the doorbell. The inside of her lids darken. Someone switches off the lights. She's tingling with excitement, thinking of a birthday wish.
“Not yet! Open 'em up!” Jason says. She opens her eyes. There's singing. The cake, in the shape of a Chanel bag, is plonked in front of her. She can't wait to taste the smooth butter icing. She closes her eyes again. She can feel the heat of the candles.
“Make a wish!” Mum, in that new mauve cardigan, calls out.
Lara's lungs fill with air. The light switches back on.
“She's not done it yet!” shrieks Mum giggly/angrily.
“Turn the lights back off!” commands Sandi.
It's hard to hold her breath. Dad is by the door, next to him a woman in a severe blue-and-black head tie. Tie-dyed? They're talking. He looks strained. Angry evenâhis face as white as a sheet. She doesn't recognize the woman. Lara wants to exhale now; she can't hold her breath like she used to when she was a kid. She's thirty now, remember?
She blows out the candles, finally. Clapping. A loud cheer erupts.
She's staring at the woman. The woman stares back. She's a stranger. Why is she here? She wasn't invited. Who is she? Why has she come? The questions float around her annoyingly. No answersâbut even though she doesn't recognize her, Lara Reid is consumed by a strong, strong feeling, nearly a certainty, that she has known this woman her entire life.
It was the morning of her fifth birthday when the Little Girl first found out she was an alien.
Standing in the middle of the school playground by the white oblong water fountain, this was less than eloquently explained to her, through a series of hand gestures and grown-up words, by someone named Connie, who had bad breath, freckles, and a pair of uneven socks.
“You're definitely an alien!” repeated Connie, whose fiercely plaited blond pigtails swung from side to side, like two whips, completing that evil demeanor the Little Girl had almost come to expect from Connie, as part of her school day.
Itching to be let into the source of Connie's information, the Little Girl felt only vaguely confident the comments had no real truth.
“Do you wanna know how I know?” said Connie. “My dad said so!” she continued, hand on hip, body twisted into a sort of “S” shape, immediately awakening her to the belief that Connie Jones was not only the school bully, but could also read minds. That knowledge, along with a sudden image of an actual grown-up confirming an ET ancestry, blurred into an uneasy focus that shed new and unwelcome light on the moment.
The Little Girl was clearly about to be exposed.
“So ⦠so ⦠what else did your dad say ⦠about me?”
“He said you were an alien. Are you not listening?!”
The words hung about like unwelcome pungent odors, threatening to overpower anything good or decent within the Little Girl's reach. Although used to being on the receiving end of Connie's nastiness, the Little Girl knew that something about Connie's confidence, her whole manner, and that adult source meant this particular verbal onslaught plainly stood out from the rest. A mammoth revelation in a sea of minute insults she'd been forced to digest over the weeks.
The Little Girl searched the playground for a friendly face, wishing to join the short-trousered boys who remained at the far end of the playground chucking marbles on the floor, chatting in general about boys' stuff and the like. She wished for such simplicity and not the worrying revelations she was now forced to confront, thanks to Connie.
“I'm telling my dad you called us aliens!” she threatened, part of her acutely aware that this cowardly approach could make things worse.
She backed away and Connie followed.
“Why? He's not an alien, YOU are. My dad said so!” Connie's blue eyes flashed with triumph.
“Well ⦠who told him?”
“They told him at work!”
“You're lying!” the Little Girl protested as Connie's words began to jumble up into shapes and colors she just didn't understand.
“My dad said it's only YOU! We could all see it when your mum brought in your birthday cake. If you don't believe me, just look in the mirror when you get home!” Connie sang eerily.
“You're lying!” she reiterated, mainly because her five-year-old brain couldn't come up with anything stronger to articulate her feelings of confusion, helplessness, and growing frustration.
“You don't look like them and that's because⦔ Connie rolled here eyes mockingly, and the Little Girl began to imagine what it would feel like to knock each and every one of her teeth right out of her head. “Because⦠YOU'RE an alien, stoopid!”
And with that killer ending, Connie skipped off to terrorize another classmate or stamp on a spider, leaving the echo of her words to waft around in her wake like floating ash after the fire.
That night, the Little Girl called out to her cousin Jason who was staying over, with the clever pretext of sharing leftover birthday cake. She tugged him by his orange-juice-stained T-shirt, pulling him toward the tall mirror in the corridor, as Mum sat engrossed in the telly and Dad snoozed in front of it.
“What you doing?” asked Jason with agitation, as she forced him to stand side by side, shoulder to shoulder with her, like toy soldiers on an inspection. His head shot down in defiance, and she masterfully propped it up again with her forefinger.
“Stand still, Jase! I'm not joking!” she hissed, careful not to shout and disturb the tranquillity of her parents' “downtime.”
Her eyes bore into the mirror, then to her cousin, to the mirror and back to him again. She did this so much her neck began to ache.
“Whaaaaat?” whined Jason, perhaps once pleased to be free of his bossy older sisters for one blissful night, but now wishing they could forge a rescue mission A-Team style and get him away from this clearly deranged cousin.
“Just stand still!” she said, pulling against the rigidity of his arm.
“I'm telling Aunty Pat!” he threatened.
Narrowing her eyes and forcing the stream of concentration needed for such an important task, she stared intently at their reflections, acutely unsure of what she was actually searching for.
“Aunty Pat!!!!” called Jason, traitorously.
Opening her mouth to retort, she could only gaze at their reflections, immediately noticing that her cousin Jason appeared to be slightly taller than she was.
“What's going on?” asked Mum, appearing in the hallway and tucking away strands of blond hair that had fallen from the elastic band used to tie it in a rush.
“I'm being held hostage!” he wailed with gross exaggeration.
“Let go of your cousin, please!” said Mum in a warning tone.
The Little Girl wrinkled her forehead, as if attempting to calculate her seven times table, before releasing him. Jason immediately ran in the direction of the bedroom as Mum crouched down to her height, filling the Little Girl's nostrils with that familiar scent of lavender. Mum placed her hand on her daughter's and, in that instant, something was revealed.
“Sweet pea, what is it?” asked Mum.
The Little Girl widened her eyes in wonderment, not able to actually close her mouth. This fresh realization was so raw, so real and it was staring right back at her from the mirror.
Mum's eyes looked different from hers.
“What is it, sweet pea?”
Mum's eyelashes weren't bushy like hers either.
“Sweet pea?”
The shape just above her lips stuck out a bit too, whereas Mum's didn't.
And the tiny hole at the top of her ear and her really long eyelashes were also not shared by Mum or anyone else in the family. In fact, Mum, Dad, Uncle Brian, Aunty Agnes, Keely, Annie, and Jason all resembled one another in tiny doses while sheâ¦
Forcing another glance at Mum's hand, the truth knocked a little harder on the door of denial and suddenly she'd no idea what was happening.
“Sweet pea, what is wrong?” asked Mum again.
Unsure why, her reply was to simply stare down at her feet, noticing how lovely the pink-and-white fairy slippers with the gold sprinkles tipping from a magic wand looked on her feet. They were one of her many birthday gifts from Mum, picked to match the pink nightdress with the sleepy teddy bear on the front.
She focused again on the image reflecting back at them, and Mum called her name.