Fairytales for Wilde Girls (8 page)

 

 

Guinevere's Rabbits

The sky was the burnt sepia of autumn; a paper-lantern moon hung aloft and the palette of the forest was bitten and bloody.

Edgar saw her often in the front yard of Number Thirty-six, her hair twisted up in
Sailor Moon
-style odango and pigtails. Sometimes she was reading or scuffing over anthills or doing both at once; her eyes on that large book while her clomping boots sent ant sergeants, brigadier generals and lowly soldiers rushing to man the sniper towers, the barracks and the trenches. Sometimes she was peeling open stillborn flowers, as though hunting for Thumbelinas.

There was something familiar but strange about her – Snow White with a suntan. Cinderella in biker boots. Tough and delicate and magical and real all at once.

One afternoon, there was a second person in her garden. Isola and a girl with blunt black hair were kneeling with their heads almost bumping together as they peered into the shrubbery.

They were wearing odd costumes: Isola had on a long blue dress and the other girl had a red paper crown perched atop her head. Edgar wondered briefly whether there was another costume party on, but before he considered wandering over to ask them Portia skipped right out the front door and crossed the street. She had become quite taken with the girl at Number Thirty-six, and Edgar hurried after her, embarrassed but slightly pleased.

‘Sola!' Portia yelled.

Isola turned and lifted her gaze, squinting in the crisp sunlight. ‘Portia, look here,' she said, seemingly unruffled by their sudden appearance. She held out her pale hands, which were clasped as though in prayer, then shifted her thumbs to make a peephole. Portia peered in.

‘Ew!' Portia hopped up and down on the spot. ‘It's an ugly
bug
!'

‘A grasshopper,' corrected Isola, and dumped the creature in the small girl's palm.

Portia squealed in pretend fright; her flushed cheeks gave away her excitement. ‘It's moving! Cass!' she shrieked, dashing suddenly across the street, her hands clasped tightly against any escape attempts. ‘Cassio!
It's moving
!'

‘So you're the new neighbour.' The Asian girl rubbed her dirty palms on her bare legs, then offered her hand. ‘I'm Grape.'

‘I'm Edgar.'

‘I know.' Grape grinned, showing all her teeth. There was a knowing sparkle behind her glasses, and Edgar suddenly remembered where he'd seen her before.

‘How's the wrist?' he asked innocently, and she cackled with laughter.

‘See, Sola? It
was
the highlight of the night,' said Grape, to which Isola gave a pinched smile. ‘So –' Grape turned back to Edgar ‘– how do you know Jella?'

‘She's dating my best mate, Phillip.'

‘Oh my God,
Pip
? He's a legend, he keeps trying to give me advice on picking up girls. It's hilarious.' She clapped her hands together. ‘You're good at gardening, yeah?'

He shrugged. ‘My mum's pregnant, she needs the help. Most things I plant die. I've got, like, an evil touch.'

‘The accursed black thumb,' said Grape solemnly. ‘Well, that's all right, because we're trying to solve a rabbit infestation.'

As if on cue, a black lump bounded from the bushes, past them and towards the woodland. Edgar noticed that Isola watched it with a curious gaze.

‘I mean, yeah, it's the cutest plague ever, but they're destroying the veggie patch,' Grape continued.

He could see their odd costumes better now, but they still didn't make sense. They were both in school sports uniforms, but over hers, Isola wore a blue, ankle-length diaphanous nightgown, like the slightly moth-eaten dress of a Camelot drowning.

‘And you left the prince's ball for this?'

Isola suddenly seemed aware of the odd see-through dress, and swished the sleeves awkwardly. ‘Autumn Athletics Carnival, actually. It's a costume for my house. I'm in Guinevere, the blue house,' she added unnecessarily.

‘Are you any good?'

Grape laugh. ‘Geez, no! They're terrible. They're our little stragglers, bless 'em.'

‘Yeah,
they're
terrible.
I
don't compete,' said Isola, slightly defensively.

‘The dress gives the illusion of house pride,' Grape told Edgar. She gestured rather smugly to the ribbons pinned to her chest. ‘Arthur house. Red team. Undisputed conquerors.'

‘Hey, I did compete in something,' said Isola, as if only just remembering. She lifted the hem of the dress to show Edgar the mud flung up her legs and flashed her shiny raw palms. ‘Tug of war.'

‘Sister K threatened her,' said Grape, quirking one eyebrow. ‘‘‘Maybe you'll find your house pride in detention, Miss Wilde!''' She mimicked a deep voice, then laughed an infectious spurt of giggles that seemed to vibrate through her whole body.

The three of them began ferreting through the shrubbery, combing the long grass with their fingers. The disturbed bushes rustled; more rabbits slipped out, followed by a gecko, which was scooped up by Grape's waiting hands and deposited on Portia's shoulder, who had returned to shriek happily at the wildlife.

Edgar reeled off his mother's usual tricks: wire fences, natural border-walls of nettles, kindly worded requests to the animals whether they'd please not eat certain plants, hot sauce mixed with water to spray over the garden. The last option sounded the most straightforward, and in the more unkempt shrubs they uncovered a crop of old butterfly cocoons, the husks of mummified houseflies, old spider-snacks. When they were certain the wildlife had been cleared, they gathered spray bottles and mixed water and hot sauce, spraying their brew over the plant stems and leaves, a fine red mist like diluted blood. The rabbits might still come, of course, but one taste of this and they wouldn't be back in a hurry.

When Isola took Portia around the corner of the house to find the best spot to release the little gecko back into the wild, Grape sat back on her heels and said abruptly to Edgar, ‘So – what are your intentions, punk?'

‘Huh?'

She pitched her voice roughly, eyebrows drawn together in an impression of someone unknown. ‘Are you gonna marry my daughter, Mr Edgar?'

‘Uh, what? I –'

Grape snapped her fingers, the serious expression vanishing. ‘Sorry! I'm just trying to prep you for Mr Wilde's inevitable speech. He only ever plays “bad cop”, so don't take it personally.'

‘Oh,' said Edgar, feeling his cheeks heat up.

‘Of course, my question still stands.' She gave that same raucous laugh at his embarrassment. ‘Hey, don't look so worried! I'm just looking out for my best friend! I love her to a million stinkin' bits, I swear. It hasn't been easy, though, not since . . .' She jerked her head meaningfully towards the upper floor of the Wilde house. Edgar craned his neck to see the latticed windows, the firmly closed curtains. ‘That's not to say I've been the easiest friend, either. And she's always stuck by me. When the girls at school found me out.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I mean it's hard enough being “the foreign girl”,' she said, with a smile that crinkled up her whole face and suddenly wet eyes, ‘without being “the only gay kid in school” too.'

Friendship: An Interlude

Years ago, when they were small, Grape remembered Mrs Wilde walking her and Isola down High Street, towards the bus that would take them all to Bloodpearl Beach for the day. As they waited at the road crossing for the lights to change, Mrs Wilde took her daughter's hand and nodded at Grape, to whom Isola held out her hand and intoned, ‘Hold my hand so we don't float away!'

Looking back, Grape realised that it was a simple trick to train them in road safety, that the asphalt wasn't really anti-gravity like Mrs Wilde claimed, and small girls couldn't anchor each other to the ground no matter how tightly they grasped. Years passed and Grape grew out of the habit, even if she sometimes felt, as her feet left the pavement, the phantom swoop in her belly she imagined weightlessness to feel like.

When they were thirteen, Isola ripped a crucifix off the wall and threw it ninja-star-style at Bridget McKayde, after Bridget had hissed
dyke
when Grape passed by, when Grape's barely there sexuality was suddenly her defining characteristic in those oppressive halls.

Isola had been her best friend for five years already; the past three had been a tearful miasma, as the Wilde family imploded behind the screen of trees and Isola stopped being so clever and funny and loud, became mute and shadowy like a stitch-lipped flower shuttered indoors, where it could neither grow nor die, in stasis. She stopped meeting people's gazes, stopped wanting to be touched; she withheld hugs and ceased braiding little worms with ribbon through Grape's hair as she sat behind her during class.

But that was the moment, while Bridget howled and grasped her black eye, Grape knew she would always
always
always
love Isola Wilde, and vowed to do better to show it.

They shared the tiniest of smiles before Sister K hauled Isola roughly from the room. Grape waited after school outside the headmistress's office, listening to the muted shouting like an underwater ruckus. Grape picked at the rips in the cracked vinyl chair, her eyes fixed on a portrait of Dymphna over the coffee table, remembering that every saintess was once just a gawky and heavy-hipped girl with oily skin and uncertainty of self like the rest of them. Grape watched the portrait for a wink, a shadow of a grin – an acknowledgement of the saintless girls of the future.

But Dymphna ignored her, and on the quiet walk up High Street a half-hour later, under the neon sign of the Church of the Unlocked Heart, Grape reached out to grasp Isola's hand, briefly and wordlessly, looking both ways as they crossed the road.

She felt Isola squeeze back.

 

Names Exchanged

The next week Isola was sitting at the end of the driveway, her wavy mass of anime heroine hair uncombed, eyes fixed in a book.

Edgar shouldered his skateboard out into the court, greeted her, then proceeded to skate up and down the asphalt as damp oak leaves caught in the wheels and stuck to his jeans. He almost tripped on a hidden tree branch.
Be cool, Edgar
, he told himself, as he regained his balance and waited for Isola Wilde to talk to him.

After skating and waiting a solid fifteen minutes, he kicked his board under his elbow and marched over to her. She didn't even look up as his shadow stained her hair.

‘Hey, Isola? Can I ask you something?'

She squinted up at him. ‘Yeah?'

‘Why do you live out here? On the edge of the spooky woods and all?'

A tiny smile cracked her still-life lips. ‘We used to live right in the middle of 'em, but the council made us move. Gingerbread cottages apparently don't make for sustainable living.'

‘Ah –' Edgar tapped his nose knowingly ‘– so you're a witch.'

‘That's what they tell me.'

Edgar laughed, but she didn't.

He shifted his skateboard so she could see it clearly under the bulk of his arm. It was bright pink, an exact replica of the hoverboard from
Back to the Future Part II
. Red scars pocked his elbows from all the spectacular crashes he'd had on it.

‘Where did you move from?' Isola asked, squinting up through the sunlight at him.

He sat down beside her, blocking the blinding light, and pointed to the far hills rising. ‘Other side of the valley. It's only a twenty-minute drive. I didn't even have to change schools.'

‘Why'd you move?'

‘My mum's an old hippie. Her name's actually listed as “Lotus Blossom” on her birth certificate.'

Isola's narrow lips curved upward. ‘And?'

‘And they were building a transmitter tower over our house. Mum was convinced our brains would fry in our sleep. She legitimately considered making tinfoil hats.'

‘And she moved you here for health and safety?' She chuckled at some invisible irony.

‘What?'

‘Nothing.' She tossed her book into the grass and looked up at him, a curious glint in her eye. ‘What's your real name?'

Edgar raised a mocking eyebrow and said loftily, ‘Honestly, I'm famous. I thought you'd claimed to have read all my work?' He started picking the shredded leaves from his skateboard's axle. ‘It's Edgar Llewellyn. Not nearly as original as Isola Wilde.'

‘It's not original at all. Mum named me after Oscar Wilde's sister.'

‘No kidding. Was she a writer, too? What'd she do?'

‘Nothing,' she said, looking put out. ‘At least, as far as I'm aware. She died really young.'

‘All the best people do,' he conceded.

Then came rumbling in the distance; a monster waking up. The treetops shook with trepidation.

‘Is that a
car
?' said Edgar in disbelief, before adding, ‘Is it weird that I've lived here a month and already I'm sensitive to the sounds of civilisation?' He craned his neck as the car came into view and rolled along the dirt road that wound around the woods. Rusted red metal glinted through the hazy dust clouds. Two surfboards clogged the roof rack.

‘Aha,' said Isola, her voice coloured with a hidden smile.

The ancient car looped around the court and came to a rolling halt in front of Number Thirty-six. A boy with sickly too-much-time-indoors skin and still-wet-from-the-shower hair climbed out of the driver's seat.

‘Jamie Sommerwell!' called Isola. ‘What brings you to these backwoods?'

The boy drummed the car roof nervously. ‘C'mon, Isola.' He climbed back into the car, crawled across and kicked open the passenger door. ‘The surf's supposed to be decent today.' He patted the cracked leather seat.

‘You know, I charge by the hour.'

‘In what, Monopoly money?'

Isola rolled her eyes so dramatically they might have rolled out like blue marbles down the asphalt. She waved a hand towards the car. ‘Edgar, this is James. He's not usually such a creep.'

The boy in the car gave a sharp jerk of his head in Edgar's direction. He looked back to Isola, and said, ‘Chariot's departing, Sola.'

‘Hold on.' She got up, dusted gravel off her skirt and hurried indoors.

James and Edgar looked at one another.

‘Nice car,' said Edgar.

‘Nice joke,' said James coldly. ‘It's a piece of shit, I'm well aware.'

They sat in awkward silence. Edgar blinked at his warped reflection in a dent on the bonnet. James fiddled with some controls on the dashboard until The Smiths filtered out of the speakers and drifted amongst the shrubbery of Aurora Court, netting in webs, crowding letterboxes.

Isola came marching out. Gripping the car's barely attached passenger door, she looked inquiringly at Edgar. ‘You swim?'

‘About as well as Jeff Buckley.'

A husky laugh battered her throat, a trapped butterfly. ‘Well, we're going to the beach. Care to join?'

She plopped a large straw-woven bag on the car floor. Edgar spotted a swimsuit, a towel, a heavily dog-eared book. He shook his head.

‘Sure? You're welcome to, honestly.'

‘Nah. I gotta go plant some more trees for Mum.'

‘Well, okay. Try not to decapitate any more rabbits.'

Edgar skated back to his house. When he reached the letterbox, which still bent double as though spewing out letters, the car's brakes screeched behind him.

Isola was working furiously to wind the window down. It stuck fast, and she yelled through the brief gap, ‘Hey, Edgar?'

‘Yeah?'

‘Nice skateboard!' She winked, and James hit the accelerator.