Wonderland (19 page)

I used to know who I was. Jude. Named after a song in the hope that I’d stand out and shine. But I didn’t. Jude the Invisible. Jude the Obscure. Everything about me unremarkable. Nothing beautiful or striking, to make people say, “You know, the girl with that hair,” or those eyes. I was just the girl from the farm. The one with no mum. I knew what would happen when I woke up, when I went to school, when I came home. Who would talk to me. Who wouldn’t.

Until Stella. Now when I look in the mirror, I see someone else staring back. I can’t see where I stop and Stella begins.

“We’ll be legend,” I say.

I watch Stella as she lights up a cigarette and drops the Zippo on the dash.

“Like Thelma and Louise,” she drawls. She takes a drag then passes it to me. “But without the head scarves or Brad Pitt or the heart-of-gold cop watching us die.”

And then I know she knows. And I know she won’t stop me. Because this is the only way.

“It’ll be very,” she says.

I take a long drag on the cigarette and, still watching myself in the mirror, exhale slowly.
Shouldn’t be smoking,
I think. But what difference does it make now? I pass it back to Stella. Then I let the hand brake off and the car rolls forward. I feel it hit the fence, hear the wood cracking beneath us. The car jerks down over the rock. We are at the top ledge now.

Stella shrieks. Fear? No, delight. Even in death she wants to stand out, shine. She takes my hand. And I am holding part of me. A part that I had longed for. Had begged to return. Like some boy who is beautiful under the strobes and half light of a club, when you’re drowned in vodka or Pernod. But then you see him in the harsh unforgiving light of day, and you realize that you never wanted it at all.

And so I do it. My one hope of losing her and keeping me. I snatch my hand from her grasp and click open my seat belt. “I’m sorry,” I cry as the car pitches forward. And then it’s like some disaster movie. Fast and slow at the same time. I pull the door handle, desperately pushing against its weight with my shoulder. Stella reaches out and tries to hold me back. My arm flails out and hits her full on the cheek. I feel the pain sear through me. But she doesn’t flinch, just grasps my arm. And I think,
I have lost. This is it. It’s over.
But suddenly I feel other hands, stronger hands, gripping me hard. Pulling me out. Away from her. I jump.

For a brief moment, I am in two places.

I feel my body smack the ground, the crack of my leg breaking beneath me, my skull hitting a rock.

And I feel Stella flung forward into the windshield. Hear the suck as the sea floods in through the cracked glass. The muffled echoey sound of her pulse as her head goes under. The gurgle as she opens her mouth to breathe and water rushes into her throat and lungs.

Then I’m in his arms. My body broken, his head on my chest, the tears mixing with the rain and the blood. Then everything goes black. There is no sound. It is over. She is gone. The curtain falls.

I WAKE
up in the hospital, three days later. Alfie sitting next to me, dressed as a crocodile again, reading
Hello!
Dad silent, clutching his hands so tight that I can see his knuckles whiten.

“Hi.” My voice is croaky. Every inch of me hurts. My head, my leg, my stomach.

“Jude. Oh, my God.” Dad reaches forward and presses a button, and nurses flood in. Like angels in blue and white. I pass out again.

The doctors say I’m lucky. I guess I am. Lucky that Alfie told Ed about Stella. Lucky that Ed knew where I would go. That he ran to Matt’s and got his camper van in time to reach me, to pull me out before the Land Rover took me down with it. Lucky he’d called the coast guard and the helicopter was airborne before I’d even reached the Point. Lucky my broken ribs didn’t puncture my lung. And that I blacked out before the pain made me panic and lose too much blood.

Or maybe luck doesn’t come into it. Maybe my fairy godmother was looking out for me after all.

I come home. Dad shows me the clippings from the paper. The wreckage. Then photos from the hospital. My own face, battered and bloated in purple, red, and black. And I cry. Every day I cry. Because of what I’ve done. And what I’ve lost. Because I am alive.

And I am alive. My legs still in casts. Taking morphine three times a day. And other drugs too. No chance of starting at the Lab this year. But they’ve held my place. And Ed’s at King’s. He’s deferring, going to work on the boats for a year, earn some money. Then away in Matt’s camper for a bit. I’m going with him. Dad says it will be good for me. To get away. I said he should think about it himself, getting away. From here. From her. The memories. He smiled, said, “Maybe.” But I know he won’t.

I never told Blair. Never spoke to him about that night. But it’s over now, the baby gone. I’ve asked Ed how he feels, knowing he wasn’t the first. But he says it doesn’t matter. And I believe him. Because that wasn’t me.

I was someone else then. Someone I thought I wanted to be. Someone for whom the world would spin alone. Someone who took dares, picked fights, smoked, drank, danced in high heels above the sea.

Now I’m just Jude.

JOANNA NADIN
is the author of numerous books for young readers.
Wonderland
is her first young adult novel to be published in the United States. She says, “I wanted to explore the idea of identity, and of wanting to be someone else, which is what I seemed to spend a large part of my teens, and some of my adulthood, doing.” A former special adviser to the prime minister, Joanna Nadin freelances as a government speechwriter. She lives in Bath, England.