Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil — Chapter no 11

I

When Alice wakes the day after the party, her first and only thought is this: The world is far too fucking bright.

Sunlight splinters through the dorm’s cheap curtains, attacking the room with daggers of white. Alice sits up, and immediately wishes she hadn’t.

She groans, a feral, miserable sound, and slumps back down, shivering as her cheek hits the damp pillow. Her wet hair must have soaked in overnight and even though the hair dried, the down-filled cushion didn’t, and is now a damp and lumpy block under her head.

Her skull is throbbing and her mouth is dry and she is unbearably hungover. (The first time she ever got drunk, it was on a bottle of sherry Catty swiped from the pub, shared on the picnic bench out back, and it had gone down sweet and come up sour, a headache so fierce Alice could feel it behind her eyes, and this is ten times worse.) It takes her a moment to remember where she is, another to remember where she was last night, a third to remember that she wasn’t alone. She rolls over, half hoping and half dreading that she’ll find the violet-haired girl curled up beside her in the bed, but it’s empty.

There’s no sign of Lizbeth, either, her bed still made, as if she hasn’t been back.

Alice presses her palms into her eye sockets and tries to think. There’s something there, a memory just out of reach, something between collapsing into bed and now, something just beyond the ache inside her skull, but she’s still grasping in the dark when she hears the sound.

A soft drumming, like fingers on a desk.

“When I was a child / I got lost in the woods,” sings an eerie voice, and it takes her a second to realize it’s just her phone’s alarm, the song she programmed coming from the shelf beside her bed. Alice slams her hand

down on the screen, killing the alarm, and that’s when she notices the purple Post-it Note tacked to the lampshade above.

Three words, written in a slanted cursive.

Goodbye, Alice. xo Lottie

And even with the sickness rolling through her skin, she feels a wave of disappointment at the sorry little note. There’s no call me, no number, not even a see you round. Just Goodbye. So formal. So finite.

Alice squeezes her eyes shut again and the night before comes blinking back, like a lightbulb on the fritz before it steadies; fragments of music and rain and tangled hands, and heat, and if Alice didn’t feel like death, she’d probably play the whole thing over in her head, not to relive the good, but to assess the damage. Trace over everything she said and did, trying to decide if she’d made a fool of herself, what her classmates would think.

Play out the scene with the girl in her bed—Lottie—until the pleasure of it soured, replaced by shame over the sounds she made, the sheer, mortifying abandon of being that other, reckless Alice.

But embarrassment requires energy and she has none, and it doesn’t matter if she made an idiot of herself because Lottie is gone.

And Alice can’t stop shivering.

At some point in her sleep she must have kicked the comforter off, because the bulk is now piled down around her feet, and she’s naked except for the scratchy sheet tangled around her legs and torso. The once-white cotton is dappled with pale purple splashes (the last dregs of hair dye, a

watery ghost).

There’s another stain on the sheets.

The unmistakable red-brown of dry blood.

Alice frowns, touches the place between her legs, wondering if that’s what this is—not a hangover, just the world’s worst PMS—but her fingers come away clean. And anyway, the stain isn’t a smudge, or a smear. It’s three perfect drops, like someone dripped paint, and looking at it gives her the weirdest sense, a kind of mental vertigo, like she’s leaning over the place

where a memory should be.

But it’s not there.

Nothing to grasp. Nothing to hold on to.

She peels off the sheet, still searching for the source of the blood, and

yelps at the sight of half a dozen bruises blotting her pale skin, before she touches one and realizes it’s not a welt or a wound, but the remnant of a kiss. Pomegranate lipstick dotting her thigh, her stomach, the inside of one wrist.

Alice shivers, less at the memory than the fact she’s naked and cold, and feels like total shit.

She looks around, searches for something in reach because the thought of getting up is just too much right now. The old oversized T-shirt she normally wears to bed is draped on the desk chair and she tugs it on, shaking from that smallest effort as she hauls the comforter up, and curls beneath the blessed dark and tries to sleep—

Her head pounding—

Like a fist against a door—

Bang bang bang—

Until it slams shut— So hard it bounces in its frame and—

Alice takes off, nine years old, all elbows and knees, bare feet slipping in the marshy grass as she tries to catch up with her sister.

Because Catty is running away.

Not away away (because if Catty were serious, she’d have headed for the train station instead of the hilly slope at the edge of their yard), but away from the house, and the dinner, and Eloise Martin.

Eloise, who walked into their lives a year ago, and upended everything.

Eloise, who hails from Edinburgh and has an accent so soft it might as well be English, who never raises her voice, and who once made the fatal error of telling Catty to “call me whatever you like.”

An offer that Catty put to rude use until Dad intervened.

Eloise, who was apparently Dad’s childhood sweetheart, way back before he went to uni and met Mum. A fact they just learned about that night at dinner, because Eloise has friends visiting from Leith, and while dessert was cooling on the counter, she took Dad’s hand and said that maybe they were meant to be, which Catty took as Eloise saying their mum wasn’t, and did that mean that Mum was meant to die, and no, of course that wasn’t what Eloise was saying, but it was too late, the chair was scraping back, and the door was slamming, and Catty was off.

It’s the second time she’s run—the first was after Dad came home from that first date, looking almost happy, like the lights were finally coming on again inside his house, and it was such a relief—or so Alice thought—but Catty saw only a betrayal. As if there was an unspoken agreement that when they buried Mum, the grave would follow them home, a six-foot hollow in the bed, a hole at the table, a plot of land left fallow for their entire lives, and then Dad broke his word by planting something there.

The first time Catty ran, Alice didn’t go after her, but only because it was dark, and her sister was gone before Alice could see which way she went. She had cried herself sick, and when Catty finally showed back up the next morning, Alice made her promise—not to stay, but at least, next time, to wait, to take her with her.

But she’s twelve now to Alice’s nine, and fast—so fast that Alice can’t catch up, the distance between widening a little more with every stride.

“Catty!” she calls out. (Catty, not Catherine, or Cathy—Alice couldn’t make the th sound when she was small, so it came out Catty, and then one day their neighbor Mary Galford tutted at the name, said it wasn’t nice, so of course her sister went and looked up the meaning—mean, nasty, spiteful —after which she gleefully declared she’d answer to that and nothing else.) “Slow down!” shouts Alice now as Catty lopes up the hill, but of course, she doesn’t slow down, doesn’t look back, just tells her to “Catch up!”

Catch up, as if that’s easy, as if she doesn’t have three years on Alice.

Three years that don’t feel like much, not unless she’s running. Or the subject of Mum comes up, which it doesn’t—not directly, but it’s always there, like a hazard, a pothole they have to skirt, and every time they hit it, the years between them open up.

The difference between missing and memory.

Because Catty remembers their mum.

And Alice doesn’t.

It’s not her fault—she was only five when Sarah Moore died, and the few memories she has are mostly smudges, like old dreams.

Here is what she does remember: the sadness that hung over the house like a shroud, the sound of her dad weeping into a dishcloth when she

was supposed to be in bed, the way his shoulders bowed beneath a weight no one could see but everyone felt.

The way the air in the house got lighter after he met Eloise.

But still, Catty is too fast.

She crests the hill, and vanishes, and a strange terror grips Alice, that she’s crossed some invisible threshold, one long stride carrying her forward, out of Hoxburn, out of the world, and by the time Alice scrambles, breathless, to the top, she’s convinced Catty will be gone.

But she isn’t.

Alice sees her, a dozen strides down the hill’s far side, fetched up against the low stone wall like it’s a finish line, one that holds instead of breaking. (The hills around Hoxburn are dotted with sheep and crisscrossed with dozens of low stone walls that always look as if they’re about to crumble but never do, and for a long time Alice assumed it was some kind of magic, or imagined that the walls went deep, deep beneath the ground and that’s why they never fell, but now she knows that there’s a mason who walks the walls once a season and patches them up.) Alice slows, gasping for breath.

Catty’s back is turned, but even from here she can see how hard her sister’s gripping the wall, her knuckles going white, and Alice is sure one of them will break—the rock or her fingers, she doesn’t know which—so she starts forward, ready to pry her sister’s hand away. But Catty hears her coming, and lets go, scrubbing a palm across her cheeks.

“Hey, Bones,” she says.

It’s a nickname, going back to the time when they shared a room, a bed, when Alice liked to sleep with her knees curled into her chest, so some sharp edge was always poking Catty in the side, the back, and she would shove a pillow between them, muttering that Alice was all bones.

“Needed some fresh air.”

Catty slumps forward, resting her elbows on the wall, and Alice pads forward like her sister’s not a girl at all, but one of those nervy dogs that is always on the verge of startling.

“It’s nicer out here anyway,” she adds, even though it’s not, it’s cold, and windy, and wet, and there was cake inside, chocolate with vanilla icing.

But Alice only nods, and says, “Yeah,” running her palm along the top

of the wall. (This one isn’t on their property, but that didn’t stop Catty from declaring it hers—“See, right there, a C stamped into one of the stones”—and Eloise once explained to Alice that it’s because the stones came from the old church before the town built a new one, and that letter was just a maker’s mark, but she didn’t tell Catty because it doesn’t hurt anyone, to let her have it.) Her sister swings her legs over the wall, and Alice climbs up beside her, shivering as the cold soaks like damp into her jeans. The sun’s going down, shadows growing dense around them, but up here they can see most of Hoxburn—which admittedly isn’t much, but it looks even smaller now, and kind of quaint, like it could fit inside a snow globe, or an open hand, and Catty must be having one of her psychic moments because she lifts her hand and squints, and Alice can picture her cupping

the whole town in her palm.

Catty closes her fist. Lets it fall.

She sighs, and then stretches out along the wall like it’s a bed, and it’s too narrow for them to lie side by side, so Alice twists round and lies so they’re head to head. Cheek to cheek.

Sisters, staring up at the darkening sky.

On paper, they look the same.

Fair skin, blond hair, blue eyes.

But Alice’s skin is too pale, burns in summer, where Catty’s is dusted with freckles. Alice’s hair is a lifeless shade, Catty’s the color of melted butter. Alice’s blue eyes are tinged with gray and green, Catty’s the cold, clear shade of winter mornings.

They don’t talk about the dinner, or the fact that when Catty bolted, it was Eloise who stood up first, meaning to go after her, but Dad caught her hand and told her not to bother, to let the daft girl go.

They don’t talk at all.

Alice sucks a breath, wishes she knew what to say to make Catty happy, or at least to make her hurt less. But she knows that the wrong words will make things even worse, and she’s still searching for the right ones when Catty pulls out her phone and shoves an earbud in one ear. She offers the other one to Alice and taps the screen and the music comes spilling out, and Alice exhales.

She knows the song, recognizes it just by that opening beat, which

isn’t a drum, exactly, but the primal thud of a palm striking wood, a summons. It’s always made Alice think of the Pied Piper, it has the same strange effect of pulling you along in its wake. Sure enough Catty starts rapping her knuckles on the wall in time with the beat, and Alice feels her own pulse work to match the rhythm.

It is stripped bare, this song, a simple, hypnotizing thing. The beat never rises, but after eight counts, a girl’s voice kicks in, haunting and high, carrying the air of incantation.

“When I was a child / I got lost in the woods The trees parted for me / made such a clear trail Then closed up behind me / now I’m turned around Been trying so long now / to find a way out.”

They don’t sing along, it’s not that kind of song, would never show up on someone’s karaoke list. Instead, they simply lie there, and let it wash over them.

“The woods want to keep me / the ground wants to eat me The trees want to hold me / can’t find my way home.

The night’s getting dark now / the air’s getting cold So tired of walking / can’t find my way home.”

The music unfurls over them like a tent, and it isn’t comfortable, bits of loose rock dig into Alice’s back, but this is an enchanted moment, and she knows better than to ruin it by moving. It’s almost over now, anyway, the drumbeat slowing like a tired heart as the voice becomes higher and softer.

“I live in these woods now / the trees hold me close

The voice is a whisper as it gets to the last line.

“No longer lost now / I found my way—”

But before the last word, Catty taps the screen and the song starts over. Alice fidgets. By now, the sun’s gone down, the shadows growing dense, and she’s cold, and Eloise and her friends are probably gone, and they really should go back, go home, but when Alice brings it up, Catty says Yeah.

Says Sure.

Says We will, we will, as soon as the song is done.

And Alice wants to believe her, so she stays there, sprawled on the cooling rock beside her sister as the music unravels again. Holds her breath and waits, sure that if the voice can just get out that final word, the spell will break, the world will come unstuck, and Catty will agree to get up with her, to come home.

But the end comes around again, and Alice knows what’s going to happen, and sure enough, when the voice hits the last line, Catty taps the screen and starts the song over. And over. And over.

“No longer lost now / I found my way—”

“No longer lost now / I found my way—”

“No longer lost now / I found my way—”

Alice hits the phone, silencing the alarm a second before the singer says the word home.

“Bloody hell,” says Lizbeth from the doorway. “I thought you were dead.”

Alice groans. The sun is gone, but her skull is still pounding, and her jaw aches as if she’s been clenching her teeth in her sleep.

“That alarm’s been going off for ages,” adds her roommate curtly. “I had to study in the common room.”

Alice frowns, head spinning. She’s always been a light sleeper, usually wakes up somewhere around the second verse, but she was buried somewhere deep, had to climb up through layer after layer of sleep, the panic rising as some distant part of her heard the lyrics passing by, carrying her close to the end.

She stares at the screen now, trying to understand how it’s somehow still nine o’clock, until she realizes that it’s now nine at night (she must have nudged the AM/PM button when she turned it off before) which means she’s gone and slept through all her classes and now she has a whole new reason to feel sick. (Catty used to ditch class all the time, but Alice never missed a day of school unless she was well and truly ill, and even then, she made sure she could borrow someone’s notes so she wouldn’t fall behind, and now, three weeks into her first year of four, the professors will have it out for her, and and and—) Alice is well along the panic spiral when she remembers that it’s still

Sunday.

She heaves a strangled breath and slumps back into bed.

“No offense,” adds Lizbeth, hooking her backpack on the edge of her chair, which is never a good way to start, “but you look wretched.”

Alice tries to answer, but her throat is full of cobwebs and her skull is full of rocks and her tongue is a useless mass inside her mouth, so it takes two tries to manage a bone-dry “Thanks.”

“Are you ill?” she asks, but there’s no real caring in the question, only a prodding worry and a measure of distrust. She might as well be poking Alice with a stick.

“I’m dying,” answers Alice, because hangovers require a measure of hyperbole, and because she has truly never felt so awful. The words come scraping out, leaving a horrible taste in her mouth, and Lizbeth starts packing a bag and explaining that she really can’t afford to be getting sick, with her courseload being what it is, and it’s no problem, really, she will stay with Jeremy. (Jeremy, who was assigned to show Lizbeth around campus when she came to visit that spring, after she’d been let in, and “he must have been smitten” because they kept in touch all summer, and now that they’re in the same place they’re attached at the hip—“making up for lost time” she likes to add, as if he’s been in a war and not studying biology).

The phone slides between Alice’s fingers as she starts to shiver again, and she wishes there were a kettle in the room, but she hasn’t got around to buying one and Lizbeth is one of those rare English monsters who for some reason favors coffee over tea, and insists on getting it made fresh by someone else.

Lizbeth scurries out, and Alice thinks of folding herself back into the nest of her duvet, but her whole body aches from lying down so long, and what Alice really wants in that moment is El. (She resists the urge to call her Mum, even now, even just in her head, Catty’s glare pinging like a pebble against the side of her skull.) Dad was never any good when his daughters were sick, all awkward head pats and there, theres, but El always knew exactly what was needed, a hot water bottle or a ginger tea, a day in bed or

a bit of fresh air.

Fresh air.

The thought suddenly feels better than lying in this sweat-soaked bed in this too-small room, the air around her close and stale. Alice flings the

covers off, gets to her feet, instantly regretting the sudden rise as her limbs tremble and the whole room dips like a cheap ride. She squeezes her eyes shut and waits for space to steady before she attempts the daunting task of getting dressed.

Her jeans are sitting in a pile on the floor, still rain damp, which is just as well because the thought of anything tight against her skin makes her nauseous. Alice fumbles in the drawers for a pair of sweats and an oversized jumper. Catches her face in the mirror on the closet door and pauses long enough to see the remains of last night’s makeup streaked black around her eyes, making them look sunken, hollow, the irises fever bright, the only time they look pure blue. Her hair has dried wild, a gorse-like tangle, her fringe askew, but she doesn’t have the energy to scrape it back— her arms feel too heavy when she tries—so she settles for scrubbing at her face with the cuff of the jumper, and leaving it at that.

Alice stumbles out into the suite common room, and she must truly look as shit as she feels, because Rachel physically startles at the sight of her, and Jana looks up from the sofa and says, “Uh-oh, do you need a burrito or a bucket?”

Her stomach twists, the way it does when part of you is hungry and the other part is sick, and your insides can’t agree on what should go down and what should come up, so Alice keeps her mouth clamped shut as she shakes her head, and soldiers out into the hall.

Students pass, their voices echoing, too loud, inside her battered skull, and twice on the stairs she has to stop and brace herself against the banister.

Each time she looks down and half expects to see the trail she and Lottie made the night before.

But it was water, only water, and has dried to nothing now, leaving only Alice, who sighs and shoves open the door, hoping a bit of fresh air will set her straight.

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