Fall by Candice Fox Page A

seventeen-year-old is trying to interact inappropriately with you.’
    â€˜And that I’m doing nothing about it.’
    â€˜I’m trying to help you realise what’s going on, so that you can do something about it.’
    â€˜Well, thank you, Imogen. Thank you very much. You’re such a giving person.’
    â€˜Fuck you.’
    â€˜Fuck me?’ I scoffed.
    â€˜Yes. You’re being rude. And mean.’
    â€˜You’re being rude. You don’t know this girl. Her sister bludgeoned her parents to death. She sprayed their brains all over their pretty pink bedroom.’
    â€˜That’s terrible.’
    â€˜You’re right. It was terrible. In fact you have no fucking idea how terrible it was,’ I said.
    â€˜I’m sure it was the kind of terrible life event that might reorient a person’s whole perception of the world. Of people. Of relationships. Of appropriateness.’
    â€˜Oh lord,’ I sighed. ‘Stop.’
    She shrugged. My face felt hot. I sipped the water nearest to me, tried to back down the angry stairs I was slowly ascending. ‘What are you doing going through my phone in the first place?’
    You’ll either bend to her command or snap her hand off one day.
    â€˜Why shouldn’t I be able to go through your phone? Going through your phone shouldn’t worry you, Frank, because you should have nothing on there that you wouldn’t be happy for me to see.’
    Imogen rifled violently through her handbag, threw her phone onto the table so that it bounced dully on the cloth. People turned in their chairs.
    â€˜You want to see my phone?’ she snarled. ‘Go ahead.’
    â€˜I don’t want to examine your phone, Imogen. I’m not that fucking needy.’
    And then when you do snap at her, boy, then she’s really going to own you.
    Imogen looked at me, broken. Then she got up and left. I tried to chase her, but she slipped through tiny gaps between the chairs of other patrons I just couldn’t fit through. She was gone before I could see which way she went.

 
    Tara liked Violet the moment she saw her standing there in the doorway of her bedroom, twirling a piece of her long white hair around a willowy finger. She didn’t know how long the girl had been watching her at the desk, playing with her dolls.
    Well, she wasn’t sure ‘playing’ was the right word. She was sure playing wouldn’t have upset Joanie so much. When Joanie had found Tara’s Barbies, with their cropped hair and their burned eyes, the hundreds of holes she’d dug into their breasts and crotches and stomachs with the heated needle, she had begun to scream. But to Tara, indeed, it was playing. Toying. She couldn’t seem to leave the Barbies alone, the way she couldn’t seem to leave a sore alone. Her father kept bringing them in their beautiful pink cardboard boxes, and they would sit on the shelves staring out at her from behind the clear plastic windows begging her to unwind the wire from around their wrists. Then once she had them free, Tara would feel the urge to play. The needles she found in the housekeeper’s closet. The matches she found in the kitchen.
    The way the Barbie’s big, glossy blue eyes blackened and bubbled and sunk as Tara slowly inserted the needle made her mouth wet. She cleared her throat and shoved the dolls aside. Violet came right into the room and sat on the bed.
    â€˜Hi,’ the girl said. ‘I’m Vi.’
    Sometimes, after that first day, Tara sat alone in her room and smiled to herself and whispered, Hi, I’m Vi , in the soft and lilting way the girl did, like a birdsong on a clear morning. Years later Tara would wonder if she had been in love with Violet then. Her first crush.
    â€˜My mum’s downstairs with your mum.’
    â€˜Oh. Okay.’
    â€˜She says we’ve got to hang out together.’ Violet raked her fingers through her hair.