Fall by Candice Fox Page B

‘But I don’t mind. This is a cool room.’
    The girl reached out and jangled the string of Nepalese bells hanging above Tara’s bed. Tara hadn’t heard the word ‘cool’ regarding anything to do with her ever before, whether it was her room, her things, her clothes, her self. She was the very definition of uncool. She caught a flash of herself in the mirror and twisted quickly in the chair, the wire back cutting into her flesh in a cross-hash pattern. It made her look like a rolled brisket. She pulled her cardigan over herself and locked her eyes on the Violet girl’s impossibly thin ankles.
    â€˜How old are you?’
    â€˜Thirteen,’ Tara mumbled.
    â€˜I’m thirteen too.’
    She said it like it was an achievement. She’d made it to thirteen. Tara smiled at the floor, scratched at her neck, leaving red marks she tried not to stare at in the mirror.
    â€˜So what do you do?’ the girl asked. Tara noticed that she was still touching her hair. Always touching her hair – raking it, pulling it, twisting it into ringlets that unrolled and fell impossibly straight, refusing to be manipulated. While the girl toured the room, Tara gathered a small ball of fallen hairs in her fingersand rolled and rolled it in her palm, making it tight, a tiny snowy creature that she tucked into the pocket of her cardigan.
    â€˜Do? Um.’
    â€˜Yeah, like, what’s your thing? What do you do?’
    Tara scratched hard at her neck, felt her face flush. She clenched one fist, just one, by the side of the chair, feeling her knuckles crack.
    â€˜Um. Um.’
    What are you doing here? Why did she send you here? What do you mean ‘do’? I don’t know what other kids do. I don’t do anything. I hide. I hide. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t want to look stupid. I don’t want –
    â€˜I’m a ballerina,’ Violet announced. Tara exhaled hard.
    â€˜Oh.’
    â€˜It’s my career. Do you have a career?’
    Tara breathed.
    â€˜You’ve got to take care of a career like it’s a baby,’ Violet said, shooting up onto the bed, standing in the centre of the room suddenly like curtains had opened before a mattressed stage, like an audience had been revealed, had demanded her presence. She looked at herself in the mirror, did a series of little rises and falls, flattened her hands on her ribcage and pushed, hard, inwards until the whole upper section of her torso collapsed like a balloon, the air expelled neatly. She was like a fold-out. An origami girl of crisp white paper. She slid her hands down, did the same with her waist, seemed to want to squeeze herself dry like a sponge.
    â€˜Your career is a little life that belongs to you. You love it. You care for it. You think about it every minute. You do your duty to it, because if you don’t, it’ll die. And you’ll havekilled something. Killed a baby. You’ll never forgive yourself. You know?’
    Tara did know. Her own mother spoke of such things. Not of careers, but of killing.
    You’re killing me, Tara. You’re killing me with this. Look at you.
    Tara got up, stood looking at Violet squeezing herself in the mirror, and wanted to join in, but didn’t know how. She loved Violet already. Loved her milky smooth skin and white hair and the smell of milk all about her like a newborn animal, pure and untainted. Tara thought if she touched her the girl would probably be cold, might feel like condensation on a bottle left on the counter in the kitchen. Violet turned to Tara and grabbed her forearms. The bigger girl felt a rush of electricity run through her, right into her chest, like stepping on a stair that wasn’t there, the terror followed by the blessed relief. Violet squeezed her fleshy elbows, slid her fingers along until they were holding hands, the two of them, just standing there in the room where no one dared enter, where her own