Genie and Paul by Natasha Soobramanien

experience of overloading himself and just sitting on his own, breathing. Absorbing himself in the pleasure of breathing in and out. If you thought too hard about breathing you might forget how to do it at all, like saying a word over and over again until it lost its meaning. But this was like her fifteenth birthday all over again. How he had been that night. The warmth, the lightness. Taking this pill was like opening up a time capsule. Swallowing a time capsule. She’d taken it because she wanted to talk to Paul, to feel close to him, to have him open up to her. She remembered a film they had watched together once: about a man’s search for his girlfriend who’d disappeared suddenly when they’d stopped at a garage for petrol. After years of searching, her abductor contacted him and agreed to meet up. On meeting, the abductor said, If you want to know what happened to your girlfriend, take this. He held out a pill, which the boyfriend took. When he came to, he found himself in a coffin.
    Her thirst was more persistent than she’d supposed, Genie realised, feeling now as though she had a mouthful of sawdust. As if she were that character in the film and had maybe tried to chew her way out through the coffin. She reached for Paul’s water bottle, and emptied it in three swallows. It had obviously been refilled several times, and was creased with tiny white scars where the plastic had been stressed. Handing it back to him, Genie realised that her hand was damp – that the bottle was starting to leak. Or had she broken out in a sweat without realising it? Her throat seemed drier than ever.
    Genie?
    She realised, as she caught him sneaking glances at her, that she probably looked uneasy. How long had she been drifting off like that? He was trying not to look concerned, she could see that, she could see he didn’t want to trigger anxiety in her but he’d seen her looking upset. Walking past the school chapel at night with Eloise had been like that too, past the two candles lit in perpetual vigil by the chapel doors, their flames rocking in a draught that threatened to blow them out, heralding the presence of the devil, flames that threw huge shadows which licked the walls and followed them along the corridor, Genie and Eloise not daring to look one another in the eye because of the fear that would spark up between them.
    Genie wanted to get away so that Paul wouldn’t mirror and distort her mood into paranoia as he seemed to be doing now. Suddenly she felt sick again. She had drunk too much water too quickly. And yet her thirst, if anything, had intensified.
    I’m just going to be sick now.
    She said this in completely the wrong tone, it sounded to her – too bright or too casual, like I’m just going to buy some more cigarettes , but then she thought wildly, What would be the right way to say it? She couldn’t remember how she would normally say it.
    Shall I come with you?
    Oh, no – no – I’ll be fine.
    I’ll just see you back here, then.
    She couldn’t get away fast enough, pushing her way through the dancers, who didn’t melt aside this time but stood solid as pillars, blocking her way as she stumbled past the ice torsos on the bar, the ice cock sucked to a stump, leaking sadly.
    The pigeon girl was still there, standing sentry beside the sinks, a bottle held under the tap; she was reassuringa freaked-out teenager with eyes like glitterballs. Genie watched her jaws working mechanically like an insect’s.
    Don’t worry, love, just stay with me, here have some of this water. This is your first one, isn’t it, love? Don’t worry, you just have some of this water. It’s coming on strong now but when it calms down you’ll have the time of your fucking life, love. Just go with it. Go with it…
    She didn’t seem to recognise Genie.
    Genie ran to a sink and stuck her mouth to the tap, drinking in prolonged swallows. And now the nausea was quite violent, each gag washing her mouth full of thin, bitter bile