Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

She did, and Tilly’s mouth opened up into a pinky brown cavern with sharp white teeth as she gave a little scream of surprise, then called out, “Brilliant!”

Later, when they had been on everything and the electricity from the control box had run out (NEPA), the amusement park was still again.

That was when Jess looked around and realised that the sun had set.

“Oh my God, TillyTilly! We’re. . I’m going to be in BIG trouble!”

Just the thought of what her mum was going to say to her made her feel queasy.

Tilly didn’t look all that concerned.

“Then we’d better go home now,” she said, leading the way out of the park.

“Are we. . you going to leave the gates open?” Jess asked, trotting after her as she started down the road.

“I’m too tired to pull them shut,” Tilly flung out over her shoulder.

“I could help,” Jess offered.

Tilly stopped, reached out and hugged Jess. As Jess awkwardly hugged her back, unused to having her arms around a body smaller and skinnier than her own, Tilly suddenly whispered into the air between them, her breath tickling the curling tendrils of Jessamy’s hair.

“Thank you for wanting to help,” she said, “but you need to get home now. Don’t worry about it.”

She left Jess at the back gate of the compound and scurried away, not looking back.

The cars that had been parked outside the compound when Tilly and Jess had left that morning were all gone. Only her grandfather’s car remained, the dark blue of it making a mere outline in the dark.

As Jess edged carefully past it, her mother and Driver sprang out of the car. Jess jumped back, a little whimper escaping her as the faceless pair advanced. Then, when they drew closer, she saw her mother’s tight expression of anger, and saw her crumple into tears.

“Oh my God, Jessamy! You are so selfish! Where on earth have you been?”

“I’m sorry, Mummy,” she said, falling forward and burying her face in her mother’s long T-shirt. But for some reason that she couldn’t have explained even to herself, once her mother could no longer see her face, Jess’s expression of remorse shifted into an empty reflex expression, the corners of her mouth tugging up into a smile.

Jess was alone downstairs, the top three buttons of her gingham checked dress undone as she steadily bounced a tennis ball off the wall of the centre house. She was pretending not to know that her parents were watching her from the top window, probably talking worriedly about her. Lips pursed now, her brow furrowed in concentration again as the thwacking sound of ball against brick became intermittent with the muffled drop of the ball hitting the ground.

A few minutes later, as Jess was reaching into the dust for the ball which she had just dropped, she looked up. She had heard someone moving, coming around the corner of the house.

Was it her mother?

Her mother had made her stay up nearly the whole night being talked at about how she should never, ever, try to run away, especially since this wasn’t like England where police would actually stand a chance of being able to find her if she had been hurt somewhere. Sobbing, her mother had told her how scared she had been, had told her about ritual murders. Jess had watched impassively, some part of her shocked and embarrassed at her own lack of emotion, wishing that she could feel something and be truly sorry.

If she saw her mother turning the corner, she would run around the other side of the house, she decided.

Enough was, after all, enough.

A face appeared around the corner, grinning mischievously. It wasn’t her mother; it was TillyTilly.

Relieved, she turned to her friend, who was wearing the same dim white costume as the day before. The beautiful, dark puffs of her hair sprang out from above the bits of string that dangled down below her ears, and she had the sleeves of the dress rolled up to the elbows.

“Did you get into much trouble?” Tilly asked, catching the ball as Jess threw it at the wall.

“Not really,” Jess said, after some consideration of the admonishments and “Praise Gods” that had heralded her arrival in the house. Her father and her grandfather had returned shortly after her, having been searching the immediate area.

“All right. Good.”

Tilly bounced the ball against the ground. Jess leaned against the wall and watched her.

“Did you say anything about me?”

Jess shook her head.

She expected Tilly to smile, but she didn’t; the expression on her lean, thoughtful face remained the same.

“You’re leaving soon.”

It was not a question, and Jess remembered with a shock that this was so. Her mother had told her to begin packing a few days ago, and when she hadn’t, had dragged Jess’s suitcase into the bedroom shared by Jess’s parents and begun packing it herself, marching into Jess’s room to fetch her book box, armfuls of clothes and underwear, shoes.

There was some languidness latent in the Nigerian atmosphere that made her forget the meaning of time passing — she could hardly even begin to understand that she’d been in Nigeria for nearly a month.

“Yeah,” she said, finally. “Tomorrow, actually,” she added, a note of astonishment in her voice.

Tilly laughed, a breathy laugh that was like her usual, wheezing laugh, but shorter.

“Will you forget all about me, Jessy?” she asked.

Jess stared incredulously at Tilly.

“What? Never!” Blushing, she added, in an undertone, “You’re amazing, TillyTilly.”

TillyTilly gave a full laugh, a gasping, delighted sound.

“You are, too,” she said, her tone sober.

Jessamy’s blush deepened. She put her hands behind her back and blew outwards.

There was a brief silence, in which Tilly’s nose wrinkled up as she thought silently. She looked sideways at Jess.

“Would you like to be like me? Like, be able to do the things I do, I mean?”

Jess nodded so hard she felt as if her brains were bouncing about inside her head.

Tilly nodded too, and Jess briefly got that odd feeling again that her actions were being mirrored.

“I’ll write to you,” Jess offered, adding, lamely, “if you give me your address.”

And your surname , she thought, surprised at how much she didn’t know about the girl.

TillyTilly threw the ball at the wall, caught it, turned it over in her hand, staring at it. “Don’t worry about it,” she said. “You’ll see me again.”

Jess believed Tilly; how could she not? And she had discovered that she liked surprises.

When she looked up, she saw the trailing tail of Tilly’s dress disappear around the corner and realised that TillyTilly had just said goodbye. She felt oddly disappointed.

Wasn’t there supposed to be more to a “goodbye” than that?

She clutched her chest, almost crying in her panic. How could she stay? How could she make Tilly stay, the being-friends stay?

O God, please help me to stay friends with TillyTilly, please, please, please. Let me keep her. She is my only friend; I have had no one else. She gave me a book, my mother’s book. I have had no one else.

Unable to bear her own thoughts any longer, she ran around the back of the house and towards the Boys’ Quarters, almost flying. She could hear her teeth chattering, as if she were cold, could feel a scream building up. She hesitated on the veranda, then resolutely putting her smaller fears aside, charged in, past the table with its fresh layer of brown dust. She turned left and ran down the corridor, dimly hearing her feet pounding on the ground.

“TillyTilly,” she said aloud, almost cried out.

Silence. Dust settling, floating through the air.