Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

God, it was so dark. Were they in that place that she and Tilly had fallen to before? Tilly bent over her, gently touching her shoulder. And smelling the cool, leafy scent of Tilly’s hair pomade, Jess gazed up at her, gaping a little with the effort of dragging air into her lungs when all she really wanted to do was curl up and not hurt anymore. She couldn’t see Tilly properly; her vision was blurring and it was as if she could only receive visual information about Tilly little bits at a time: the blue and turquoise of the friendship bracelet tied to her bony wrist; the green ribbon trailing from the end of each of Tilly’s bushy black plaits; Tilly’s eyes, widened now with concern.

“Jessy—”

From behind her back TillyTilly now drew out what at first looked to Jess like some model or figurine, but as she brought it closer and Jess could make out the way that Tilly’s hand fitted around it, she saw that it was a black cup; some kind of chalice, even. Instinctively, she shrank back, pushing Tilly away from her, although she didn’t know why. The pain in Jess’s fingertips flared even more violently than before at the simple contact between her hand and Tilly’s arm, and she let out a cry and fell onto her side. They were in some sort of open space — it was definitely earth beneath her, but there was no light anywhere.

“Look inside, Jessy,” Tilly insisted.

Jess weakly shielded her face with her arm, unable to speak for a few moments.

“Come on, Jessy, look inside! I did!”

“Stop it,” Jess managed to croak. And after a while, Tilly did.

When Jess next became aware of herself, the first thing she noticed was that the pain had left her. Her hands flew to her mouth, then she held her fingers up in the half-light to find that the skin was whole and unpuckered. It was still nighttime and she was in bed with the door half open, letting in a slice of light from the passageway. TillyTilly was there, in the room with her, Jess knew, although she seemed to have decided not to show herself.

“TillyTilly?” she whispered.

After a pause as soft as folding cloth, TillyTilly whispered back. The sound seemed to reverberate in the air.

“Jessy?”

“What just happened to me?”

There was no audible reply to Jess’s question, but it somehow seemed to Jess that TillyTilly might be laughing silently. She didn’t think that the cleansing had been funny.

It wasn’t real, anyway , she told herself. If you had been burnt but it didn’t show, did that make it real or not?

“Listen,” Jess began. “I keep getting into trouble, Tilly.” She had decided that maybe Tilly shouldn’t tell her things and show her things that she shouldn’t know about.

Like Colleen McLain and the knickers. And

(deadbabysister)

Fern.

TillyTilly finally spoke again. “It’s my fault.”

Jess sat up, looking around for TillyTilly. The last thing that she’d expected was for her friend to sound so miserable.

“Listen, no! It’s not really your fault. You didn’t make me do anything, but—”

Tilly switched on Jess’s desk lamp, and Jess could see the outline of her shadow sitting on top of the papers on the desk, hugging her knees. She definitely hadn’t been there before. It was almost eerie.

“You keep getting into trouble,” Tilly said mournfully. Then she seemed to straighten. “You’re right, it’s not my fault,” she said, suddenly cheerful.

Jess sighed, too tired to keep up with Tilly’s change of mood.

“Well, all I wanted to ask you was if we could stop—”

Tilly interrupted her, speaking as if Jess hadn’t said anything. “It’s Miss Patel’s fault about you kicking her, you know. She didn’t have to be so horrible to you.”

Jess thought about that, and she thought of Miss Patel’s hands clasped in her lap, then wished she hadn’t because it made her angry again just to think about it. Miss Patel crying!

And Miss Patel thought Jess was weird; weird in a bad way. Jess didn’t know whether she’d been thinking aloud or not, but Tilly, now at the end of Jess’s bed, nodded vigorously.

“She thinks there’s something wrong with you,” Tilly said with a snort. “Well, there’s something wrong with her, more like!”

This made Jess feel better, and she giggled, until she thought of something.

“But I can see you, though, and you’re not really here. That’s weird, isn’t it?”

TillyTilly laughed and wriggled farther up the bed so that she was kneeling directly in front of Jess.

“That’s different, duh! We’re special! We’re twins! Miss Patel’s horrible, even more horrible than Colleen McLain, and she got shamed, didn’t she!”

Jess had to laugh again at that.

Tilly pulled at the ribbon on the end of the right plait and added, with her short, brilliant, sunrise smile, “Listen, I’m going to get Patel, anyway.”

Jess frowned and drew back, her heart suddenly thudding behind her rib cage.

“What d’you mean, get her?” she whispered fiercely. “I didn’t say we could do that!”

TillyTilly laughed scornfully.

“You’re such a baby! Trying to take it back ’cause you’re scared! Remember, you said it to me three times: ‘ Get her, get her, get her, Tilly Tilly!’”

Jess jumped slightly at hearing Tilly’s extremely accurate mimic of her voice, wondering if she could really have been angry enough with Miss Patel to say that. She couldn’t remember.

“And then you felt really bad for saying that,” Tilly continued, sounding even more disdainful, “so you did that cleansing thing with the coal. Remember now?”

Jess remembered, and as she did, she reached out and plucked at the short sleeve of Tilly’s school dress.

“TillyTilly, please don’t, please, please, please!”

Tilly removed herself from Jess’s grasp and laughed derisively.

“Ah, shut up. You’re only saying that because you think you should. But really and truly, I know that you want her got .”

“I don’t!”

“Liar, liar, pants on fire.” TillyTilly stuck out her tongue, but Jess refused to smile. She stared at Tilly in horror.

“What are you going to do?”

“None of your business. She won’t die or anything, though. Probably.”

“PROBABLY? TillyTilly, I’m going to get in trouble again because of you!” Jess realised that she had raised her voice into a wail, and she fell silent, glaring at Tilly, who had moved to the door and had her hand on the doorknob.

“Getting in trouble,” Tilly whispered, with her quicksilver smile, “is that all you’re bothered about these days? Listen, no one will know you wanted her got , only me. It’ll be funny, and it’ll serve her right, Jessy. You’ll see!”

The next morning after breakfast, Jess was sitting on the stairs tying her shoelaces and fretting about Miss Patel, when her mother approached her. A slim white-covered book was under her arm and a cheerful expression fixed on her face. Lowering her head, Jess made out the brightly coloured words All About Africa on the front cover of the book and resisted the temptation to roll her eyes at being patronised. She shifted her attention to the laces on her other shoe.

“Do you know what an ibeji statue is, Jess?” her mother asked, in a voice that seemed to Jess to be overloud.

She shook her head and waited to be told.

“Move up, woman.” Her mum dropped herself down onto the step beside Jess. “In the old days in Nigeria, people were kind of scared of twins — some people still are. Traditionally, twins are supposed to live in, um, three worlds: this one, the spirit world and the Bush, which is a sort of wilderness of the mind.”