Helen Oyeyemi - The Icarus Girl

“Wuraola.” Her grandfather’s voice was serious now.

“Mmmm?”

“Two hungry people should never make friends. If they do, they eat each other up. It is the same with one person who is hungry and another who is full: they cannot be real, real friends because the hungry one will eat the full one. You understand?”

“Yes, grandfather.” She was scared now, because she knew he wasn’t talking about food-hungry. She almost understood what he was saying; she was sure of it.

“Only two people who are full up can be friends. They don’t want anything from each other except friendship. .”

Jess sprang up from the step, eying the darkened staircase as her grandfather’s voice was cut off with a loud series of beeps. Then, seeing nothing, she relaxed and gave a relieved laugh as she realised that it was only the lack of money on the phone card that had divided her grandfather and her into separate spaces again.

“Jess,” her mother called from the kitchen, “you hungry?”

Jess, who had dropped the phone with a clatter, calmed herself and replaced it carefully.

“Not really,” she said, chewing on her bottom lip.

“Pssst!”

Jess, who had run up the stairs ahead of her mother to prepare herself for the first two fits of The Hunting of the Snark read out in a Yoruba accent, stopped short before entering her darkened bedroom. The sound didn’t come from there.

“Jessy—”

Jess looked to her right and to her left, then moved cautiously down towards the bathroom and pushed the door open. The bathroom was cold, but the square, white-framed mirror above the sink was coated with what looked like condensing steam. She took a couple of steps inside, wondering what TillyTilly was doing, then she tried to step back out again, not liking the indistinct way her outline loomed as she approached the mirror. But, with a rattling sound, the bathroom door slammed shut, as if pushed. When she touched the handle, it was so cold that she jumped away lest her hand stick to it.

“TillyTilly,” Jess whispered, and her voice sounded so, so small that she almost didn’t realise that she’d said it aloud. “I don’t like this. I don’t like it,” she said, trying to sound firm and assertive. Tilly had to stop it now.

No sound, no movement. It was dark in the bathroom, but Jess somehow knew better than to make a move towards the light switch. The tiles had a pale white glow of their own. Shivering, Jess rubbed her arms and moved forward to the mirror, as she knew Tilly wanted her to. With one hand, she tremblingly rubbed away a corner of the mist, only to see her own eye peering back at her.

“Jess?” her mother said, sounding as if she was at the other end of a long, hollow tunnel, rather than just outside the door. “You all right?”

“Yeah,” Jess murmured, now smudging mist away with her fist. Then, louder: “Yeah. I’m just brushing my teeth.”

“New habit?” her mother asked, with a smile in her voice. When there was no reply, she said, “Well, I’ll be in your bedroom, all right?”

“Mmmm.”

Jess had now cleared a rough little patch of mirror, but was bewildered to find that she was only looking at herself. What exactly had TillyTilly wanted her to see? It was Jess, just herself, her hazel eyes darting bemusedly around the mirror, her pale brown oval face framed with the beginnings of the thick cornrows that swung to her shoulders and ended with the brightly coloured bustle of wooden beads. She leaned closer, squinting, then gasped aloud as her reflection spoke to her.

“I want to swap places, Jessy.”

It was Tilly’s voice, but Jess’s mirrored mouth moving.

“Sw-swap?” Jess stammered, touching her face even as she tried to discover how this could be. Her reflected eyes narrowed and passed over her coolly, and the cheeks were sucked in thoughtfully before Tilly said, “Yes. I’ve decided that it’s about time.”

Jess, moving rapidly towards the bathroom door again, was trying to reconcile this Tilly with Tilly-who-was-ill. She’d changed again: two Tillys, nice Tilly, nasty Tilly, TillyTilly. She disagreed with Tilly’s last statement with a frantic shake of her head. “I’ll scream again,” she warned.

TillyTilly chuckled indulgently, but remained standing still in the mirror-world she inhabited, even as Jess was moving, trying to force the bathroom door handle down despite the cold.

“All right then, scream. They’ll only put you in the basement again, and we’ll swap places there. People don’t care when you scream, Jessy, because—” from the inside of the mirror, she leaned closer to the surface and it seemed to bulge and stretch as if she would tumble out, “—because it’s really annoying.”

Jess put a hand to her mouth, trying not to let her heart feel too full that TillyTilly, who was supposed to understand, was saying these things to her. She also began to feel the stirrings of anger amidst her fear.

“I’m not swapping,” she warned, but her voice came out thin and squeaky — a frightened voice. Oh, she was scared again. She’d never been more scared.

“Yes you ARE.”

TillyTilly sounded frustrated. As she spoke, all four taps, the two for the sink and the two for the bath, turned on with a single sharp hisssssss . The plugs were already in place.

“Next the water pipes,” TillyTilly warned, as Jess stared uncomprehendingly at the gushing water. Some of it leapt impossibly and splashed Jess where she stood. All of it was cold.

“A person could drown in here,” TillyTilly added, from the mirror. “The water would have to rise fast though. .”

“Never, never, never,” Jess whispered to herself, unsure what she meant, and she closed her eyes tight and hid from TillyTilly, even though her hands and feet were numbing with cold. She could hear the rushing water drumming away in the bathtub.

“I’m not full, but you’re the hungry one,” Jess said between clenched teeth, as a cold hand (was it within or without?) touched her.

She was scared! She was so scared it was in her eyes and her hands and her bones and hair and teeth—

It was OK.

It

was

OK—

Then, without opening her eyes, she was caught in the crisp outward shattering of glass as the mirror crack’d from side to side , flying out of its frame. At the centre of it all was TillyTilly, manically screaming, “Seven years’ bad luck! Seven years’ bad luck! SEVEN YEARS’ BAD LUCK!”

“What are you?” Jess cried out from her safe place.

Tilly’s reply: “I don’t KNOW! You know! YOU know!”

Sarah heard the sound of loud breakage in the bathroom, and was there half an instant after Daniel, who had flung himself against the door and forced it open. There was a thin layer of cold water on the floor — it was from the overflowing bathtub. Water was also pouring gradually from the edge of the washbasin as well, since all the taps were on. And Jess, sitting near the middle of the room, small and inscrutable in her blue T-shirt, was surrounded by a myriad of glittering mirror pieces. Inexplicably, the white mirror frame was empty on the wall above the sink, rocked slightly to one side. In the middle of all this sat Jess, silently clutching her purple toothbrush, holding it out as if it were an offering. It had bits of glass in the bristles; she’d been incredibly lucky not to be blinded or hurt. Glass was everywhere — Jess blinked and shook her head; pieces of mirror were in her hair and scattered on her clothes and the floor. It broke the spell.

At the light clinking sound, Jess’s mum stepped gingerly into the room, moving quickly over to Jess and brushing her down with a towel as Jess’s dad turned off the taps.