Pandora’s Box. Giselle Green

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       11 Shelley

      Surinda is coming round after school, she said. She’s suddenly become interested in schoolwork whereas she never was before. ‘I’ve got to get my exams, haven’t I? I’ve got to do something with my life. Jallal will expect me to work.’ This coming on top of a year in which she’s spent the best part of each term off playing hooky.

      I’m not even sure I want her around today. Not if she’s going to be as narky as she was to me on the phone last night. I told her I’d got the Beat the Bank tickets and that’s why she’s coming, but you’d think she’s the one doing me a favour and not the other way round. Ever since this Jallal business she’s become a very different person, I think.

      It’s only 3.30 p.m. so it’ll be a little while before she shows; this afternoon is dragging on forever. I’ve tidied the place up a bit. This room is not huge so I had to. By the time you take into account the bed, the ward robe, the desk with the keyboard and Bessie, there isn’t enough room left to swing a cat. She’ll have to sit on the end of the mattress, that’s all.

      I don’t suppose she’ll be staying that long. Just as long as she agrees to take me to Blackberry Common I don’t care how long she stays. My stomach’s all in a knot over it.

      If she says no I don’t think I’ll ever speak to her again.

      She’ll have to be prepared to help me get onto the bus. She won’t like that. Surinda isn’t known for her patience. She’s meeting Jallal the week after next, and she’s angry because they’ve had to put it off a few days. It seems he couldn’t get an earlier flight out from Jakarta. I pointed out that gives her a few extra days to drop those ten pounds she’s on about losing before she meets the bridegroom but that didn’t cheer her up any.

      Anyway, the bus. I haven’t been on one for a very long time. Daniel gets on one sometimes and he says they’re often empty. I wanted to ask him this morning if he’s ever seen anyone get on it in a wheelchair but I don’t want to arouse his suspicions.

      He’s back from school now, I heard him rooting around in the kitchen a minute ago, getting himself a drink.

      ‘Shell?’ Talk of the devil.

      ‘Yeah?’

      ‘Your room looks different.’ He’s standing at the door, looking puzzled. He’s probably wondering why there aren’t any papers or clothes on the floor.

      ‘I’ve tidied it, dunderhead. You should do yours more often too.’

      ‘Oh.’ My brother stands there for a moment, flummoxed. His face is red, his hair all sticky-up and sweaty because it’s hot outside and he’s just got back from school. ‘I’m going out on my bike,’ he says shortly. ‘Tell Mum.’

      ‘You’ve just come in’, I say. I return my attention to the nail varnish I was applying just a moment before. He’s just come in and now he’s going out again. And why? Because he can. My heart sinks a little. I remember the times when we used to go out on our bikes together. I was the one who used to encourage him to ride. He was so scared. He would never have done anything at all if it weren’t for me. I wonder if he’s still got those stabilisers on. In a minute I will hear him practising, round and round the drive up front.

      Sometimes lately the sounds outside go quiet and I know he’s gone a little way up the road to his friend’s house. His world is expanding. That’s good; that’s the way it should be. I envy my brother that.

      When I look at the light brown side-panel of my wardrobe and the jutting-out edge of my computer desk, my world feels as if it’s shrinking, even though I’ve just picked up all the crap off the floor.

      I want to see something different. A different view; different faces. I want to be somewhere else.

      I wheel myself over to the window and take a look at the view from there. We have a little garden. Just in front of my window there’s a tiny azalea bush just coming into pink bloom. It’s the same colour as my nail varnish, I realise now. The bird feeder that Daniel hung from the washing line is empty again. The garden is very green. It wasn’t a couple of weeks ago, but now we’ve entered May the whole earth seems to have woken up with a flourish.

      I wish my room were a tiny bit bigger. I wish I could get in and out of it a bit more easily. I feel so stuck. Deep in the pit of my stomach there’s this feeling of stuckness. I’m like a rat in a cage. I’ve got to get out of this place, I’ve got to. I’m withering away.

      And with a sinking feeling I realise that it’s already begun, the shrivelling that happened to Miriam; it’s happening to me! Not in my body, not yet, but it’s happening in my heart.

      The knock on my bedroom door, when it comes, is so loud that it really startles me.

      ‘You in there?’ Surinda is standing in the doorway, her schoolbag placed primly in front of her. It doesn’t look very full.

      ‘Your front door was just…wide open, man.’ Her kohl-lined eyes take in my little bedroom in one quick sweep. She looks at me, smiling. I get the feeling my place is smaller than she imagined. ‘So, you got those tickets, Shell?’ Surinda doesn’t sit down. Does she think I’m going to hand over the precious tickets just like that so she can make her excuses and be gone? ‘Because I’ve got to get back,’ she’s saying, ‘me mam’s taking me shopping for Jallal-clothes.’

      ‘Great,’ I say. ‘Jallal-clothes. Look, Surinda, you’d better sit down because there’s something I’ve got to explain about the tickets.’

      She perches obediently on the edge of my bed and I try to figure out what it is that is different about her. Something is. Her hair is slicked back and held in a pink rosette in the middle so you can see her dangly golden earrings. Her skin is dark, a little more greasy, with dark spots over her forehead. She has dark circles under her eyes. She used to look better than this, I think. But that isn’t what’s changed; it’s something else. She’s got a bit more confidence about her, that’s what it is. Like she’s been places and done some things. She’s had a little experience of the world. And me, stuck here, I’m feeling at a distinct disadvantage: I’ve had none.

      ‘Go on,’ she says. She’s picked up my nail-varnish bottle and is looking at the label.

      ‘Those tickets that we’re after, we’ve got to go down to Blackberry Common this Saturday and collect them.’

      ‘What?’ She’s frowning in annoyance now. ‘I’ve got things planned for this weekend, girl. My hair, for one.’

      ‘If you want the tickets…’ I say.

      ‘Why can’t they just be posted?’ She puts the nail-polish bottle down on my bed. ‘You ring them and tell them that you want those tickets posted.’

      ‘Ring who?’ Surinda is looking cross now. I thought she was desperate for those tickets. This whole Jallal business is ruining everything. ‘We can’t ring anyone. We’ve got to go in person.’

      ‘I don’t think I can help you.’ She’s shaking her head in a vague kind of way. ‘My СКАЧАТЬ