The Flask

“You could have a different rate depending on whether it was just a look or a touch,” Paddy continues.

“Shut up,” I say.

“A pound for a look, two pounds for a good look and a fiver for a touch.”

“I said SHUT UP.”

“We could call it JFS – Jess’s Freak Show.”

And now everything that’s been silent and bottled up comes frothing and boiling over at last and I go right up to him because I’m going to hit him in the stupid, shining face. I draw back my fist and I lash out as hard and fast as I can, but he just catches my wrist.

“Hey,” he says. “Hey. What’s up with you? It was only a joke. Can’t you take a joke now?”

“I hate you,” I scream.

But actually it’s Zoe I hate.

I turn and march away from the park. Of course, Zoe follows me.

“Jess,” she says. “Jess, Jess, Jess!” And now it’s her turn to clutch me by the sleeve. “Come on!”

I stop, I wheel about. “Come on what, exactly?”

“I never told him,” she says. “I didn’t.”

“Oh, right; he just made it up, did he? Thought it up out of his own stupid little brain?”

“I didn’t tell him, Jess, I promise, I swear.”

I stare at her. Her eyes are all lit up bright, but not like a mirror. I can’t see myself in them, in her. “Then who did?”

“I don’t know,” Zoe exclaims. “Maybe your mum told his mum and she told Paddy.”

“Oh, yeah, right.”

“Or Em. You didn’t just tell me, did you? You pretended you did, but you didn’t. You told Em too. So maybe it was Em who told Paddy.”

Very clever. And hurtful, because it’s true. I did tell Em actually and I did pretend to Zoe that she was the only one who knew. Why did I do that? Because Zoe can be jealous probably. She can go mental just like she did about the friendship bracelet thing in year 5. But Em’s away on holiday. Em’s not here to defend herself. “Why would Em tell Paddy? She doesn’t even like Paddy. No one likes Paddy.” I pause. “Except you.”

“I still didn’t tell him, Jess. I mean – why would I?”

And I can’t say it. I can’t say, Because I think you’re beginning to like him more than you like me, because that sounds totally pathetic. So I say, “For a laugh. So you could both have a laugh behind my back about my so-not-normal brothers.”

“Jess, you’re way over the top. I didn’t tell him. I didn’t!”

“So why did you let him say all that stuff, all that eight-leg circus-freak stuff?”

“That’s just mumbo jumbo, Jess, you said so yourself. You said people would say stuff like that. How’s that my fault?”

“You could have spoken up – you could have said something. Anything.”

Now she’s silent, biting in her lip.

“But you just stood there,” I ram it home. “You let him say all of it and you just stood there.”

I start walking again now, turning my back on her and walking, walking.

She runs back after me again, but I shake her off.

“I didn’t know I had to say anything. Anyway, you were saying stuff,” Zoe remarks to my back. “And what does it matter? They’re born now. They’re OK.”

It matters because she promised, because I trusted her. And I need to go on trusting her. Because of the flask. “Who says they’re OK?” I say.

“What?”

“The babies – who says they’re OK?”

“You did!” says Zoe. “You said it!”

“I said they were beautiful. I didn’t say they were OK.”

“Well – are they OK?”

I say nothing.

“Well, are they?”

“I’m not telling you,” I say. “I’m not telling you anything ever again.”

I don’t say a single thing over dinner. And if Gran notices she doesn’t mention it. She probably thinks it’s to do with the babies. And she’s right. Everything’s to do with the babies these days.

Except the flask.

I delay going up to bed, partly because I’m no good at sleeping when I’m angry, and partly because I expect to see little bits of sticky tape on the floor. I mean, something that can blow a cork from a bottle can burst through sticky tape, right?

Wrong.

There is no sticky tape on the floor. The desk is still closed, the drawer inside shut. I reach my hand in and feel the cold, rounded form of the flask.

“I’m back,” I say, sliding my fingers up the throat of the bottle, just to check the sticky tape is really still in place.

It is.

So I draw the flask out into the light. It is blue. Really blue – like a summer sky. Like happiness. Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this.

I just stand and stare, trying to work out whether it is the glass or the thing inside that is blue. But I can’t separate the two. Nor can I understand why – despite Zoe and Paddy and the park and the mumbo jumbo – just holding it makes me fizz with joy, as though I am holding a tiny, perfect other universe.

“You’re extraordinary,” I say. “You know that?”