Shine, p.1
Shine, page 1
Contents
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Thank you
About the Author
Also by Candy Gourlay
Copyright
About the Book
This is not a ghost story even though there are plenty of ghosts in it.
And it’s not a horror story though some people might be horrified.
It’s not a monster story either, even though there is a monster in it and that monster happens to be me.
Forced to hide herself away from the superstitious island community of Mirasol, thirteen-year-old Rosa seeks solace online. There she meets Ansel95, and as the friendship moves from virtual to real, Rosa discovers that she’s not the only one with something to hide . . .
As Rosa’s social life blossoms, how will she seize the freedom to be who she really is?
From the author of the critically-acclaimed Tall Story, comes a haunting, intense and moving novel which weaves myths and ghosts into a modern setting.
To Cynthia Lopez Quimpo
I love you, Mom
1
‘ARE YOU LISTENING, Rosa?’
I stared at Yaya. Her eyebrows were knitted on her yellow forehead and her face was suddenly smaller, her eyes hard and burning like black coals.
‘Listen, listen. This is important.’ The seriousness of her voice and the smallness of her face made me feel suddenly scared. I climbed up onto her lap.
‘Imagine what it would be like if the rain stopped,’ she said in a hushed voice. ‘No more hammering on the rooftops. No more drip drip drip. No more splish splash, I am taking a bath. Can you imagine it?’
I tried to imagine it, really I did, screwing my eyes shut so that I couldn’t see the rain steadily drawing stripes on the window pane. But I couldn’t. How could I when here on Mirasol it rained all the time?
All the time. Buckets. Sure, sometimes it was just a wetness in the air that left your hair damp. But often it was a torrent. And then the sea turned into a beast with waves for claws.
‘Do you ever wonder, Rosa,’ Yaya whispered. ‘Do you ever wonder what it would be like if the rain suddenly stopped?’
Think, Rosa, think! All the wet sounds suddenly silent, just like that. Like God pressed the wrong button on his remote control. OFF.
The quiet would be instant, wouldn’t it? Big. Heavy like a giant’s blanket.
That was what it was like that day, Rosa. One moment the weather hissing in your ear, the next, boom. Nothing.
People froze, their heads tilted to one side, their ears cupped, waiting for the pitter patter to start again. But it didn’t.
They rushed out of their houses, staring up at the heavens. And then they were all talking at the same time, pointing. Look! Look at the sky! And oh, the clouds! They were peeling away like old, dry scabs.
And before you knew it, there was just a big blue sheet high above their heads. So blue that everyone found themselves rubbing their eyes. It burned. Who would’ve thought a colour could do that?
And then the sun came out, a blazing white coin – and there was a smell . . . everyone pointed their noses at the sun, like this. Sniff. Sniff. What was that strange odour? It was the smell of fire. Oh, yes.
On their faces, on their bare arms and legs, they felt a strange sensation. Like the jabs of a thousand tiny beaks. There was a prickling on their scalps, and from the tops of their heads popped beads of scratchy sweat.
The children were the first to move. No rain to keep them indoors! No need to wear itchy plastic things over their clothes! No rain to crumble their sand castles!
They raced into the streets and down the sandy pathways to the beach, whooping and shouting and ignoring the grown-ups’ cries of Where do you think you’re going? BE CAREFUL! Don’t go into the sea! It’s dangerous!
The children’s joy was like an infection, a happiness virus. And then it was the grown-ups’ turn to smile. Everyone startled to hear laughter exploding in their throats. Ha-ha, ha-ha! Everyone was so happy! And they all held their hands up at the sun as if the heat was something you could trap and keep for ever.
Meanwhile.
(Come closer, Rosa, this is the scary part. Here, put your arms round my neck.)
Meanwhile.
Out in the middle of the ocean, a fisherman and his boy sat in a boat, jaws gaping at the flickering sea.
First the waves were grey. Boring. Like porridge with no milk or sugar. Then, abracadabra! They were blue! A blue that kept changing. Dark blue. Light blue. Cobalt blue, Duck-egg blue. Midnight blue. Blue blue. Wow. Wow. Wow.
And then they saw something bobbing on the ocean. What was it? Driftwood? Rubbish? Seaweed?
It was a girl.
Without stopping to think, the boy leaped into the water. It was hard to swim because blue waves are bigger and stronger than grey waves, but he managed to grab her with one arm and swim back. Then with the help of his old daddy he dragged her into the boat.
But too late. She was like a wet rag tangled in their nets, green things in her long, black hair, and no breath on her purple lips.
On her throat there were terrible marks. As if a noose of rope had been tied tight around it.
Burning, angry, puckered.
They decided to take the body to the police. But first, the fisherman said, we must bring her to the priest for a blessing. If we cannot save her body, at least let us save her soul.
At the church, the fisherman went to fetch the priest, leaving his son in the back of their old pickup truck with the body.
The boy stared sadly at the dead girl, at the lashes long and wet on the pale cheeks.
Then her eyelids fluttered. She was alive! The boy leaped to his feet, poised to shout for his daddy.
But when the eyes opened, his voice withered in his throat.
The eyes were so empty and hopeless the boy shivered, as if he’d fallen into a cold hole.
And then the pretty lips parted and the girl began to take long, thirsty gulps of air.
As she drank from the atmosphere, the boy felt his own throat become tighter, the tubes that fed his lungs began to narrow, and soon he too began to gulp. But unlike the girl, whose lips and skin became rosier as she breathed, he opened and closed his mouth, swallowing. To no avail.
Slowly his lungs shrivelled into stones.
The girl watched, her face expressionless as he fell to his knees, suffocating. Then she whirled and leaped from the truck.
When the fisherman and the priest emerged from the church, the rain had begun to fall again.
The boy lay dead in the back of the truck, and the girl was gone.
Yaya held me close. ‘Everyone said the girl was a monster come down from the heavens to make trouble.’
I squirmed on Yaya’s lap, incredulous. Was it true?
‘It’s absolutely true,’ Yaya said. ‘That’s why here on Mirasol we are always afraid. We are always looking over our shoulders for monsters that might steal the life from us. This is our lot. Rain. Every day. And fear.’ Yaya pressed her cheek against mine. ‘It’s important that you know this story, Rosa, no matter what your daddy says. This is why you must hide away . . . and keep anyone from seeing these.’
And her fingers traced the marks that circled my neck.
Burning, angry, puckered.
2
IT WAS MANY years later when I found the slogan on the Internet. Liked it so much I printed it out and stuck it up above my desk in the attic with Blu-Tack.
The moment Father saw it he swept it off the wall as if it was a disgusting cockroach.
‘ROSA!’ he yelled, boiling mad. ‘HOW MANY TIMES DO I HAVE TO TELL YOU YOU ARE NOT NOT NOT A MONSTER?’
I knew Father would hate it, but I didn’t expect him to be that dramatic. Instinctively I moved to the window, in case after all these years he decided that today would be the day to do something about the candles I lit for Mother. That he would throw them out the window, once and for all.
Then he yelled for Yaya. She appeared instantly, as if she’d been standing outside the door the whole time. He glared at her so hard I half expected laser beams to shoot out of his eyes. ‘See, Yaya? See?’ he ranted, waving the sign around. ‘See what your stories do?’
To be fair, Yaya’s storytelling really was something else: the kind that required blinds drawn, lights switched off and flashlights shining under sheets. It drove Father mad.
‘These are horror stories, Yaya, you’ll give the child nightmares,’ he used to warn her when I was very little. ‘Can’t yo u tell her stories that end in happily ever after?’
But Yaya just looked blankly at him. ‘I don’t know any stories like that. Why don’t you go ahead and tell her?’
Father had tried. The problem was, he couldn’t tell stories like Yaya did. His voice was a monotone, his accent clipped and he didn’t bother with sound effects – didn’t so much as moan or groan, bare his teeth or flap the sheets.
Right now Yaya just smirked up at him with unblinking eyes. ‘Stories? They’re not just stories. They’re true. Anyway Rosa can make up her own mind. She’s thirteen years old already!’
Father ground his teeth together and the scraping of them put my own teeth on edge. He turned to me. ‘Rosa, Mother had it too. Would you call her a monster?’
‘Monster is what monster does,’ Yaya said, her philosophical face on.
Fine. We were all agreed. I was not a monster. Neither was Mother.
But here are the facts:
The marks are there. Round the base of my throat. Unambiguously, inescapably, unmistakeably right there.
They are ugly thickenings the texture of rope. See the puckers, the shrivelled folds, the welts. Like burn scars . . . except these were scars acquired not from some fiery accident but deep in the womb before I was born.
And last but not least – deep in my throat, under the hideous scars – the mechanisms that form words and shape sounds are withered and useless.
I cannot speak. All I can manage is an animal ‘ungh ungh ungh.’ Not attractive. Probably quite monster-like as a matter of fact.
I’ve communicated in sign language since I was born, my hands fluttering like birds and shaping words in the air, but when I’m not thinking the noises still escape from my throat. ‘Ungh ungh ungh!’ Horrible.
Mother had IT and I’ve got IT . . . and IT is called the Calm.
It’s got a proper medical name, of course, something long, unpronounceable, forgettable. It’s incurable – but no, it’s not life-threatening, as long as you take the right precautions.
Did I mention that Father’s a doctor? A doctor of the Calm, to be precise. Which is no coincidence, because how else did he meet Mother? But more of that later.
There were dangers, of course. There were drugs to be taken every day to keep everything level. Miss one element of the drug cocktail and there were horrible attacks – Father installed a first-aid kit in the bathroom just in case, complete with injections in case I seized up and fell over.
We even practised with a dummy injector, with Father hovering and instructing in a patient voice. Go on, Yaya, stab it into her thigh, you’ll have to do it right through the fabric of her trousers. Then wait ten seconds. Count the seconds in elephants! One elephant, two elephant, three elephant.
So, yeah. All precautions were taken. No big deal.
But I felt so well! I couldn’t speak, yes, but that was just part of our everyday, that was our normal.
Sometimes I wondered if the Calm was just a medical fantasy. In all my thirteen years I have yet to use the kit, yet to experience any attacks, yet to have the emergency injection, even though we’ve practised a million billion times. Did I really have this terrible, life-threatening condition?
I had to look in the mirror, see the hideous marks, to remind myself the Calm was still there.
Elsewhere in the world, it was no big deal either. Just another horrible chronic condition. Like horrible Crohn’s disease or horrible leprosy or horrible cystic fibrosis or lupus or asthma or Aids. Just another bad thing that couldn’t be helped, an act of God . . . life goes on.
But on Mirasol, the Calm was no act of God.
The marks singled me out.
Fingers were pointed and prayers whispered. The Calm. She has it. Remember the story? The day the sun shone. It’s her, isn’t it? Demon. Monster.
So, really, in Mirasol the safest thing to do for someone with the Calm was to get out of the way.
Stay inside.
Hide.
When Mother and Father moved from London to the island all those years ago, they knew how things were, of course. Mother knew what she was getting into – of course she did; she was born in Mirasol, grew up there. She was no stranger to the superstition and the fear. She’d experienced it first-hand.
And yet it wasn’t Father who made the original choice to move to Mirasol. It was Mother.
‘I begged Kara to change her mind,’ Father always said. ‘But she was adamant. Jon, she told me, in England, you are surplus to requirements. In Mirasol . . . well, there were never ever enough doctors in Mirasol when I was growing up. You would make such a difference. In England, nobody will notice that you’re gone.’
So they went.
Would they have gone ahead with the move if they’d realized Mother was pregnant? I often wondered.
By the time they realized I was on the way, it was too late to change their plans. ‘You were such a surprise!’ Father told me.
But not as big a surprise as when they realized that I too had the Calm.
3
KAT, WHEN I look up at Mount Banawa, I can’t help but think. She’d seen us as babes, watched as we grew up. She knew more than we did, I bet. She must have seen everything that happened. And she probably knew how it was all going to turn out.
Kara, you said, have you ever wondered what it must be like to be a mountain? To be so ancient, to know everyone, to see everything . . . We were just nine years old when you asked me.
And we both gazed up at her jungled peak, waterfalls streaming down her slopes, her presence looming over Mirasol.
Whenever we studied the mountain like that, I felt an odd thing coiling in my gut that was both comforting and alarming at the same time. A spooky feeling. Because it was true about Banawa knowing everything, wasn’t it?
She must have known we were special, you and I . . . mirror twins, each the reflection of the other. Kat and Kara. Kara and Kat.
Whenever I looked at you, it was like staring into an enchanted looking glass.
My right eye was a match for your left. I wrote with my left hand while you wrote with your right. Your right foot was one size bigger than your left, and mine was a size bigger than my right.
Remember how Mama used to buy us two pairs of the same shoes, one a size smaller than the other? And how we used to swap lefts for rights? I can’t imagine how we would have coped otherwise.
We shared the same bed, didn’t we, Kat? We shared a bed until we were in our teens, in fact! We slept face to face, left knee to right knee. When I opened my eyes in the morning, your sleeping face was the first thing I saw.
Mama loved to tell the story of how she used to feel us moving together, deep in her womb. We were like those synchronized swimmers in the Olympics, she said. When one breathed in, the other breathed out. When one kicked, the other kicked too.
I loved to imagine us ripening together in Mama’s tummy, face to face, nose to nose, knee to knee. After we were born, Mama said we continued to move synchronously in our cot as if we were still bound together by her womb.
I like to imagine that twins all over the world were just like us sisters, constantly measuring, comparing. But what about the things we couldn’t see or measure? Were our souls identical too? Or were they reversals of each other? One dark, the other light? One good, one bad?
Mirror twins. Identical twins, but physically perfect opposites.
Well. Perfect apart from the Calm, of course.
What happened there, deep in Mama’s womb? And when did it happen? When did the Calm find its way between us sleeping babes? At what point did it choose which one of us to take? At what point did it wrap itself around one infant’s throat and release its poison, leaving one unspoiled and the other scarred and mute, its prisoner for ever after?
And so one of us had to stay at home while the other went to school. One of us had to hide, while the other lived in the world. One of us lived in fear while the other had her freedom.
Our parents were teachers. They earned enough for us to live happily. But leaving Mirasol was not an option. Where would we go? What would we do? The world didn’t need any more teachers. Not from Mirasol anyway.
But I remember that day you turned to me, eyes shining. We were teenagers by then, wondering how to escape this future.
‘Kara! I think I know what we can do!’ you said. ‘Look, see. Read this article in the newspaper. World nursing shortage. Nurses! Every hospital in the world is desperate for nurses. I can train to become a nurse and get a job in another country. That will be our ticket out of here!’
