Page 4 of Out of the Blue
I remember the tightness in my throat as she made the first few cuts. I remember the locks slipping past my knees, curving like strokes of ink on the bathroom tiles. It was my childhood, that hair. It was bedtimes and bath times, messy French plaits, and too-tight braids the summer we went to the Bahamas. It was Mum’s hands: washing and combing and tying, winding the tresses around her fingers or stroking it as she read me a bedtime story. It was the sleek black veil of her hair, too, and my grandmother’s when she was younger, and all our Sri Lankan ancestors before them. That hair was my history, and now it was gone.
I didn’t regret it. But it didn’t feel as good as I’d hoped it would.
Leah was right, as it happened: it turned out years spent scalping your Barbies didn’t make you a good hairdresser. I walked home with an NYC cap on my head and a nervous flutter in my stomach. Mum would have found it hilarious (I could almost hear her cackle: ‘What have you done to yourself? You look like the neglected love child of Noel Fielding and Edward Scissorhands!’), but Dad was a different story. Dad would be Concerned.
He came running into the corridor as soon as I pushed open the door to our flat. My heart was pounding. I tugged the cap off quick, like a plaster, but he didn’t even blink.
‘Did you hear what happened?’ he asked. ‘In China? Did you see the news?’
His eyes were red, like they had been for most of the past ten days – a combination of gin and tears – but this time there was something different. They were bright. Hopeful.
‘This has to mean something,’ he kept saying, as he paced around the living room, stopping every few minutes to rewatch the video on his laptop. ‘It has to be a sign. It has to be.’
It took him two hours and twelve minutes to notice the mess on my head. Being Fever had already kicked in.
Rani wakes me up the next day with the latest Being Bulletin: another angel landed off the coast of Alaska early this morning. A fisherman and his son spotted him bobbing face-down in the water, his wings like storm-torn sails, and rowed out to bring him back to shore. It sounds just like a dozen other Falls, except for one thing. Both the boy and his father swear that, just as they were hauling him on to the boat, the Being said something. It wasn’t any language they recognized – it sounded more like music than words – but it was something like speech.
‘By the time they pumped his lungs and checked his pulse, he was dead.’ Rani leans over the top bunk and shows me a photo on her phone. ‘If they’re telling the truth, the Being must have survived the Fall!’
I rub my eyes: the blur on-screen becomes a man, middle-aged with metallic red skin. He’s lying on a pebble beach, his wings patchy where his ‘rescuers’ have helped themselves to feathers. By now, the Alaskan authorities will have flown his body to a lab. They’ll slice him open, marvel at how his heart is so like ours though his blood is golden, how his bones look almost human yet are light as a bird’s. They’ll scan his face through an ever-growing database of the dead, trying to find the person he could have been before.
So far, they haven’t found any matches. I never really believed the theory that the Beings were once human, but I don’t see why they shouldn’t be treated like people.
‘Listen to this, Jay.’ Rani starts scrolling through links on CherubIM. ‘Reports suggest that the Being has only one broken wing, whereas all other bodies have had both severely damaged or, in a few cases, ripped off entirely.’
I yawn and check my phone. No messages from my friends. Still nothing from Leah.
‘Absolutely enthralling, Ran,’ I mutter. ‘I can hardly contain my excitement.’
She ignores the sarcasm. ‘At this early stage, we can only speculate, but experts suggest that Being No. 86 may have been able to slow its descent with its one functional wing, allowing it to land safely on the water. Isn’t that amazing?’
I pull the phone from her hand. ‘Hello? What? Oh my God, Ran, news just in! Experts have now confirmed that I really don’t give a crap.’
‘Ha ha.’ She scowls and snatches it back, rolling her eyes. ‘I’m just trying to keep you informed of world events, Jaya.’
Before I can think of a suitably snarky reply – something about not needing life lessons from a girl who was still watchingDora the Explorertwo years ago – there’s a tap on the door. Dad pokes his head in.
‘Morning, girls.’ His eyes are slightly bloodshot, and his T-shirt is crumpled. I wonder if he’s been to bed, or if he was up all night doing research. ‘How you feeling, Jay?’
My cheeks burn as I remember my fainting spell last night. I’d woken to find Dad and Rani crouching over me as Shona looked on, her mouth a purple pout of concern. Dad sat me up and told me to put my head between my knees. ‘Probably just dehydrated,’ he’d said, patting my shoulder. ‘It was a long journey.’
Shona clicked her tongue. ‘Very negative energy, that Standing Fallen lot,’ she’d said. ‘I’m not surprised it’s having such an overwhelming effect on you, hen. I’ll bring you up some quartz, maybe a bit of amethyst – very cleansing for the aura.’
Outside, two fire engines had pulled up beside the flats. We’d watched in silence as the firefighters unfolded their ladders and led the members of the Standing Fallen off the roof. The adults’ faces were impassive as ever, but the little girl was sobbing, and the boy melted with relief as a fireman lifted him away from the rain gutter. Nobody had jumped, nobody had slipped. Not yet, anyway.
Dozens of religious cults have popped up since the Falls began. Hundreds, probably. Guild of Gold is the largest, and Fourth Age the most deadly – countless suicides all across America, and some in Europe. But it’s only the Standing Fallen that make me feel like this: small, and lightheaded, and totally powerless.
‘. . . Fine,’ I reply. ‘Just felt a bit woozy.’
Dad nods in agreement. ‘I’m heading down to Roslin to check out the spot where No. 13 fell,’ he says. ‘Anyone fancy coming?’
Rani leaps off the bed, demanding to go to McDonald’s for breakfast. For a moment, I almost feel as if I’m back in my bed up north, and that Dad’s asking us if we want to come to Tesco or for one of those pointless drives that he used to like so much. I’ll walk out to the car and Mum will twist around from the passenger’s seat, hand me the iPod and say, ‘Pick a tune for us, John Peel,’ like she always did. But then, like a punch in the gut, I remember: I’m not, and he isn’t, and she won’t, she can’t, she’s gone.
I don’t bother to answer. After a moment, Dad drums his fingers on the doorframe lightly. ‘OK, Jaya, see you later. There’s some money on the kitchen counter if you need it.’
He waits another moment, then sighs and shuts the door. His disappointment lingers long after he, Rani and Perry have left the flat. I don’t know what he expects of me. I can’t play happy families. I can’t pretend everything is normal, that I don’t spend every waking minute wishing I could go back eight months and make things right.
I bury my face in the pillow as my eyes start to prickle. Nothing is normal any more. He’s just too busy chasing angels to notice.
