Chapter 3

This chapter has a trigger warning - self-harm/suicide.

I walk down South West King Avenue in the late afternoon sunlight, beneath the golden-bronze fall foliage of the beech trees and liquid ambers, leaves waving in the wind like an unsettled sea of molten copper above me.

As I make my way from school to Dr. Martel’s office in the neighbouring suburb of Nob Hill, past quaint Victorian villas and trendy boutiques tucked away along leafy avenues, one thought runs through my mind, over and over.

Two years. Two whole years.

I can’t believe it’s been two whole years already.

Today is Friday the 19th of October. The two-year anniversary of the day that changed my life forever.

The day of the bus crash.

I went to school today, even though mom suggested I stay at home. I couldn’t bear a repeat of last year - her hovering outside my bedroom door, bringing me countless cups of tea, asking me a bajillion times if I wanted to “talk about it.”

In retrospect, I wish I had taken her advice and stayed at home today.

I could have spent the whole day in bed, cocooned from the outside world in my own drowsy little bubble.

Instead, I spent the whole day trying to block out the surprise news that has half the school abuzz like a hive of hungry honeybees.

Apparently a mysterious virtual countdown clock appeared on Fable’s website and all of their social media overnight - a midnight blue screen with nothing but a sprinkling of tiny glimmering stars in the background, and in the foreground, a blinking row of glowing silvery white numbers counting down in real time to who knows what. No one has any idea what it’s about, but the fans are utterly euphoric.

There are rumours that the band is about to release a new music video, or maybe announce another world tour. Some people think it has something to do with the boys’ recent trip to Portland and the helicopter “publicity stunt” on the highway at the end of July.

Worse - a group of Enfablers realised that the countdown clock’s starry background was the exact same background image featured on the album artwork for Fable’s second album, Midnight, and was therefore a clue. They'd worked out that the clock was counting down to midnight tonight, somewhere on the west coast of the United States.

Which means that something is happening in Hollywood, or Las Vegas, or San Francisco… or Portland.

I’d hoped that silent-study period near the end of the school day would be a reprieve from the constant Fable talk I was trying so hard to ignore. But unfortunately Ms. Fanshawe, a youngish new teaching assistant who started at Huntson High this year, is a massive Enfabler, and even wears a delicate silver necklace with a winged pendant most days - the insignia of the Alastaire’s Angels fanclub.

So she spent the entire “silent” study period chatting away enthusiastically, leaning over the desk of the most evil, awful girl in school (and maybe in the entire world). Beth Donklin. The Queen Bee of the Three B’s and the unofficial president of the Alastaire’s Angels fan club.

Beth was telling her friends Becca and Bailey, and Ms. Fanshawe too, that the whole countdown clock stunt was definitely hinting at a big budget Hollywood movie starring the Fable boys, probably in the fantasy or sci-fi genre, the trailer of which was sure to drop at midnight tonight.

And of course it went without saying that their idol, Alastaire, would be the star of the movie. The other boys would play supporting characters in Alastaire’s movie, except Felix, who would likely be cast as some sort of villain, or maybe a very minor role - perhaps as Alastaire’s grumpy personal assistant or bitter manservant or something similarly demeaning.

Knowing Alastaire, he’d probably like the sound of that.

The rumour mill was in overdrive, and there was no blocking out the excitement bubbling up all around me.

Thanks guys. Great timing to go and reawaken the beast. Just as everyone was starting to forget and move on.

Including me.

Surprisingly, no one has come up to me to ask if I know anything about the countdown clock and what it might mean. Maybe they assume that I really am nobody to Fable, and I know nothing (which is actually half true, sort of) - or they assume that even if I do know something, I’m not going to tell them.

Still, all throughout the day I feel curious glances shot in my direction, prying eyes on me wherever I go.

Even Zee and Jamie and Grace are super-excited, although I know they’re trying to hide it from me. They’re all sleeping over at Zee’s house tonight, an invite I turned down without needing a second thought. They’ll stay up together glued to their screens until the big reveal at midnight, whatever it may be - a movie trailer drop, a surprise world tour announcement, or even confirmation of a rumoured collab with BLACKPINK’s Rosé, who in a recent interview named Felix as the singer she’d most like to perform a duet with.

Whatever it turns out to be, I don’t care.

It’s none of my business. Not anymore.

I can’t blame my friends for still stanning Fable with the same fervour they always have, even in light of everything that happened over summer break.

And that’s because they don’t really know what happened - or most of what happened, anyway. I chose not to tell them.

Maybe to protect them, or to protect Fable, or to protect me. They don’t know about the strange impossible things I was seeing, or the desperate, secret kiss I shared with Felix under the oak tree outside the cabin, or how I decided to completely banish the band from my life.

But they don’t need me to tell them specifics for them to understand.

They just get it.

Besides avoiding everything and anything to do with Fable, there’s another band I’m trying not to think about right now - my own, Wild Blue Yonder. Our concert at the July Jubilee turned out not only to be the bands’ final performance, but my own as well.

I haven’t sung since that night.

In fact, I don’t know if I’ll ever sing again.

Alix and Micah’s departure for Yale at the start of August heralded the end of our little band. They left long before the start of the semester, driving cross-country in Alix’s beaten up old Pontiac, leaving our practice space, aka the Zavaras family’s garage, to be reclaimed by Alix and Zee’s dad for his new “mancave” (aka. midlife crisis lair).

Now, going to Zee’s house just makes me feel sad. Too many memories of sunny afternoons jamming with the guys, Micah at the drums and Alix on the bass, making up stupid songs about Portland and our school teachers and whatever other stupid “inspirations” popped into Alix's head.

In a way, it's a relief that Wild Blue Yonder is officially over.

How could I explain to them that I no longer want to sing? That I no longer can even sing?

It's for the best.

I even stopped my weekly singing sessions at the Night Owl - something I'd been doing most Friday nights for the past year and a bit, way before the Fable boys came crashing into my life.

I don’t even like listening to music anymore - not only Fable, for obvious reasons, but literally anything musical - whether it’s a pop song playing on the radio or the forlorn sounds of the homeless cellist casting a spell of icy notes into the cold October air as I walk past - it all just makes me feel sort of grey, and flat, and hollow.

I realise now that music, and by extension, art in all its forms, is nothing but a beautiful - and ultimately empty - fantasy. Stories we tell ourselves in orchestral melody, strokes of paint on a canvas, words on a page. A fairy tale. A slippery facade. A fake refuge; a shimmering mirage that slips away the moment you reach out and try to grasp it.

A pretty lie to hide the ugly truth.

The truth that we are dying, each and every one of us. Like the skeletal bronze leaves overhead, clinging to their brief moment of glory before desiccating, withering, curling up on themselves, then drifting softly and sadly to earth. All of our art, our words, our songs, our memories and dreams and joys and sufferings - all of it, utterly meaningless in the face of the final abyss.

Before going back on my meds, this was all I could think about.

The abyss. Death. Decay. Nothingness.

The thoughts are still there, but they can’t hurt me like they used to. It’s as if my depression - all that sadness, grief, hopelessness - was a wild, raging ink-black ocean, infinitely deep, impossible to conquer and filled with writhing seamonsters, their claws reaching out, pulling me under. I was drowning. But Dr. Martell’s sunny yellow pills dispelled the storm, and they were a lifeboat of sorts, a raft.

The vast black ocean of tears is still there, ever present, but now I float on it, atop it, drifting lazily over the ebb and flow, just out of reach of the monsters’ sharp talons as they snake and swirl restlessly in the depths below, trapped beneath the waves so long as I keep popping my magical happy pills.

My depression will always be with me. But it doesn’t need to consume me. It’s under control. For now.

I’m not exactly happy, but not really sad anymore either.

I’m just numb.

Thanks doc. You probably saved my life. For whatever that’s worth.

*****

I arrive at Dr. Martel’s offices soon after three.

Standing on the footpath outside, I check the small silver watch on my wrist - something I started wearing when I realised that the biggest problem with living ‘phoneless’ wasn’t keeping in touch with my friends, or no Google, or anything like that. No. The most frustrating thing about not having a phone was never knowing what the time was.

Still, it’s worth it. The feeling of being disconnected, unchained, free floating...

As I think this, a large brown moth flutters past me, flickering through the air until it alights on the bronze name plaque above the door.

Liara Martel, MD

PSYCHIATRIST

The moth unfolds its wings, obscuring the final “a” in “Liara”, so that it becomes “Liar.”

It stays for a moment, then flaps its wings once more and takes to the air, drifting away as it pleases.

I wish I could just fly away.

I’m five minutes early for my appointment, and I know mom will be in the waiting room, having come straight from the daily dinner service preparations at Biblio. Recently, she’s been spending less time than usual at the restaurant that she and my dad co-own. Spending more time at home, waiting anxiously for me to walk in through the door every day after school. Needing reassurance that I’m fine, I’m ok, I’m not about to slit my wrists or jump off a cliff. Wound up so tight she might break at the first outward sign of any distress on my part, like a guitar string ready to snap.

She never used to be so needy and… brittle. Maybe she’s the one who needs to see a shrink.

Today will be especially bad. She’ll be trying hard to cheer me up, and to gauge my mood on this most deplorable of days, the terrible anniversary.

Why on earth did she book me in to see Dr. Martel today, of all days? And why does she still insist on being there for every.single.freaking.session?

I’d rather not deal with mom right now, so I linger outside on the footpath underneath the ancient Ginkgo tree that overhangs the building. Gazing up into the yellow canopy of small fan-shaped leaves above me, incandescent in the late afternoon sunlight, I remember how Gran had the same sort of tree in her garden, although hers was much smaller.

In early summer she’d harvest and dry the leaves while they were still green, to be brewed into a bitter tea for “mental clarity and concentration.” She loved telling me all about the medicinal properties of plants like this, and the folklore too. Gran was such a hippy.

One Fall, when I was maybe seven or eight years old and the leaves on her little Ginkgo tree had turned the same vivid yellow as the leaves on the tree I’m standing below right now, she told me that in some parts of the world it was called the Maidenhair Tree, named for a forlorn young woman whose lover drowned in a river. I’ve forgotten most of the story, but I remember the ending. It went something like this:

A knight and a maiden were walking hand in hand, when she spotted a sprinkling of beautiful tiny blue flowers growing along the river banks. Her lover leaned over to pick them, for her to wear in her hair, and he lost his footing, tumbling into the deep and turbulent river in his heavy armour. Unable to save her knight, the maiden sat weeping on the riverbanks as he sank beneath the rushing water. She stayed on the riverbank for many days and many nights, crying endlessly as she faded away in her grief. Eventually, the spirits of the forest took pity on her, and turned her into a tree. Her long golden hair transformed into fronds of bright foliage, her weeping faded into a whisper on the wind, leaning over the river to gaze forever into the watery depths.

The story made me feel sad as a child, imagining that the Ginkgo tree in Gran’s garden was this sort of leafy prison for the soul of a long lost maiden - and recalling the story now brings to mind uncomfortable half-formed memories of another fairytale, one I’d prefer to forget.

A beautiful girl sitting at the water’s edge combing her long silvery-blonde hair, her eyes the swirling silver of the moon; her siren’s song heavy with heartbreak and lost love.

Ondine.

I shake my head, trying to dispel these melancholic thoughts.

Checking my watch again, I see it’s time for my session. Hopefully Dr. Martel’s ready for me and I won’t have to stand around for too long with mom in the waiting room. Most days I can deal with all her quiet neediness, her constant need for reassurance, but not today.

As I’m about to head inside, I feel a hand grip my shoulder.

I swing around expecting to see mom, running late from Biblio maybe. Instead, I see a frail old woman draped in spidery grey rags, impossibly thin; all sharp edges and bones, pale skin pulled too tight over her skull, the same sickly white as a fish’s underbelly. Her eyes are wide with fear, and something else - sadness maybe? Two dark sunken wells of misery staring into me, past me, through me.

With a jolt, I recognise her.

Oh my god. It’s Bea.

She must have lost at least twenty pounds since I last saw her, when I was eavesdropping on her conversation with Mrs. Leyton and her new boyfriend Robert at the July Jubilee just three months ago.

She was looking brittle and unkempt back then, but now… now, she looks like something risen from the grave, impossibly old, impossibly grey and gaunt.

Her hand grips my shoulder tighter, and as she leans in, I’m enveloped in her smell.

She smells like the ocean. And blood. And rot.

Salt, iron, rust, decay.

She’s whispering something to me, very quickly. Inaudible at first, faint as a sea breeze.

I try to pull away, crying out in pain as she squeezes tighter. It feels like she’s crushing my shoulder. I’d fall to my knees if not for her vice-like grip holding me up like a stuffed toy dangling helpless in a claw machine. Through the haze of pain I hear what she’s muttering to herself.

No, not muttering anymore. Now she’s wailing, pleading, frantically shouting at me like someone trying to wake a sleepwalker about to wander off the upstairs balcony.

“Don’t let them take your sight…” Bea cries. “Open, open, open… you’re lying to yourself… please, please, you need to see… can’t you see that? Choosing to make yourself blind… it won’t work, you’ve chosen not to see it, but it’s still there! MY CHILD! ONDINE! WAKE. UP. How can you run from it if you can’t even see it?” With her free hand she jabs her index finger against my forehead, the fingertip cold and wet, like an icy kiss right between my eyes as she screams “OPEN! OPEN! OPEN!” over and over again.

Time seems to move slower, and I watch the scene numb and dazed, as if through a dense fog of shock and detachment. Several people run out of the doctors’ offices towards us - Dr. Martel’s receptionist, Cynthia; two people who look like patients maybe, a middle-aged man in a red shirt and a scruffy grey-haired biker dude; Dr. Martel herself, and finally my own mother. They pry Bea off me, catching me and pulling me to my feet as I fall to the ground.

Bea goes quiet, held back by the biker dude, and in an instant all the fear and terror slip away from her expression, replaced with a serene, grandmotherly smile.

“Ash! Ash! Baby! Are you ok? Say something! Ash!” My mom is holding me at arm’s length, her eyes already welling up with tears.

I nod automatically, dazed and stunned, only half hearing her as one word echoes through my mind, drowning out all other thoughts.

Ondine.

She called me Ondine.

Bea’s still smiling at me, but I can see the cracks in her mask, the secret glowering face beneath.

“Remember what I told you, my sweet,” she says, winking at me conspiringly, before turning to address Dr. Martel. “Now, Liara, I believe it’s time for you to take me inside so I can lie down on that comfy leather couch of yours. I know you’re dying to poke around in this screwy old brain of mine and find out just how deep this crazy goes. I’ll even bring my friends.”

She gestures at the empty space beside her, nothing but air.

Dr. Martel shoots a worried glance in my mom’s direction, and my mom nods quickly, some unspoken agreement passing between them.

“But you don’t have an app-“ Cynthia begins saying, before Dr. Martel cuts her off.

“Ok Beatrice,” Dr. Martel says, taking Bea’s arm gently. “Let’s go inside and talk about it. I’m sure Mrs. Shields won’t mind rescheduling.”

Dr. Martel mouths “thank you” to my mom before leading Bea away, followed by a very flustered Cynthia, muttering about how “she’s not even a patient here.”

As we watch them disappear through the doorway and out of sight, my mom shakes her head and sighs.

“Poor Bea,” she says. “I hate watching her lose her mind like this. Ash, promise me you’ll never do acid.”

“Acid?” I ask.

“LSD. The Molly. Drugs. You know what I mean,” she says. “Bea and Mom did a lot of that back in the sixties. It catches up with you. I mean, you know your dad and I trust you not to mess with mind-altering substances but-”

“Except the ones you and Dr. Martel put me on,” I interrupt her. “Or do the happy pills not count as drugs?”

My mom’s face falls, a flash of guilt, and suddenly she looks so sad, and hurt. I immediately wish I could take the words back.

“Mom, I’m sorry-” I begin, but before I can finish she wraps her arms around me, pulling me into a fierce hug. I hug her back awkwardly, not wanting to hurt her feelings, but also not sure I want this intense PDA right here in the middle of the footpath.

Is it possible to feel any more numb than I feel now?

After a few uncomfortable moments she pulls away, studying my face and tucking a loose strand of silvery-blonde hair behind my ear.

“You’ve been through a lot,” she says. “Come on, let’s go home.”