I aim the wand upwards and spin in a circle. The bubbles fly high into the sky, hovering just out of reach, carried by the breeze and catching on the tops of the buddleias. Too high, Alice cries. Too high, Violet. But I keep on spinning, keep on blowing, spurred on by their laughter and the sense of freedom. Suddenly, Nate screams, Look, Violet, look! Alice and I freeze and track the invisible line travelling from his finger. A single bubble survives the buddleias, climbing higher and higher, bobbing over the garden fence, beneath the telephone cables, up, up and over the tops of the sycamores.
We watch that bubble until it is no more than a tiny dot, floating into the horizon. Nate turns to me. He grins so wide I can see all of his baby teeth, all pearly and wet. Will it land in the stars? Alice and I laugh. Yes, Nate, it will land in the stars. And that’s when I hear it, the rhythmic pip of a hospital machine, like the ones you hear on Holby City. Pip. Pip. Pip. The scent of Dettol and washing powder replaces the perfume of summer.
Alice turns to me. What’s that noise? We look across the lawn, under the flowers, behind the wooden bench. But we can’t find the machine. Pip. Pip. Pip. Nate nuzzles his head into my stomach. I don’t like it, Violet, make it stop. I climb on the stones, peer into the neighbours’ gardens, check the windows into our house. But still no machine. That sense of freedom makes way for a growing sense of dread. Pip. Pip. Pip.
The pips begin to mutate, changing into the hollow tap of knuckles against wood. I wake to Saskia’s stern face, her fist rapping against the edge of my bunk. ‘Come on, Violet. You need to use your charms on that useless hunk of a Gem.’
I’m covered in sweat, my pulse banging repetitively in my ears. ‘Willow,’ I say, my voice muffled with sleep.
She frowns. ‘Yeah, I know his name.’
I blink the grit from eyes and tell myself those pips were just the sound of Saskia’s impatient knocking, or my own blood gushing through my body. There’s no other explanation.
I shove some tasteless gruel down my neck and grab another shower, almost enjoying the way the cold hammers into me – freezing the anxiety, transforming it into a shimmering block I can step away from and leave behind.
I walk to the manor with Saskia and Nate. I can feel the worry taking over – the next part of the story requires more than just reciting lines and avoiding farting. This is when I really fall short of Rose’s ghost, because the next part of the story requires physical activity. And there’s a reason I’m always the last one to get picked for the netball team.
‘So how are you going to get lover boy to notice you this time?’ Saskia asks me.
‘Last night, he asked me my name. Tonight, I’m going to show him.’
She raises an eyebrow so it meets the dark stain on her head. ‘What d’ya mean, show him?’
‘I’m going leave a rose on his windowsill,’ I reply.
Nate pulls a rose from his overalls and hands it to me. The plumpest, reddest one he could find in the rose garden earlier that evening. I take it from him and rotate it in my fingers. We both look at Saskia, awaiting her excited response, the one she gave Rose in canon: That’s a brilliant idea, lure him out of that bastard manor house. But instead she scrunches up her face like she’s just smelt something really bad. Maybe I did fart.
‘That’s effing ridiculous,’ she says. ‘Leaving a rose on his windowsill! Where do you two come up with this shit?’
Nate and I exchange a little smile.
‘It’ll work,’ Nate says. ‘Just you see.’
Saskia snorts. ‘Well, it’s wrong if you ask me, calling yourself Rose. It’s disrespectful of the dead.’
‘Thorn said I should keep her name,’ I reply. ‘To remind me of her bravery and to keep me on course.’ Thorn didn’t say this, but I hoped if I took on her name, I would somehow take on some of her beauty and daring. Besides, a mess of viola flowers sprawled across a windowsill wouldn’t look nearly so romantic, as Nate so keenly pointed out earlier in the day.
‘Thorn ain’t always right, you know,’ Saskia grumbles, brushing her fingers against the scar on her collarbone.
The manor falls into view. It looks similar to the building used in the movie; stately and grand, with two parallel towers puffed out like the breasts of a peacock, and so far removed from the Imp city it may as well be a painted backdrop. It always struck me as strange how the Gems, with all their technological advancement, should choose to live in such classical-looking environments. I know the exterior of the manor is merely an illusion and inside there exists every futuristic gadget imaginable: artificial intelligence; matter-transporting drains; simulation pods; I could go on. But I could never work out why the Gems chose to modernize original Imp buildings, why they didn’t just build from scratch. Now, living as an Imp, gazing at this beautiful Georgian hall, I finally get it. They did it to piss us off. To remind us that they won – they’re the superior race. They live upstairs, we live downstairs. They stole our beautiful Georgian halls.
Bastards.
I try and cleanse my brain of such thoughts. Anger towards the Gems won’t help me lure Willow. Instead, I focus on the grass yielding underfoot as we creep across the lawns, the grip of Nate’s fingers around mine, the taste of smoke and cold on my tongue. We circle towards the back gardens, nearer and nearer to Willow’s window. I notice the light in Willow’s room remains off – third floor, fourth from the left.
We huddle beneath a large oak, the one Rose shimmied effortlessly up, bloom poking from her cleavage. I swear this tree is bigger . . . meaner.
‘So you’re going to climb that huge tree?’ Saskia says.
I begin to tuck the rose down the front of my overalls imagining how awesome I’m about to look. But instead, my lack of cleavage lets the stem wilt to one side and the thorns stick into my chest like the little bastards that they are. I am so not Hollywood. But I force a little smile, pride getting the better of me. ‘How hard can it be?’ And if I say it, I might believe it.
She shakes her head and links her hands together to form a stirrup. I place my foot in it and grip the lowest branch. The bark scrapes my fingers and the bough flexes beneath my weight, yet somehow I manage to haul my body into a sitting position. I’m no higher than the top of Saskia’s head, but I still daren’t look down; it freaks me out that I could just lean back and topple to the ground.
I honestly don’t know what I thought would happen. I knew I wouldn’t magically transform into Rose and scoot up a giant oak with ease, I knew the spirit of Katniss wouldn’t suddenly possess me, allowing me to scuttle into the treetops while shooting a bow and arrow. But I didn’t think I would be quite so devoid of upper-body strength. I take a few deep breaths and let my head fill with images of Katie and Alice and Nate. I have to do this. I have to complete the story so we can go home.
I stand carefully, hugging the trunk like a koala, my feet splayed across the bough. Another branch lies within reach on the other side of the trunk. I flail through the air and end up straddled between two branches, acutely aware of the fact only air and wood separate my body from the ground.