Chapter 12
The week zooms past in a frenzied blur as I race to collect all the documents and take the medical tests needed to meet the GOP visa conditions.
Everything has been approved and now all I have to do is welcome Lily’s cousin Mai to London who is taking over my room in the apartment. And then head off to the airport.
I’m gazing out of the apartment window, lost in thought when she arrives.
‘Lily!’ She catapults herself on her cousin as if they haven’t seen each other for years, which is not the case but hey, maybe I’m jealous.
‘We’re finally together again!’ Mai screeches.
‘My favourite person.’ It’s a bit much, all this exuberance, but Mai is nineteen so I give her some grace.
Lily is close with her extended family. Their group chats have side chats, I’m not even joking. It’s the kind of family everyone wishes they had, me included.
‘Well, how bloody lush is this, then? Not sure about the décor, but I guess I can live with it. Or set it on fire.’ Mai laughs, a high-pitched shriek that pierces my brain. ‘Harley! Nice to see you again.’
‘Uh, it’s Harper.’ She throws me a quizzical look. ‘My name.’ As she well knows, since I’ve been in Lily’s life longer than Mai’s been alive and have met her on many family occasions.
‘Oh, right. Well, Harper. You can go on your great big adventure, happy in the knowledge that Lily and I will be safe from internet predators, because I’m proficient in Krav Maga.’
Before I can ask what the heck Krav Maga is, Mai pivots behind me and in one slick move has me in some kind of chokehold. ‘See?’ she says while I fight the oncoming blackness as I’m deprived of oxygen. ‘It’s easy!’
‘Let her go, Mai.’ Lily finally comes to my rescue, not a second too soon, I might add.
Mai’s arms drop and I greedily suck precious air deep into my lungs, blinking away the greyish spots that cloud my vision.
When did she become an overbearing monster?
Where did that sweet little ponytailed kid go?
Lily quickly apologises for her cousin, but I don’t have the energy to utter a word.
Hands on knees, I keel, wondering when this downward trajectory of my life will end.
Now I can add to the long list of negatives that my taste in décor is woeful and I don’t know Krav Maga!
‘Don’t make me regret saying yes to you moving in,’ Lily admonishes her cousin. ‘Why you have to strut around like a prize peacock is beyond me.’
Mai pouts. ‘Oh, come on, she had plenty of air, she’s being dramatic.
Now let’s see this room of yours, Harps, and see if I’ll be able to fit my desk in there.
’ From what I’ve heard, Mai is a Twitch streamer, which essentially means people pay to watch her play video games and interact with her audience. It can be quite the lucrative gig.
‘Harper,’ I manage to groan. Harps? Urgh, times like this I wish I did know a spot of Krav Maga.
I suck in a breath and stand up, following in her excessively sugary perfumed wake as she enters my once book-filled room.
Now it’s a shell, with only the stripped bed, tallboy, dressing table and bookshelves.
The rest of my worldly possessions have been Marie Kondo-ed and put into storage, including my precious book collection.
Who knew that it would hurt so much, abandoning my beloveds?
Now I appreciate how parents fret when they separate from their newborns for the first time and while that comparison might seem a stretch to some, it isn’t for me.
Those precious tomes are my book babies, who have been there when humans haven’t.
It’s like I’m missing some integral part of me, leaving my collection, my comfort reads, my escape from the real world.
‘Whoa, we’re going to need more than a smudge stick to get rid of the bad energy in here.’
My already thin patience snaps. ‘Excuse me? Why are you always this rude?’ How could I have forgotten the bratty cousin schtick that she always performs? I presumed she had grown out of that after adolescence, but clearly not. Poor Lily. Have I made her life infinitely worse?
Lily hastily jumps in. ‘She’s got no filter. You get used to her sharing every thought that flutters in her mind.’
‘No filter, or no manners?’ My island paradise home is looking better every second.
Mai wears a petulant smirk that really rubs me up the wrong way. It could be I’m feeling rather sensitive of late. I mean, do you blame me? Here’s this bossy minx telling me my former bedroom has bad energy. How is that even possible?
‘I’m not being rude, Harper. It’s simply that I’m highly attuned to bad energy. And this room is vibrating with it.’
‘Well, it didn’t vibrate with anything until you walked in, so you’d have to ask yourself where the bad energy originated…’
‘OK, OK.’ Lily stands between us, which I’m secretly grateful for. I don’t want to be Krav Maga’d again. ‘Why don’t we head to the airport now, Harper? Have a celebratory glass of overpriced bubbles?’
‘Good idea.’
I don’t bother giving Mai instructions on how to release the stuck window. Or that occasionally the radiator needs to be hit like a xylophone to produce heat. Petty, but satisfying.