Chapter 3 Anna
Anna
So, who’s in?
My thumbs hover over my phone. But like, who are you really inviting, Julian?
Me or Maddie Costas or just the lads or all of us?
Stupid group chats. I finally get Mum to let me have an account—‘social media age of consent’s thirteen in this country and even that’s too young’—only to discover Snapchat’s like walking through the canteen with your skirt tucked into your knickers.
Nightmare. Honestly. Not worth turning thirteen for.
I want to go. Of course I do—whether or not I’m invited.
It’s super important. Probably the most important stuff I’ll ever do and I’m a damn teenager.
But Mum’s gonna kick up a fuss. Julian’s been quick off the mark—Big Bad BoJo only announced letting people outside for recreation yesterday, and you’re only meant to see one person from one other household.
This group chat has six. How he thinks we’re going to get away with this is beyond me, but maybe that’s the point.
It’ll cause a fuss, and that’s the only way to make people understand.
I’ll have to ask Mum when she’s in a good mood.
Can’t respond right away anyway, someone might clock I’m into Julian.
Or, you know, I was last time we actually saw each other.
Fifty-one days and counting. Long hot days this week too, stretching out like toffee. I. Am. So. Bored.
I chuck my phone on my desk harder than I mean to and check the screen—it’s only an old one of Mum’s but she’ll still kill me if I crack it—it’s fine though.
It lights up. I’m in! Can’t wait! Bloody Maddie, she knows I’m into Julian and she’s all over him like PVA glue.
Literally nobody needs to use that many hearts at the end of their message.
This time I throw the phone into my duvet and turn my attention back to Lockdown Project Number Two Hundred And Fifty-One: blotting out my pastel pink bedroom walls.
I’m running out of Blu Tack and reckon it’s not an essential item.
Wonder if you can even get it any place other than nowadays.
Probably can, but it’ll take weeks. Maybe I could look for some plastic-free Blu Tack.
Does Blu Tack have plastic in it? I examine the blob in my fingers.
Maybe the whole thing’s plastic. Damn. Another staple I’ll have to give up—alongside conditioner from a bottle and actual eyeliner.
I’ve been practicing with that charred almond stuff I made, but Mum reckons I look like a bad goth with a haystack on my head.
‘Just use conditioner. Your bottle is not going to be the one that changes the world.’
‘Yes it will, Mum, every bottle counts. It only works if we’re all doing it.’
‘Or use refillables.’
‘Um, they’re low plastic, not plastic-free.’
She just doesn’t get the sacrifices we need to make.
I stick up my second-hand Glass Animals poster and stand back to appreciate my now decidedly less pink room.
I got it painted when I was like eight and into that girly stuff, but Mum won’t let me repaint it now that I know better.
Maybe I shouldn’t have gone in so hard for pitching a navy room with big activist slogans.
Should’ve started small and tasteful. You know, magnolia and one of Mum’s beloved archaeological sketches or something.
She doesn’t even know about history, she’s rubbish at it.
Says she just likes the way they look, that they remind her of Dad.
Anyway, the pink’s going, covered by alt-J and Stormzy, staring out between newspaper articles about flooding and forest fires.
My heart twists. COVID’s just a short pandemic compared to the eco-plague in the background.
I slouch down the hall to the study and knock on the door. ‘Mum?’
I can hear her foot tapping, which means she’s got her techno in and won’t hear me. I knock louder. ‘Mum!’
Still nothing, so I just open the door, and she catches the movement in the window’s reflection.
I hate that I can’t enter Mum’s study without getting caught in that window.
I don’t like looking at reflections of myself—I never know who’ll be looking back at me, and I dread one day Mum’ll see it too.
But that day’s not today. Instead, Mum turns with a big grin. ‘Hey sweetie, what’s up?’
‘Nothing. Just wanted to check how you are.’
She takes off her giant headphones and swivels in her chair. ‘I’m alright, yeah. How was school?’
‘Same old. Joseph-Always-Joseph asked a question on the mic in English. The e on his keyboard was broken.’
Mum grimaces. ‘I guess that counts as exciting nowadays.’
‘I guess.’ I hover for a moment. ‘Do you want a cup of tea or anything?’
She squints at me. ‘OK, what do you want?’
‘Nothing, I swear!’
‘You’re up to something.’
I throw up my hands. ‘Honestly I’m not, I was just trying to be nice. God, so suspicious.’
‘Anna.’
‘Alright fine.’ I flump on the spare chair, sitting on a pile of books. ‘Julian’s organising this climate action at the weekend, and I know it’s COVID and everything, but we’ll be really really socially distanced, and I swear I’ll be good, and it’s Julian, and also it’s super important.’
She looks disappointed, but I think it’s fake. ‘Anna, I can’t let you go, you know that. And honestly Julian’s parents shouldn’t be letting him go either. It’s the middle of a pandemic.’
‘But Mum, it’s Julian’s thing!’
‘Exactly, he’s the last person in the world you want to socially distance from.’
I get even hotter under my three-weeks unwashed T-shirt. ‘Oh my God, Mum!’
She laughs. ‘What? You brought him up.’
‘Can I go though? Please?’
‘No. And that’s an end to it. Now off you go, I’ve got to finish this code by five or tomorrow’s tests will fail.’
‘Why don’t you get it? It’s like you want the world to end.’
Mum sighs like I’m being dramatic.
‘Don’t sigh at me like that. This isn’t drama, Mum, it’s proportionate.’
‘Anna, out!’
‘Fine.’ I stomp back down the hall to my room.
If I’m really honest, I’m slightly regretting some of my poster choices.
I’m not sure how I’m going to sleep with all these eyes staring at me.
Maybe I’ll get some glow-in-the-dark stars for the ceiling or something.
Some second-hand ones to avoid the extra plastic.
It’s too damn hot to hang out in here right now anyway.
I unearth my phone, grab my annoying wired earphones, and head for the balcony.
Mum’s office looks onto the balcony, but the door from the sitting room’s already open because of the heat, so I crawl out and lie on the old rag mat, sneaking under her gaze.
She probably wouldn’t notice anyway, it’s like she’s in another world when she’s coding.
It’s not as cool out here as I’d hoped, but the breeze is good. It’s, like, freaky hot for May.
There’s a bunch more messages on the Snapchat.
The lads are all excited. Julian’s dad’s offered to chaperone.
He’s a big cheese in one of the activist movements, lectures at UCL about algae or something, and is much more frightened of carbon dioxide than COVID-19.
My dad would’ve been that cool if he was still around.
He’d have had a big fight with Mum about this and let me go.
Or maybe not. Mum says he was the quiet type.
I wish I’d known him, even a little bit.
I message the group: working on mum but its not looking good. probably cant make this one. soz. Do I put kisses? No? Yes? I go for one, it autocorrects to five, and I hit send too fast to catch the mistake. xxxxx. Bollocks. Well, I’ll be cringing about that till 3 AM.
Sticking my earphones in, I put ‘Tessellate’ on full volume, staring at the balcony ceiling, which Mum and I painted last month, big rainforest flowers, and a hummingbird.
I was doing it to stay occupied, but for Mum it was all about her war against the pigeons.
She read somewhere they don’t like bright colours.
But, just like her other contraptions—netting, spikes, chilli, vinegar paste—it hasn’t kept them away.
Not that she’s got any right to. Like, this is the pigeons’ natural habitat, leave them to it.
To be fair, I guess they do poo all over her plants.
I flick one of the mint leaves and it puffs guano dust. Gross.
Her current anti-pigeon armour—strings of dangling mirrors—twist in the wind, twinkling sunlight.
I squint as reflections of the allotments below, the plants around me, and even my own body pierce the perfect sky.
I still can’t get over how clear it is since lockdown.
One of the only good things about it. It’s a lie that dolphins are returning to Venice, it’s not that magic, but something’s changed.
If humans just got snuffed out, it would all come back so quickly.
Julian wonders if that’s what the pandemic’s about, some kind of Gaia response to get rid of the humans, but Julian’s dad says that’s not the way to think.
We can’t just stop living, we have to learn to live with nature.
In a DM last week, Julian said he thinks his dad’s a hopeless optimist. we cant all go live in a forest. its gone to far for that.
I’m not sure Julian always listens to his dad properly though—I mean, Julian’s really clever, I just think he’s got a blind spot when it comes to his dad.
I check my phone. Julian’s replied: shame Anna, next time
No kisses. This right here is why I get confused—DMs about really important personal stuff one week, no kisses the next.
I mean, how am I meant to take that? Maybe if we were in person he’d look sad.
He has this way his lips get tight when he’s upset about something, like if he’s missed a goal.
It’s small, but I’d notice it. Maybe he makes different faces now, I haven’t seen him in forever.
Boys act so weird when they’re disappointed.
Probably toxic masculinity or something.
Mum says none of us know what we’re doing and thank God or we’d all be up to more than we should be at our age.
But. It would be nice, sometimes, to know what I’m doing.
Then again, I’m not sure Mum knows what she’s on about most of the time.
Got to be pretty strangely wired to spend so much time on a bunch of pigeons.
Shuffle switches to Bonobo and the bass relaxes me a bit.
They say when the lockdown ended in Wuhan a bunch of people went to the river and shouted at it.
Maybe that’s what I’ll do when Mum and I go for our walk this evening.
Go yell at the Thames and, you know, sane up a bit.
Probably Chelsea Bridge would be best—small and quiet, just enough traffic to cover the noise.
Though I guess not many cars are crossing it now; everywhere’s dead, or so it sounds like from here.
Couldn’t take Maddie to scream at the river of course.
She’d think I’d gone off the deep end. I could probably get Mum to come along though.
Climate march no way, but screaming at a river would be right up her street.
She’s weird like that. Says katharsis is good for you.
That’s how she spells it and everything, with a k.
The mirror-strings spiral and sparkle, and for just a moment they catch my face, all of them turning to me at once.
It’s like that experiment we did in physics before everything got shut down: like they’re iron filings and I’m an electromagnet that’s suddenly powered up.
But it’s not my face they’re reflecting, even though they’re pointing right at me, it’s someone else’s.
The breeze holds its breath—I’m not making it up—then sighs, setting the mirrors spinning and breaking the spell.
I frown at my dark phone screen and my own furrowed brow stares back.
That’s how it always happens—for a second, I see the-face-that-isn’t-my-face instead of myself.
Then she’s gone. Another thing I haven’t told Julian and Maddie.
Haven’t even told Mum. I mean, what would she say?
It’s one thing to suggest a kathartic river scream, quite another to see someone else in your own reflection.
My back sweats against the floor and the sun glances in my eyes.
Thirty pigeons do a flypast, wheeling over the big square between the apartment buildings, scanning for insects in the allotments.
One of them miscalculates its route, flutters near, thinks about landing on our balcony, but at the last moment swerves away.
Bloody hell. This cannot be the day Mum stops me going out and wins the pigeon war. That would just be too unfair.