Chapter 15 Anna #2
I’ve got to try to be normal, or Mum’s going to smell a rat.
I brush my teeth without being able to look at myself, my reflection blocked by the-face-that-isn’t-my-face.
I shower, dress, and pour myself a bowl of Alphabites with soya milk, but in each room the surfaces bounce slightly the wrong light back at me.
Even my cereal spoon contains the-face-that-isn’t-my-face, even the toaster, even the dull shadows on the shiny fridge door.
The multigrain goop in my mouth sticks on its way down, and I nearly throw up.
I don’t want to chuck what’s left because food waste is the worst, but I’m really not hungry.
Mum comes in, still sweaty and flushed from her morning yoga, and kisses the top of my head. ‘Morning, darling, how’d you sleep? Weird about that bird in the middle of the night, huh?’
I mumble something that must suffice as a response, because she keeps on, making a big pot of Earl Grey and pouring us both mugs.
‘Anna?’
‘What?’
‘I said do you want to go for a walk later today? We could ask Maddie if she wants to join us, now that’s allowed.’ She’s smiling as if there’s nothing wrong. Clearly, she hasn’t noticed the problem with the reflections yet.
Seeing Maddie isn’t high on my list of priorities today. It’s hard enough replying to Mum with something normal, let alone having a full-blown girl gossip.
‘I don’t really want to see Maddie,’ I reply, sipping my tea and sensing the-face-that-isn’t-my-face rippling on its surface. Please, Mum, please don’t look at the toaster, or my spoon, or any reflection in here.
‘Are you feeling alright? You’re awfully pale.’ She puts a hand to my forehead.
‘Maybe I’m poorly,’ I say. ‘My head’s a bit spinny.’ If I say I’m sick, she’ll send me to bed, and she won’t have a chance to notice the wrong reflections everywhere.
‘Why don’t you go back to bed?’
Bingo.
‘You can take my laptop and watch some TV if you like.’
Double bingo.
Turns out it’s hard to find something I want to watch though.
Theoretically Maddie and I are watching Stranger Things together online, so I can’t watch that, and besides I’m already in the Upside Down.
Julian loves Adventure Time so I’ve been trying to get into it, but for some reason it scares me more than Stranger Things.
Avatar: The Last Airbender is usually a good bet, so I stick it on, but today it’s moving too fast, and the pitch is too high, and it makes me feel even weirder than I already do.
It’s silly, but I turn the sound down really low, and watch hand-drawn Beatrix Potter cartoons on YouTube like I’m a little kid again.
I doze fitfully, woken again and again by the sensation of falling.
When it reaches Jeremy Fisher getting almost eaten by a fish, the panicky, spinny feeling comes back, so I find an extensive playlist of those really ancient videos Mum likes of Old Bear and Friends.
Finally, the dozing takes me over, and I’m woken hours later by Mum coming to check whether I want lunch.
She’ll have checked on me quietly a couple of times while I was sleeping, and she’s got sense enough not to comment on the Old Bear videos.
She just pats my overheated cheek, and says I really need to eat something, even if it’s ice cream.
Still half asleep, I shake my head and burrow deeper into my duvet, even though I’m sweating in the midday heat. ‘I don’t want anything,’ I mumble.
‘What was that?’
I tuck the duvet under my chin and repeat, ‘I don’t want anything, I’m not hungry.’
For some reason, Mum gets this really worried look. ‘Anna, lovely, I can’t understand you.’
‘What do you mean, you can’t understand me? I’m just not hungry.’
‘Darling.’ She’s gone pale herself. ‘You’re not, uh, I don’t think you’re speaking English.’
I sit up like I’ve been electrocuted, trying to hide my shaking hands from Mum. ‘I just said I’m not hungry.’
Mum’s eyes narrow. ‘OK, that I understood.’ She puts her hand to my forehead again, checks my pupils, goodness knows what for—she’s got no medical experience whatsoever. ‘What just happened?’
‘Nothing,’ I say, waving her hands away and climbing out of bed. ‘Honestly, I really don’t know.’
‘Was that another language?’ She follows me across the room.
‘I must’ve been dreaming about a French exam or something.’ Another lie. Her notebook was right, they build up.
‘It wasn’t French.’ She folds her arms. ‘You’re not having a stroke, are you?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I say, a whole new fear birthing in my brain. First a hyperventilating asthmatic heart attack, now a bloody stroke! ‘What does a stroke look like?’
‘Probably not this,’ Mum allows.
‘Look, can you just drop it? I’ve probably got a fever or something.’ Yeah, that’s it, a fever.
‘Sorry, I just worry about you.’ Mum looks out the window—or is she looking at the window?
I snap. ‘Just get out, will you? I don’t feel well, I just want to be left alone!’
‘But Anna—’ Her eyes flick between me and the window. Is that just a coincidence, or has she seen the-face-that-isn’t-my-face?
‘I mean it, Mum, get out!’
‘Fine, fine!’ She leaves with her hands up like I’m a policeman, and I slam the door after her and lean against it. I’ve only slammed the door once before, in the second week of lockdown when Mum and I were really getting on top of each other. I feel awful almost immediately.
I can hear Mum on the other side, hovering like a moth, thinking about knocking. She breathes so loudly she doesn’t need to knock, but finally she does anyway, two oh-so-timid taps.
‘Leave me alone!’ I shout at the closed door.
‘Something’s not right, Anna. You don’t normally behave like this.’
‘Shut up, I’m fine!’ I’m glad I can’t see her face.
I’ve never told her to shut up before, and I don’t ever want to do it again, but it also felt good.
I don’t understand what’s going on, or why she’s been lying to me, but she’s definitely forfeited her right to come pestering in my private business.
‘Well. When you’re ready, you know where I am.’ Then, in a mutter I’m intended to hear. ‘Not like you can go anywhere right now anyway.’
I go back to Old Bear, but it’s lost its comfort value.
I give reading a shot, discarding the Edge Chronicles, His Dark Materials, and Percy Jackson one after the other.
My eyes keep sliding off the words like Vitalite on a hot pan.
Maybe I really am sick, maybe it’s COVID.
Maybe I’ve had a hallucinatory fever for the past three days, and if I wait long enough I’ll get better, and everything will go back to normal.
Time to get serious about sitting this thing out.
After a couple of tries, I remember Maddie’s Disney+ login, which she borrowed off Joseph-Always-Joseph, and stick on Simpsons reruns for a second screen.
Lockdown Project Number Two Hundred And Sixty-One: lose time.
TikTok works best for that, which is normally really annoying, but today it’s all I want.
Time slides into that grey, mindless scroll.
15:19, 15:52, 16:02, 16:41, 17:14, 03:04—wait, that’s not right.
Yeah, I thought so, it’s 17:23. I watch the minutes click over to be sure: 17:24, 17:25 …
Once I’m certain, I return to purposefully drowning myself in social media.
17:41, 18:03, 00:01— What again? That’s flat-out wrong.
The sun’s still up, and even on TikTok you can’t waste that much time.
I close TikTok and just watch the clock on my phone.
00:01 flicks to 00:02, then back to 00:00.
Then to 16:03, 09:22, 08:17. How long has it been doing this?
Was it doing this the whole time I was scrolling?
My phone’s got to be broken—but what if I’m breaking it?
I need another clock.
My alarm clock has stopped completely, but when I pick it up and shake it to double-check, it’s really hot in my hand, and the plastic mechanism on the back has melted.
Pausing my second-screen Simpsons, I check the laptop clock instead. 22:23, 13:04, 15:15. Goose bumps prickle down my arms and back. OK, don’t panic. What would Mum do? She’d troubleshoot the problem, like when her code has a bug. Alright, so it’s not just my phone. Maybe it’s this room?
Still in my PJs, I pad through to Mum’s study and wriggle the mouse on the old desktop I use for homework.
It wakes up slowly, leaving me to watch the-face-that-isn’t-my-face going about its business.
I feel sick all over, like that time I accidentally took a sweet home from the local shop without paying for it, and knew I had to go back and apologise.
Finally, the monitor flickers to life. 18:07, 01:52, 14:35.
The time switches are getting faster, not to the minute anymore, so I change the settings to show the second counter too, and sure enough the numbers are out of order, streaming too fast to keep track of, accelerating to a blur.
I watch them, feeling way worse than I did finding Maddie’s post about Julian.
It’s not just my phone, and it’s not just my room. It really might be me.
There’s only one way to check.
‘Mum?’
‘In the kitchen!’ she calls back.
‘Hey sweetie, I didn’t hear you get up,’ she says as I walk in, but falters when she turns from the sink and sees my face. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. You weren’t watching Stranger Things on your own, were you?’
‘No, must just be this bug I’ve got. Do you have the time?’
‘The time? Sure.’ She turns a sudsy wrist to look at her smart-watch. ‘Ten past six. I should start thinking about dinner soon.’
‘OK, but can you check it again?’
Mum frowns. ‘Why?’
‘Homework.’ I’m getting quite good at lying. ‘For physics. Mr Bunting is trying to make some kind of point about relativity. I don’t really get it, I just have to say I’ve done it. Come on, Mum, physics is my favourite, and we never get to do experiments anymore since lockdown.’
‘OK.’ She turns her arm again. ‘Well now it’s eleven past six.’
‘And now?’
‘Still eleven past six. Oh, now twelve past.’
I don’t know how long I can eke this out before Mum cottons on, but the clocks don’t seem to be screwing with her the way they are with me.
‘Can I try your watch on for a minute?’
Mum looks pointedly at her wet washing-up hands. ‘Now?’
‘It’s for homework, you should just be pleased I’m doing homework on a Sunday!’
‘Cheeky.’ Mum laughs and rubs her hands dry on a tea towel. She takes off her smartwatch and hands it to me. I don’t even need to put it on, the minute I take it, it starts jumping around. I hold it in my palm, out of Mum’s sight. 21:27, 10:16, 02:44 …
My stomach’s in knots, but I try to smile as I hand the watch back. ‘Just like you say, it’s twelve past six.’
‘What was that meant to prove?’
‘No idea,’ I say. ‘Mr Bunting must be having an off day.’ Poor Mr Bunting, he’s actually really lenient about homework because he doesn’t like marking. He got us to make parachutes for teddy bears out of plastic bags last Christmas and then let us throw them off the school roof.
‘You really do look peaky still, back to bed I think,’ Mum says, marching me to my room and tucking me in. ‘And I’ll make rice pudding with almond milk for dinner, how about that?’
I nod. ‘I’m sorry about earlier, I just really don’t feel very well.’
‘Oh, being sick can do really weird things to your brain,’ Mum says sweetly. ‘Don’t worry about it.’
Once she’s back in the kitchen, I google variations on ‘clocks being weird’ and ‘broken clocks,’ and as a last ditch ‘stuttering time,’ but nothing like what I’m experiencing comes up. There’s only one way to figure out what’s going on, and that’s to finish reading the notebook.
When the rice pudding’s ready, Mum climbs into bed next to me, and we watch a couple of episodes of Old Bear together.
The sun’s setting, so she drew the blind when she came in, covering the only big reflective surface we can see from my bed, and I relax enough to eat.
With a full belly, I tuck into the nook under Mum’s arm and actually start to doze off, until she closes the laptop and leaves to go to her own bed. ‘Night lovely, sweet dreams.’
‘Night Mum, love you,’ I murmur back.
In the dark, alone, my pulse speeds up, and my eyes staple themselves open. I wait, thinking up one worst-case scenario after another, until I’m a thousand per cent convinced that Mum or I or both of us are certifiably nuts.
It’s impossible for me to check the time, because every clock keeps telling me nonsense, but after what feels like hours, I flick on my lamp and slide out of bed.
I lift the mattress just a little, and slip my arm under to where I hid the notebook.
My fingers grip its sharp spiral binding and I pull it out.
It looks smaller than it did yesterday, but that really is an illusion: Frightening things are always bigger in your head than they are in real life.
Mum taught me that when I was little and didn’t like spiders.
As I stand, notebook clutched to my chest, I catch sight of the-face-that-isn’t-my-face in the wardrobe door mirror, but there’s something wrong with that too: The skin is blooming with mould, the eyes punctured with maggots. She’s rotting, right in front of me, and I’m too terrified even to speak.