Rachel Eos (runrachelrun) wrote in darker_london, @ 2015-06-01 12:46:00 |
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Entry tags: | cai finch, rachel eos |
Identity (Rachel, Cai)
The time Rachel had spent at Casa Rosa was a grounding experience, and once she felt wholly unentitled to.
Cai kept giving her projects to work on, putting something heavy in her hands and showing her what to do with it, and together they built a chair and a park bench and a swing for the boys down the road. The swing had been Rachel’s favourite. She’d knotted the rope herself and insisted on climbing the tree to tie it up: "I'm a better climber than you,” she said. Which she was. Cai watched her from the ground, grinning, and jumped feet first onto the swing when it was ready.
"It holds!” He grinned up into the branches, half tipped backwards on the swing, hands clasped around the rope. Rachel's long legs dangling from where she sat, unwilling to come down. She thought she could stay up here forever, become part of the tree and just let kids play on the swing underneath her, make sure that nothing bad ever happened to them.
Make sure that the kids didn’t become bad and happen to someone else.
She could have easily got lost in thought up there. Heights were bad for deep thoughts, heights deepened her thoughts into dark places, made them all a little more deadly. But she and Cai were due back in half an hour to help with dinner. Another project, but it helped. Dom taught her how to roast a perfect potato, and Roe watched her. She mirrored her sometimes too, tied her hair back when Rachel did and copied her speech. Rachel wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Roe was odd, but after what Cai had said about her past, odd was understandable.
(There are all sorts of reasons why things don’t end up in the paper, Rachel kept repeating to herself.)
Rachel kind of wished Roe would stop following her around. Last night Roe had sat down next to her with her maths homework and Rachel’s brain went into silent panic mode. She had no faith in herself as a role model for messed up kids.
“Danny doesn’t believe I could have done it,” Rachel said to Cai, the first time they talked about the events at Danny’s house since she arrived at Cai’s. “But you were very quiet. Do you think… what do you think?”
They were in his room, Rachel lying on the floor playing with a wooden box, trying to find the secret compartment. Cai hung his head off the side of his bed, looking at her upside down. “I don’t know if you did it or not,” he said eventually. “Or what difference that might make. But when I think about you, the thing I remember the most is that time you sang to me, when I couldn’t drive. Remember that?”
That was a blurry memory. Danny had been gone – dead, she believed. Dead and gone and she had been trying to be dead and gone as well, but Cai had come to find her. Cai who’d lost his brother but still had room in his heart to care about her. Cai who cared about her so much it freaked her out sometimes because she couldn’t understand why. Couldn’t understand people with a seemingly bottomless capacity to care about shitty people.
She tried to keep her face neutral. “I guess.”
Cai’s face was anything but neutral, all his feelings transparent. “Me and Danny and Zoe, we all know who you are now. If it was your fault… Okay not fault but if you did cause it, somehow… that is a very, very hard thing to live with, and we’ll help you if we can.”
“I don’t even know who I am now,” Rachel said, trying to keep her voice ironed flat. She pushed at the side of the box, but it didn’t give.
“You sang to me in the car. You stood by Danny’s side through his trial. You’re kind to my sisters. That’s a start, right?”
“I guess.” Rachel didn’t feel kind. She felt impatient and withdrawn. It felt like Cai was trying to spin a nicer version of her than really existed. It felt like all her friends were doing that. Sometimes it felt like only her dad understood the real her. Why would anyone else put up with her if they could see what she really was?
They listened to the fall of rain on his roof for a while. Cai slithered off his bed a little further till his shoulders rested on the ground. Rachel looked at his dark hair flopping out onto the carpet and wondered what he’d see if she touched him. She wasn’t going to, but she couldn’t help but wonder. She felt detached enough that she didn’t think it would matter if she made everything worse. (Or there was the fainter, more unbelievable possibility that she felt safe enough, here, to wonder.)
She rolled herself up off the carpet and shuffled forward to look at his bookshelf instead. “Did you make this yourself?” Her hands trailed along the grain of the wood, reading the titles of books. A lot of graphic novels, a lot favourite childhood reads, a few of them in Spanish even. She opened one up, recognised nothing.
“Me and Dom did,” Cai said. She’d picked up an action figure she didn’t recognise either and turned it upside down, then put it back in its spot as she moved slowly around the room, looking at his things. Something about her reminded him of Roe, her slow investigation of his space.
Rachel walked her fingers across the floor and up over the wheels of his computer chair, flicking her fingertips over the edges of the pile of school books under his desk, over ringbinders full of notes. Everything she touched felt like it belonged here, all the things that go together to make a home. His life had been so different than hers. “What’s it like living in the same place all your life?” She asked, pulling open a drawer of his desk to reveal his collection of Pokemon cards.
“It’s… familiar,” Cai said. He’d never really thought about this question before. Living in one house for eighteen years didn’t used to seem so unusual. Lots of his old friends from school had lived in the same place all their lives. Then he’d met these girls, Zoe who’d come from the other side of the world, Rachel who’d lived in more places than she had fingers. “It’s just home. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
Rachel didn't have any remnants of her childhood. She had nothing after the river - a clean start. Harley had set up her room in his mother’s house when he took her there after the hospital, and she’d bought a whole set of new clothes, new things. Then when Harley met Imogene she’d left a lot of it behind in charity shops and dumpsters - another fresh start, really.
And another, when she and Harley moved out.
Now another, since she’d run away.
One day maybe she’d stay in one place long enough to make it a home.
(This thought felt like she was kidding herself; even before the river she'd given up believing her little family would ever end up living in any of the places they stayed, they were never there long enough, and leaving was hard, every time. It was easier not to get attached to a place, a bed. Her room at Imogene’s was the closest she'd had to a home, a permanent home, and even that she’d managed to fuck up. This was another thing her mother passed her, the inability to stay still.)
Maybe curses were real. If there were ghosts and psychics and vampires, then surely curses weren't impossible.
Curses were breakable, though, and if anyone could break a curse it was Cai and Danny and Zoe. But she didn't want to suggest it. Zoe would want to tear open all her old wounds to seek out the rot, and Rachel knew from last time at Danny's that she couldn't handle it. She didn’t want them looking any deeper into her, deeper than she ever wanted to look herself.
She’d lived with her curse this long, it was probably less painful to leave it alone and just accept that’s what her life was.
Leave it, and leave when she had to. She couldn't stay at Cai's forever, she knew that, though she couldn’t imagine where she’d go next. She didn’t want to, but everything she knew about herself dictated that she’d eventually run.
Maybe all four of them could make a home together. But Rachel couldn’t ask them to leave their families. She couldn’t imagine Danny really leaving his mum, but then, she couldn’t imagine leaving her dad before now, either. Even thinking about dad hurt, but she couldn’t ask him to live with her for any longer. He’d put up with her this long; his crazy, messed up, killer daughter. She couldn’t ask any more of him.
She was beginning to feel the crushing weight of tears press down on her, like it did whenever she thought about her dad since she left. Rachel excused herself quickly, saying that she was going to bed, and let the sound of the rain cover up any crying.
Maybe if she was quiet enough, and good enough, and kind enough to his sisters and helpful enough to Nonnie and Dom, they’d let her stay for a while longer. Maybe no one would get sick of her, maybe she could convince herself that if she pulled her head far enough into her shell she wouldn’t have to move for a while. Pretend to be normal and useful and not bone crushingly sad. It might work – it would have to work. She was technically homeless and living on other people’s pity. But thinking back, wasn’t she always homeless and living on other people’s pity? At least at her dad’s she was helping to pay the bills. She wondered what he’d do without her extra money coming in, if he’d be alright.
She’d have to go back to work, she realised. Whatever happened, she was going to need money. She’d call Monk… sometime, but right now she was going to stare at the wall for a good long while.
Rachel’s eyes felt twitchy and a little tired, tired enough that little black things skittered across her vision, the worst of them making her slap at the quilt and at her legs, in case they were actually spiders. The room at Cai’s was bigger than her room at her dad’s, but not by much. It was tidier too, but not bare. In it were the remnants of lots of other lives; just as Cai’s room was full of Cai, this room was little bits and pieces of a lot of people, Nonnie and Dom and Cai’s mother, and maybe foster children that had come and gone, a drawer full of clothes that strangers had outgrown, a bookshelf full of books they’d read a dozen times or never. It had smelled clean when she arrived, though to be honest, a little dusty, a little like a collection of things rather than a room for a person. But Rachel felt that was fitting. She felt like a collection of things, of memories and feelings, rather than a complete person.
She didn’t know how to make that feeling stop, how to become a person. Making things with Cai did help, a little. Knowing that she’d helped create something new in the world even if it was just a chair or a swing. She should do something… be something. She should be an adult and go and get her passport, let the government tell her that she existed enough to be allowed to leave the country.
Rachel has missed the appointment she’d made earlier and it was with shaking hands the next morning that she called up to make another, expecting that it would be another three weeks before they’d be free but “Olivia has an opening this afternoon,” said the voice on the phone, which threw her into nervous disbelief. She’d been preparing herself to wait… not do it today.
She almost said ‘no today is no good.’ Almost. But she said yes, and felt strong but also sick with nerves. She forced herself to stand and walk to the bathroom to shower and make herself look the part of a competent adult. Blowdrying her hair helped, make up helped.
She walked along the hall to the kitchen in her best shoes to tell Cai she was going out. The second floor was empty, though, and there were voices in the front yard. Or – next doors yard. Cai and Faye and Roe were helping to feed the neighbours chickens. Rachel crept outside and lingered in the open gate in the fence between the houses.
She looked pale, Cai thought, like she was getting sick. “You alright?” he asked. Rachel was eying the chickens warily.
“Why aren’t they in their cage?”
“They’re free range!” Faye pointed out, rolling her eyes. It was quite a Zoe movement – if Roe was imitating Rachel, it was only because Faye had started imitating Zoe, right down to her height. Since Rachel first met Faye she’d shot up, turning into a right beanpole and still growing and upper proud of every inch.
Roe inched over and offered Rachel a paper bag of chicken feed – Rachel stepped back suddenly.
“They’re free range devil birds,” she said, and shrieked as one of them came toward her, following the bag of food. “Oh god it’s after me!” she darted back through the gate and slammed it behind her, poking her head over the top of it to stare at the chicken, bobbing its head back and forth like it was stabbing the air with its devil beak. Cai laughed at her, which was sort of the intention. Freaking out over chickens was so much easier than freaking out over anything else going on in her life.
“Shut up!” she called, sticking out her tongue at Cai. “You’re so horrible! They’re devil birds! Their eyes are red! Look at their feet!”
Cai ran toward her, bobbing his head like a chicken freak, and Rachel screamed and braced herself against the ground to keep the gate shut. “That’s NOT FUNNY!” she yelled. “I’m going out! Enjoy getting pecked to death by MONSTERS.”
“Bye!” Cai called, cheerfully, though as Rachel made her way down the path to the road, she could hear him miming being pecked to death.
Dickhead she texted him, instead of yelling it over the fence because Cai’s household didn’t approve of that kind of language.
:D he messaged back, followed by <3.
She snapped a picture of herself pulling the finger, but it had a little red heart drawn in the corner, just in case he worried she was serious.
Her heart felt a little lighter as she walked to the tube station that would take her into the passport office, but like all light things, it didn’t last for long.
Rachel was no good at this part of life, no good, no good at all. This was a thought that she repeated to herself over and over as she walked from the tube station toward the passport office. Appointments, forms and official stuff, she was really bad at it. She didn't understand it.
She'd never needed to understand it. Her dad did all that for her. He did everything.
She was such a crappy adult. She couldn't even think of herself as an adult. But she was nineteen. And a half. That was old. Old enough to get her own passport. By herself. She didn't want to do this, didn't want to let anyone find out how dumb she was when it came to this grown up sort of thing. She'd rather just hide.
But here she was. Because she wanted to do something for herself and in doing so, maybe she could start solidifying her thoughts about herself into something… person shaped.
And because Cai and Chile. Because a passport was freedom and with one she could get to Chile or China or Canada. Rachel crossed her fingers, all eight of them on both hands, squeezing them together, as she timidly entered the door.
Everything smelled official, like clean carpet and paper.
She told her feet to take her to the reception desk and told her mouth to speak. "I have an appointment?" she said. "For a passport?"
"What's the name?" the woman behind the desk asked. Her hair was smooth as glass. Rachel drew a blank, blinked slowly like a doe before her breath hitched in a moment of excited realisation. "I wrote it down," she said, scrambling in her bag for the name of the woman she was seeing.
"No honey," said the receptionist, with a patience that made Rachel deeply embarrassed. "Your name."
"Oh," Rachel said, letting her bag fall back to the end of its strap. "Rachel Eos. E-o-s.”
“Take a seat, Olivia won’t be long.”
Rachel took a seat next to a tall pot plant, pressed her hands between her thighs, and stared at the leaves. The words no honey and your name kept coming back, like a swing ball, the harder she tried the hit them away the faster they came back. No honey. Your name. She felt so, so stupid. She half wished Danny was here and was half glad he wasn’t. He’d said he would come with her – or not – whatever she wanted, but she’d forgotten he’d said that till now.
But she should be able to do this for herself. She should.
Olivia had to call her name twice before she realised she was being spoken to, and once she did realise she jumped to her feet like she’d been zapped. She plastered a smile across her face, squeaked a greeting, and followed Olivia into an office.
Pleasantries were exchanged. Rachel caught a glimpse of herself reflected in a window; she looked professional. Her hair was pulled up in a tight ponytail and she was wearing clothes Imogene had bought her. They were a little tight across her stomach and her arms though – she’d put on weight since leaving Imogene’s house. A diet of white bread and beans instead of the raw, microbiotic, organic food she’d almost gotten used to at Imogene’s. But the fit wasn’t too bad, as so long as her red lips kept smiling she’d still look the part of a competent adult.
“So I – um – I tried to do the passport thing online but it wouldn’t let me, it said I needed to come in and do it in person,” Rachel began.
“Yes,” said Olivia. Olivia was dark and round and didn’t smile easily. “Yes we need to straighten out the way you changed your name when you were younger.”
Rachel started to scramble to get her forms out of her bag, but remembered that professional capable young women shouldn’t scramble, so took a breath and forced herself to move slowly. She’d had to apply for copies of her name change forms from the deed poll office back when she’d first been turned away from the online application. The forms were folded unevenly in half and worried around the edges. She should have got a folder for them, Rachel thought, but it was too late for that now.
Olivia took them and lay them flat, reading over them.
“Are they okay?” Rachel couldn’t keep quiet. “Are they right??”
Olivia smiled with her brown lips, but did not lift her eyes from the paper. She bent the first form forward and read the second, then the third. “Okay,” she said eventually, folding her hands on the paper. “The problem we have is this form here –” she slid the third form across the table toward Rachel. It said APPLICATION FOR COURT ORDER along the top. “Now, schools and other organisations may accept your changed name as your legal name, but we cannot issue you a passport under the name Rachel Eos based on these forms. When your change your name as a child you need signatures from both legal guardians – “
“But my mother is dead!” Rachel blurted, insisted, nearly throwing up the words. “She’s dead! She was dead before he changed it!”
Olivia sat back a fraction. “I see,” she said. “This form here is a court order that your father applied for, in order to change his child’s name without an absent mother’s consent. This,” she tapped the paper again. “Is not the process if he is the sole surviving guardian. Now, he may have been confused, that happens, and it’s not the end of the world that he did. What we should have seen, back when you were–”she looked down at the papers, “–eleven, was some proof that you father now had sole custody of you. He never filed that information. Just this one,” she tapped her French tipped nails on the court order.
“I don’t have that stuff, my dad does. Or – he used to. He doesn’t any more. We lost it. We moved or – we moved lots. I can’t ask him for it.”
She closed her mouth, well aware that there were too many different desperate stories coming out of her mouth but she couldn’t stop any of them. All her energy was going into looking the part, she’d forgotten to think about what she was going to sound like.
“I’m sorry,” Olivia was giving her a small smile, polite and slightly pained. “There are a number of counselling places I can refer you to. I think it might be best if you get some legal advice, talk if through with someone.”
“Um. No. Um. Can I just… change it myself, now? I’m over 18. Can I do that?”
“Yes, you can do that. You’ll need to apply to change it by deed poll, and you’ll need your original ID.”
“I don’t know… if I have it. I think my dad got rid of all that stuff.”
“Ah. You can apply for a new birth certificate if you have lost your original one.”
“And that will be my old name, right?”
The woman looked at her sternly. “Yes. Birth certificates don’t change unless you were adopted.”
Rachel dropped her eyes. How was she supposed to know that? How was she supposed to know any of this?
“Okay, can I get that now, then? And change my name now?”
“You will have to apply for a copy of your original birth certificate, then make an appointment with the Deed Poll service to change your name. Then come back with the required documents and we can issue you a new passport, but I can’t help you with anything else before that is done.”
“But I can’t do anything today?”
“We can’t issue a passport under a changed name if the name was changed when a child was less than eighteen without proof that both parents signed the consent form,” Olivia repeated, sounding exactly as if she was quoting from a rule book. “It may be that your father applied to change your name under the wrong circumstances. But, I think… I strongly suggest you seek legal advice, Rachel.”
Rachel left the office in a grim daze. There weren’t many options left – she was just going to have to not go. Getting a passport was too hard, and there were too many terrifying questions she didn’t want the answer to. She’d just… stay here. Stay shackled in the UK, which had never seemed like such a tiny island prison before now.
Stay here with the haunting thought that her mother might still be alive – no. Rachel barked in one nervous laugh at the thought. No, she wasn’t still alive. Her dad had been confused. Just confused. Grief stricken. Under so much pressure from losing his family and trying to stop her going crazy. And ID was so complicated! No wonder he was confused.
She walked back to Cai’s. It took a couple of hours, but she barely noticed.
Or – and this thought came to her later, when she was tucked into bed in Cai’s house, after dinner with Danny where she’d pretended, valiantly, that nothing was wrong – or maybe her mother had faked her own death and disappeared.
It was the sort of thought that crept up on her in the dark and blossomed. Rachel lay very still, as if movement would attract… as if movement… as if there was something watching her, and she wanted very much for it to think she hadn’t noticed it.
Maybe they’d never found her mother’s body so Harley never been able to prove she was dead. Maybe she’d used the river to disappear. Maybe…
There had been times throughout her teenage years when Rachel had the distinct impression that someone was looking for her – and Harley too. Someone was looking for them so she mustn’t tell anyone her real name. Had he said that? She couldn’t remember his words, if he had. Her head felt packed with butterflies and her stomach felt like a rock and her heart felt flat and still and certain. She found it very hard to remember anything her father had said to her. Thoughts slipped out of her head as fresh ones surged to life.
What could she do to make it stop? Nothing, nothing, nothing. If her mother had faked her own death then maybe the crash at the river wasn’t Rachel’s fault after all but Rachel didn’t know if that was better.
This was a stupid thought.
She was making this stupid thought up to try to get out of feeling guilty.
She’d done it. And her mother was dead like her brothers. There was no… death faking, here. Her brain was being stupid and dramatic and trying to absolve itself from something unabsolvable.
Rachel violently twisted the neck off her small bottle of sleeping pills and swallowed two of them, and then very very determinedly, she lay back down and shut her eyes against the world and willed her mind to stop thinking, till the pills took over, and she faded into nightmarish sleep.