BELIEVE MAKE BELIEVE — an extract

I’m supposed to be good at telling stories. 

Maybe this story is harder to tell because it happened to me. But that’s a bullshit reason because I love talking about myself. No, maybe the reason is because it’s real, and I don’t like writing nonfiction. But then again, this story feels like every YA fiction book I’ve ever read lol. 

Forget I said that. I didn’t just write lol in a novel. Let’s not ever bring it up. Thanks.

I’m hesitating to tell you how old I am, because that’s kind of a spoiler that shows that I survived the events of the story. But then again, if I am here to tell you it, then that in itself is a spoiler, right?  

I actually love spoilers. I don’t get why everybody makes such a fuss all the time about avoiding them. Like, I haven’t met a lot of people who don’t flip to the last pages of the book to see what happens. When you talk about a TV series though, everyone’s like Omg shut up I haven’t seen episode ten yet how dare you etc. I think a lot of stories aren’t interesting enough if you don’t have the spoilers.

Also, it helps makes sense of why there’s so many useless seeming details at the beginning. Helps you appreciate things more. 

Obviously, I won’t give away any big spoilers that would ruin it, but just enough to keep you intrigued, yeah? Because the one thing that’s worse than writing your own story, is people getting bored while reading it. 

So here goes, three spoilers for you my dears. I’m not nearly old enough to call you my dears, but I felt like that was the only natural thing to say. Here are the spoilers:

-    I am not a normal human 

-    Australia is an excuse 

-    Reality doesn’t exist 

These are good because they all sound like they come straight out of a conspiracy video like the ones my brother used to be obsessed with. Like, about Australia being a place the government made up, and about us all being in the Matrix and some of us are Reptilians or something. It’s okay, I’m not a Reptilian. You can trust me. Well, sort of. 

I’ve been thinking about where to start this. It’s easier with fictional characters because they don’t really exist before the beginning of the story, they just kind of pop up like a cardboard cut-out with a ready-to-wear backstory. But me? I have a life before the beginning of this story, so it’s harder to pick where to start. Granted it’s not a super interesting life, so I definitely want to start it right about the time when things started getting weird. When I first started to write this, it began when my Dad left in

June. But then I was like, describing the whole summer’s going to be boring. So I thought I should just drop you in the action straight away, but then I thought you would get confused. So I decided to start when we left for Saint Jowan’s Port. Let’s set the scene a little.

My Mum, my brother and I were in a rental car. It stank. No literally, it smelled foul. I thought it was coming from the ventilation we had just turned on. Like wet socks and gravy. Wet socks dipped in gravy? Something like that. I was the only one sitting at the back, because Sammy got carsick and well, Mum had to drive the car. 

For like the first half hour drive I hesitated to tuck in the label that stuck out onto her pale neck, just under her chaotic blonde bob. I knew she’d flinch if I touched her, but I couldn’t stand staring at it anymore. She sent me a glare in the rear-view mirror, shifting in her seat. It was a tired glare, less powerful than usual. She had lines all over her face like she was so much older than she was. It was the smoking that did that, Nan said. Sometimes I thought it was leeching out the colour in her eyes too. They were like her denim jacket, barely blue anymore from having been washed so many times.

Except that she didn’t wash her eyes on purpose, they just started flooding spontaneously. Especially lately.

Maybe that explained why Sammy’s eyes were so dark, because he never cried. If Mum’s eyes matched her denim, Sammy’s matched his fake-leather jacket. From the back it made him look like he was a lot older and cooler. When I dozed off and opened my eyes again, I forgot about everything and it looked like it was Dad sitting there. Once I remembered, I couldn’t go back to sleep. I didn’t want to feel that punch of disappointment on a loop.

At each side of me were cardboard boxes that didn’t fit in the boot. They were both mine, Sammy didn’t own a lot of stuff. The one on the left was a bunch of knick-knacks that I’d kept, notebooks and cool stationary from Nan, souvenirs and artwork from Auntie Caroline. The box on the right held my books. I picked out book two of Teen Spies Adventures. Book three was coming out soon and I wanted to remember where we’d left off. And I had time to kill before we reached St Jowan’s. Time to spend with my favourite teen spy: Emily Boyde.

I love reading. It’s basically hallucinating while staring at squiggles on a piece of paper. Mad. It made a car ride with antisocial family members fun. Problem was I couldn’t live between the pages forever. Too soon, the portion of pages in my right hand got thin, and even though I’d been expecting it, I fell right off the edge of the cliff hanger and landed into the backseat of the stinky rental again.  There was still two hours left before we arrived. Mum was listening to the traffic announcements on the radio and kept forgetting that there was no more coffee in her thermos. Sammy had fallen asleep with his music but one of his earphones was now sitting on his shoulder like a pearly teardrop. I could hear the beat leaking out of it, angry voices calling and whooping. I leaned forwards in my seat. Even in his sleep Sammy frowned, his mouth slightly open like he was about to complain about something. Mum had cut his hair military-short before we left and there were slices of black down the side of his neck. I pressed my finger to it, trying to pick some up. He frowned harder, exhaled, and shifted in his seat, turning the other way. 

I caught my reflection in the rear-view mirror. Mum was supposed to help me dye my roots but we’d ran out of time. They looked so awful I wished I could spread some glue and stick Sammy’s cut hair on top of them. The fact that they were so light compared to the rest of my hair made it look like I was going bald. Disgusting. Imagine that, being a thirteen-year-old bald girl. 

I just heard that too. Yep. Super insensitive. Let’s cross that out. Forget I said that. I do that a lot. I say something that’s supposed to be funny, and then it turns out, it’s awful. It always made my Auntie laugh like crazy, but my Mum and my Nan told me off. ‘You have to be careful with your words,’ they said, ‘words can be dangerous’ they said. That was why they never let me swear. Which was really unfair because Sammy got to swear. Mum said Sammy was different. I said that was sexist.

She said it had nothing to do with that. I said well what does it have to do with then, but she didn’t answer. 

Music replaced the traffic announcements on the radio and Mum slammed her hand down on the dashboard to turn it off, waking Sammy up with a jolt. 

‘Jesus,’ He groaned, turning towards the window.

‘Well, you shouldn’t be sleeping anyway,’ Mum grumbled, hand fluttering to the coffee thermos again. 

I expected Sammy to talk back to her. What else are we supposed to do during the five-hour drive?

But instead he made a grunt like when he doesn’t want to admit she’s right. 

‘You can sleep though, Zoey,’ Mum said, eyes in the rear-view mirror again. It sounded like an order, like she wanted me to sleep. Like she didn’t want me looking at her. 

‘I’m good.’ I told her, fishing out a notebook from the box on my left. It was the one Nan gave me for my birthday the previous year. It was almost finished now. 

The cover had this cool Celtic knot pattern that inspired me to write a new story. It was about creepy mystical beings that live in Cornish caves and kidnap children during the night, training them to become hybrid warriors that can breathe underwater and slay demons. Nan said it sounded a bit too dark and that I shouldn’t read things that aren’t for my age. Which was bollocks because I wasn’t twelve anymore and I’d seen way worse on the films Sammy watched with his mates. When I told Auntie Caroline about the story, she sent me some gorgeous drawings of gothic mermaids with swirly ink tattoos and tentacle hair, and I’d stuck them at the beginning of the notebook for inspiration. The rest was filled with mind-maps and scenes from the story. I picked up on the one I started writing a couple of days before, where the main character – this badass girl called Leandra– discovers that the cute guy she keeps seeing on the beach is actually a bloodthirsty demon who’s responsible for her sister’s death. 

Leandra was like me, but so much cooler. She was a bookworm, optimistic but sarcastic, funny and sometimes awkward like me, but she had tons of friends, boys went crazy for her, and she looked textbook heroine gorgeous. Glossy black hair in rebellious curls, smooth olive-toned skin, and effortless style.

A few paragraphs into the scene, my eyes started to burn. I ignored it at first, it happened a lot when I concentrated, but the feeling just got worse and worse, until tears started coming out of my eyes and I couldn’t see anything anymore.

‘Who’s slicing onions?’ I asked, blinking. Looking down at my notebook, I did a double take. Big, red, splotches had appeared on the paper, and were continuing to fall from my face. ‘Shit!’ 

‘Zoey, what did we say about-’ Mum started but I cut her off.

‘No, I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding from my eyes!’ 

‘Sammy! Give your sister a tissue!’

‘My eyes are bleeding!’ Were they deaf? I tried to catch the blood tears before they fell on the notebook, panting desperately, but some of them were getting past, dripping down on my lap. ‘Quick!

Sammy! I’m bleeding all over the car!’

‘Stop yelling,’ Sammy whined, turning in his seat with a packet of tissues. Looking me up and down, he frowned before turning back round. ‘Not funny Zoey.’

‘Give me the tissues!’ I wailed.

‘Help your sister!’ Mum’s voice rose too.

‘Calm down, there’s no blood, she’s just crying.’ Sammy plugged his earphones in again.

‘What?’ I asked, bewildered, but when I looked down all the red splotches were gone. Nothing. My face and my hands were wet, but colourless. ‘But I swear it was blood – I looked down and it was red, right on my notebook!’

‘Zoey, you know I can’t afford to pay extra for any damage to the car.’ Mum hissed. ‘Now’s not the time to fool around.’

I didn’t bother saying I wasn’t. Because I knew Mum wouldn’t believe me, but also because I wasn’t even sure what had happened. I traced over the page with my hand. It was wet and crinkled, something definitely fell there, but it wasn’t red. Weird. Maybe it was from rubbing my eyes too much, like when you see loads of coloured shapes under your eyelids. 

In hindsight, I realise this is such a cliché reaction. I used to hate when, in books or films, characters who’d just seen something abnormal immediately disbelieved it and carried on as usual. But when you’re in the moment, I promise, it’s a lot harder to accept what you saw.

Unable to concentrate on the story anymore, I stashed the notebook back into the box and looked out the window. I imagined an upbeat song and the names of big producers appearing on the fields next to the motorway like we were in the establishing shots of a film. 

Already then, I was making up this story as I went along, the story of my life. The Adventures of Zoey Rimmer–Episode Twenty-Five: More Divorce Fuckery. I thought my main issues with moving in with Nan at Saint Jowan’s were going to be keeping in touch with my parents, making new friends, and learning to swim in cold water all year round. What I didn’t expect was the upcoming mysteries, supernatural phenomena, and life-threatening dilemmas.

I can’t really remember what happened for the rest of the car drive, which means it was probably nothing interesting. What I remember is leaving the motorway and starting to feel nervous. Apparently, Mum was feeling the same way. She started tapping her fingers flat on the steering wheel, a small rhythm that she always made. Tap tap tap tap. Tap tap tap tap. Once, when Mum was driving me and my friend Lauren to school, we wondered if she was doing some kind of morse code, and Lauren started chanting in a whisper: ‘I want some cake, I want all cake,’ on a loop until I laughed so hard I couldn’t breathe. Mum didn’t think it was funny.

I missed Lauren. She was the pretty much the only best friend I ever had. In primary school I’d spent most of my weekends at her house – since Mum didn’t like having guests at ours – and we’d spend ages on her trampoline practicing somersaults. In year six Lauren’s parents got into a huge argument and Lauren’s Mum took her and her brothers and moved all the way to Australia without saying goodbye. I asked Mum if I could please get a smartphone so I could talk to her, but Mum said we didn’t have enough money and that WIFI signals gave people cancer. 

Sammy and I were never allowed to go on the internet. It wasn’t really a problem until secondary school. Now everyone had smartphones and they were always talking about videos and social media stuff we didn’t know about at all. I’d go on the library computers at break time, but all the stuff that people talked about were blocked on the systems. I couldn’t even watch YouTube videos. People at school thought we were weird, and I never really made another friend like Lauren.

Now, because we would be living with Nan all the way across the country, Mum allowed us to have phones, but they were old shitty ones that couldn’t access the internet at all. We could only call and text. It wouldn’t really be that bad, except that without internet, we couldn’t talk to Dad. In a way, he kind of did like Lauren. Slammed the door without saying goodbye and flew to Australia. Sometimes I thought Australia was a bit of a bitch for stealing people away. But the real problem here was Dad. Or Mum for making Dad want to go that far away from us. Or maybe it was us. Sammy and me. I wondered about that a lot, and it made my stomach hurt like crazy. Like I was being stabbed. 

Outside, we reached the sign that read Saint Jowan’s Port, and the familiar sights of my Mum’s hometown shot past. I tried to make a point of looking at everything, stopping my gaze on every sign and sight like my eyes were cameras. They stopped on the memories that were fixed there. The small stone wall I used to balance on. The window of the bakery where Nan used to get us pastries. Further down under the town where the masts of boats can be seen, I caught a glimpse of the pier Sammy where fell when we were playing tag once. 

Seeing all of this made me forget why we were here. It made me think of the times we used to come here for the summer holidays. Before Nan fell off her bike and hurt her knee so bad Mum said we couldn’t spend our summers with her anymore. 

We arrived on the road leading to the cliff Nan lived on, overlooking the beach on our left. The dark clouds and strong wind seemed to have discouraged the tourists, because there were only a couple of dog-walkers on the sand, hugging their chests and bending their heads forward. Straight ahead, the cliff loomed over the ocean, its head spotted with cottages. Moments later, Mum pulled the handbrake facing one of these cottages. 

You know how some houses look like faces? Well Lavender Cottage looked like the face of a pale drama queen with mascara leaking from the windows from all the crying she’d done, and a prickly boa of lavender wrapped around her neck. The roof was gleaming black tiles from the recent rain, and the front door was open like a wailing mouth. Just as we pulled up in the gravelly driveway, my Nan appeared in the threshold. 

My Nan wasn’t really that old, but she always acted like it. Her hands were constantly doing something: smoothing the flat grey hair around her ears, fidgeting with her necklace in the shape of an ink vial, or flattening the creases on her dark blouse. As soon as we parked, I was the first to get out and rush into her arms. 

‘Still growing then!’ She said after a few moments, fake-upset as she leaned away from me to look at my face. I’d officially overtaken her last Christmas, and now I was a good three inches or so taller than her. She looked at me properly, analysing how I’d changed over the last eight months. My cheeks mostly – finally less chubby now – and my ears, pierced and glinting. I didn’t look like such a baby anymore. I saw that in the way Nan smiled, a little sad.  She, on the other hand, hadn’t changed a bit. Short silver hair. A wrinkle between the eyebrows. Dark clothes. And a faint smell of lavender and pine. 

‘And you!’ She exclaimed, catching sight of Sammy over my shoulder. ‘Looking like a man now!’

Sammy smirked, swooping down to give Nan a short but respectful hug. He was the same as

Mum when it came to physical contact. Weirdos. I wished Nan wouldn’t encourage him with all her gushing. Sammy thought that just because he was soon turning sixteen, he was pretty much an adult.

As if he wasn’t snobby enough before.

‘Hi, Mum,’ Mum got out of the car slowly, and, bending down too, allowed Nan to give her a kiss, grimacing. 

‘You must be tired,’ Said Nan, rubbing an awkward hand along Mum’s arm, who stiffened. 

‘Yeah. Sammy, Zoey, take your stuff out.’

We took a box each and waddled towards the cottage. Through the front door we both halted for a few seconds, taking in the ghostly smell of holiday freedom, past hide and seeks, and delicious dinners. That’s what this house had always smelt like to me. It was weird to think that I could come to associate the smell of this house with homework or winter. 

Sammy must’ve been thinking the same thing because he looked at me for the first time of the day, his box of belongings shifting in his arms.

‘Home sweet home, I guess.’ I said. Sammy looked away, his face tightening. That wasn’t what he’d been thinking apparently. He turned and went up the stairs two by two. I was slower, my box was heavier.

I’d barely reached the door to my new bedroom when the phone in my back pocket vibrated, reminding me of its low battery. I put the box down in the corridor and headed down again to fetch my charger.

I was almost out of the front door when I heard a few words from the kitchen that made me freeze right in my tracks.

‘You haven’t told them yet?’ Nan’s voice was disapproving, but mostly it was scared, and that was weird for her. 

‘I’m hoping I won’t have to,’ Mum replied, hushed, ‘Not for the moment.’

‘Sophia!’

‘Keep your voice down!’ 

Eavesdropping isn’t bad if you find out valuable information. That would be what Emily Boyde would say in this situation. Then again, Emily Boyde was a spy, so she would think that. Still, I inched my way towards the kitchen and flattened myself against the wall next to the opened door.

‘We’ve delayed all this long enough, the more you wait the harder it will be,’ Nan said, making an effort to keep her voice down, not knowing it was too late now. 

‘Not if I can figure things out with Jonny first.’ Mum said, and I could almost hear her shaking her head and pursing her lips. My Dad’s name rang like an alarm in my head and boosted all my senses alert. I knew there something they weren’t telling us!

‘Look, I know this is hard to handle all at once,’ Nan said, tone softer, ‘But keeping them in the dark isn’t going to keep them safe for much longer. They’re both at that stage now.’ Safe? Safe from what? What had that to do with Dad? 

‘No,’ I heard Mum say. ‘Sammy’s not, he never will be. It’s only Zoey you have to worry about.’ I parted from the wall, scared that my frantic heartbeat could vibrate across it and betray my presence. I pressed my hand on my mouth to keep any gasps from escaping.  I heard Nan sigh and put something down on the table – probably a cup of tea.

‘So that’s why you’re bringing them here.’ She said. ‘To rid yourself of the responsibility.’ 

‘Mum…’

‘It’s fine. I’ll do it. I’ll tell them.’ 

‘No, don’t!’

‘What are you playing at?’ Nan’s voice rose again. 

‘There is a chance that we never have to tell them anything.’

You could tell Nan wasn’t happy about this. I could hear the chain of her necklace tinkle in her hands. 

‘Just please, try and delay it as much as you can. Hopefully it’ll all be sorted soon.’ There was a long pause.

‘Fine.’

My heart sank. I distanced myself from the wall slowly, away from Nan’s betrayal when I heard Mum say:

‘Right then. I’d better get going.’ Shit. She was coming! ‘I’ll be back in half an hour or so. Is

Fetching Flowers still open?’ 

I didn’t have the time to get back up the stairs before she left the kitchen!

‘It is, but Claire runs it now, you know Barbara passed away?’ Their footsteps reached the kitchen door and I had no time left. I quickly went up a couple of steps and made a loud show of going back down just as Mum and Nan came out.

 ‘Yes, you told me over the phone – Zoey!’ Mum spotted me and I froze mid-step. Could she tell that my heart was beating right through my eyeballs? Could she hear the questions bouncing around in my head after what I’d just heard? ‘Aren’t you done yet?’