Sugar, p.1
Sugar, page 1
About the Book
What’s yours is yours for a reason. Luck has nothing to do with it.
Some people get exactly what they deserve. And, as it turns out, I deserve to be called Persephone. No simple-to-sound-out Pride-and-Prejudice-style name like Elizabeth or Jane for me. Nope. Demi had to go Greek. Define Persephone. Bringer of destruction. That pretty much sums it up.
Persephone is angry. Angry that her life revolves around finger-prick tests, carbohydrate counts and insulin injections. Angry at Alexander Manson. Angry with her mum for lots of things, for nothing and for everything.
But most of all, she’s angry with herself. For deserving it all. Because one year ago she did something and her dad died.
But then Persephone finds a body on a bush path, a young woman she doesn’t know but feels a strong connection to. And as she tries to find out what happened to Sylvia, Persephone begins to understand her own place in the complex interconnectedness of the universe.
Sugar is the story of a sixteen-year-old girl trying to make sense of the life-changing events that have sent her world into a spin, her search for a reason behind it all, and ultimately her acceptance of life’s randomness.
Contents
Cover Page
About the Book
Title Page
Dedication
PART 1
1 friend for life
2 this is the way the world ends
3 this is a stone
4 somewhere between four and eight
5 this time last year
6 the most offensive word in the english language
7 so sorry
8 everything that exists
9 it’s funny
10 we will set the world alight
11 define normal
12 so various, so beautiful, so new
13 willful, disrespectful, disobedient
14 a fresh start
15 five per cent of car accidents
16 like a thread on a nail
PART 2
17 it’s complicated
18 i guess we’ll die
19 this isn’t about you
20 a nuclear family
21 ghost sickness
22 cats don’t miss people
23 the death zone
24 a traumatic event
25 why don’t you just leave
26 a strange pressure
27 an existing wound
28 through the cracks
PART 3
29 he goes hunting
30 what were you thinking
31 all clear
32 the centre of the universe
33 letting go of the wheel
34 what’s on your mind
35 the circle stops with you
36 the thing in the wall
37 looks like an accident
38 a million tiny bursts of light
39 a round puff of air
40 if i held a gun to your head
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Copyright Page
For everyone walking the tightrope
1
friend for life
4.0
I don’t care what anyone else says; when I punched Alexander Manson in the face, it was exactly what he deserved.
It wasn’t premeditated. It was a natural reaction, like a Venus flytrap closing around an insect. Cause and effect. I didn’t plan it, but I did mean it. I meant it so hard my fist is still aching.
‘What happened?’ Keleos said, after she had sat me down in her office. ‘Your side of the story. In your own words.’
My own words. In words that belong to me. That are mine.
‘I was going to maths.’
‘And?’
‘And I bumped Michaela Dobbell. By accident. As in, my shoulder bumped her shoulder for a second. Not even hard.’
I could tell from the way Keleos raised her eyebrows that she didn’t believe me. I couldn’t really blame her.
‘Then what happened?’
I paused. Tried to find the words—my own words—to describe the way Michaela Dobbell had looked at me. A combination of disgust, anger, pity and fear. If there’s a word for that, I don’t know what it is. I shrugged.
‘You can do better than that.’
I honestly couldn’t, but if I didn’t give her something she’d keep me here until after the bell. ‘She sort of screamed,’ I said.
Screamed wasn’t the right word either. It was more of a yelp, mixed with a gagging sound, mixed with a sort of animal growl. But I sensed Keleos wasn’t interested in discussing the inadequacies of the English language. Screamed would have to do.
‘Okay.’ Keleos tapped an unpolished fingernail on her desk. ‘She screamed, and?’
‘She said, Ew, and, Get away from me, and, I don’t want your gross disease.’
Again with the raised eyebrows. ‘Is that a direct quote?’
I nodded.
‘And what did you say?’
‘I said, Diabetes isn’t contagious.’
That wasn’t a direct quote. A direct quote of what I’d said would have been Diabetes isn’t contagious, you dumb bitch. But I figured a bit of editing was a good idea.
Keleos uncapped a pen and made a note. Then she looked back at me. ‘And that was when Alexander Manson got involved?’
Define involved.
‘He said something. So I hit him.’
Action, reaction. My fist rising to his face like a reflex.
‘What did he say?’
The world was full of words. Long and short, hard and soft, heavy and light. The choice was endless.
‘Persephone?’
So why did he choose that one?
The night I was diagnosed, the A&E doctor said, ‘Diabetes is your friend for life.’
I may have told her to fuck off. Maybe I just cried. My memory of the moment is hazy; I had an IV stuck in my arm and a blood glucose level of forty-five. They told me the number like this—‘Persephone, your blood sugar is forty-five’—and the only thing I understood about that sentence was my name.
I used to think I knew myself, that I had a good understanding of who I was, inside and out, fingers and toes, muscles and bones. Turns out, my body was plotting against me. Internal unrest, quiet mutiny. And how can you abandon ship when you are the ship? You can’t. You go down with it. And while it’s sinking you think: How did this happen, how did I get here, how am I not myself anymore? While at the same time, you know the answer. This is your body paying you back. This is your body giving you exactly what you deserve.
4.7
‘What did he say, Persephone?’
I plucked at the hair tie around my wrist, like Ms Hardstark had suggested. I’d pulled out my ponytail while I was waiting for Keleos to call me in. My hair was getting long enough to hide behind. The hair tie was gold, sparkly. It had come in a pack of five from the chemist. It wasn’t helping.
‘I’m waiting.’
By my count, this was the third time I’d been in Keleos’s office since the term started. And it was only week two. The first time was because some year-seven kid asked if I could eat cake or not, so I rubbed vanilla slice in his hair. The second time was for swearing at Abby Ellis when she said only fat people get diabetes and I wasn’t fat so I must be faking. And now I was here because of Alexander Manson.
‘Cunt,’ I said.
Keleos winced.
‘Fucking cunt, if you want to be accurate about it.’ They had been Alexander Manson’s words, and then they had become mine. And now that I had told Keleos, they would be hers, too.
She rubbed her forehead.
Search weary. There’s Keleos, right below a grumpy cat meme.
‘I have to suspend you,’ she said. ‘You can’t give someone a blood nose without consequences. Fair?’
I nodded.
‘The rest of the week,’ she said. ‘Back on Monday.’
I stood up.
‘Persephone.’
Per. Se. Phon. E. As in, Per-Seh-Phony. Phony, as in fake. Not—like at least three counsellors, one nurse and two police officers pronounced it—Per-Seh-Phone. Not as in telephone. At least Keleos pronounces my name correctly. She knows her Greek; I guess that’s something.
She spread her hands, palms up, on her desk, the way people do when they’re out of ideas. ‘What’s your plan here?’ There were tiny creases at the edges of her eyes. ‘What do you want?’
I shrugged. Keleos waited. I waited longer. Keleos sighed.
‘Monday,’ she repeated, and picked up the phone. ‘Don’t be late.’
Some people get exactly what they deserve. And, as it turns out, I deserve to be called Persephone. No simple-to-sound-out Pride and Prejudice-style name like Elizabeth or Jane for me. Nope. Demi had to go Greek.
Define Persephone. Bringer of destruction. That pretty much sums it up.
There’s a myth that goes with Persephone, too. Bonus. Not only does my name come with a fucked-up meaning, but I also get my own personal horror story that will follow me around for the rest of my life. It’s not a complicated story, but it is pretty dark. Basically, this girl, Persephone, is walking along one day and she sees a flower. She thinks it’s pretty, so she kneels down to look at it, and next thing you know the king of hell drags her underground and rapes her and forces her to be his wife.
Yeah. Thanks for that.
The only thing I got from Dad was his surname. Nedra, as in ‘underground’.
Everything else, Demi gave me. My name, my hair, my pale skin, my weirdly long middle toes. My green eyes. Demi and I are two halves of the one whole. Iris said that once, and it stuck. Halves of the same whole. Birds of a feather. Peas in a pod.
Too bad the pod is rotten.
5.0
When I came out of Keleos’s office Alexander was standing there holding an icepack up to his nose. The bleeding seemed to have stopped, but there were red spots on the collar of his shirt.
I wondered what Alexander would say to Keleos. What was his side of the story? Would he explain to her why he’d called me a cunt? He’d only been here a week, and in that time I’d sat behind him in English once. That was the full extent of our interaction, until today. Who did he think he was? Who did he think I was? Did he know what I’d done? How? Could he see it on my face, like a birthmark, or a bruise? Was it that obvious?
I couldn’t tell what his mouth was doing because of the icepack, but I recognised the tilt of his eyebrows. Rage was coming off him like radiant heat. Mind your own fucking business, I wanted to say, but didn’t because Mrs McCracken was at her desk and I couldn’t handle her fish-lipped disapproval.
I turned my back and tossed my hair and imagined I was giving Alexander Manson the finger.
And I left.
2
this is the way the world ends
5.3
I walked home along the bush track. It’s not a shortcut; it doesn’t cut time, but it does cut paved roads and cars, and the likelihood of running into other people.
Mostly. No guarantees.
I used to be okay with people. I used to have friends; a reasonably stable circle of girls my age, and some boys. But then I got diabetes. I got used to needles and blood. My friends didn’t. They looked at me sideways when I injected, and got pissed off when I snapped at them for staring. In the end, I stopped hanging out with them. Being alone is easier. I don’t have to explain myself, and I don’t have to waste my breath telling people not to be dickheads. I became a solitary animal; most people, most of the time, kept their distance. But then Alexander Manson called me a cunt in the corridor. Not for no reason. What did he know about me?
It’s just a word. A sound in the air, marks on a page. And yet—it had power. Like a spell, or a secret. It’s just a word, but it felt like so much more than that. When someone speaks it at you, to you, it has a physical force. It makes contact, like wind against skin. Like a bite. Like a punch in the face.
It’s just a word, but people speak it in lowered voices, if they use it at all. Some newspapers won’t even print it. Why this word? Why is this collection of letters so offensive, and not others? Why not stick or stone? Why not dick? It’s just a word, but it’s also the worst of the worst. If you want people to listen, use this word. If you’re trying to make a point, say cunt.
What point was Alexander Manson trying to make?
Cunt is a word I deserved.
Search the worst of the worst. There I am. But Alexander Manson had no right to say it to me. There were people who did, but this kid wasn’t one of them. This kid, who hadn’t even been at school a week. This kid, who didn’t know me, who’d never spoken two words to me until he said ‘fucking cunt’. Maybe he could see into me, somehow, but that didn’t give him the right to say it. The universe doesn’t work that way.
I like the bush because of all the things that aren’t there, but also because of the things that are. Trees, birds, bugs. The river. That’s Demi in me, again. The nature thing. Liking the way plants smell, feeling better when there are leaves around. Demi’s always had it, and she’s passed it on to me. Without any words, through the walls of her womb, or whatever. Except lately Demi doesn’t seem to have it anymore; there’s a noticeable lack of green. It could be the drought. Or, it could be me.
It hasn’t rained in a year. Not properly. Sometimes clouds gather, sometimes the sky spits, but that’s all. Everything is brown and brittle. Fish are dying. It’s only October, and they’re already predicting a bad fire season.
I went slowly through the dry bush. My head was full up with cluttering, obnoxious thoughts that included (but weren’t limited to) the following:
My blood sugar.
Why Alexander Manson called me a cunt.
The sound Alexander Manson made between seeing my fist and feeling my fist.
What I was going to do for the next week while I was suspended.
My blood sugar.
If I had enough jellybeans in my backpack.
If I’d calculated my carbs right at lunch.
My blood sugar.
And then there was Keleos. With her spotless desk and her school values blu-tacked to the wall. What’s your plan here? Fucking Keleos. What do you want? Who asks questions like that? I want you to leave me alone. I want to eat a whole pizza followed by a whole block of chocolate. I want—
‘Hi, cousin.’
I felt his voice in my ear. He’d materialised from the trees like a ghost, so close my cheek went warm with his breath.
‘For fuck’s sake, Steven.’
‘Sorry.’ He hung his head for half a second, then bounced right back. ‘I’m pretty sure it’s leprosy.’
His sweaty hand was wrapped around my wrist. I twisted out of his grip and kept walking.
‘I mean, it’s early stages.’ He was trying to keep up, but the track was narrow and every few steps he snagged himself on a blackberry bush. ‘Ow. But I’ve got all the symptoms.’
Steven Slaine is small for a twelve-year-old. Thin limbs that seem brittle like bird bones, cheeks like shoulder blades. A head too big for his body, sitting on top of his wandering neck like a bowling ball on a pipe-cleaner. His hair is the kind of blond that looks fake but isn’t. It’s been that way since he was one-and-a-half, shockingly white. The rest of him is pale, too; an unhealthy, cooked-fish colour. He’s got a nervous twitch in his right eye, and a scar on his chin that makes him look like an upside-down Harry Potter. He has another scar on his left elbow. He doesn’t have leprosy.
‘Joint pain, weak hands and feet—ow—weight loss. Ow! Can you move over a bit?’
‘You don’t have leprosy,’ I said, staying exactly where I was on the track.
‘And numbness. I’m losing feeling. Poke me.’
‘I don’t want to poke you.’
‘Just—ow—just a little poke. Bet I don’t feel it.’
Steven is not my cousin. Demi says he is, but he’s not. He’s Iris’s kid, and—if you ask me—even that’s debatable. Iris is Demi’s best friend. Demi would like me to call her Aunty Iris, but I don’t, because she isn’t my aunt. I don’t have any aunts. I’ve got an uncle who lives somewhere in southeast Asia and speaks eight languages. He speaks to me in exactly none of them. Demi and Iris have this thing where they pretend they’re related because they grew up together and they both hate their families. Whatever, that’s fine. Just don’t drag me into it. And don’t expect me to treat Steven like he’s not annoying.
‘How come that new kid called you the c-word?’
All right, he probably is Iris’s kid; he picks up gossip like a sponge picks up bacteria.
‘Because he’s a dick,’ I said. Or, I thought, because—somehow—he knows.
‘What did you do to him?’
‘Nothing.’ I edged my way forward, so Steven would have to walk behind me. ‘I didn’t do anything to him.’
‘Until you punched his lights out!’
I turned around just in time to see Steven make a weedy fist and jab it at a blackberry bush. ‘Kapow! Ouch!’
There was a rumble of thunder in the distance. We were in the middle of one of the worst droughts in history, but we still had storms. The worst kind of storms—all thunder and lightning, and no rain. Dry lightning in bush where dead leaves and bark crackle under your feet like bubble wrap is not ideal.
Search tinderbox. There’s a picture of us, surrounded by a thousand images of neatly packaged firewood.
‘Did you hear that?’ Steven stopped, bony shoulders hunched to his earlobes. Steven’s not scared of storms; I’ve seen him stand outside in rain and hail, head tilted back, mouth open like a lunatic. He’s fine with the deluge itself—it’s the build-up that’s the problem. The threatening grey at the edges of the sky, the electricity in the air, the rising humidity. He can’t stand it. But he can stomach the worst things, once they’re actually happening. He’ll search for ‘scariest horror-movie moments’ online and watch them over and over. But he won’t watch the whole film; he can’t take the suspense. And when it comes to violence, Steven’s more comfortable with a black eye than with a fist that hasn’t been made yet, a fist that is still just fingers tapping fretfully on the arm of the couch. A storm without rain, a storm that never breaks, is Steven’s worst nightmare.
