Simran Wran

Parts of Me

Novel extract

Chapter 1

It felt as if I’d only just turned eleven and started big school. The year rolled past without me really noticing. Being twelve was like standing in the middle of a tightrope. Behind me were memories of teddies, party bags, sleepovers and scuffed knees from falling off swings onto hot concrete in the summer. In front of me was the idea of adulthood. Puberty and periods, house parties, hangovers, boys and boyfriends. It was a time when half my room was covered with plushies and Barbie dolls while the other half was covered with One Direction posters. 

Mum left a present on my bedside table for me to open when I woke up on the morning of my birthday. A rectangular white box tied with a red ribbon. My first smartphone. Freedom was face-timing friends instead of asking mum permission to use the house phone. It was setting up group chats to gossip about Linda May from the other form class. It was sending Matty Whitehall a friend request on Snapchat after spending hours wondering if you should and squealing with joy when he accepted. Reality started to sink in at eighteen, when life and opportunities slapped me across the face, that I really didn’t have any kind of clue what being ‘grown-up’ really was. 

I sat on my bed and stared at the open boxes and suitcases that completely covered the floor. Everything I needed for the next year, or thereabouts, folded and squashed as best as I could. All that was left behind were some old tops that hadn’t fit since I was thirteen, some nearly empty bottles of perfume and a shelf filled with old toys. Most old toys I got Mum to shove in the attic, some we gave to charity and the special ones I kept on a small shelf above my desk. A white teddy bear bought by my Dad when I was a baby, a wooden dollhouse, and finally a life-sized baby doll gifted by my Gran. The colour of her cheeks, that used to be rosy pink, had faded. 

I stepped over the maze of my belongings and lifted her close to my face. I rubbed our cheeks together. The smooth plastic contrasted with the rough bristles on her head from where I cut it all off with scissors. Her soft dress, with one strap missing it’s button, coated in layers of dust. She smelt musty and smoky like old books and cigarettes. Just like Gran’s house and her clothes and her hair. Towards the end she would often tell me how pretty I would look in white and, in spite of everything, there was always a pang of guilt in the pit of my stomach that I couldn’t fulfil that wish. If she could I think she would have loved to place me on a shelf where she could dress me and comb my hair. 

*

My feet had barely touched the ground before I was being dragged along by my new roommate, Kirsten, to meet the rest of the girls’ soccer team. Before I was entirely out the door, I managed to catch a glance in the mirror. I told her to hold on a second whilst I tucked behind the loose strands that had fallen over my ears. Kirsten said I looked better with them over my ears as she moved them back and forth, looking at me then at me in the mirror as if she was a different girl, before she decided it looked better to have them covered. My cheeks looked round and full, my hair pulled back into a ponytail made me look about twelve plus my t-shirt with a picture of Dobby that had half his nose peeled off didn’t help either. I threw on an oversized white sweatshirt and decided I was good to go. There was nothing that tinted lip balm and baggy clothes couldn’t fix.   

I quickly messaged Mum back that I was in fact still alive and arrived safely. 

– Love you Mum. I’m going to a house party already. Check me out! New York is so big. Can’t wait to explore. I’ll call soon! 

– Love you too sweetheart. Enjoy yourself but not too much. Be safe. 

The kitchen had everything you needed for a party – a large punch bowl and plenty of red cups. Girls lingered around the food and drink table and others scattered themselves around the halls and different rooms. 

He stood with his back pressed against the wall taking occasional sips of his drink and seemed very relaxed. His loud voice caught the attention of the room like he was the main attraction they had all flocked around. He didn’t look like a wolf so I didn’t know not to approach him. There were no signs – no big ears, big nose or big teeth to watch out for. My stomach fluttered just from looking at him almost like a nauseating sickness. He looked calm as he swallowed me with his eyes before indicating for me to come closer by waggling his finger at me. All of them turned to me and I felt flushed.  

‘Hey new girl. Gina, right?’ he said.

‘Yes. Nice to meet you,’ I said.

‘Coach Jones. Bertram Jones.’

An older name that didn’t suit his face although he wasn’t young. Maybe early to mid-forties I would have guessed? Bertram was the name of old men that played golf or vice presidents. 

‘Cool name,’ I said.

‘Thanks, it was my father’s,’ he said, ‘Ran away when I was six.’

‘Holy shit.’

‘Yup. Went out for some milk and never came back.’

There was something about his bluntness that made me think ‘this guy is pretty cool’ and forget that he was my coach or much older and probably married with kids. He knew how to talk to us and what to say. 

‘My Mum told me once that she found me under a bridge,’ I said. 

‘Oh really?’ he said. 

‘Yeah, she forgot she left me there.’

His loud cackle reverberated around the room and pulsated through my body from head to toe. Then he placed his hand on the small of my back so smoothly like softly imprinting a foot on snowy ground. I shifted in place then suddenly aware of my body because of him. His smell, his touch, his eyes on me, his entire being invaded my personal space. His scent was overpowering the closer he got – malt whiskey, oak wood, smoke, something new yet unfamiliar, something exciting. 

‘Did your Dad really leave?’ I said. 

‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘It’s true but when I was a baby so I don’t remember. He was kind of an idiot though according to my mother so don’t feel too bad.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘What’s your story?’

‘My Dad passed. Ten years ago. I was eight. My brother was six.’

‘Jeez I am so sorry.’

‘Thanks.’

I felt movement up and down my spine. I noticed him applying more pressure now and then almost as a reminder that his hand was still there. There are things that don’t seem too bad, at first, because they feel good like the puff of your first cigarette. People don’t come packaged with warning labels. He put his cup down on the floor and guided me away from the group so we were alone in the opposite corner of the room. 

‘Could I get your phone number? I’ve done this with some of the other girls,’ he said, ‘Just in case you have any problems. I want you to know that I’m here. If you ever need to talk or anything.’

‘Oh. Sure. I left my phone in my room though.’

‘You don’t know your own phone number?’

‘I never needed to.’

He rolled his eyes and smiled playfully as if he had me all figured out. . 

‘The youth of today! You’d be no use if we were lost in a forest somewhere. Here. I’ll give you mine,’ he said. 

He grabbed a pen from his back pocket and bit the lid off. So cooly and calmly like downing the ice at the bottom of a whiskey glass and the feeling of it slipping slowly down your throat. After that he walked away and trickled out of the door like a trail of smoke. The rest of the night descended into alcohol and loud music. 

*

We spoke everyday about school, work, friends, family, life and the future. Then he said ‘I love you.’ All I could think about was that word and it didn’t matter when he said it or how. Only that he said it at all so it must be true. I felt dizzy and sick when he made me wait for his responses. All I could do was stare at his profile picture. His eyes were black holes ready for me to trip and fall into. He had an aura that would pull you in quietly and calmly until you were being swallowed whole like a sheep trapped in the wide jaw of a snake. 

Little by little I gave pieces away of myself to him, gift wrapped in little boxes, until he had me completely and there was nothing left to give. If he wanted an arm or leg I would have gladly hacked it off for him. Did it ever come across as strange? Should it have? There was something dangerously intoxicating about him. He would ask me how I was, how my classes were going, how was I getting on with the other girls? He had dug through my barrier like flesh eating bacteria gradually making it’s way beyond the surface. He was someone to talk to and then the only person I wanted to or felt I could rely on. 

I want something.

What?

You.

You have me. 

A picture. So I can see you all the time. 

A selfie?

A special one.

Special?

Show me all of you.

*

Two blue ticks. He was online. Then the notification came. He had saved the pictures. The last thing he sent was the purple devil emoji with a smile and I sunk, face-down into my pillow. My phone lying next to me in the same face-down position. The worst part about being eaten alive is that you don’t even see the snake until you’re up to your neck inside it. 

I suddenly threw the sheets off me and stormed over to the mirror, not knowing what I’d find, and not being surprised by what was there. I told myself to stand up straight as if that would magically change my short torso that seemed to stop too early as if God needed room to attach my legs. It was sickening. The black lacey bra that had dug under my armpits and left red marks and panties that had dug into my arse crack. And thinking of my arse crack was not sexy. It was the same feeling as being a kid and trying on mum’s dresses and stockings that would go way past the knee on a tiny seven-year-old. It was playing at being sexy or what I thought sexy was. A lacey thong, a glass of wine, his hand on my breast, touching and feeling me like checking to see if I was ripe enough yet. Would it have been wrong for Red Riding Hood to admit that actually she would like to be eaten by the wolf? That she enjoyed making him drool and how she wanted to be savoured, devoured, finished off by him. 

I stood at the foot of my bed and let my body fall forwards like a domino until I hit the mattress with a gentle thud. Maybe if I was still enough I’d metamorphosise into a rock or something. Be swept out to sea. A tightening feeling moved down from my chest to my stomach which I tried to push away. I wasn’t going to be this way and actually I was determined not to be. But the invisible force wrapped itself around me like a rope and, at first, gently raised my chest up from the bed until I was floating entirely in the air.  Without warning it flung me up to the ceiling and pulled me this way and that. The tightness travelled from the tips of my toes up inside my throat like a cat squeezing it’s fat body through a small flap. I was dangling above my bed. There was no way I could reach my phone or anything. Furiously, I tried gripping the walls, the light, the ceiling. There was no time to shout, yell or do anything. Seconds later a sudden heaviness pushed against my back and I found myself being drawn towards my phone . It felt as if I was being sucked inside by it and I couldn’t stop rolling forward through an endless tunnel. A bright white light. I rubbed and adjusted my eyes. Darkness surrounded me. No walls, no floor, no ceiling. Just pitch blackness. No apparent lines or corners to mark out the room, if you could call it a room, which made it seem endless. I ran into the darkness only to be confronted by the same thing. 

There it was. Projected in front of me like a slideshow image. My whole being reduced to a single image. Bare chest, torso, legs, feet. Strategically, the picture had been cropped so that my head was cut off. I was just a body. Not even that. Parts of a body. Other images zoomed in to highlight them. Breasts, thighs, torso, arms, neck. There were many images behind my one that I didn’t recognise. They were me but not me. All of them headless like mine. 

‘Hello?’ someone said.

It didn’t comfort me, weirdly, to learn that I wasn’t alone.