Sick Teen Read online

  And isn’t that what we’re always being lectured to do anyway: to take a look at yourself in the mirror, and start there?

  *

  The tattoo place is – well, a bit intimidating, really.

  If this is where he got his tattoo, then I can well understand how an infection might have set in.

  I’ve got no idea how Lisa conjured up the courage to go in.

  I linger at the window, looking at all the alternative tattoos you can have.

  Serpents.

  Skulls.

  Rearing horses.

  Spiders.

  But Lisa had been adamant; it had to be the hare and moon, and it had to be on the shoulder blade.

  Strangely, they don’t have it here in the window.

  So how come Lisa asked for it?

  I hadn’t asked her that.

  She must have asked for advice when she’d gone in.

  Being nervous, this being her first time, she’d have wanted something small.

  Something she could hide away from her parents.

  ‘We’ve got just the thing, madam; a tattoo that makes you bewitchingly gorgeous!’

  Ah, go on then; I’ll have that one!

  *

  Inside, it’s no better than the exterior.

  Dingy. Dim.

  Seemingly empty, too.

  Perhaps I should come back another day whe–

  ‘Yes?’

  Sh*t!

  This woman sure as hell hasn’t got a hare and moon on her shoulder blades!

  More like a warthog and a supernova, I’d guess.

  Then again, whatever it is she’s got there, I reckon it would take an eternity to find it amongst all the other images she’s had painted across her body. Her shop window has fewer tattoos on display.

  She seems to have appeared out of nowhere but, looking at her now, I figure she could have been here all along, her flesh and similarly coloured clothes effective camouflage in a place whose walls are covered in yet more examples of exotic designs.

  She’s gone for the face beading, too, the metallic charms hanging from lips, nose, even eyelids and cheeks. I trust she makes sure to avoid any car wreckage yards, where any overhead electromagnet would whip this woman’s face straight off.

  Sure, she’s forgone the usual earrings, which might sound a little bizarre to anyone who hasn’t seen pictures of lobes stretched to accommodate what could be Royal Doulton dinner plates.

  Wow, she’s ugly!

  Then again, maybe this passes for beauty in some cultures. The front cover of Vogue, say, in the sort of land you can’t mention these days without being accused of being racist.

  ‘Er…’

  I’m looking for an excuse to walk out.

  ‘The hare and moon?’ she says confidently.

  What? I’m that ugly I look like I need it?

  The woman manages a smile that isn’t half bad, considering every tooth has been filed to a point.

  ‘Yes…er, how did you, er, know?’

  She lifts up the hinged top of the counter, allowing access to the back rooms.

  ‘I always know!’ she says.

  *

  Chapter 4

  I don’t believe it; but it actually worked!

  Well – not admittedly, the way I’d expected it to work.

  I mean, it’s not like, suddenly, like Lisa, I’ve got the ‘look’. I’m not all dainty prettiness, the model-like legs and hair.

  My look’s more athletic build, like I’m down the gym every hour God sends me, flexing those muscles, lifting those weights.

  As for the hair; wow, there’s nothing to complain about there.

  I’ve got to admit; I think I look gobsmackingly wonderful!

  And just as Lisa promised, you just simply wake up looking like this!

  Sure, mum and dad almost had kittens on the spot when I appeared looking like this at breakfast.

  But what are they gonna say?

  ‘Tana! Back to bed this instant! You can’t go out looking like you’re some Goddess’s most favoured female!’

  Thankfully, I had an excuse: I said it was all the Goth-like clothes I’d been wearing, the matted, braided hair, the plastered white makeup.

  Hiding a natural beauty that had obviously been blooming beneath it all all along!

  Now I’d grown up, I’d simply jettisoned the Marilyn Manson look, hadn’t I?

  All so yesterday, wasn’t it?

  Course, I didn’t have many clothes I could wear to suit my new look.

  I’d borrowed some of mum’s more causal wear, which didn’t look too dated; not that it mattered, as on me they somehow looked like the clothes to be wearing this season!

  It’s the weekend, meaning I can use the money I received for my birthday to buy some new clothes. Plus, I can return the stuff I don’t want, trading it all in for something to go with my new ‘look’.

  Damn!

  If only he were still alive.

  *

  It’s still too early for there to be a gravestone.

  It not exactly the sort of thing people plan for, is it? A boy of seventeen dying?

  The soil used to cover him up is still settling; still a bit of a mound, but dropping daily I presume.

  Not that I’d know for sure, of course.

  What?

  No, I haven’t been visiting here every day!

  No, not even every second day either, thank you very much!

  Just how crazy do you think I am?

  This is the very first time I’ve visited him – it – if you must know!

  The fact is, I wasn’t even invited to the funeral.

  That was Lisa’s role, wasn’t it; the grieving widow at the graveside?

  But now here I am!

  The secret, beautiful mistress, who can only attend and lay flowers on his grave once everybody else has left!

  (No, I haven’t brought any flowers! It’s all just sort of that movie idea of it all, isn’t it?)

  His true love, left out of the will.

  (Yeah, okay; I really am pushing it now, aren’t I?)

  But look; if he’s looking down from on high – as I surely hope he is – he’s just got to be thinking; Wow, who’s that?

  It’s me!

  Course, you don’t recognise me now, do you?

  Just look what you’re missing!

  All this could’ve been yours!

  And you just didn’t know, did you?

  You just weren’t prepared to take the trouble to find out what the real Tana was like!

  You could’ve loved me; not them – those girls who can’t even be bothered to visit your grave!

  There could’ve been something good between us!

  I remember you, remember you as you were!

  Oh sh*t! This is all getting way too morbid, isn’t it?

  What’s wrong with me?

  I never felt this desperate about the guy before!

  Then again, I was never in his league, was I?

  Whereas now, I’m probably way out the other side, a league way above his.

  *

  It’s too much, of course, for the A lister girls.

  It’s bad enough Lisa coming in one day looking like she’s won the lottery for every nip and tuck operation the business can offer.

  It’s even worse when her friend turns up looking like she must’ve been attending the very same Lourdes Beauty Parlour; even if she does look like she’s been spending most of her time on the exercise machines.

  Now they all want to know me.

  To invite me round to their house, to parties, to sleep-ins.

  To just hang out with me, and listen to whatever pearls of wisdom I have to deliver.

  Okay, so I’m a hypocrite; but didn’t I admit to that already?

  I should just be sneering in these girls’ faces shouldn’t I, telling them to get lost?

  Instead, I tell them all the beauty secrets they’re eager to know.

  ‘I think a
girl’s just got to have the most expensive hairstyling she can afford at least every week!’

  Yeah, that passes for the highest flights of wisdom amongst these girls.

  These girls, they’re soon gonna break daddy’s bank at the rate I’ve got them spending on looking beautiful.

  *

  Chapter 5

  Thing is, despite now having quite a few boys at my beck and call – bless them, I’d never realised, but they really are such innocent, pathetic little dears, aren’t they? – I find I’m not the slightest bit interested in any of them.

  It’s still him that I want.

  Even though, naturally, that’s impossible!

  That’s crazy!

  So what do you know; I’m visiting his grave again.

  What…is…wrong…with…me?

  Worse, I find myself thinking; you know what, I don’t think he’s really dead and buried – well, not forever and ever, at least!

  I mean, what with all the food preservatives we end up taking into ourselves, these days a corpse doesn’t even start to rot for ages.

  Stop: don’t worry!

  I’m not thinking of digging him up!

  As I keep telling you, I’m not crazy!

  Honest!

  As I’ve also said, I just don’t understand what keeps on drawing me back here

  But I’ve been like this, of course, ever since I had that tattoo.

  And it was a tattoo that caused him to end up here, in this grave.

  Is that the connection?

  If so, how the heck does that work?’

  *

  I visit the tattoo parlour again.

  Wondering if the ugly woman can give me a few pointers as to what might be going on in my life.

  Soon as I step over the threshold, she’s there, just about blending into the dim surroundings of the interior, like she’s got no real boundaries.

  I see her this time, of course, because I’m expecting her, I’m looking for her.

  She sees me, naturally.

  Very few people are unaware of my presence these days.

  The men who watch me walk down the street like all their dreams have abruptly come true.

  The women who secretly glower at me, their eyes mostly downcast to hide their hate and envy.

  This woman, however, she instantly knows who I really am; what I originally looked like, before the inscribing of the hare and the moon on my shoulder blade.

  ‘Ah, back already,’ she says brightly, giving me the saw-tooth smile once more.

  ‘Not for another tattoo,’ I explain quickly, before she has time to attempt to persuade me otherwise, ‘I was just wondering if you could help me regarding a friend of mine who died!’

  ‘Then it is a tattoo you need!’ she insists, lifting up the top of the counter, stepping aside to invite me through. ‘This one,’ she says, pointing at a stick-like man etched into the side of her forehead.

  ‘That one?’ I say, finding it hard to hide that I’m aghast at even the thought of having something so crude painted anywhere on me, let alone in such a prominent place. ‘Why on earth would anyone want that one?’

  ‘It allows you to converse with the dead!’ she assures me, her skull-like grin alone enough to persuade me she’s being serious.

  ‘I don’t need to speak with the dead,’ I assure her thankfully. ‘I just need to know about a boy who had a tattoo here then later died, through an infection.’

  ‘No, no: not an infection!’ She says it light-heartedly, like it’s all been nothing more than an innocent mistake. ‘I know the boy you mean: he was too ambitious!’

  ‘Ambitious?’

  ‘It was far too big a leap to take; from a few small tattoos to one mostly covering the whole body!’

  With the waving of a hand, she indicates a tattoo running up the entire body, serpent like, from at least the legs right up to the neck.

  ‘I warned him his body wouldn’t be ready for it,’ she continued with a few sad shakes of her head. ‘But he said that was all the point of the tattoo, wasn’t it? To protect him from death!’

  I chuckle; yeah, like a tattoo could do that!

  She’s not smiling. (Not that I can tell, anyway.)

  ‘The Tree of Life!’ she says, quickly indicating pictures on her arms and legs that – I can only presume – join up beneath her clothes, forming this complete tree running over her entire body.

  There are long, dotted lines running down her, which could be some kind of prickly branches. Her hands could be roots, but there seems to be something similar adorning her ankles. Her upper thighs (revealed to me by an unashamed lifting of her dress) could be the trunk, maybe with some ivy like veins. The upper part of her chest, which she also unashamedly displays to me, could be leaves or blooms.

  Then again, there are so many creatures and plants adorning her body, I’m simply presuming these were the areas she was pointing out to me.

  ‘There can be no death when one is part of a Tree of Life!’ she says firmly.

  If a tattoo that size and extensive became infected, no wonder he died.

  Ironic, too, considering it was supposed to protect him from death.

  ‘Did the police come here?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘But as I said, they found no cause here of any infection. They checked!’

  ‘Then what killed him?’

  ‘His blood: a bad reaction. It couldn’t be foreseen.’

  ‘And me?’ I ask anxiously. ‘What if my blood’s the wrong type?’

  ‘You’re blood’s fine!’ she reassures me, smiling again.

  Thing is, it doesn’t really reassure me, does it?

  I mean, if she can check my blood group just by giving me the once over, like she’s making out, then how come she didn’t spot that his blood was just itching to stitch him up and hand him over to death’s clutches?

  *

  There is no Heaven.

  How do I know this?

  Think about it: do you think there’s any need for beds in Heaven?

  Of course there isn’t.

  But how can it be Heaven without a bed?

  I love my bed

  I love it on a night, snuggling up beneath its warm quilt.

  I love it on a morning, when I can briefly get up to go to the bathroom, then get back under the quilt, feeling all warm and secure once more.

  I hate it on a morning, though, when I’ve got no choice but to get up, and stay up.

  Not the bed, of course; it’s not that I hate!

  It’s the morning: I mean, why do we have to have mornings?

  Then again, I do have an additional impetus to get me out of bed these days.

  It’s not like it used to be, after all, when I woke up dreading the rest of the day.

  Then I’d know I’d be walking around school with a miserable face. Pretending that’s just the way I was, that I wasn’t really just completely sour because the boys at best just ignored me, at worst threw insults my way whenever they could.

  When I was really down, I’d turn on the radio, the stations full of people phoning into the DJs, chatting ever so cheerfully about how great their lives were going, how they’d planned a weekend getaway, a meal with friends.

  And I’d think, Wow; just how sad can you be? I mean, flattering yourselves that everyone out there wants to listen to your warblings about your boring life rather than listen to Adele or what have you!

  These are the guys who send the average IQ tumbling, inhabiting the total opposite end of the scale to all the high flyers like Mozart and Einstein.

  Compared to these people, even I’m on the genius level.

  And just knowing that would help get me though an otherwise uneventful, boring day.

  Yeah, halcyon days, right?

  Now, though, I know that my day’s going to be full of boys literally falling over each other as they make fools of themselves, hoping to impress me with their childish antics, their ridiculously infantile sense of h
umour.

  What the heck did I ever see in any of them?

  I’ve had more fun watching flies trying to fly out through the glass of a window.

  Besides, I have another reason to get out of bed today; I want to see what my new tattoo looks like.

  *

  Chapter 6

  Miss Guess-What-My-Face-Used-To-Look-Like had offered me this new tattoo for free.

  She said she wasn’t busy these days (nothing to do, I suppose, with one of her customers agonisingly dying over three days?) and she wanted something to do just to keep her hand in.

  As the business was quiet, she let me watch as she set her things out and mixed her dyes.

  First time I’d come in here, I’d frankly been a little shocked by her ‘equipment’.

  I’d always thought tattooists used something equivalent to a dentist’s drill; you know, all shiny steel, a needle probing and vibrating like it had dreams of becoming Versace’s sewing machine.

  These are sharpened animal bones, even fangs, I reckon. Plus a few thorns for extra detailing.

  ‘Tradition,’ she’d said, noticing the fearful widening of my eyes.

  Her preparation of the inks, it turns out, is no less unsettling.

  If another two women turned up looking just like her, I wouldn’t be surprised if they dragged out a cauldron and started throwing in eye of newt and what have you.

  There are shredded herbs, a number of oils, something that smells like sandalwood, something as black as pitch.

  Whenever she opens one of the bottles of oil, however, I almost gag with the stench; whatever type of oils these are, I guess they’re not taken from the usual things like pretty sunflowers and tasty olives.

  Just like the hare and the moon, the tattoo she gives me is nothing too dominating; they could be the paw prints of an incredibly small dog, running along the inner thigh of one of my legs.

  It used to be used by primitive hunters, she said, enabling them to run as fast as their dogs.

  Now sure, I should be highly sceptical of such a wild claim; but isn’t this the woman who miraculously transformed me into the girl of every boys’ dreams?

  So why should I doubt her when she tells me a cute paw tattoo will have me running like I’m set for an Olympic Marathon?

  *

  I’ve got to give it a try, haven’t I?