CHAPTER FIVE
THE DOLPHIN PHILOSOPHY
‘Hey, Paranoid Patty, can I come in?’
I opened the front door and Millie bounded through it, shaking her head at me as she slid her oversized sunglasses off her face and on to her hair. ‘You’re like something out of a bad horror movie, peering through your sitting-room curtains like that. It’s the middle of the afternoon!’
‘There was a car …’ I started, and then instantly gave up. ‘Never mind. Come in.’
She padded after me into the sitting room, where I was watching old re-runs of America’s Next Top Model. Tyra Banks was on-screen berating a model for being disrespectful and not ‘caring enough’ about the opportunity. She was so angry it looked like her eyes were going to pop out of her head, but the model was just staring through her, totally checked out. I could kind of relate to that feeling.
‘God.’ Millie crinkled her nose at the screen and then turned in a slow swivel back to me. ‘What’s this all about?’
‘Tyra was rooting for her,’ I said, pointing at the screen. ‘And now she’s pissed ’cause Tiffany basically didn’t give a crap, so it’s become this whole drama.’
Millie was moving her index finger in a big circle, gesturing at the TV in its entirety. ‘Soph, I meant gen-er-ally,’ she said, elongating the word, so that she sounded extra British. ‘You know I meant generally.’
‘Did you know there’s such a thing as a “smize”, Mil? It’s like smiling … but you do it with your eyes.’
‘Uh-huh … Did you know there’s such a thing as a sun? It’s like fire, only it’s a big round ball in the sky.’
‘There’s also this thing called the “booty tooch”. It’s something.’
Millie halted me before I could demonstrate, raising her hands in the air and whipping her hair across her face in a violent head-turn. ‘Please. You know how uncomfortable second-hand embarrassment makes me. Where’s your mum? Do we need to stage some kind of intervention here?’
‘She’s in the garden … it’s her new hobby.’ Obsession might have sounded a little harsh, if true. My mother was constantly planting new flowers. Sometimes she stayed in the garden so long she forgot to eat dinner. She forgot to work, too – maybe she didn’t want to – and now our garden bloomed with ten shades of strange flowers and unruly shrubs, while her commissioned projects lay in unfinished piles of fabric around the house. I think she hated being indoors the same way I suddenly hated being outside. I think she hated idle moments of stitching or sketching when her brain would bring her back to that night in the warehouse, to the sound of bullets and the smell of blood. She had the garden, I had the switchblade, and I had no right to judge her obsession.
‘At least one of you is getting some vitamin D.’ Millie flung open the curtains and I recoiled like a vampire, flinching at the sun’s invading rays. ‘You’ll go see-through if you get any paler.’
‘I’m fine.’ I was surprised at how genuine I sounded. I couldn’t remember the last time I had slept properly. The slash from Luca’s blade was still fresh and pulsing, and every couple of hours, my heart would do this weird thing and seize up, and then my breathing would quicken and I’d get the sudden sense I was about to die.
‘Very believable,’ said Millie. ‘You are not fine. You are in deep denial. And pretending this fear doesn’t exist is not beating it, it’s accommodating it. And it has to stop, OK?’ She had her hands on her hips. She was definitely not smizing. ‘Bad things happen. And then you get over them. That’s how it goes. I know this whole situation has been … unfortunate.’
I decided not to bother ladling out any more lies. My best friend could see right through me – even if she couldn’t hear it in my voice, she’d see it on my face. I sank back into the couch. ‘You know, I’ve been thinking lately.’ That was pretty much all I had been doing. ‘My whole family is unlucky. What’s to say I’m any different from the rest of them? Did you know that my dad lost both his parents in a car accident when he was only sixteen? They were deadbeat alcoholics and one day they drunk-drove themselves into a barrier on the interstate. Jack and my dad went to live with their grandmother and she ended up dying of cancer, basically leaving them out on the street. My mom’s dad died on her birthday and then her mom died of a broken heart a couple of years later. That’s literally what they told my mom. Her heart just … gave up. My only uncle is a freaking drug dealer, who could be dead right now for all I know, and my dad’s in jail for shooting someone … Sometimes it feels like I’m being circled by something that’s just waiting for me to put one foot out of line. It’s like it’s inevitable.’
Millie unstuck her hands from her hips and sat down next to me. ‘What’s inevitable?’
I shrugged. ‘My destruction?’
‘Your destruction?’ Her eyebrows had reached full arch height. ‘Really?’
‘OK, maybe that was theatrical. But you know what I mean.’
‘That is ridiculous. Seriously. So your dad had shitty parents. It happens. And his granny dying of cancer? So did mine. That’s a crappy fact of life too. He and Jack were on their own from a young age and that’s probably why Jack ended up dealing. We know why your dad shot Angelo Falcone. It was an accident. And if he hadn’t shot him, who knows? Angelo probably would have murdered Jack. I’m sorry you don’t have a large family and that all that bad stuff happened, but the universe is not against you. You’re not, like, doomed, or whatever. This isn’t a Game of Thrones episode. You’re good, OK? You’ve come out the other side.’
‘I just wish it felt like that.’
‘It will. Eventually. You just have to try.’
‘I know,’ I conceded. She was right. Of course she was. I just wasn’t really dealing in logic, so it was hard to see it.
‘So,’ she said, leaning back with a triumphant smile now she felt she had gotten through to me. I let my gaze drift back to the window now that the direct sunlight had stopped assaulting my retina. ‘With all that in mind, I was—’
‘Mil,’ I shrieked, bounding from the couch and gluing myself to the window. Outside, a black Mercedes was crawling by my house again. No one drives that slow. Not even in a residential zone. ‘Get your ass over here and tell me this car is not the most suspicious thing you’ve ever—’
‘Dammit, Gracewell.’ She yanked the back of my T-shirt and dragged me away from the window. ‘Listen very carefully to what I’m about to say.’
‘Can you just humour me and take a look—’
‘Persephone Elizabeth Gracewell, listen to me.’
‘All right,’ I said, refocusing. ‘I’m listening.’
She inhaled a giant breath and did a slow-blink. ‘OK. Have you ever met my mum’s friend, Emily?’
‘The millionaire from London?’
‘She married a millionaire,’ Millie corrected. ‘She’s from the same estate as my mum.’
I tried to act like the distinction mattered to me. ‘OK, what does she have to do with anything?’
‘Trust me,’ Millie said, moving close enough so I could count her freckles. ‘Emily has everything to do with this.’
‘I’m listening.’
‘So the first thing you need to know is that Emily is a total bitch. And these days she has way more money than sense.’
‘You better not be about to compare me to Emily,’ I interjected.
‘No, I just don’t want you to feel sorry for her.’
‘It already seems a little one-sided.’
‘Some people are just assholes, OK?’ Millie said. ‘Like, one time Emily tried to get with my dad at a party, in front of my mum, who’s supposed to be her friend. The last time she came to visit us, she hit on Alex. Major no-no. Do you see what I mean?’
‘Um, I suppose,’ I reasoned. ‘But in a wider context? No. Not at all.’
‘So, Emily went on this cruise a couple of years ago,’ she continued. ‘She likes to flaunt how mega-rich she is now – if there was a cruise ship made of gold, she’d be on it. Anyway, at one point on the cruise, which I can only imagine was all kinds of boring, she got to go out and see the dolphins close up. There was a group of them on this little speedboat and they were riding along and the dolphins got so excited they started chasing the boat. After a while, they came level with the boat and were jumping out of the water at the same speed. Emily was loving it, snapping photos and flooding her Instagram while she stood as close to the side as she could. All her captions were like “OMG best day ever”, “Ahh, this one is definitely smiling at me. I think he fancies me!” and “Free Willy LOL”, which is annoying because Willy was a freaking orca and you know I hate when old people overuse text abbreviations.’
Millie paused to assess my reaction.
‘Right,’ I said. ‘So … this is all still very vague …’
‘Well, you won’t believe what happened next,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘One of the dolphins overshot the mark. He jumped out of the water and ended up headbutting her in the face. He knocked her clean out.’
‘What?’
Millie’s eyes went impossibly large. ‘Yeah.’
‘Wow,’ I said. ‘That is really not how I saw that ending.’
‘So,’ she said, stepping back from me and lacing her fingers in front of her. ‘What are your thoughts?’
‘Was the dolphin OK?’
‘Yeah, he went right back on swimming.’ She grinned, before adding, ‘She had to get a second nose job, though.’
‘Right,’ I said, still trying to figure out the point of the story. I never was that good with metaphors in English class, but this one seemed particularly obscure. ‘And the reason you told me this story is because …’
‘Because, Soph, life is unpredictable. One minute you’re sipping champagne on a boat deck and laughing about how rich you are and the next minute you’re getting hit in the face by a dolphin. Shit happens, OK? No matter where you are or what you’re doing, you are still susceptible to the uncertainty of life. You can’t just roll yourself up in bubble wrap and close off the rest of the world. My point is that you need to get off your ass and come back outside before we lose the tail end of this summer and get sucked into the oblivion that is senior year.’
‘Well,’ I said, feeling very much like I had just had my ass handed to me. ‘I can’t really argue with that.’
‘No you cannot. The Dolphin Philosophy always prevails.’ She raised her palm in the air. ‘Now let’s get you back to normal, OK? Up top.’
I high-fived her and she grabbed my wrist. ‘Hey, where did this bandage come from? Did you cut yourself?’
Oh, yeah. That. ‘Accidentally …’ I hedged. ‘I sort of fell asleep with Luca’s switchblade in my hand.’
‘As you do,’ she deadpanned, moving her suspicious gaze from my hand to my face. ‘You really need to get rid of that.’
‘I will,’ I lied. The thought of relinquishing it brought an uncomfortable twinge to the base of my spine. It was in my pocket even then, resting heavy and sure against my thigh. I liked it. I needed it.
‘The sooner we get you out of this house the better. Tomorrow night, OK? How does bowling sound?’
‘Like fresh hell.’ I withdrew my hand and pulled the sleeve of my shirt over it. ‘I’d rather take a dolphin to the face.’
‘You should be so lucky,’ she retorted. ‘The movies, then?’
‘Only if we can watch that one with the robot who falls in love with the human who made him.’
‘Sophie,’ she whined. ‘You know I can’t relate to non-human love stories. That’s why The Princess and the Frog was so problematic for me. They spend way too much time as frogs.’
‘Mil, if I’m going to re-enter society, I’ll be damned if it’s not to the backdrop of a futuristic romance that transcends both scientific engineering and biology to conquer impossible odds for true love.’
‘Fine,’ she conceded, with an eye-roll. ‘I’ll suffer this one for you.’
‘Oh, cheer up. It’ll be fun.’ I patted her on the arm, trying to force some enthusiasm. ‘Smize.’