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Faye and Falaun
She is smiling in that odd, quirky way we have come to call
her own version of the Mona Lisa smile. I keep looking at her.
“Goodbye,” She says, and the curtains are flung wide open, flung so that they
are torn too.
“Goodbye,” I repeat, dumbly. I cannot get her beautiful eyes out of my mind –
the kind that go with Norah Jones music. Slow, blues-y and green-grey, as far
away as the sea and as close as here and now.
She climbs into her shiny black limousine and then she is off, driving at
regulation speed down the crooked street. I stare after the taillights of the
car long after it disappears, thinking it is still glimmering there.
Then I crumple the notes I meant to give her, folded ever so tiny in my hands. I
shred them into tiny, tiny pieces. I wait till a gust of wind blows my way, then
let them fly, over the houses, over the pristine yards, over the neat, lonely
islands of suburbia into the vast unknown.
My name is Faye. That’s about all you really need to know about me right now.
Eventually you’ll learn that Faye is a strange girl indeed, one with her own
quirks and fancies, as they say. Faye is a loner, sulking by herself and longing
to be with others. Faye is restless, like a caged fairy. Faye would love to
dance her way out of mundane things, but she doesn’t know how to dance. So
instead she writes.
I feel like my whole life I’ve been moving. Never settled down, never grew up in
the same house I was born in. With every new boyfriend, every new marriage, my
mother and I moved. At first it was simple road trips across the country. Then,
when Derek dumped Mum, she went on this travelling splurge and brought me to
India for a whole year, depositing me in boarding school while she toured the
country. I was always something to be gotten rid of, anyway. Then we went to
England for two years, one year in London and one year in Bristol. I loved
London to bits, but I hated the uphill/downhill complex Bristol had, and the
snotty school I went to there, where the girls were uptight bitches who just
wanted to seduce guys, and the guys were rough idiots who just wanted to screw
girls. A sexathon, basically. That was last year, and now we’re back in the US
with the one boyfriend Mum’s actually married, Randall. I don’t know how long
he’ll last, so I’m trying not to form any attachments to him. When I was younger
I made friends with Mum’s boyfriends and they made friends with me, and when
they left it was like I lost a father, over and over again. But I’ve never had a
real father. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have a real father,
just like the other kids.
Mum is a free spirit, a girl who never grew up. She wanted to run away with the
love of her life, leaving everything else behind. Instead she got stuck with a
child and a difficult life, moving from one person to the next, always longing
for the one person she had to leave behind… my father. Except only she knows who
he is. She won’t tell anyone. Not even my grandmother knows who my father is.
I’ve always wondered how she can keep a secret like that, but it seems she can.
For years and years, too, and nobody knows why it has to be this way, either.
I always pronounced Falaun’s name with its own flavour. Fuh-laun was how I
usually pronounced it, when everyone else pronounced it Fah (rhymes with Fa in
fallacy) len. I fancied this accent a British accent, but really it was only a
contortion of my own accent. She humoured me, letting me pronounce her name any
way I liked. To me, Fuh-laun was a different person altogether, much different
from the childlike, plain Fah-len. Fuh-laun was glamorous and shone like her own
little star. She would gaze seductively out at her audience, wink while she
opened her mouth briefly, and pop one high-heeled foot out in the air. Then she
would dance down to Earth. Falaun didn’t seem to mind me calling her
differently, though all the other people stared in class, and when I referred to
her, they would correct me, saying, “You mean Fah-len.” I was adamant about my
pronunciation of her name, just as I am often strangely adamant about small
things.
Zoom in on my first day of school at Yulen Academy. Me = small and
insignificant. Yulen Academy = big and strange, formidable, pronounced in the
French way. I am wearing a white button-down shirt with a short plaid skirt,
which I consider to be the simplest fashion statement that actually is a fashion
statement. I realise right away that most people here dress differently, and
they frown on a faux-schoolgirl-type wannabe like me. Even though I hate to be
one of those “mainstream” types, I long to be one now.
I walk through the marble arches down the pebbly path into the cold stone
building, wanting. I feel like the girl in Love Lessons¸ one of those books I
carry around randomly and quote randomly, all alone and being stared at. The New
Girl. No one is staring at me this time – instead they are hurrying on by, as if
they have important places to be. The school is spread out over the grounds in
various huts, and I feel lost, as if I will never be able to manoeuvre my way
about this place. A familiar feeling, one that trespasses my mind every time I
start something over again.
I remember the frantic way I studied myself in the mirror earlier that morning.
I had stared at myself naked for a long time. I looked funny, odd, out of place.
Even in a nude procession I would have been out of place. I had quickly donned
the matching set of lingerie Mum had bought for me, deciding I was old enough to
wear it.
I had trailed my hands over my breasts, remembering the way Liam had touched me
there. I had wished he was there, to see me dress, to tell me I looked
wonderful. I had squeezed my eyes shut, remembering the odd way we had parted,
the strangeness of our snuggling on the couch in front of our mothers. It had
been so abrupt, so sudden. So that I cried in frustration for a minute or two
after he left, wondering if somehow I could reverse time, and lengthen those
moments.
The principal sees me for a moment and then hands me a schedule, and a prefect
shows me the way until I reach the cold, unfriendly room that is my creative
writing class. It is grey and not personified: a simple dullness with somewhat
too ornate desks and chairs, old Victorian style, with all those curvy black
things. I would admire the furniture if I was my old self, but I’m not. So
instead I hate the furniture, loathe it incessantly, and I don’t know why.
There are other students in the class, all dressed in the same tattered/worn
jeans and basic T-shirts, some preppy girls decked up in jewellery and gauchos.
They are talking and laughing, gathered around a desk or two. The boys are
sprawled out more, laughing more boisterously. Stereotypes play out as girls
flip their lovely hair back and guys snigger at rude jokes.
Then she comes in. And suddenly the furniture gleams and I slide into a front
seat effortlessly, and the other students arrange themselves in synchronisation.
She is so incongruous in that room, it is like comparing an elephant and the
sky. Simple and yet the hardest thing in the world. The world changes each time
she blinks, and ballet dancers should have announced her arrival for there was
nothing more important, nothing at all. I don’t know if I am conscious of all
this at this precise moment, but I have this vague feeling of complete surprise,
complete astonishment.
“Why hello,” She says, as if she has found something very special indeed. “How
nice to see you all. God, this room looks rather drab, doesn’t it? Except for
the desks, I love the desks. But we really must do something as soon as
possible. I heard that before I came here there was this ancient lady teaching
this class, you know the kind, they’re so ancient and old-fashioned they can
barely tolerate anything that’s modern and punk and cool, anyway, I could be
making presumptions but I’m pretty sure I’m not. Gosh I’m blabbering on again.
What I really meant to say is we have to do something to this place.
Immediately. How on earth can we learn to write in an uninspiring atmosphere
like this?” She stops suddenly. We are all gazing at her, entranced.
“Oh my goodness, I’ve forgotten to introduce myself,” She says. “Just the sort
of thing I would do. My name is Falaun. Now you must all tell me your names, for
we have to get acquainted and know each other well, our deepest darkest secrets,
everything. I hope by the end of this year you all know each and every classmate
down to their very core. For they,” She pauses, “are going to be your
observations. You are going to write about what you see around you, or at least
incorporate it somehow, I don’t care if it’s even trying to incorporate human
nature in aliens on Venus, you’ve got to write about what you know to some
extent.”
She turns around and starts writing on the board with a purple marker. I close
my eyes and wonder how this room will be transformed by her. Indian sari
material for curtains, the same material as the skirt she is wearing; beautiful
fake leopard-print framed bulletin boards, rugs shaped like feet and hands, a
wardrobe full of exotic clothes that we’ll all dress up in when we need
inspiration….
I look at the board. All kinds of stuff is scribbled to the left and right,
first a list of books we need to have read by two months from now, then a bunch
of websites for writing, all kinds of stuff. She stops suddenly, and smiles at
us. Her teeth are perfectly white, to the point where you start to wonder if
they’re fake. But somehow you know they aren’t fake.
She goes on, effervescence spilling out of her like bubbles, getting everyone to
introduce themselves. When it is my turn, I stutter a bit and say I like to
write, obviously, then feel dumb for saying such an obvious thing, then wonder
what to say next, and finally give up, frustrated and somehow very angry at
myself for making such a poor impression. But everyone is sympathetically
looking at me. I want to fly away with Falaun, to a place where we can drink
cold decaffeinated coffee and I talk normally about all kinds of interesting
things, my deepest darkest secrets, everything. Instead I just meekly sit down,
resting my head between my hands, wondering what the hell is wrong with me.
Then she starts talking about her politics, and I am so fascinated to hear about
the social work she has done and is interested in doing, and how much she has
travelled, and how she is a strong leftist, I feel like I’ve found someone who
would really understand, finally. She seems exactly like the kind of person I
would long to grow up to be.
Back at home Mum is making coffee and eating a chocolate tart.
“How has your day been?” She asks, sounding like a regular mother. I stare at
her, then mumble something.
“What? Speak up, I didn’t hear you.” She finishes off her tart and holds out a
platter of tarts to me. I shake my head and go up to my room, ignoring her
calls.
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