Chapter One

 

His head is ripped off. In that photograph. Of him. Kit spots it buried among four years worth of undergraduate essays; the photo she stole from her half-sister Ivy, and misplaced in an effort to keep safe.

She drags her bottom dresser drawer out too far. The stiff wood clunks as it slips out of its casing and hits the floor with a thud. Sitting cross-legged and naked on the hot itchy carpet, she stares at the photograph—at five-year-old Ivy's carefree grin and trusting arms wrapped around her father's knees. A drop of sweat tickles Kit's crotch. She scratches herself and wipes her wet fingers on the carpet beside her thigh as she stares at her father's hand placed delicately on the top of Ivy's head, and Ivy's sideways and upward glance toward his non-existent face. Kit touches the top of her own head, trying to imagine what his touch may have felt like, what it would have been like to be Ivy those twenty-five years ago, before she was even born.

She stands. Her knees crack. They've cracked ever since she fell off her bicycle when she was six and the rubber seat ruptured her hymen. She rubs her left hand on her thigh to dislodge the tiny beige pebbles that have embedded themselves into her palm. Stupid new garden path. She places the photo on her bedside table, propping it up against the wall behind her bedside lamp, where her four-year old self drew a wobbly shape of a rainbow with blue biro onto the cream parchment. It's still there.

Kit sighs, squints at Ivy's apparent joy in the photograph, and bites her thumb nail. It rips off too low and starts to bleed. She sucks it, then hooks it under the knuckle of her index finger to stop the flow. It stings like the time she accidentally lodged a sewing needle below it. She'd heard that the white crescents at the base of people's nails were actually full of air and wanted to see if she could pop one like a balloon and listen to the air wheeze through the hole.

There's no time better than now.

She scoops her university papers out of the drawer like an eagle catching prey, and with one swift movement, drops her entire collection of archaeological lecture notes, research method essays, and Cypriot artifact analyses into the cardboard box on her bed. But the postgraduate application form she has to fill out and submit before the month is out, which is folded six times over and stuffed into the smallest pocket of her handbag has a heart of its own. She whispers, “Not now. Not yet…” to the rhythm of its beat, and zips her handbag shut. ... cont.

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