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I was allowed to stay downstairs until Rose blew out the sixteen candles on her birthday cake. Nancy, with a lot of help from Nana, had created a magic-looking Malteser cake, which looked like the bag of chocolates was hovering in midair. The number sixteen was spelled in chocolate balls too. It really was very impressive. When the bowls were all cleared away, Rose started opening her presents, surrounded by friends and people who loved her. My mother gave her a beautiful pale blue designer dress, and I felt the jealousy growing inside me until it hurt. But I wasn’t the only one. Lily looked at that dress as though it should have been hers, which might be why Rose immediately put it away in her wardrobe upstairs. When Rose opened Nana’s present—the bronze, silver, and gold ring that Rose still wears today—I remember how hard it was not to cry. The ring was so beautiful, just like my sister. I wished it were mine.
“Time for bed now, Daisy,” my mother said in front of everyone, and I hated her a little bit. I didn’t feel like a child, even though I was one, and I didn’t like the way she spoke to me in front of everyone else. I was old enough by then to notice that my motheralways wanted to hide me away from the world, as though I were something to be ashamed of. At least that’s how it felt.
Ten-year-old me did go upstairs, but I didn’t go to bed as instructed.
Instead I snuck into my sisters’ bedroom, while everyone else was having too much fun downstairs to realize. I opened their wardrobe and found the pale blue dress my mother had given Rose for her birthday. The tags were still attached. I didn’t care that it didn’t belong to me, or that it was several sizes too big. I was sick of wearing hand-me-downs that were years old, and faded from being washed too many times. I put the dress on and admired my own reflection. Disappointed by what I saw, I borrowed one of Lily’s bras, stuffed it with socks, and pulled the dress over my head again. I looked better, even if one fake boob was bigger and higher than the other. Next I stole a pair of shoes, kitten heels that were too big and impossible to walk in, but that didn’t bother me. I never knew my shoe size as a child because I always just wore the shoes Rose and Lily had grown out of.
I borrowed some of my sisters’ makeup. Applying it wasn’t something I was good at—having never been shown—but I’d give myself an A for effort. Then I backcombed my hair. I’m still not sure why anyone ever thought this looked good, but in 1986, big hair wascool.I sprayed a can of hairspray all over the creature on top of my head until I made myself cough, and admired the finished result in the mirror. My face was a shock of pink lipstick and blue eye shadow, my hair looked as though I had stuck my fingers in a socket, but the blue dress was beautiful, and I liked what I saw.
Not sure what to do next, but still in the mood to do things I knew I shouldn’t, I opened Rose’s diary, which she kept by her bed. I understood that what she wrote inside was private, but I wanted to know everything about the lives that my sisters got to lead. Ifound one of Rose’s hush poems scribbled on a scrap of paper, hidden between the pages, and I sang it out loud.
Hush, little baby, don’t say a word.
Mama’s gonna buy you a mockingbird.
And if that mockingbird does scream,
Mama’s gonna trap you inside a dream.
And if that dream is a scary place,
Mama’s gonna put a pillow over your face.
Hush, little baby, don’t you cry.
Sometimes we live, sometimes we die.
There were magazines spread across Lily’s side of the room—she lovedJust Seventeen—and there were a pair of scissors on top of an open page, where she had been cutting out the faces of her favorite boy bands and sticking them to the wall. Lily was obsessed with boys by then, and to be fair, they were fairly obsessed with her in return.
I could hear my sisters and their friends playing a game downstairs in the hall, so I crept out onto the stairs so that I could listen. The game involved striped drinking straws, the kind Nana normally used for homemade lemonade. The rules of the game were hard to follow, but the boys picked blue-and-white straws, the girls picked red-and-white ones, and the boy and girl with the shortest straws were locked in the cupboard under the stairs for one minute. The cupboard with no light. And mice. And spiders. But spiders aren’t the only ones to spin webs to catch their victims.
I peered down at them all through the banister, and it didn’t look like a fun game to me. When Rose and Conor chose the short straws and were locked inside, Lily looked very upset. The group of ten or so teenagers were all counting down the seconds andgiggling, and I couldn’t resist slowly creeping down the stairs to get a closer look. When the clocks in the hallway all struck midnight, the kids all screamed.
Lily unlocked the cupboard.
But Rose and Conor didn’t come out; they were too busy kissing.
“Look! It’s therealDaisy Darker!” said a boy I’d seen staring at me earlier. He looked like he ate too many chocolate bars.
Nobody else noticed me at all; they were too busy staring at Rose and Conor. I guess I’m one of those people who other people just don’t see. Lily was crying in the corner of the hallway for some reason; the mascara she had been wearing had leaked down her cheeks in a series of inky tears. Rose and Conor were still kissing—as though the rest of us weren’t there—and I decided that it was time for bed after all.
I ran up the stairs and back into my sisters’ bedroom, pulling off the blue designer dress. I could still hear all the clocks striking midnight down in the hall, and they sounded louder than normal. That’s when I noticed the scissors on top of Lily’s pile of magazines again. I didn’t really think about it, didn’t hesitate. I shredded that blue dress so that Rose would never ever get to wear it. Then I put the thin strands of silky blue material in her bed, hiding them beneath her pillow. I put the scissors on Lily’s bedside table and left everything else exactly as I found it.
Lily got the blame, and a silent war started between my sisters.
Everyone thought it was an act of revenge.
They were right about that part.
31
October 31, 3:15 a.m.
less than three hours until low tide
Back in the present, I think I’m the first to hear a noise spoiling what should be silence. It’s the sound of ringing in the distance. Like an old-fashioned alarm clock.
“Can anyone else hear that?” I whisper.
