Curiouser and Curiouser

Dido Dahl made up her mind once and for all that she was going to leave and then didn’t, much as she’d been doing for some thirty minutes.

She stared at the cafe door, willing Amy to walk through it. Hadn’t they agreed to two pm? Hadn’t she said she really needed to speak to her? No, actually, she hadn’t because she’d been afraid that if she did Amy would have asked why, and that was a question she still wasn’t sure she’d be able to answer. She’d inferred it, hadn’t she? How often did she ask to see Amy? Not that often. Wasn’t she careful not to bother her? Surely she had somehow osmotically conveyed a sense of import?

Dido took a long breath, trying to steady her nerves which had already been thoroughly frayed when she’d arrived here and were, by now, ground down to nothing. She glanced around at the hectic to-and-fro of the café, bustling with other students in the midst of their own personalized stresses, and then quickly snapped her eyes back to the table in front of her. It was as if, to everyone else here, she was completely transparent. That they could all see straight through her white T-shirt with the faded star on the front, her skinny, bony body with its short fuss of dark hair, her thick rimmed glasses sitting astride a one-size-too-large head… to the awful truth she’d been deranged enough to think she was ready to let loose.

Why couldn’t Amy have arrived when she’d felt ready? She’d had words worked out, a script to follow. Half an hour earlier she had all been ready to go. But now none of it sounded right. She couldn’t just vomit a revelation like this into Amy’s lap. She couldn’t just say it.

Except she had to.

She had to, because one week earlier she’d realised, quite out of nowhere, that it had been three years since the last time she’d tried to say this to anyone. Three. Years. It seemed ridiculous something like this could be left for that long, but she’d managed it. She’d failed then, chickened out, but promised herself every day after that it was just a set-back. She’d find the right moment sooner or later, the right person. It’d happen when she was ready. And now it was thirty-six months later, and she still hadn’t said a word.

It terrified her that she was capable of that. If she could leave it three years, she could leave it forever. She could just never do it.

That thought had nestled into her brain and become the only thing she could think about the last few days. If she didn’t tell someone now, that would be it. It would become impossible, impassable. So she had, over the course of several hours, typed out a text asking if Amy would be free to talk about something, and, eyes closed, hands clammy, hit send.

Amy was her friend, she’d told herself. She’d not react badly. It was the first time in her life Dido had reason to believe that. After she’d sent the message and the dread had finally abated, an incredible excitement had overtaken her. This time it would happen. Amy was definitely the right person for this. They might have only really known each other a few months, but she’d been so nice, invited Dido to board game nights and all kinds of precious events like that. She’d wanted to know what she wasn’t saying when she was quiet. And Dido was quiet a lot.

Where is she then?

Now, though, sitting here, long after their appointed meeting time, that energy had drained away. Now everything seemed wrong, too delayed to be done properly.

Maybe Amy wasn’t coming, she thought, the idea sending a wave of relief through her. She had forgotten their meeting, likely distracted by something far more important. Nothing personal, it happened. The delay wouldn’t be Dido’s fault, she didn’t need to feel bad about it. She could try again, when she had a bit more confidence, when she wasn’t so strung out and couldn’t feel the sweat trickling down her backside.

This was the universe doing her a favour, letting her off the hook. Today, at least, she was allowed to wait a bit longer.

She was just barely out of her seat when Amy sprang from the crowd, smiling in a way that made you feel like she was shining a spotlight on you. The chubby, brown-haired girl hailed her:

“Hey! You been here long?” She frowned at Dido, frozen mid-flight. “We are still meeting, yes?”

Dido hovered, a part of her cursing herself for not leaving a minute earlier. Just thirty seconds even and she’d have been able to leave this for another day.

But there was no running now. After a moment she attempted to reseat herself as naturally as possible. “Yep. We are.”

Amy’s bright eyes were already scanning the menu. “Can’t stay too long, sorry. Need a coffee. Want anything? My treat.”

“Uh. The same, I guess—”

“Super. Back in a sec.” Amy darted off, leaving Dido to frantically try and remember her lines. It was all happening. No backing out. God, she was shaking. Breathe. Breathe.

This is it.

Amy returned shortly and handed over a coffee, which had been a bad choice on Dido’s part since her throat was dry and she could have used some water and was already plenty wired without any caffeine, but—

Amy took her seat. “How are things?”

Dido tried to stop herself thinking. Thinking never helped.

“Good. Can’t complain. Lots of work to do—” It was so loud in the café she felt like she could barely be heard. Why had she decided to do this here? She wanted to shout at everyone else to shut the hell up. “The usual.”

“Mm hm. Sorry, three classes this morning, brain going.” Amy laughed. Most sentences spoken by Amy were accompanied by at least a chuckle. “I wanna crawl up in bed with a book. Not the books they’re making me read, obviously. Other books. I dunno, these are all right, I’m just mad at them. I have to get this out of the way by Thursday—”

She reached into her bag and dumped a copy of Alice in Wonderland on the table, a white library slip sticking out from under the cover.

“19th Century Lit.” Maybe she noticed the expression that had shot across Dido’s face because she frowned and asked, “You read it?”

“A while ago.” The book briefly pulled Dido’s attention away from her nervous breakdown. It was the exact same edition she’d had as a child, the same plain red clothbound cover with the title embossed in gold. She hadn’t seen that book in ten years. Its appearance blocked out everything else for a moment, thinning the clot of thoughts in her head.

Amy took a big gulp of coffee. “I need to write a response to it for my tutorial. Any ideas?”

Dido’s brain returned to its coagulated state. “I mean, I don’t remember most of it. How are you doing, otherwise?”

“Super. Mostly,” Amy replied. “I saw Aiden the other day. He said to say hi. So: Hi from Aiden.”

Dido did not remember an Aiden. Possibly she’d been introduced to him at some point, but she was bad with putting names to faces. “That’s nice, I hope he’s doing well.”

“He’s same as always. Hey, you wanted to talk to me, didn’t you? Something up?”

The spotlight increased to a blinding intensity. The moment had come, but Dido wasn’t ready.

“Oh, um… I thought it would be good to catch up. We used to hang out a lot more when we had Bio together.” This was excruciating. Amy must be able to see something was wrong, Dido was practically on fire—

“Can’t believe I ever thought science was my thing.” Amy retrieved her phone from her bag. “Thank God you were around. Hang on, getting a meeessage.”

Damn it, Dido thought, she should just tell her now. This was her opening, why was she wasting it?

“Sorry, Beth’s texting me. Uno momento…”

Say it. Say it, why can’t you say it?

“But yeah, it’s totally great to see you…”

You still haven’t said it. You’ve been waiting years. She’s the only person you know who you even could tell. Why are you waiting?

“Been a while, after all…”

JUST SAY IT. WHAT COULD BE WORSE THAN NOT SAYING IT? NAME ME ONE THING WORSE THAN LEAVING THIS CAFE HAVING NOT SAID A WORD. YOU KNOW WHAT THAT WOULD MEAN. YOU KNOW THAT WOULD BE IT. 

“Maybe we could do another board game thing or something—”

“Actually, I did have something I wanted to tell you.”

Amy looked up at Dido’s interruption, appearing a little surprised, though nowhere near as surprised as Dido was at herself. The whole cafe seemed to have gone quiet, so she could only hear the sound of her own heartbeat.

Ohh you’re screwed now.

All the air seemed to have vacated her lungs. She needed some words. Any words would do.

“I’ve been doing some thinking lately,” she started. “About, um, some personal stuff. And it’s been good getting to know you. You’re a really good friend.” Wow, the words were coming quicker than she’d expected. Amy was smiling, politely, clearly not understanding yet. A slight frown appearing on her brow.

Dido carried on. Over-formal, but she had to get this right. “You’re a really cool person. I’m sorry if it feels like I’ve been relying a lot on you lately, I just felt like… Uh, it’s just I feel like I can talk to you, it’s a bit different with you.” Okay, this had gone on too long, she should just say it.

Come on, say it.

Say the big secret and she’ll know.

She’ll know you think you’re a girl, and there’ll be no taking it back and you’ll have to deal with everything that happens after.

Just like that, it all came to a halt. The words wouldn’t come, they couldn’t. As if they didn’t exist. It was like running full speed into a painting of a tunnel. That was it, as far as she could go.

“Okay.” Amy was still smiling, but a little more pityingly than before.

“It’s, um, nothing, just wanted to tell you that,” Dido blurted out. Couldn’t say it. Couldn’t just say—

“Thanks,” Amy started. Not sounding upset, not sounding annoyed. Confused, but soft and careful. “It really is nice of you to tell me that.” But she looked awkward. Dido had made the most un-awkward person in the world feel awkward. “I mean, I’ve enjoyed hanging out with you too, obvs. You’re nice.”

Oh God, she felt like she needed to reciprocate that ramble. Come on, please just say it, she begged herself. Don’t stop, you know how you’ll feel after, don’t let this go.

“Don’t worry. It’s fine.” Amy smiled tightly. “Y’know, I don’t know you that well. You don’t talk about yourself much. But you don’t have to, or anything. We just had a few classes together. Don’t feel like you have to confess anything to me.”

She gave a short, nervous laugh. Dido’s thoughts turned into a manic blur. She’d been right. This wasn’t wanted. She’d misjudged. Amy didn’t want to know her, not that well. No, she couldn’t do it. It had never been the right time. She should have known.

“Not that I don’t want to know you better or anything,” Amy added hastily. “If there’s anything important?”

Dido stayed silent. The revelation sat deep inside, still unglimpsed.

Amy looked as though she was going to say something else, but her attention diverted to her phone.

“Sorry, uh, Beth is texting me again,” she said. Dido had no idea who Beth was either. She probably didn’t know any of Amy’s real friends. “Um. I have to go. Sorry, don’t mean to cut and run, she’s just got a lot going on. Kinda needs help. But I’ll see you round.”

Mercifully, Amy moved to leave. Dido muttered a half-heard farewell, then waited while she moved away through the crowd.

She hadn’t done it.

She was never going to do it.

***

What do you do after the worst day of your life?

Dido decided to go to the library. She found a desk on one of the upper floors, tucked away behind the shelves, invisible.

She could have tried to cheer herself up. Found something, some indulgence, to make things a little bit better. But she didn’t. That would have meant acknowledging in some way what had happened.

Instead, she had taken one look at the black morass of self-pity and shame that had been birthed inside her and decided not to touch it. It was too much. Even the bits that were visible and comprehensible to her were more than she could deal with.

Tomorrow she would get up and do the same things she did every day. Go to lectures, read books, sit in libraries. The same as for the last three years.

Except it won’t be the same, will it?

She sat in silence under the flickering fluorescent lights, reproducing the contents of her textbook onto sheets of refill.

Now you know. This really is forever. There’s no day this magically changes. You’re not capable of it.

She wouldn’t go home yet. Not for a while. Her Mum wouldn’t be expecting her for dinner, anyway.

You were never going to tell her. No one’s ever going to know. Why go through all that for nothing? Can’t you just stop?

Better to wait until it was late. Sneak in and go straight to bed. She’d been doing that a lot lately. No one seemed to notice.

Wouldn’t it be nice if this all stopped?

Her pen slipped as she lost her place. Don’t listen to that, she told herself. Don’t. Focus on something else. Anything else—

And then, just at the point where she needed a distraction most of all, she saw Alice in Wonderland was sticking out from her pile of textbooks, the glint of its gold lettering catching her eye. Had Amy left it behind? She didn’t remember taking it with her. How had it got mixed in with her things?

She pulled it from the pile and opened it. In the back was the old cardboard slip where people would have their names written when they took the book out, not in use for years since the system became digital. The list scrawled there went back years. All the way to—

Ten years ago. Exactly when she’d thrown away her copy at the age of twelve. And it was so much like the one she’d had…

But that was impossible. Just a weird coincidence.

There had been a space left on the inside cover to write your name. “This book belongs to…”

Couldn’t be.

Could it?

She turned back the pages and then dropped the book onto the desk.

There it was. Unmistakable. The truth buried deep inside her. Dido. Written in black, felt-tip pen in a child’s scrawl. A name that shouldn’t have been known by anyone else.

She slammed the cover shut, the noise echoing through the dusty, empty building, and leaned back in her seat away from the cursed thing. Had to be just her imagination. A trick of the light. Her copy was gone, destroyed, it couldn’t have followed her here. It couldn’t.

Suddenly that awful darkness she’d tried to ignore was there in front of her, staring back from under the red cloth cover.

Get rid of it.

Grabbing the slim volume, which seemed to tingle in her hand, she abandoned her notes, heading down a shadowy aisle as deep and as remote as any part of the library, and jammed it between two others on the nearest shelf. Somewhere it would never be found again.

She stepped back from it, half expecting it to leap out at her. Instead, the lights flickered once more. The threat lay dormant.

She almost turned to go back to her desk and collect her things, but stopped as she felt an odd, wet squelch under her foot. Oh god, what had she stepped in? Why was everyone at Uni so disgusting?

There was a puddle forming beneath her, a white goop spreading out from the bookshelf. She tried to jump back out of it, but it was oddly sticky, like chewing gum, and her foot was caught. What the hell was it? There were little black marks in it, almost like…

Words?

She looked up at the shelves and could see that the books resting there were starting to sag and collapse. The pages plopped out from between their covers and dribbled to the floor.

The paper was melting.

Dido tried to pull herself loose again but was even more stuck now. Horribly, the gunk that had been History and Geography was crawling up her leg. It slunk up under her jeans, clutching at her.

In front of her even more books were liquidating, the entire shelf turning into a waterfall of white slop. Then it seemed to harden, becoming like marble. She could see herself reflected in it.

Then that image changed. Instead of herself, she saw events. Moments from her recent past, talking with Amy, that awful evening with her Mum, lying in bed at night hearing something at the window—

This broke down further until she could see songs and dances and colours, somehow all still components of her life, all still a reflection of her. She almost didn’t notice the goop rolling up over her face, sliding down her throat and then, finally, coating her eyes, leaving her in a world of—

***

—white.

Everything was white.

There was nothing ahead of Dido but unyielding blankness. There was no horizon even, the point where the land met the sky indiscernible.

Wait, sky? The library was gone and, in fact, the whole campus. She was somewhere else entirely, if you could call this empty world somewhere.

“Hello?!” she shouted. Somehow her voice didn’t carry as it should if she were outdoors. It sounded like it would in an airless room, muffled and small.

She tried to walk and couldn’t tell whether she’d moved forward or not. The ground, if it was ground, was soft and yielding. A bit like snow. It didn’t look like it, though. It looked like white. Not something that was white, just… white.

She wished there was a horizon. Some sense of distance. And as soon as that thought occurred, one appeared, as if it had been waiting for an invitation. She looked down at the blankness beneath her and imagined snow, real snow, the messy, tough, wet, dirty stuff that clogged the streets at Christmas and turned brown in sewer drains…

And in an instant that was what was in front of her. The blankness was filled with tiny details that hadn’t previously existed. Dido picked it up and sifted it through her hands, the unmistakable crumbly dampness telling her this was indeed snow, or a very good facsimile.

It still wasn’t quite right, more like she was interacting with a very high-definition photograph than something that truly existed, but it wasn’t as unnerving as it had been.

Something else had arrived, though. Silence. Not the dead absence of stimuli that had been there before, but a real, frightening hush.

“HELLO?!” Her voice carried across the tundra properly, echoing back at her, allowing her to hear a slight tremor of fear in it.

There was no response to her cries. That made sense. This place hadn’t even existed until she’d arrived. Who did she think was going to be living here?

This was a world with only her in it.

She wondered if she should panic just a little, as that was probably a healthy thing to do in this kind of situation. But there was nothing to panic about yet, was there? She didn’t actually know anything about what was going on. She should save that until the horror became a bit more concrete at least.

But the snow was getting more genuine by the second, slushier and thicker than any snow she’d known before. A newly born wind snatched it up and threw it in her face. She started to try and move through it and found it harder as it gained substance. It was the snowiest snow she’d ever seen, as if the world around her was taking her memories and amplifying them, picking out everything she associated with winter and making it bigger.

What is snow?

Snow is fun, she tried to tell the world. Snow is something you play in. You make blobby looking men out of it and throw it at people.

What is snow? Come on, think it…

Snow is… She tried to think of something else, anything else. Snow is… Wet, messy, uh, uh, water, snow is—

Snow is cold.

And then it was colder than any snow she’d encountered before, colder than anything she’d ever imagined. In seconds it cut to her bones and she sensed her face start to frost over. She let the panic happen. She started, while she still could, to scream—

“HELP! HELP ME, I’M LOST! HELP ME!”

Then she heard a whistle.

With a cry of pain, Dido managed to force herself forward toward the sound, the ice eating deep into her as she went, so deep it nearly reached her heart.

It had sounded like a train letting off steam. She tried picturing it, to will it into existence. That seemed to be how this place worked. If she could picture that train, then she knew it would be there—

And then it was. A massive black steam engine, a monster of a thing, standing out starkly against the storm. Dido didn’t bother to shout out, she just kept forcing her way through the snow as it built up around her, nearly to her chest—

Her hands hit the gleaming, obsidian surface and she felt warmth, the heat of the engines fighting against the freeze. She found a door and pulled at it.

It wouldn’t budge.

The snow was almost covering her eyes. Desperately she tugged, but it was sealed tight and her strength was giving out. The ice was now so realistic she swore she could see the perfect, star shaped flakes which composed it.

Then there was a metallic grinding sound. A hand shot out and hauled her up out of the tundra. Warm air hit her face and she saw gleaming gold all around her.

Then, because it had been a very hard day, she let herself pass out and gently slide to the floor.