Chapter Six

 A Smack in the Face for Darrell 

Darrell walked briskly away from the scene. She went home and locked herself in her bedroom. Darrell gritted her teeth. She pushed her face into the pillow and tightly shut her eyes. She heard conspiratorial whispers from the hallway. There was a knock on her door a moment later. Something possessed Darrell to get up from her position on her bed and unlock her bedroom door. She found Sally Hope with a pained expression on her face. Her mouth was contorted in worriment. She kneaded her hands. She tried to straighten her back, before she spoke. ‘Hello, Darrell.’ 

    ‘I saw you.’ 

    ‘Your hair is nice,’ Sally mumbled. ‘It looks fine short. Why didn’t you show me? We could have gone together to the hairdressers. We didn’t mean to upset you, Darrell, you aren’t upset, are you?’

    ‘Samantha cut it for me.’ 

    ‘Are you alright?’ 

    ‘I don’t want to talk with you, Sally, I’m perfectly fine on my own.’ 

    ‘Darrell.’ 

    She shut the bedroom door in Sally’s face and turned back toward her bed. When Darrell heard Sally start a quiet conversation with Mildred in the living room, she thought she might vomit right there, but she also felt an acute desire to strangle something. She had never felt as angry in her life. She had never struggled as much to collect her emotions. Before she knew it, Darrell was storming into the living room. 

    Samantha was by the stove, in a long dress, and Sally and Mildred were sitting on the large armchair by the fire. Darrell clenched her fists. 

    ‘I think the two of you are perfectly disgusting.’ She had started, so Darrell thought she better go on with what she wanted to say. ‘And you, Sally Hope, I bet you wrote lots of disgusting things in those diaries about the girls at Malory Towers. How you wanted to sneak into their beds and cosy up with them. I bet you even fancied Gwendoline, that horrid bitch. I bet you would have kissed her all over, just like you do with Mildred. Well, I don’t want you to ever look at me again, Sally, and I hope you rot.’ 

    Darrell turned away as Sally curled up to Mildred in defense. They were both shaking, and they both had fresh tears in their eyes. 

    Darrell went to her room again. It was raining outside now. She opened the latch of the balcony window. She sat on the wet balcony floor and peered down to the cobbled street. She felt filthy and guilty. Her head span as she looked to the beach. It was a long way down for Darrell Rivers. 

Darrell distracted herself with Plato. They were reading his Republic book for her Classics tutorial on Wednesday. She hadn’t made any headway. Drowning herself in Ancient Greece for a few days seemed like a solid solution to her current problem. It was also a worthy penance, although she didn’t take the latter into consideration herself. 

    Darrell found a dark cranny of the library and read until her eyes were sore. Occasionally, she would get funny looks, and she blamed her unusual haircut. Samantha had done a terrible job cutting her hair, but Darrell, at present, did not have the energy to think about Samantha. 

    It would be too painful to think about Sally or Mildred, so Darrell thought about Plato and his vision of the world, which seemed like a rather too-good-to-be-true one for Darrell. She closed her book. 

    Her breath was foul, and the inside of her mouth felt as coarse as sandpaper. She was incredibly hungry. At the start of term, she had talked to Sally about going to one of the new cafes, which had opened during the holidays. They might’ve shared a tray of fine sandwiches. They would have made an afternoon of it. Darrell was shocked that a conversation like that with Sally could have taken place, as all their conversations now seemed to be barbed and hurtful. Darrell found, when she had thought about Sally that day in the library with Plato, she could only use simple words, like ‘hurtful’ or ‘sad’, to express her feelings, and she wished, with all her heart, that she could communicate the importance of her feelings to herself in a complex fashion. Darrell stopped thinking about Sally; it made her sad. 

    Darrell might’ve left the library and gone to the Bucket and Moon. She’d find John at the bar with his friends. She pictured pushing John off his bar stool. She’d slap him across the face. She would poke him right in the eye. ‘His eyes are blue,’ she recalled, despite herself. ‘A poke in the eye,’ Darrell thought, ‘is precisely what that boy deserves.’ She imagined, if she were still a schoolgirl at Malory Towers, the teachers or her fellow students would find some kind of suitable punishment for John, which taught him the error of his ways. But Darrell was not a schoolgirl anymore. Besides, John was a boy. Boys did not attend Malory Towers. Plato wrote about idiots. John was an idiot. Darrell thought that John was another type of idiot. Surely, he was in a class of his own. Darrell’s taut train of thought came to a stop when someone, a stranger, tapped her on the shoulder. 

    ‘Excuse me,’ the stranger said. ‘Are you Darrell Rivers?’ 

    ‘Yes,’ Darrell replied, raising an acerbic eyebrow in defense. 

    ‘How funny,’ the stranger continued. ‘John always mentions you. I’m one of his friends. Henry. Says you’re quite the catch.’ 

    ‘Nice to meet you,’ Darrell replied. 

    Darrell did not like the idea of being a catch. It made her feel like a fish hooked on the end of the fisherman’s line. 

    Henry hovered by Darrell’s desk. He inspected her. She had been leaning over her course books all day, and she thought she probably looked like death. Darrell’s skin crawled. The boy disappeared into the library at large. Darrell was left alone in her cranny. She desperately wanted a bath. Darrell wondered if Henry had been to the football with John. As she collected her books, Darrell imagined the conversation between John and his friends on the way to the match. ‘She’s a fun one, alright, a real catch,’ John would say. ‘It didn’t take much to get her into bed, either,’ he’d go on, as his friends listened intently. ‘Just look out for a girl with short hair, like a boy, and small breasts, and quite a sharp nose. That’s the thing about Rivers,’ John went on, ‘she’s not much of a looker, but she’ll fuck you for nothing.’ Darrell imagined a chorus of laughter. 

    The sun was setting when Darrell left the university library and wandered in a daze to her lonely room. 

    ‘Dear God, let Henry be hit by a car on his way home, tonight.’ Darrell doubted that God would grant such a wish, but she thought she might as well ask Him.