NINE TIME MACHINES: Do you want to undo your entire life on planet earth?

CHAPTER 53

Just like me, my copper wall has great potential but is incomplete. I stand back and admire my artwork. Perhaps Matron Caine will accept this as part payment. Or maybe not. It will be nice if someone volunteers to finish the job though, like that person who was supposed to pick up where my mother left off. I look back at the mirror in a rage. Look at me. Really look at me. Anyone can see that all I need is some more prodding and shaping. Surely someone can do me that favour. I'm not asking for much. I'll even stick my own self into the oven and watch me brown into completion. Oh, wait until the scent of my greatness rises up in the air. Not even Tessa's shampoo will compare to what I can become – if someone jumpstarts me, that is.

Then I gravitate to my corner of shame, the ball tighter than ever before. This is why I never wanted to breach her graveyard, never wanted to awaken her memory. And now that she's awake, it's the look in her eyes I can't stand; that look of shame and scorn. She doesn't care about silly things like potential. She judges me by her own unrealistic standard of perfection when she should be blaming herself for leaving me behind, mentally unprepared to endure this cruel world. If only I could burn her pictures that shuffle through my mind, I wouldn't hesitate. But then I'd only draw the ashes up and reverse time to happier days. Inhale. Exhale.

Is it wrong that I can't remember much about my mother? Lily, sweet Lily! She's more real to me than Ebony's disgusted voice, the one that crawls behind me when I haunt the corridors on darkest nights. Lily was a true friend. Yet, she too became an elusive dream, abandoned me in the middle of a crisis, as though she wanted me to crack and follow her to that other side everyone talks about. Maybe; just maybe if I whisper into her ear loud enough, I can get Debbie-from-the-ground-floor to hold my hand and yank me through that portal today.