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

CHAPTER 54

The funeral did not last long. Perhaps if her people were in attendance things might've been different. But I didn't even know Debbie existed before she knocked on my door that day. And no one answered Matron Caine's calls to her emergency numbers either. So it was just us – the Bunny House girls – who helped sound Debbie's last trumpet. I sat numb through it all, thinking all sorts of things. Is this how my funeral will be? Chairs at the front filled by perfect strangers? Strangers who'll be unable to say for sure if the girl in the coffin looks anything like the one in the mirror, because it'll be their first time seeing me?

Hazel puts a comforting hand on my back and leaves it there a while, so I can suck her empathy dry. Back behind the safety of the hostel's walls, she continues to fuss over me. But Hazel can never replace Lily; even though she showed up just after Lily died, and tolerates my bitterness like no one else. I guess you can say she's my angel. But I'll never tell her that. Never! And you keep your mouth shut too, or I'll stop thinking these thoughts so loud.

My feet want to take me upstairs but I know Hazel will follow and I can't risk her seeing the wall. So I pause like I'm on two minds about where to go. She takes that opportunity to lead me into her favourite place.

"Don't worry about how things seem," she starts off. "Everything will make sense in the end."

"All empty words to me," I say bitterly. "I need things to make sense now."

"Maybe not right now, Mary; but soon. Just know it'll all work out somehow."

"Like it did for Debbie?" I spit out. "Abandoned like a dog in her final hour? Hell, I know I like to say I've got no family. But everybody must come from somewhere, Hazel?"

"Maybe what you should be doing is focussing on your birthday in eleven days."

"And my eviction?" I grab the red slip out of my pocket to remind her.

"That'll work itself out. I just know it. But you. You only get to be twenty-two once."

"As far as I'm concerned, twenty-two equals zero!"

"What on earth does that even mean?"

"It means I'm a zero. I'm nothing. In fact, the best thing that can happen right now is for my whole life to come undone. If I can just find some way to bring me back to day zero, I can erase this entire thing; remove all this frustration and unanswered questions."

"Or." Hazel gets up and holds my face between her red hands. "Or you can reset it, Mary."

"Reset it? Why the hell would I do that?" I push her hands away and stand too. "All I want is to disappear, just like all my relatives and now Matron wants me to. I want to lie down and die."

"There are plenty of other ways to disappear without dying, Mary."

"I know. How about we get one of your imaginary angels to hide me forever and ever?"

"Don't say empty words or they'll come for you."

"What the hell! Hazel, can you be serious just this once?"

"I am being serious," she stresses. "If you call them, they'll answer."

"Okay, then. Call them! I dare you. Call your angels right now and see if they'll come help!"

"All I'm saying is when twenty-two becomes zero, let zero become one."