Chapter Seven: My Life HereAfter by Rosaline Saul

Emma and I walk down the long bright passageway. The quiet is eerie as I look at the doors, looking for my name and I wonder who I will share a room with. Almost in the middle of the passage, I see Emma’s name in calligraphy on the door, together with a girl named Sally.

Tears are running silently down Emma’s cheeks and I turn to her, hugging her close to me. Emma has been in most of my classes since third grade, and although we were never close friends, we used to go to the same parties and hang out at the same diners. I put my head on her shoulder and softly we cry together for our families left behind.

Sally comes walking out of the room to the side of us and then stops abruptly when she sees me and Emma still clinging to each other.

I notice Carly walking past us silently, searching for her own dorm room. Her eyes are hazy, and she is walking with a blank stare in her eyes. She is still holding her blood splattered arm up tentatively as if it should hurt, and it is as if she cannot understand where the blood is supposed to have come from if there are no cuts or gashes on her body. Her flesh is intact.

I look up over Emma’s shoulder and look into Sally’s soft brown eyes. She smiles, friendly, and I gently pull away from Emma. As I move away from Emma, I whisper near her ear, “We’ll be okay.”

She nods her head a little and takes a long, loud sniff, and I assume she thought she was doing it in relative privacy until I smile apologetically at Sally across her shoulder.

Emma twirls around and then she smiles embarrassed. “I suppose you are Sally.” Emma points at the door as she says this because, above her own name, Sally’s name is also printed in bold calligraphy.

Sally agrees, “Pleased to meet you, Emma.” Sally looks at me inquisitively.

I explain frantically, “I am Sunel.”

Sally smiles while she steps away from the door. “Come in. Please.”

Emma turns to me. “Come.”

“No. I think I should find my room first. I know where you are, though, so as soon as I have had a shower, I’ll be back and then we can go to the graduation ceremony Vera was talking about.”

“Okay,” she says as she walks into the room. She turns back to me. “I’ll see you soon, okay.” Her face is etched with anxiety and apprehension.

“I promise.”

I walk away from her to look for my own dorm room. Eventually, I find my name, and it looks beautiful and swirly when I see it written under the name, Vanessa.

I knock softly on the door as I push it open, and it moves away from my hand silently. The room is brightly lit by the sun beaming through the lacy curtains swirling in the breeze.

The girl calls from somewhere behind the door. “Hi. You must be Sunel. Come in.”

I walk into the room and all I can see is her back where she is crouched into a cupboard. I hear her muffled voice, “I am just looking for something decent to wear to this stupid graduation, I wish there was something other than white in here.”

She grunts and then she pulls herself out of the cupboard. When she is standing in front of me, she is small and petite. She only reaches my chin and it feels odd looking down at her. Her blonde-brown hair is cut short and frames her pixie face. Her eyes are animé huge and glitter mischievously while she looks me up and down. I feel like a giant next to her.

I smile nervously. “Hi.”

She walks past me to the twin beds standing next to each other with a bedside table separating them. She gestures to the bed opposite from the bed she is walking toward, and says, “That’s your bed.”

I cannot decide if she is nice or not.

When she reaches her bed, she turns to me. “You should go and have a shower. You look awful and you remind me of what this place really is.”

Embarrassed, I remember I am still covered in blood and gore.

She continues, “That cupboard you’re standing in front of, is yours. You will find everything you need in there.”

I turn around and then walk to the cupboard. I want to look back over my shoulder to get confirmation she did mean this particular cupboard, but she is intimidating, and I decide not to. I open the doors and gasp shocked when I see the clothes, hanging in the cupboard. Not my usual dress code, everything is brilliantly white and loose fitting, dress-like kaftans. I see a shelf full of toiletries and a towel hanging from a hook inside the door. I take shampoo, conditioner, and soap in my one hand. With the other hand, I pull a white dress from a hangar and grab the towel from the hook.

I turn back to Vanessa. “Which way is the bathroom?” I ask softly.

She looks up from her nails. “Right, down the hall. You’ll see it.”

I walk out of the room and then turn right, feeling unsure of myself, my eyes dart from door to door until I reach a door with large, black, block letters: Bathroom.

Walking into the room, I hear water running. For a moment, I wonder if I have to wait until I turn the corner and see an entire wall of shower cubicles. I walk into a cubicle at the far end away from the one where I can see steam billowing out from the top.

I hang the towel and white dress over the hook at the back of the door and then turn the nozzle of the shower head down so the spray would not drench my new attire and my means of drying myself.

When I peel my jeans and baby doll shirt from my body, it feels as if it is glued to my skin. The dry blood crackles as it turns into red dust and then drifts down to my feet lazily, where it settles.

I feel reluctant to get rid of my clothes. The shirt is my favourite and it is really the only thing I have left from my old life.

I open the tap while I let my clothes drop to my feet. I open the shampoo bottle, and I pour the liquid generously over the clothes and I start to stomp on it as tears drip down my cheeks.

This is an awfully long way away from home.

The water runs in rivulets down my body and I see the red, pink water trampled into my clothes. Briefly, I wonder if I will ever get the blood out of my clothes when I notice the dark, dark red twirling water running down into the drain.

I trample my clothes harder and harder. I feel as if I want to scream because my stomach hurts, my heart hurts, and my head hurts. I want to go home. I hear a sob and then I realise the sound escaped from my own mouth. I clamp my palm over my mouth and then I stifle the yell I can no longer hold back. I kneel down onto my knees with the shampoo bottle in my hand and I scrub at the bloodstains on my shirt. I feel my knuckles go numb, but I cannot stop myself until the water starts to run clear from my shirt. All the while, I cry. I feel my body shudder where I am hunched over my clothes.

I lean back onto my ankles and hold my shirt up in front of me, pinching it by the shoulders. Most of the blood is washed out and the flowery pattern hides the stains. I reach for my jeans and red water gushes from it onto the floor. I pour the rest of the shampoo in the container over it and push on it repeatedly in a kneading motion, and after what feels like hours, the pink soapy lather runs clear. I hang the pair of jeans next to the shirt over the cubicle wall and watch sadly as faint pink water still runs from it. I scrub my body vigorously with the body soap, and the smell of vanilla fills my nostrils, a smell which reminds me of home, but instead of it making me cry again, I smile nostalgically, while I contemplate that scrubbing the bloodstains from my clothes has had a strange therapeutic effect on me. I wash my hair with the body soap because I had finished the shampoo and then I condition my hair.

When I eventually turn off the tap, and after I dry myself until my skin appears pink, I step out of the cubicle in my loose-fitting white dress. I walk to the basin and I try to wring as much water as possible from my old clothes. I wrap the still wet clothes in the towel and then I brush my fingers through my hair while I look at myself in the mirror. I still look the same, not a scratch or a bruise anywhere to be seen.

I turn away from the mirror and then I walk back to the room I am sharing with Vanessa. I see Carly walk in my direction, and she smiles shyly when she reaches me.

I stop walking and we both ask at the same time, “Are you okay?”

We laugh together nervously, and then she says, “Thank you for earlier and including me in your group.”

“It was nothing. Are you feeling better, though? You were so sad.”

She looks at me pensively. “I am okay now, but I see you yourself had a good cry.”

Embarrassed, I look down to the soft beige carpeting on the floor and consider briefly what an inappropriate colour it is in such a high traffic area. I can actually hear the words in my head, in my mum’s voice.

She moves closer to me, and she touches my arm softly. “It is okay to cry, you know.”

I pull my lips into each other. “I know.” I can feel the sadness building up within me again, and I quickly change the subject. “Do you like your new wardrobe?” I pull the side of my dress away from my body, and she laughs, while she curtseys in front of me.

“It feels like I am wearing my pyjamas.”

“You’re right. It does feel like a nightshirt. Are you going to this graduation thing?”

“Might as well. All the boys have gathered outside already and nobody really knows what we should do, if we decide not go to the graduation.”

Walking with Carly toward the entrance of the building, we stop at my dorm room first. I rush inside and am relieved to see Vanessa is not in the room. I fold the towel into a square and place it on the floor in my cupboard. Quickly I push the hanging clothes aside to one side of the space and then I hang my jeans and my shirt over the railing. The water drips slowly from the hems, but the top is made from a soft, sheer material so it will dry much faster than the heavier pair of jeans.

I close the door and close my eyes for a moment, hoping wishes here comes true faster than it did on Earth, if ever, and I hope the clothes dry quickly and does not make the room smell funny.

When we knock on Emma’s door, a girl calls from ahead of us, “Emma already left with Sally.”

I feel disappointed because she did not wait for me, but I shrug my shoulders while I look at Carly and we walk to the light radiating through the door in the foyer.

Vera is standing at the top of the stairs when we push ourselves through the double doors. “If you all follow me quietly; I will lead you to the Gallery.”

I notice Emma already walking across the hill with Sally and Vanessa. I frown briefly and I feel betrayed.

She could have waited for you, the voice in my head insists.

We walk away from the dorm and when I glance sideways, I see Mark and at that moment, he is also looking at me. I cannot stop myself from smiling and he nods his head in my direction.

He is walking alone. I remember he never really had any friends at school and was always by himself, unlike his brother, David, who was popular, untouchable and billboard-handsome. Strange how people who live in the same house, even twin brothers can have such polar opposite personalities.

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