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Twenty Six Letters To Remember Me By
By Blade Mistress
A is for Angel fallen from grace
Her father calls her – called her – Angel because she was once his guardian and saved his useless life. Jarod calls her Miss Parker, maybe to remind her, maybe to scorn her. But she knows he’d like to call her Angel too.
They weren’t always the only ones who called her angel…
Little Miss Parker was fifteen years old and sitting outside a department store. Her mother was two years dead and she had been sent away to school for doing something so terrible she wasn’t allowed to ask what. Her friends, Alexandra – who insisted on Alec – and Samantha slurped milkshakes and remarked on her clothes. “You look like you’re going to church,” Alec said as Samantha agreed in earnest. “You need new clothes.”
“Daddy won’t give me the money… he says I don’t need any.”
Alec smiled and gestured to her expensive clothes and good looking boots. “Where do you think I got this? Just go in, and put it on. Simple.”
Now Samantha nodded. They were teasing; if they got caught Samantha would be strung up from her ears and Alec just wouldn’t appear again, but it was all part of the fun.
“Go on.”
Little Miss Parker shook her head, “I won’t.”
“You’re such an Angel,” Alec hissed. “Where are your stupid wings?”
Little Miss Parker matched her venom for venom. “They withered when my mother died.”
B is for Bad-guy shot in the face
When she arrived home she found Lyle was drunk, sitting on her couch with a bottle of her whiskey sitting happily in his hand, the rest in his glass and some more down his front.
“You’re drunk.”
Lyle nodded, sloshing the glass as he did so.
“Get out.”
Lyle nodded again, then stopped mid nod and shook his head instead.
“Isn’t a brother ‘lowed to visit his favourite sister once in’a while? Hmmm?” He drained the glass and went to pour another, missed, tried again and gave up, drinking straight from the bottle instead.
Parker gave up and sat down across from him. She had never seen him like this. Tied up, pissed off, nearly dead and crazy – yes. But never drunk. She smiled, this could be interesting.
“Had a call f’rm Jarod,” he slurred. “Don’t know how you do it, havin’ him call you all the bloody time with his fuckin’ phssco babble. ‘s like having Sydney in your fucking ear, only he calls back! Even when you tell ‘im you’ll kill ‘im the next time you see ‘im! Him,” he corrected. “Next time I see him.”
Parker sighed. It had been a long day, she didn’t need this. Not now. Not ever, really.
Meanwhile Lyle had decided to save his why Jarod is a bastard rant and try something new. “What was it like, Parker? When you went away to school. What was that like? Y’know, being away from the Centre?”
Parker sighed again, school was something she tried to forget. Not because it had been a hard time for her, because she hadn’t been happy, but because she had been. And had felt nothing but guilt every time she came home. She remembered Alexandra and Samantha, her two best friends, her first girl friends - if you didn’t count Faith.
“Get out Lyle, before I shoot you.”
Lyle laughed. “Never want to talk do yah, Parker? Not to me, perfectly happy to talk to Jarod.”
“Get out before I shoot you.”
More laughter, “you know what he sent me?” he pulled out a gun, Parker went for her own by reflex. “’s not real. Just a water pistol.”
He threw it at her, his aim went wild but she managed to grab it. It was an exact replica of Lyle’s own gun, why, Parker had no idea, but it was a typical Jarod gag.
She aimed it at him anyway. “Get out Lyle.”
Lyle made no attempt to get up, so she pulled the trigger and a stream of water shot him in the face.
C is for Crystal smashed on the floor
Even littler Miss Parker was thirteen years old. It was the first Christmas she was ‘celebrating’ without her mother. When she rang her father his secretary promised that she could come home for the holidays and she would clear his schedule. But now a box had arrived and this didn’t seem likely.
Written in handwriting that looked like her fathers, but wasn’t, a note informed her:
Angel,
I’m sorry you can’t come home for Christmas but circumstances don’t allow for it this year. Enclosed are your presents.
Merry Christmas.
~ Daddy.
Samantha and Alec had gathered around while she read the note, poking and prodding at the package while asking what she thought it was. Parker shook her head, she didn’t know, something her father’s secretary had thought pretty no doubt.
The box didn’t rattle when she shook it, didn’t feel like clothes and didn’t tinkle when Samantha accidentally dropped it. Much to the disgust of her friends she put it under her bed, still wrapped.
Alec whined, Samantha tried to sneak it out with a ruler but in the end they accepted her decision and forgot about it. “If you’re not going home then come over to my house on Christmas, Parker, my mum would love to meet you,” Samantha said.
Parker smiled and said a polite thank you, just like her mother had taught her.
That night when her room mates slept she put on her dressing gown and slippers and opened it up, careful not to disturb the ribbon and paper. The box inside was harder to open silently but she managed it, and cautiously removed the bubble wrap. Carefully she put down the plastic and removed the object inside. It was crystal and so very beautiful, with awe she held it up the moonlight and watched it filter through the crystal angel. A small card dangled from its hand, once again written in the similar but not quite daddy’s handwriting. It said:
For my favourite Angel.
Her roommates woke up to the crash.
D is for Devil of which there’s always one more
The Centre is like the monarchies Parker learnt about in English History, Miss Parker thinks.
The king is dead, long live the king.
Mr Parker is dead, long live Mr Parker. Mr Parker is dead, long live Lyle. Mr Parker isn’t dead, long life Mr Parker.
It reminded her of school, when on her first day some girl with more bulk than brains had picked her up and shook her while explaining ‘the way things were’.
Samantha and Alec had found her crying in a corner and taken her under their wing.
“We’ll teach you to fight,” Samantha promised.
They did. They taught her tactics that Samantha’s older brother had taught her, things they’d seen on television and more. They taught her not to use her nails, or slap, to ball a fist and punch.
A few weeks later the girl with more bulk than brains returned, intent on giving Parker a refresher course. When she was lifted from the ground Parker didn’t squirm, instead she put her thumb in the other girls eye socket and twisted. With a howl the girl dropped her to the floor. Parker allowed her self a smirk, until she saw the three other girls behind her.
Mr Parker is dead, long life Lyle. There was always one more; a worse one.
E is for Eve and the temptation she gave
Sydney still believes in God, still has faith - sometimes he even prays for his soul. Miss Parker doesn’t – can’t – and hasn’t since before her mother died. She knows all the prayers and how to say her rosaries but some of its just habit, the rest just a dull ache that never left.
Jarod left his latest stint as a teacher in a Catholic School and the halls are so familiar that Miss Parker remembers…St Marks was a Catholic school and aside from Communion, Confession and Mass every Wednesday they went to Bible Studies. They were reading revelations that day. In the back Samantha and Alec giggled over a piece of paper they’d manage to smuggle into their Bibles.
Miss Parker sighed, and stared at the ceiling. Her mother had been religious, had prayed to saints and prayed for sinners but it was something Miss Parker couldn’t do.
“Miiss Parker,” one of the sister’s voices sing-song’d. “Please, tell the class what your perceptions of Eve are, why she fell to the temptation and left us all with Original Sin.”
Lazily Miss Parker picked up her book, she, like all the other girls hated Wednesdays. Sister Laura (ha, what a name for a sister) was boring and obsessive. “If Eve hadn’t done it Adam just would of,” she replied. “If it was so important not to eat the fruit then God could have made the plant have thorns, put it on a mountain or over a sea. Not in the middle of a garden that lets in serpents. It was rigged, if it hadn’t have been Eve it would have been Adam, or most certainly Cain.”
The class was silent, that silence that only comes from a group of students that know one of their numbers is going to be punished. Severely.
“Have you always felt this way, Miss Parker?”
She shook her head, no, she had said her prayers when young, she had listened to Sydney talk about this Saint and the Virgin Martyrs but they held not the value, nor significance they once did.
“And when did you decide that you know what would have happened had Eve not bitten the apple?” Sister Laura asked with open scorn.
She matched it and gave some in return. “When you asked me the question, Sister.”
F is for Faith and the lives that she saved
To Miss Parker it seemed that every month there was someone new to mourn, another sibling, sister or parent lost. It was Faith this month, her adopted sister, the little girl her mother had saved from a quiet death and adopted as her own. She had been her first girl friend, even before Samantha and Alec.
[It was nearly midnight but the girls were still up. A cocoon of blankets and pillows surrounded them in the middle of their room. Candles gave off some light, but only enough to make out the shadows. They roasted marshmallows over it.
“So tell us, Miss Parker, how did you come to arrive in St Marks School for Those Who Aren’t Given a Damn About?”
Miss Parker finished her marshmallow. “I did something, something bad. I just don’t know what.”
“You don’t know what?” Alec repeated. “I did something bad too, but I know exactly what it was.”
Samantha grinned, “You still haven’t told me just what that is.”
“Damn right, none of your business, Sammy.”
They changed tactics. “So, any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Same,” said Alec and Samantha hit her lightly. “Lucky, I’ve got two elder sisters, one elder brother and two younger brothers. My parents are the real deal church-y goers. No protection for them.”
Alec and Parker shook their heads at her, saying they’d love to have a sibling, someone to talk to. Especially a twin, Alec said. The topic was only changed when a fight nearly broke out.
“So, any friends back home?”
Miss Parker smiled slightly and Alec grinned to Samantha. “Betcha it’s a boy.”
Parker was confused, “Yes, his name’s Jarod. We’ve been friends for ages.”
“Any others?” Samantha asked, still grinning.
“Well there is Angelo, but we didn’t see him that often, he likes Cracker Jacks. And Faith, of course.”
“Who's Faith?”
The marshmallow was burning, Parker quickly removed it from the heat - if one of the sisters smelt it she might come in and catch them, or worse, pull the fire alarm.
“My first real girl friend.”
“What happened to her?”
Parker didn’t feel like eating the sickly sweet marshmallow anymore, or any of the other candies. “She died.”]
G is for the Game they were
destined to play
Miss Parker wondered when people started giving her the Look when ever she asked about Jarod, she wondered how is it she hasn’t killed anyone for doing it, and why she feels the need to explain when ever they do.
Now that she thinks about it, she’s been explaining [away?] their relationship most of her life.
“So,” said Samantha. “Who is this Jarod friend anyway? You’ve mentioned him a few times.”
Parker blushed and stared fixedly at her book in front of her. “’m doing my homework,” she mumbled.
Alec and Samantha grinned, amused at the sudden discomfort of their roommate.
“Is he your boyfriend?” they drawled.
“No.”
“But you’d like him to be?”
Parker glared, she was getting quite good. It didn’t work of course; Samantha and Alec were well immune. “No.”
“Have you kiiiised him?” wheedled Alec.
Parker didn’t reply so Samantha threw a shoe.
“Come on, tell us!”
She threw a pillow back with deadly accuracy. “No.”
“So, he’s a friend, who you’ve kissed, but not a boyfriend.”
“I see why you top your class.”
Alec scowled, “I see you’re catching sarcasm off our dear friend here. So what is he then?”
“He’s … a friend--”
“--that you kissed.”
“--who I take it doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
“--and you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“--in fact you rejected that really good looking guy just last week when he asked you to the spring dance.”
More glaring. “He is just a friend.” She pronounced each word slowly and carefully.
“I think,” smirked Alec, “that our friend here is in love. Don’t you Samantha.”
“Head over heels, my friend. Head over heels.”
Parker threw a pillow.
H for the Heaven they will never obtain
[“Come with me, Parker.”]
“Do you think you’ll ever get married, Parker?”
[“Do you think I’ll grow up and find someone, someone to love, like you found daddy?” “I think you will.”]
“My mother used to say I would, now I’m not so sure. The idea of staying with one guy … it doesn’t seem the same as it once did. I’m starting to think that the ring on the finger is just another collar.”
“You’re real optimistic you know? What if it was Jarod?”
[“You can change the story.”]
“Give it a rest, Sammie.”
[“Tommy, baby, stay with me!”]
“So you really don’t think you’ll ever find the right guy. That’s not possible,” a smirk, “you where so great with that guy last month, the one with the car. Alec tells me his fingers still crooked.”
“How would she know?”
“I didn’t want to ask, in case she told me. But I repeat the question.”
Laughter, bitter. “There is no happily ever after for people like me.”
“Somewhere along the way, Parker, you turned into quite the pessimist.”
I for the Innocence that just faded away
Parker calls Samantha the night she shoots Lyle. They reminisce about the old times even though in an hour she’ll berate Jarod for trying to do the same. They don’t talk about why she’s calling, or about the last time they met – Alec’s funeral, she always joked she’d be the first to die, the grim bitch.
They talk about Christmas at Samantha’s and the innocence -ignorance?- of youth. Parker tries to resist the urge to wash her hands. She won’t be another Lady Macbeth.
She puts down the phone and it’s still warm when Jarod calls to offer his comforts and condolences. She doesn’t listen to him, she knows his words aren’t for her - they’re for him.
J for Jarod who shoulders the blame
“It was my fault you were taken away, you know.” Jarod said one day. They were in a bar and had been heavily drinking. It annoyed Miss Parker that she was slurring more than he was.
“How’s that?”
He put the glass down heavily. They shouldn’t be here, not after the last time – no don’t think about that – not with security on
his tail more than ever. Not with a shoot to kill order.
She ordered a double - maybe it would make the thought go away.
“I kept asking to see you, or maybe I talked about you too much. ‘s my fault anyway. My fault you left and went to that horrible place, left all alone and came back…” he gestured to her in her current state. Thanks, she thought.
She had never got around to telling him that she enjoyed school away, had good friends and met interesting people. How could you explain that to a boy who hadn’t seen the sun since he was kidnapped when he was six? It would be a cruelty. “It’s not your fault, Jarod. Daddy never told me why, I just don’t think he could handle it.”
Her double came and they drank, they drank until she could barely see straight. He called her a cap and she got in without saying anything. He’d still blame himself in the morning – probably for making her drink too – and she’d … well she’d … carry on.
K is for Kyle who decided who’d die
There’s a Kyle in every school in the country. The weird one that doesn’t relate; sits in the back of the classroom and doesn’t talk to the other students unless it’s absolutely necessary. Doesn’t talk to the teachers either. Secretly everyone is afraid of them, a man with nothing to prove and no one to prove it to is a dangerous thing.
At St Marks he wasn’t called Kyle, rather Michael. A lean, scrawny looking boy with very scary eyes. That’s all you could explain them as – scary. You knew he’d kill you and bury you under the football field but he just couldn’t be bothered with the manual labour.
When she was sixteen, he asked her to the winter dance.
Parker had never really spoken to the boy, he was in her biology class, or at least she thought so, she had worked with him on a project, hadn’t she? Alec and Samantha didn’t giggle when he asked her out right in front of them, lest he glare at them.
“That’s very sweet,” Parker said, sounding for all the world like it was.
Michael chewed his bottom lip, waiting for the ‘but’.
“I’d like that very much, but be warned, the last boy who I went out with ended up with broken bones.”
Michael smiled, “a woman after my own heart.”
“Make sure I only need to do that figuratively.”
Samantha and Alec just shook their heads.
L is for Limbo where the unlucky ones lie
Un-baptised babies went to Limbo. They couldn’t go to heaven because of original sin, but they were only babies and had really done anything wrong, not that they understood anyway, so they went to Limbo.
Miss Parker couldn’t go to Heaven. She had … she had done horrible things in the name of the Centre and nearly as bad things in the name of finding the truth.
Samantha was still a Catholic, one of the few girls who came out of St Marks who really was one. She never lost her Faith, even when Alec died, and Miss Parker envied and admired her strength of will.
Parker hadn’t meant to go; she’d never been one for babies and even less of one for new born babies, she thought them rather wrinkly. But as her last surviving friend she thought she owed it to her, so she travelled up the coast to see Samantha and her husband – Ned? – and their soon to be first born.
Something, however, went wrong. And instead of celebrating the birth she was now lending her self as support at the baby’s funeral.
When she arrived in the room Samantha was staring straight ahead at nothing, eyes glazed over and tear stains down her cheeks. Ned hadn’t looked much better out in the hallway.
What did you say? What consolation could you give? The only thing Miss Parker had ever given in comfort was ‘the bastards that did this are going to suffer’ and that wasn’t applicable here.
“Samantha… Sammy… God, I’m so sorry.”
Samantha looked up and gave her the weakest smile she’d ever seen. “It doesn’t seem fair does it, that in the next room a teenager is giving birth to a baby she doesn’t want and I …” she burst into tears and Miss Parker went and put her arms around her, rocking her gently back and forth.
“It’s just not fair! She was so beautiful, and she didn’t even get a chance!”
There was nothing to say, Parker just kept soothing her and rocking her backwards and forwards until once again her tears stopped.
“God, look at me, I’ve ruined your outfit.”
Parker shook her head, “doesn’t matter.”
Samantha blew her nose loudly and then asked, “does it get any easier, Parker? Loosing someone?”
Parker knew all about loss. She thought of her yearly pilgrimages, the times at 3 am when all she could do was think of their faces, what they’d be saying to her now and the things she could have had.
Did it get easier?
No, but it got easier to forget, for a little while.
“Yes.”
Samantha took the lie for granted; it was just what she wanted to hear.
“She wasn’t even baptised,” Samantha sniffed. “Now she’ll go to Limbo.”
No, said Parker. I live in Limbo, you’re baby has gone straight to Heaven.
M is for Morgan which may be her name.
Sometimes at night Miss Parker brushed her hair, just like her mother would when they’d sit in her drawing room. She never braids it, lest she get trapped in her own memories. She doesn’t want to think about her mother tonight, not tonight, so she thinks about school, and the one other time she was happy.
Tomorrow was parent visitation day, in their – now sparkling – room the girls all huddled around Miss Parker’s vanity brushing each others hair, talking about their families, friends and the boys they liked.
Samantha, the taller and blonde of the group was standing behind Miss Parker and brushing Parker’s hair in nice even strokes. Alec, a girl with very tanned skin and dark hair and eyes, was rustling through the draws looking for hair ties and products.
“Gee, Miss Parker, all of your stuff is organized except this draw!”
Parker shrugged, earning her a grumble from Samantha.
“So,” Samantha said casually – or at least tried to say casually – she wasn’t very good at the ‘I don’t really care what answer you give, if you give one’ tone. “What’s your first name? Everyone just calls you “miss”. Is it Angel? I saw that on your card.”
“Daddy doesn’t like me giving out my real name,” Parker said stiffly.
“And…?” muttered Alec, who, as it turned out, was sent to St Marks for being caught with the boy next door doing something that made her mother cry. Not that she cared or anything, ‘anything to get away from my parents,’ as she’d say.
“I…”
“It’s ok,” said Samantha. “We understand.” And they got back to work, Samantha brushing her hair and Alec muttering about hair ties.
“It’s Morgan,” she whispered.
Alec and Samantha smiled brightly. “It’s nice to meet you, Morgan,” they both said.
N for the Nemesis on the other side of the game
In her Chemistry class when she was sixteen there was a girl called Candice and a boy called Henry. They absolutely loathed each other. Had done since the beginning of school and before, or so Parker was told.
Alec complained about how annoying it was, because she had to sit between the two of them and they were always bickering and threatening to poison one another, Samantha said that was what true romance was. That they had so much emotion for one another, they just hadn’t worked out it was passion yet.
When Samantha called late one night to tell her that she’d found out she was pregnant and Parker had greeted her with “What the fuck do you want, Jarod?” it was only natural that she would bring it up.
“So,” she said when she had finished talking about the upcoming baby. “This Jarod, he’s not the same Jarod that you talked about incessantly when we were at school is he?”
Parker remained quiet, she wished she hadn’t given up smoking years before.
“It is, isn’t it? Oh that’s wonderful, Parker. You know you’ve had such bad luck with men, that Tanaka guy you met in Japan was no good for you and it was such a tragedy with your last one.”
“Jarod and I are not together.”
There was a small noise of disbelief, “of course. Do you remember Candice and Henry?”
Parker thought for a moment and looked around in case she had a drink with her when she first came in. “I think so.”
“They’re married now, have three kids. He’s a pilot and she’s a teacher.”
“Good for them.”
“Remind you of anyone?”
She poured one instead, if she did have one it would be a happy find later on. “No. Call me again when you find out the gender.”
O for Ophelia who drowned in a stream
Down the hall from their room was a girl called Sandra. She was a nice enough girl, always ready to help another student, smart in her own way, pretty enough to turn a few heads but nothing particularly special. Girls like her were pretty common.
Parker doesn’t even remember her last name now. She does remember her eyes, glassy, open and staring when she found her in the bathroom drowned. She remembers her slightly parted lips and features that almost looked peaceful. She never could really remember her mother’s death, but she remembered Sandra’s like it was yesterday.
She was in a bathtub now, completely different from the one she found Sandra in. This one was new, had half a million taps just in case she wants a water massage or whatever the catalogue says. The water was as full as she could get without making a mess and perfumed with all her favourite scents.
A glass of red wine sat on the edge, untouched.
She sat in the bath and thought as the water soaked away the layers of grime and dirt and starting the healing on her many bruises. It was a rare moment of peace in her world full of noise and action.
Sandra was stupid; she didn’t see what wonders there were in the world. Didn’t realise that she could have done anything she wanted and had so many people that cared. And they did care, school stopped for a day as the girls and boys cried unashamedly.
Parker took a drink from her red wine, interested in the taste more than the alcohol content tonight.
How long would it take them to find her? If she slipped and banged her head on the side of the tub, if she fell asleep and never woke up. Would the scents she put in her bath still be lingering? Would they have faded to only shadows of the lavender and rose they had once been?
What would they do without her? Would Broots still be terrified, would Sydney still manage to help Jarod without getting caught?
Parker rose from the tub, accidentally smashing the glass on her way out, the crimson liquid making a bloodstain on the floor.
P for the Pretender who lives in a dream
Jarod sees the world through the eyes of a child and complains about the shades of grey. He doesn’t want to understand that evil is a part of everyone, that a man can be a good family guy, go to a nine to five job, come home and shoot his neighbour dead just because he got pissed off one to many times. He’s met more psychopaths and scum than even Miss Parker but believes that fundamentally, everyone wants to repent and pay penance for their crimes.
He’s a fool.
Miss Parker lived in the real world; she’d been abandoned to it, unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with it when she had been dumped into St Marks School. She learnt to survive there, to make friendships and to remember that everyone has an agenda.
Jarod lives in a dream world, black and white where he’s the only shade of grey and that’s just because he can’t assign himself a colour…
Jarod lives in a dream world, he’s assigned her to be white in a game where you need to be black and blend into shadow.
Jarod is a fool and one day it will be the cause of his death.
Q for the Quiet she’ll find in the grave
No one expected the coup to work. Everyone there was smart enough to know that in an all out war, or a battle of politics, or any other way, the Centre was going to win. They met on the beach a mile or so from the Centre, the waves crashing endlessly behind them with deafening roars and handed out guns, weapons and plans. Everyone had a task, no one was left out.
Jarod made a noble speech about life, death, good and evil. Everyone nodded along with him. There was no more than twenty of them; all of Jarod’s family, a few loyal sweepers, a couple of Jarod’s loyal subjects, and the ‘three stooges’ – that was all. Jarod said they had the element of surprise, Miss Parker didn’t know if that was a joke she was expected to laugh at.
Though no one had said, everyone had settled their affairs the night before. Miss Parker had rung Samantha and said goodbye and good luck and left her everything because there was no one else to leave it to.
The speech was short but Jarod had to keep pausing to breathe. After it was over everyone looked ready to go.
“Broots,” Miss Parker called. “Can I talk to you?”
Stumped by her words, polite as they were, he followed her to her nearby parked car without question.
“I have something for you,” she explained and reached inside her car. “It’s for Debbie.”
The parcel was tightly wrapped, with an old ribbon on top but Miss Parker didn’t hand it over.
“I’ve got something for you too.”
Again she reached inside her car, this time drawing out a rag. Quicker than he could react she pressed it against his face and he breathed deeply. She managed to catch him before he hit the floor. Sydney helped her load him into the backseat, she left the parcel on top of him with a letter.
“I couldn’t let him go,” she explained, half to herself, half to Sydney. “We all know no one’s coming out today.”
Sydney nodded absently, as if it wasn’t important they had just drugged a friend and co-worker. “Tell me, Miss Parker, did you get any rest last night?”
She checked her weapon was loaded and smiled at Sydney. “I can rest in the grave.”
R for the Ribbons her mother gave
When ever they went to the Summer House they would sit for hours in her mother’s studio. Outside her father would rant and rave over the phone and yell at people. Occasionally he would open the door and ask her mother something about one project or another, or just glare. But he never crossed the threshold into the room, like a vampire that had to be invited in. Her mother’s studio was a haven.
On the night before she … was pronounced dead. They sat up for hours just talking. They braided each others hair and her mother told her all about Europe and her travels there. In a draw Miss Parker found some ribbons and her mother braided them into her hair making a wonderful brown and crimson pattern.
Under her bed Miss Parker kept the tightly bound present and ribbons, her father hadn’t wanted her to take them, he said that mementos like that just lead to more grief and that we should move on. Parker didn’t know how. Her father had already done it, seemed to already have forgotten her after less than a year. Sydney was some help, but there was only so much he could see under the shadow of the cameras.
That night, her first at St Marks, she sat in front of the vanity that was nothing like her one at home, weaved in the ribbons and remembered all the good times she had.
S for Samantha who will outlive them all
Alec was just 27 when she died. Some drunken bastard driving 90 miles per hour up the wrong side of the road, they were both killed on impact. It was the first time Samantha and Miss Parker had seen each other since college. Miss Parker had travelled back to America to begin training as a Cleaner her official story that she told Alec and Samantha she was a translator for foreign clients - they worried enough as it was and didn’t need to know what she really did.
She went to the funeral and listened to the priest talk about all the wonderful things Alec had been and all that she could have achieved, had she not been taken to soon. Alexandra (they didn’t call her Alec, even though she hated her first name) was an only child, her parents died when she was in college. Apart from her colleges and a few select friends they were the only mourners.
The day after the funeral Parker was back at work, training harder than ever. She had always suspected that she would be the first to die, disappearing off the face of the earth at Raines pleasure or maybe just being shot while on the job. Being a Cleaner wasn’t the safest profession. She had never suspected Alec; in her mind she had pictured her surrounded by the four children she swore she’d never have, and a husband who understood her strange mood swings. Even if Alec had always protested that she would die alone and upside down in a pub toilet. They were both wrong now.
Sub-consciously Parker knew the Centre would have something to do with her own death, when it did happen, and then Samantha would have outlived them all.
T is for Thomas yet another innocent to fall
They attended his funeral for her, not for him. They never knew him, hardly met him. In some cases, didn’t. Sydney and Broots attended to comfort her, to once again lend their support when she was in need. Mr Parker came because he was her father and bastard or no, you did those sorts of things. Who knows why Bridgette came along, probably because she probably got off on funerals. Mr Raines and Willie turned up for no reason what so ever. If asked they would probably have said Mr Parker’s orders. Not that they listened to his orders or anything. They were more probably there to make sure he was dead, like the 9mm they ordered put in his head wasn’t enough.
And finally there was Lyle.
He just got off on seeing her suffering.
Miss Parker had never even told Thomas she loved him. [not while he was living, but god she said it every moment since… she had thought she had time, so much time, but isn’t that always the way…] He had died needlessly and suffered doing so, unaware all the time that it was her fault – the one he died for – that he was killed. He like so many before had died as just another wheel in the machine that is the Centre.
Somehow when she had been growing up, when she had naively plotted weddings and fairytale romances with exotic men in strange countries. She had missed out the heartache and loneliness.
They’d never told her it would be like this.
U for the Utopia she never will see
Samantha complained that the girls in their History class were dim, that they probably had a map on their bedroom walls giving step-by-step directions on how to put on their own clothes. Alec agreed, adding that they were even dumber in her science class.
Miss Parker told them about a friend she knows - a genius, smart beyond all measure and her other friend, really smart but better at feelings than maths. She doesn’t mention their names, but tells them all about how one day she’s going to go back and get them, take them away from their … parents that abuse them and they’ll all life together and be friends for ever and ever.
“Sounds like a utopia.”
Miss Parker smiled and nodded her head. “Yeah, it will be.”
V for the Virgin she used to be
Miss Parker stumbled back to her room; it had been more than four hours since she’d left at midnight, just after the bed check, and she
tiptoed to avoid waking her friends.
The door creaked halfway so she made had to squeeze between it and the door jam and hold her breath. She was halfway across the room and nearly at her own bed when a torch light flicked on.
“And what hour do you call this,” said Alec smugly.
Across from her where the beam was shining, Samantha mumbled, “a bloody late one, put out that light you daft cow.”
“Get up Sammy, Little Miss Parker our resident Angel and Daddy’s girl has just snuck in with smudged make up, tussled clothes and a strange look.”
Samantha sat up and wiped the sleep out of her eyes. “So she has, Alexandra, so she has. Where do you think she’s been?”
Alec glared at the use of The Name but smirked anyway, “I think she’s been out with Kenny. Again.”
“Funny,” Samantha replied, “exactly what I was thinking.”
Miss Parker rolled her eyes and started getting into her pyjamas. “Shut up the lot of you.”
“So,” Alec drawled. “Did you really do it?”
“I said shut up.”
Alec turned to Samantha, nearly blinding her in the process, “I told you she’d be even more the bitch afterwards.”
Samantha looked at her odly, as if staring at her could help explain her strange statement. “Explains you then,” she said eventually. “Parker, did you really do it? I mean come on, it's Kenny. You only get one first time.”
“She sounds like my mother,” muttered Alec.
Parker punched her pillow a few times and climbed under the sheets. “Turn out that light will you, and Samantha, it’s not like I was using it anyway.”
W for the Widow dressed all in black
She had taken to wearing black all the time with the occasional red or white shirt to set it off. She didn’t remember what she was grieving anymore; maybe it was her mother, Faith and Thomas. Maybe it was her father, who wasn’t really her father, and treated her like it. Maybe it was her; maybe she’d died inside and hadn’t even noticed.
Miss Parker remembered the group of girls at St Marks who wore black even though – or perhaps because – it drove the teachers mad. They thought it was cool to look like they lived in a perpetual state of mourning, they didn’t understand what it meant to only wear real black, blood red and virgin white. They wore it to look stylish, not because they were the only colours in their lives.
Miss Parker wears black and wonders how she’s found anything
left to mourn.
X for a Xanadu; paradise she’s learned to lack
What if, just for one night, we could find xanadu? Paradise, Parker, what if we could have it for a minute, a moment, an hour or a day. Would you take it?
It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams. Alec told her that, just after Parker had been called back to Blue Cove for training. She had woken from a nightmare where she was trapped in a world of grey and hatred with no one beside her and only grief in her heart. Alec wasn’t good with serious things, she liked to make jokes and smile until the problem went away – or you stopped telling her about it.
“You’re going to do fine where ever you go, you are attractive, determined, ambitious and intelligent, and no one is going to stop you, Parker. A dream is just that, a dream. They don’t mean anything because if they did then everyone who ever had that one about the giant shoe eating them would be in a mental ward.”
Parker nodded, not convinced and let Alec pour her a generous amount of vodka. “You’ve always had strange dreams, Parker. I remember when we were in school, at least once a month Sammy and I would be woken by your crying.”
The glass was left untouched, “what do you mean, crying?”
Alec downed hers and coughed a bit, “you didn’t know? Oh, well Samantha and I always figured it was something to do with … well none of our business and like I said it didn’t happen often.”
“What did I say?”
“I really don’t remember.”
“Liar.”
Alec smiled and nudged Parker to drink, “of course, but it doesn’t do to dwell on the past either.”
What if by dreaming it we realise that it’s only a step or two away? What if we found it, Parker? You and I, what if we re-wrote it all? Would to take it?
There was vodka this time too, this time she drank it. “It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams, Jarod.”
Just remember when…
“It doesn’t do to dwell on the past either. There is no paradise, no xanadu, no heaven or hell. Only this and it’s called existence. Try it sometime, you might find it can be pleasant.”
Y for Yarrow and its meanings of strife
Across the fields, down by the creek and under the shade of the Willow tree grows Yarrow, or so Alec says. She’s quite the authority on plants and animals, something you would never expect to look at her. On her first day at St Marks Samantha and Alec took her to see them and listed off their names; Bloodwort, Devil’s Bit, Snake Grass, Soldiers Woundwart, and Milfoil. She told them it reminded her of Hamlet and the Dead Maids Fingers, they didn’t look at her as though she was daft like all the other girls did in her last school. Instead they told her of its meanings in Greek Mythology. Miss Parker didn’t know why they were telling her this, didn’t realise that it was a test, to see if she would tell the other girls about these two strange people who know all the names of flowers and spend hours by the creek. But she didn’t tell anyway, because she’s always been good with secrets.
When Kenny broke up with her and the next boy she asked out says no, because of the other boy with the still-crooked finger, she came down to the stream and sat in the blooming Yarrow.
Alec and Samantha arrived soon after, it’s a small school and things like rejection get around fast.
They didn’t say much, just offered their shoulder to cry on and threw in the occasional ‘bastard’ when they thought she needed it.
After a while Miss Parker started to make a chain out of the flowers. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Samantha, who was always too superstitious for her own good. “They mean strife, you know, if you thread them all together and wear them who knows what will happen.”
Miss Parker continued anyway, piercing a hole and putting the next flower through until she’d made a crown. It was a silly and childish thing to do, but right then she almost wanted to be a child and forget silly important adult things like sex and rejection and love.
“Then I’ll be the Queen of Strife,” she told Samantha.
Z for the Zulu’s who rule Centre life
Once, a long time ago, Mr Parker (or maybe Bridgette – they never did find out), had killed Mutumbo. They had all said good-riddance as though it was the end, like another probably more crazy replacement wasn’t already on the way.
He wasn’t already on the way, he didn’t arrive for years but when he did he arrived in spring. Baby Parker was now toddler Parker, also known to the staff as The Tiniest Bastard. Mr Raines was dead, killed in Miss Parker’s take over attempt, incidentally the reason for his visit. Miss Parker had taken the Chairmanship after an unsuccessful coup from Lyle. Miss Parker really didn’t want the Chairmanship, didn’t want anything to do with it, she hadn’t expected to live through the attack, much less to win. Sydney, crippled and not long for this world, tried to tell her that she would do some good, maybe start the healing process. It was unlikely though, she knew power corrupts and she’d always been weak. She would be just like her father (God, which one?) and rule this place like they had. It was the ultimate irony.
She had Lyle executed, not for the coup, but for the deaths of his wives and all the other girls who had never stood a chance. Parker felt she owed it to them, and perhaps this would be her final ‘good’ deed.
“Sir,” she greeted the Zulu when he arrived in her office. “I hope you had a good trip?”
He sniffed in response and didn’t accept her outstretched hand, he was a huge man of at least 6 foot five. “Yes, the trip was fine.”
“So, sir, why are you here?”
“I was sent to check out Mr Raines’ replacement,” he said.
“Oh.”
“And if I find them … lacking, I’m to take the appropriate measures.”
Parker didn’t need to ask what the appropriate measures were.
“I’m sure that will not happen,” Miss Parker assured him. “Please, take a seat.”
The Zulu didn’t sit and didn’t make any motions to. “It has already happened, Miss Parker.”
Parker barely had time to blink when the gun was drawn and fired. She dropped to the floor dead.
Sydney too died that night. A young man, bald and nervous arranged for their burial side-by-side but Samantha was the only mourner at her funeral. She toasted her lost friend and told her daughter, Morgan, about the wonderful girl Miss Parker had been when they were at school. The girl she had known was troubled, yes, but a loyal friend to the end, intelligent beyond her years and clever too.
A few days later Miss Parker’s lawyer contacted her, informing her that she had left everything to Samantha. There was so much money Samantha didn’t know what to do with it all. She donated a quarter to St Marks, where against all odds, they had been most happy.
And so across the fields, down by the creek and under the Willow Tree sat a plague surrounded by yarrow that never touched it.
Morgan Parker
Lost friend and loved one.
Gone to a better place.
And perhaps, Samantha thought, she had.
Finish.
By Blade Mistress
Her father calls her – called her – Angel because she was once his guardian and saved his useless life. Jarod calls her Miss Parker, maybe to remind her, maybe to scorn her. But she knows he’d like to call her Angel too.
They weren’t always the only ones who called her angel…
Little Miss Parker was fifteen years old and sitting outside a department store. Her mother was two years dead and she had been sent away to school for doing something so terrible she wasn’t allowed to ask what. Her friends, Alexandra – who insisted on Alec – and Samantha slurped milkshakes and remarked on her clothes. “You look like you’re going to church,” Alec said as Samantha agreed in earnest. “You need new clothes.”
“Daddy won’t give me the money… he says I don’t need any.”
Alec smiled and gestured to her expensive clothes and good looking boots. “Where do you think I got this? Just go in, and put it on. Simple.”
Now Samantha nodded. They were teasing; if they got caught Samantha would be strung up from her ears and Alec just wouldn’t appear again, but it was all part of the fun.
“Go on.”
Little Miss Parker shook her head, “I won’t.”
“You’re such an Angel,” Alec hissed. “Where are your stupid wings?”
Little Miss Parker matched her venom for venom. “They withered when my mother died.”
When she arrived home she found Lyle was drunk, sitting on her couch with a bottle of her whiskey sitting happily in his hand, the rest in his glass and some more down his front.
“You’re drunk.”
Lyle nodded, sloshing the glass as he did so.
“Get out.”
Lyle nodded again, then stopped mid nod and shook his head instead.
“Isn’t a brother ‘lowed to visit his favourite sister once in’a while? Hmmm?” He drained the glass and went to pour another, missed, tried again and gave up, drinking straight from the bottle instead.
Parker gave up and sat down across from him. She had never seen him like this. Tied up, pissed off, nearly dead and crazy – yes. But never drunk. She smiled, this could be interesting.
“Had a call f’rm Jarod,” he slurred. “Don’t know how you do it, havin’ him call you all the bloody time with his fuckin’ phssco babble. ‘s like having Sydney in your fucking ear, only he calls back! Even when you tell ‘im you’ll kill ‘im the next time you see ‘im! Him,” he corrected. “Next time I see him.”
Parker sighed. It had been a long day, she didn’t need this. Not now. Not ever, really.
Meanwhile Lyle had decided to save his why Jarod is a bastard rant and try something new. “What was it like, Parker? When you went away to school. What was that like? Y’know, being away from the Centre?”
Parker sighed again, school was something she tried to forget. Not because it had been a hard time for her, because she hadn’t been happy, but because she had been. And had felt nothing but guilt every time she came home. She remembered Alexandra and Samantha, her two best friends, her first girl friends - if you didn’t count Faith.
“Get out Lyle, before I shoot you.”
Lyle laughed. “Never want to talk do yah, Parker? Not to me, perfectly happy to talk to Jarod.”
“Get out before I shoot you.”
More laughter, “you know what he sent me?” he pulled out a gun, Parker went for her own by reflex. “’s not real. Just a water pistol.”
He threw it at her, his aim went wild but she managed to grab it. It was an exact replica of Lyle’s own gun, why, Parker had no idea, but it was a typical Jarod gag.
She aimed it at him anyway. “Get out Lyle.”
Lyle made no attempt to get up, so she pulled the trigger and a stream of water shot him in the face.
Even littler Miss Parker was thirteen years old. It was the first Christmas she was ‘celebrating’ without her mother. When she rang her father his secretary promised that she could come home for the holidays and she would clear his schedule. But now a box had arrived and this didn’t seem likely.
Written in handwriting that looked like her fathers, but wasn’t, a note informed her:
Angel,
I’m sorry you can’t come home for Christmas but circumstances don’t allow for it this year. Enclosed are your presents.
Merry Christmas.
~ Daddy.
Samantha and Alec had gathered around while she read the note, poking and prodding at the package while asking what she thought it was. Parker shook her head, she didn’t know, something her father’s secretary had thought pretty no doubt.
The box didn’t rattle when she shook it, didn’t feel like clothes and didn’t tinkle when Samantha accidentally dropped it. Much to the disgust of her friends she put it under her bed, still wrapped.
Alec whined, Samantha tried to sneak it out with a ruler but in the end they accepted her decision and forgot about it. “If you’re not going home then come over to my house on Christmas, Parker, my mum would love to meet you,” Samantha said.
Parker smiled and said a polite thank you, just like her mother had taught her.
That night when her room mates slept she put on her dressing gown and slippers and opened it up, careful not to disturb the ribbon and paper. The box inside was harder to open silently but she managed it, and cautiously removed the bubble wrap. Carefully she put down the plastic and removed the object inside. It was crystal and so very beautiful, with awe she held it up the moonlight and watched it filter through the crystal angel. A small card dangled from its hand, once again written in the similar but not quite daddy’s handwriting. It said:
For my favourite Angel.
Her roommates woke up to the crash.
The Centre is like the monarchies Parker learnt about in English History, Miss Parker thinks.
The king is dead, long live the king.
Mr Parker is dead, long live Mr Parker. Mr Parker is dead, long live Lyle. Mr Parker isn’t dead, long life Mr Parker.
It reminded her of school, when on her first day some girl with more bulk than brains had picked her up and shook her while explaining ‘the way things were’.
Samantha and Alec had found her crying in a corner and taken her under their wing.
“We’ll teach you to fight,” Samantha promised.
They did. They taught her tactics that Samantha’s older brother had taught her, things they’d seen on television and more. They taught her not to use her nails, or slap, to ball a fist and punch.
A few weeks later the girl with more bulk than brains returned, intent on giving Parker a refresher course. When she was lifted from the ground Parker didn’t squirm, instead she put her thumb in the other girls eye socket and twisted. With a howl the girl dropped her to the floor. Parker allowed her self a smirk, until she saw the three other girls behind her.
Mr Parker is dead, long life Lyle. There was always one more; a worse one.
Sydney still believes in God, still has faith - sometimes he even prays for his soul. Miss Parker doesn’t – can’t – and hasn’t since before her mother died. She knows all the prayers and how to say her rosaries but some of its just habit, the rest just a dull ache that never left.
Jarod left his latest stint as a teacher in a Catholic School and the halls are so familiar that Miss Parker remembers…St Marks was a Catholic school and aside from Communion, Confession and Mass every Wednesday they went to Bible Studies. They were reading revelations that day. In the back Samantha and Alec giggled over a piece of paper they’d manage to smuggle into their Bibles.
Miss Parker sighed, and stared at the ceiling. Her mother had been religious, had prayed to saints and prayed for sinners but it was something Miss Parker couldn’t do.
“Miiss Parker,” one of the sister’s voices sing-song’d. “Please, tell the class what your perceptions of Eve are, why she fell to the temptation and left us all with Original Sin.”
Lazily Miss Parker picked up her book, she, like all the other girls hated Wednesdays. Sister Laura (ha, what a name for a sister) was boring and obsessive. “If Eve hadn’t done it Adam just would of,” she replied. “If it was so important not to eat the fruit then God could have made the plant have thorns, put it on a mountain or over a sea. Not in the middle of a garden that lets in serpents. It was rigged, if it hadn’t have been Eve it would have been Adam, or most certainly Cain.”
The class was silent, that silence that only comes from a group of students that know one of their numbers is going to be punished. Severely.
“Have you always felt this way, Miss Parker?”
She shook her head, no, she had said her prayers when young, she had listened to Sydney talk about this Saint and the Virgin Martyrs but they held not the value, nor significance they once did.
“And when did you decide that you know what would have happened had Eve not bitten the apple?” Sister Laura asked with open scorn.
She matched it and gave some in return. “When you asked me the question, Sister.”
To Miss Parker it seemed that every month there was someone new to mourn, another sibling, sister or parent lost. It was Faith this month, her adopted sister, the little girl her mother had saved from a quiet death and adopted as her own. She had been her first girl friend, even before Samantha and Alec.
[It was nearly midnight but the girls were still up. A cocoon of blankets and pillows surrounded them in the middle of their room. Candles gave off some light, but only enough to make out the shadows. They roasted marshmallows over it.
“So tell us, Miss Parker, how did you come to arrive in St Marks School for Those Who Aren’t Given a Damn About?”
Miss Parker finished her marshmallow. “I did something, something bad. I just don’t know what.”
“You don’t know what?” Alec repeated. “I did something bad too, but I know exactly what it was.”
Samantha grinned, “You still haven’t told me just what that is.”
“Damn right, none of your business, Sammy.”
They changed tactics. “So, any brothers or sisters?”
“No.”
“Same,” said Alec and Samantha hit her lightly. “Lucky, I’ve got two elder sisters, one elder brother and two younger brothers. My parents are the real deal church-y goers. No protection for them.”
Alec and Parker shook their heads at her, saying they’d love to have a sibling, someone to talk to. Especially a twin, Alec said. The topic was only changed when a fight nearly broke out.
“So, any friends back home?”
Miss Parker smiled slightly and Alec grinned to Samantha. “Betcha it’s a boy.”
Parker was confused, “Yes, his name’s Jarod. We’ve been friends for ages.”
“Any others?” Samantha asked, still grinning.
“Well there is Angelo, but we didn’t see him that often, he likes Cracker Jacks. And Faith, of course.”
“Who's Faith?”
The marshmallow was burning, Parker quickly removed it from the heat - if one of the sisters smelt it she might come in and catch them, or worse, pull the fire alarm.
“My first real girl friend.”
“What happened to her?”
Parker didn’t feel like eating the sickly sweet marshmallow anymore, or any of the other candies. “She died.”]
destined to play
Miss Parker wondered when people started giving her the Look when ever she asked about Jarod, she wondered how is it she hasn’t killed anyone for doing it, and why she feels the need to explain when ever they do.
Now that she thinks about it, she’s been explaining [away?] their relationship most of her life.
“So,” said Samantha. “Who is this Jarod friend anyway? You’ve mentioned him a few times.”
Parker blushed and stared fixedly at her book in front of her. “’m doing my homework,” she mumbled.
Alec and Samantha grinned, amused at the sudden discomfort of their roommate.
“Is he your boyfriend?” they drawled.
“No.”
“But you’d like him to be?”
Parker glared, she was getting quite good. It didn’t work of course; Samantha and Alec were well immune. “No.”
“Have you kiiiised him?” wheedled Alec.
Parker didn’t reply so Samantha threw a shoe.
“Come on, tell us!”
She threw a pillow back with deadly accuracy. “No.”
“So, he’s a friend, who you’ve kissed, but not a boyfriend.”
“I see why you top your class.”
Alec scowled, “I see you’re catching sarcasm off our dear friend here. So what is he then?”
“He’s … a friend--”
“--that you kissed.”
“--who I take it doesn’t have a girlfriend.”
“--and you don’t have a boyfriend.”
“--in fact you rejected that really good looking guy just last week when he asked you to the spring dance.”
More glaring. “He is just a friend.” She pronounced each word slowly and carefully.
“I think,” smirked Alec, “that our friend here is in love. Don’t you Samantha.”
“Head over heels, my friend. Head over heels.”
Parker threw a pillow.
[“Come with me, Parker.”]
“Do you think you’ll ever get married, Parker?”
[“Do you think I’ll grow up and find someone, someone to love, like you found daddy?” “I think you will.”]
“My mother used to say I would, now I’m not so sure. The idea of staying with one guy … it doesn’t seem the same as it once did. I’m starting to think that the ring on the finger is just another collar.”
“You’re real optimistic you know? What if it was Jarod?”
[“You can change the story.”]
“Give it a rest, Sammie.”
[“Tommy, baby, stay with me!”]
“So you really don’t think you’ll ever find the right guy. That’s not possible,” a smirk, “you where so great with that guy last month, the one with the car. Alec tells me his fingers still crooked.”
“How would she know?”
“I didn’t want to ask, in case she told me. But I repeat the question.”
Laughter, bitter. “There is no happily ever after for people like me.”
“Somewhere along the way, Parker, you turned into quite the pessimist.”
Parker calls Samantha the night she shoots Lyle. They reminisce about the old times even though in an hour she’ll berate Jarod for trying to do the same. They don’t talk about why she’s calling, or about the last time they met – Alec’s funeral, she always joked she’d be the first to die, the grim bitch.
They talk about Christmas at Samantha’s and the innocence -ignorance?- of youth. Parker tries to resist the urge to wash her hands. She won’t be another Lady Macbeth.
She puts down the phone and it’s still warm when Jarod calls to offer his comforts and condolences. She doesn’t listen to him, she knows his words aren’t for her - they’re for him.
“It was my fault you were taken away, you know.” Jarod said one day. They were in a bar and had been heavily drinking. It annoyed Miss Parker that she was slurring more than he was.
“How’s that?”
He put the glass down heavily. They shouldn’t be here, not after the last time – no don’t think about that – not with security on
his tail more than ever. Not with a shoot to kill order.
She ordered a double - maybe it would make the thought go away.
“I kept asking to see you, or maybe I talked about you too much. ‘s my fault anyway. My fault you left and went to that horrible place, left all alone and came back…” he gestured to her in her current state. Thanks, she thought.
She had never got around to telling him that she enjoyed school away, had good friends and met interesting people. How could you explain that to a boy who hadn’t seen the sun since he was kidnapped when he was six? It would be a cruelty. “It’s not your fault, Jarod. Daddy never told me why, I just don’t think he could handle it.”
Her double came and they drank, they drank until she could barely see straight. He called her a cap and she got in without saying anything. He’d still blame himself in the morning – probably for making her drink too – and she’d … well she’d … carry on.
There’s a Kyle in every school in the country. The weird one that doesn’t relate; sits in the back of the classroom and doesn’t talk to the other students unless it’s absolutely necessary. Doesn’t talk to the teachers either. Secretly everyone is afraid of them, a man with nothing to prove and no one to prove it to is a dangerous thing.
At St Marks he wasn’t called Kyle, rather Michael. A lean, scrawny looking boy with very scary eyes. That’s all you could explain them as – scary. You knew he’d kill you and bury you under the football field but he just couldn’t be bothered with the manual labour.
When she was sixteen, he asked her to the winter dance.
Parker had never really spoken to the boy, he was in her biology class, or at least she thought so, she had worked with him on a project, hadn’t she? Alec and Samantha didn’t giggle when he asked her out right in front of them, lest he glare at them.
“That’s very sweet,” Parker said, sounding for all the world like it was.
Michael chewed his bottom lip, waiting for the ‘but’.
“I’d like that very much, but be warned, the last boy who I went out with ended up with broken bones.”
Michael smiled, “a woman after my own heart.”
“Make sure I only need to do that figuratively.”
Samantha and Alec just shook their heads.
Un-baptised babies went to Limbo. They couldn’t go to heaven because of original sin, but they were only babies and had really done anything wrong, not that they understood anyway, so they went to Limbo.
Miss Parker couldn’t go to Heaven. She had … she had done horrible things in the name of the Centre and nearly as bad things in the name of finding the truth.
Samantha was still a Catholic, one of the few girls who came out of St Marks who really was one. She never lost her Faith, even when Alec died, and Miss Parker envied and admired her strength of will.
Parker hadn’t meant to go; she’d never been one for babies and even less of one for new born babies, she thought them rather wrinkly. But as her last surviving friend she thought she owed it to her, so she travelled up the coast to see Samantha and her husband – Ned? – and their soon to be first born.
Something, however, went wrong. And instead of celebrating the birth she was now lending her self as support at the baby’s funeral.
When she arrived in the room Samantha was staring straight ahead at nothing, eyes glazed over and tear stains down her cheeks. Ned hadn’t looked much better out in the hallway.
What did you say? What consolation could you give? The only thing Miss Parker had ever given in comfort was ‘the bastards that did this are going to suffer’ and that wasn’t applicable here.
“Samantha… Sammy… God, I’m so sorry.”
Samantha looked up and gave her the weakest smile she’d ever seen. “It doesn’t seem fair does it, that in the next room a teenager is giving birth to a baby she doesn’t want and I …” she burst into tears and Miss Parker went and put her arms around her, rocking her gently back and forth.
“It’s just not fair! She was so beautiful, and she didn’t even get a chance!”
There was nothing to say, Parker just kept soothing her and rocking her backwards and forwards until once again her tears stopped.
“God, look at me, I’ve ruined your outfit.”
Parker shook her head, “doesn’t matter.”
Samantha blew her nose loudly and then asked, “does it get any easier, Parker? Loosing someone?”
Parker knew all about loss. She thought of her yearly pilgrimages, the times at 3 am when all she could do was think of their faces, what they’d be saying to her now and the things she could have had.
Did it get easier?
No, but it got easier to forget, for a little while.
“Yes.”
Samantha took the lie for granted; it was just what she wanted to hear.
“She wasn’t even baptised,” Samantha sniffed. “Now she’ll go to Limbo.”
No, said Parker. I live in Limbo, you’re baby has gone straight to Heaven.
Sometimes at night Miss Parker brushed her hair, just like her mother would when they’d sit in her drawing room. She never braids it, lest she get trapped in her own memories. She doesn’t want to think about her mother tonight, not tonight, so she thinks about school, and the one other time she was happy.
Tomorrow was parent visitation day, in their – now sparkling – room the girls all huddled around Miss Parker’s vanity brushing each others hair, talking about their families, friends and the boys they liked.
Samantha, the taller and blonde of the group was standing behind Miss Parker and brushing Parker’s hair in nice even strokes. Alec, a girl with very tanned skin and dark hair and eyes, was rustling through the draws looking for hair ties and products.
“Gee, Miss Parker, all of your stuff is organized except this draw!”
Parker shrugged, earning her a grumble from Samantha.
“So,” Samantha said casually – or at least tried to say casually – she wasn’t very good at the ‘I don’t really care what answer you give, if you give one’ tone. “What’s your first name? Everyone just calls you “miss”. Is it Angel? I saw that on your card.”
“Daddy doesn’t like me giving out my real name,” Parker said stiffly.
“And…?” muttered Alec, who, as it turned out, was sent to St Marks for being caught with the boy next door doing something that made her mother cry. Not that she cared or anything, ‘anything to get away from my parents,’ as she’d say.
“I…”
“It’s ok,” said Samantha. “We understand.” And they got back to work, Samantha brushing her hair and Alec muttering about hair ties.
“It’s Morgan,” she whispered.
Alec and Samantha smiled brightly. “It’s nice to meet you, Morgan,” they both said.
In her Chemistry class when she was sixteen there was a girl called Candice and a boy called Henry. They absolutely loathed each other. Had done since the beginning of school and before, or so Parker was told.
Alec complained about how annoying it was, because she had to sit between the two of them and they were always bickering and threatening to poison one another, Samantha said that was what true romance was. That they had so much emotion for one another, they just hadn’t worked out it was passion yet.
When Samantha called late one night to tell her that she’d found out she was pregnant and Parker had greeted her with “What the fuck do you want, Jarod?” it was only natural that she would bring it up.
“So,” she said when she had finished talking about the upcoming baby. “This Jarod, he’s not the same Jarod that you talked about incessantly when we were at school is he?”
Parker remained quiet, she wished she hadn’t given up smoking years before.
“It is, isn’t it? Oh that’s wonderful, Parker. You know you’ve had such bad luck with men, that Tanaka guy you met in Japan was no good for you and it was such a tragedy with your last one.”
“Jarod and I are not together.”
There was a small noise of disbelief, “of course. Do you remember Candice and Henry?”
Parker thought for a moment and looked around in case she had a drink with her when she first came in. “I think so.”
“They’re married now, have three kids. He’s a pilot and she’s a teacher.”
“Good for them.”
“Remind you of anyone?”
She poured one instead, if she did have one it would be a happy find later on. “No. Call me again when you find out the gender.”
Down the hall from their room was a girl called Sandra. She was a nice enough girl, always ready to help another student, smart in her own way, pretty enough to turn a few heads but nothing particularly special. Girls like her were pretty common.
Parker doesn’t even remember her last name now. She does remember her eyes, glassy, open and staring when she found her in the bathroom drowned. She remembers her slightly parted lips and features that almost looked peaceful. She never could really remember her mother’s death, but she remembered Sandra’s like it was yesterday.
She was in a bathtub now, completely different from the one she found Sandra in. This one was new, had half a million taps just in case she wants a water massage or whatever the catalogue says. The water was as full as she could get without making a mess and perfumed with all her favourite scents.
A glass of red wine sat on the edge, untouched.
She sat in the bath and thought as the water soaked away the layers of grime and dirt and starting the healing on her many bruises. It was a rare moment of peace in her world full of noise and action.
Sandra was stupid; she didn’t see what wonders there were in the world. Didn’t realise that she could have done anything she wanted and had so many people that cared. And they did care, school stopped for a day as the girls and boys cried unashamedly.
Parker took a drink from her red wine, interested in the taste more than the alcohol content tonight.
How long would it take them to find her? If she slipped and banged her head on the side of the tub, if she fell asleep and never woke up. Would the scents she put in her bath still be lingering? Would they have faded to only shadows of the lavender and rose they had once been?
What would they do without her? Would Broots still be terrified, would Sydney still manage to help Jarod without getting caught?
Parker rose from the tub, accidentally smashing the glass on her way out, the crimson liquid making a bloodstain on the floor.
Jarod sees the world through the eyes of a child and complains about the shades of grey. He doesn’t want to understand that evil is a part of everyone, that a man can be a good family guy, go to a nine to five job, come home and shoot his neighbour dead just because he got pissed off one to many times. He’s met more psychopaths and scum than even Miss Parker but believes that fundamentally, everyone wants to repent and pay penance for their crimes.
He’s a fool.
Miss Parker lived in the real world; she’d been abandoned to it, unprepared and ill-equipped to deal with it when she had been dumped into St Marks School. She learnt to survive there, to make friendships and to remember that everyone has an agenda.
Jarod lives in a dream world, black and white where he’s the only shade of grey and that’s just because he can’t assign himself a colour…
Jarod lives in a dream world, he’s assigned her to be white in a game where you need to be black and blend into shadow.
Jarod is a fool and one day it will be the cause of his death.
No one expected the coup to work. Everyone there was smart enough to know that in an all out war, or a battle of politics, or any other way, the Centre was going to win. They met on the beach a mile or so from the Centre, the waves crashing endlessly behind them with deafening roars and handed out guns, weapons and plans. Everyone had a task, no one was left out.
Jarod made a noble speech about life, death, good and evil. Everyone nodded along with him. There was no more than twenty of them; all of Jarod’s family, a few loyal sweepers, a couple of Jarod’s loyal subjects, and the ‘three stooges’ – that was all. Jarod said they had the element of surprise, Miss Parker didn’t know if that was a joke she was expected to laugh at.
Though no one had said, everyone had settled their affairs the night before. Miss Parker had rung Samantha and said goodbye and good luck and left her everything because there was no one else to leave it to.
The speech was short but Jarod had to keep pausing to breathe. After it was over everyone looked ready to go.
“Broots,” Miss Parker called. “Can I talk to you?”
Stumped by her words, polite as they were, he followed her to her nearby parked car without question.
“I have something for you,” she explained and reached inside her car. “It’s for Debbie.”
The parcel was tightly wrapped, with an old ribbon on top but Miss Parker didn’t hand it over.
“I’ve got something for you too.”
Again she reached inside her car, this time drawing out a rag. Quicker than he could react she pressed it against his face and he breathed deeply. She managed to catch him before he hit the floor. Sydney helped her load him into the backseat, she left the parcel on top of him with a letter.
“I couldn’t let him go,” she explained, half to herself, half to Sydney. “We all know no one’s coming out today.”
Sydney nodded absently, as if it wasn’t important they had just drugged a friend and co-worker. “Tell me, Miss Parker, did you get any rest last night?”
She checked her weapon was loaded and smiled at Sydney. “I can rest in the grave.”
When ever they went to the Summer House they would sit for hours in her mother’s studio. Outside her father would rant and rave over the phone and yell at people. Occasionally he would open the door and ask her mother something about one project or another, or just glare. But he never crossed the threshold into the room, like a vampire that had to be invited in. Her mother’s studio was a haven.
On the night before she … was pronounced dead. They sat up for hours just talking. They braided each others hair and her mother told her all about Europe and her travels there. In a draw Miss Parker found some ribbons and her mother braided them into her hair making a wonderful brown and crimson pattern.
Under her bed Miss Parker kept the tightly bound present and ribbons, her father hadn’t wanted her to take them, he said that mementos like that just lead to more grief and that we should move on. Parker didn’t know how. Her father had already done it, seemed to already have forgotten her after less than a year. Sydney was some help, but there was only so much he could see under the shadow of the cameras.
That night, her first at St Marks, she sat in front of the vanity that was nothing like her one at home, weaved in the ribbons and remembered all the good times she had.
Alec was just 27 when she died. Some drunken bastard driving 90 miles per hour up the wrong side of the road, they were both killed on impact. It was the first time Samantha and Miss Parker had seen each other since college. Miss Parker had travelled back to America to begin training as a Cleaner her official story that she told Alec and Samantha she was a translator for foreign clients - they worried enough as it was and didn’t need to know what she really did.
She went to the funeral and listened to the priest talk about all the wonderful things Alec had been and all that she could have achieved, had she not been taken to soon. Alexandra (they didn’t call her Alec, even though she hated her first name) was an only child, her parents died when she was in college. Apart from her colleges and a few select friends they were the only mourners.
The day after the funeral Parker was back at work, training harder than ever. She had always suspected that she would be the first to die, disappearing off the face of the earth at Raines pleasure or maybe just being shot while on the job. Being a Cleaner wasn’t the safest profession. She had never suspected Alec; in her mind she had pictured her surrounded by the four children she swore she’d never have, and a husband who understood her strange mood swings. Even if Alec had always protested that she would die alone and upside down in a pub toilet. They were both wrong now.
Sub-consciously Parker knew the Centre would have something to do with her own death, when it did happen, and then Samantha would have outlived them all.
They attended his funeral for her, not for him. They never knew him, hardly met him. In some cases, didn’t. Sydney and Broots attended to comfort her, to once again lend their support when she was in need. Mr Parker came because he was her father and bastard or no, you did those sorts of things. Who knows why Bridgette came along, probably because she probably got off on funerals. Mr Raines and Willie turned up for no reason what so ever. If asked they would probably have said Mr Parker’s orders. Not that they listened to his orders or anything. They were more probably there to make sure he was dead, like the 9mm they ordered put in his head wasn’t enough.
And finally there was Lyle.
He just got off on seeing her suffering.
Miss Parker had never even told Thomas she loved him. [not while he was living, but god she said it every moment since… she had thought she had time, so much time, but isn’t that always the way…] He had died needlessly and suffered doing so, unaware all the time that it was her fault – the one he died for – that he was killed. He like so many before had died as just another wheel in the machine that is the Centre.
Somehow when she had been growing up, when she had naively plotted weddings and fairytale romances with exotic men in strange countries. She had missed out the heartache and loneliness.
They’d never told her it would be like this.
Samantha complained that the girls in their History class were dim, that they probably had a map on their bedroom walls giving step-by-step directions on how to put on their own clothes. Alec agreed, adding that they were even dumber in her science class.
Miss Parker told them about a friend she knows - a genius, smart beyond all measure and her other friend, really smart but better at feelings than maths. She doesn’t mention their names, but tells them all about how one day she’s going to go back and get them, take them away from their … parents that abuse them and they’ll all life together and be friends for ever and ever.
“Sounds like a utopia.”
Miss Parker smiled and nodded her head. “Yeah, it will be.”
Miss Parker stumbled back to her room; it had been more than four hours since she’d left at midnight, just after the bed check, and she
tiptoed to avoid waking her friends.
The door creaked halfway so she made had to squeeze between it and the door jam and hold her breath. She was halfway across the room and nearly at her own bed when a torch light flicked on.
“And what hour do you call this,” said Alec smugly.
Across from her where the beam was shining, Samantha mumbled, “a bloody late one, put out that light you daft cow.”
“Get up Sammy, Little Miss Parker our resident Angel and Daddy’s girl has just snuck in with smudged make up, tussled clothes and a strange look.”
Samantha sat up and wiped the sleep out of her eyes. “So she has, Alexandra, so she has. Where do you think she’s been?”
Alec glared at the use of The Name but smirked anyway, “I think she’s been out with Kenny. Again.”
“Funny,” Samantha replied, “exactly what I was thinking.”
Miss Parker rolled her eyes and started getting into her pyjamas. “Shut up the lot of you.”
“So,” Alec drawled. “Did you really do it?”
“I said shut up.”
Alec turned to Samantha, nearly blinding her in the process, “I told you she’d be even more the bitch afterwards.”
Samantha looked at her odly, as if staring at her could help explain her strange statement. “Explains you then,” she said eventually. “Parker, did you really do it? I mean come on, it's Kenny. You only get one first time.”
“She sounds like my mother,” muttered Alec.
Parker punched her pillow a few times and climbed under the sheets. “Turn out that light will you, and Samantha, it’s not like I was using it anyway.”
She had taken to wearing black all the time with the occasional red or white shirt to set it off. She didn’t remember what she was grieving anymore; maybe it was her mother, Faith and Thomas. Maybe it was her father, who wasn’t really her father, and treated her like it. Maybe it was her; maybe she’d died inside and hadn’t even noticed.
Miss Parker remembered the group of girls at St Marks who wore black even though – or perhaps because – it drove the teachers mad. They thought it was cool to look like they lived in a perpetual state of mourning, they didn’t understand what it meant to only wear real black, blood red and virgin white. They wore it to look stylish, not because they were the only colours in their lives.
Miss Parker wears black and wonders how she’s found anything
left to mourn.
What if, just for one night, we could find xanadu? Paradise, Parker, what if we could have it for a minute, a moment, an hour or a day. Would you take it?
It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams. Alec told her that, just after Parker had been called back to Blue Cove for training. She had woken from a nightmare where she was trapped in a world of grey and hatred with no one beside her and only grief in her heart. Alec wasn’t good with serious things, she liked to make jokes and smile until the problem went away – or you stopped telling her about it.
“You’re going to do fine where ever you go, you are attractive, determined, ambitious and intelligent, and no one is going to stop you, Parker. A dream is just that, a dream. They don’t mean anything because if they did then everyone who ever had that one about the giant shoe eating them would be in a mental ward.”
Parker nodded, not convinced and let Alec pour her a generous amount of vodka. “You’ve always had strange dreams, Parker. I remember when we were in school, at least once a month Sammy and I would be woken by your crying.”
The glass was left untouched, “what do you mean, crying?”
Alec downed hers and coughed a bit, “you didn’t know? Oh, well Samantha and I always figured it was something to do with … well none of our business and like I said it didn’t happen often.”
“What did I say?”
“I really don’t remember.”
“Liar.”
Alec smiled and nudged Parker to drink, “of course, but it doesn’t do to dwell on the past either.”
What if by dreaming it we realise that it’s only a step or two away? What if we found it, Parker? You and I, what if we re-wrote it all? Would to take it?
There was vodka this time too, this time she drank it. “It doesn’t do to dwell on dreams, Jarod.”
Just remember when…
“It doesn’t do to dwell on the past either. There is no paradise, no xanadu, no heaven or hell. Only this and it’s called existence. Try it sometime, you might find it can be pleasant.”
Across the fields, down by the creek and under the shade of the Willow tree grows Yarrow, or so Alec says. She’s quite the authority on plants and animals, something you would never expect to look at her. On her first day at St Marks Samantha and Alec took her to see them and listed off their names; Bloodwort, Devil’s Bit, Snake Grass, Soldiers Woundwart, and Milfoil. She told them it reminded her of Hamlet and the Dead Maids Fingers, they didn’t look at her as though she was daft like all the other girls did in her last school. Instead they told her of its meanings in Greek Mythology. Miss Parker didn’t know why they were telling her this, didn’t realise that it was a test, to see if she would tell the other girls about these two strange people who know all the names of flowers and spend hours by the creek. But she didn’t tell anyway, because she’s always been good with secrets.
When Kenny broke up with her and the next boy she asked out says no, because of the other boy with the still-crooked finger, she came down to the stream and sat in the blooming Yarrow.
Alec and Samantha arrived soon after, it’s a small school and things like rejection get around fast.
They didn’t say much, just offered their shoulder to cry on and threw in the occasional ‘bastard’ when they thought she needed it.
After a while Miss Parker started to make a chain out of the flowers. “I wouldn’t if I were you,” said Samantha, who was always too superstitious for her own good. “They mean strife, you know, if you thread them all together and wear them who knows what will happen.”
Miss Parker continued anyway, piercing a hole and putting the next flower through until she’d made a crown. It was a silly and childish thing to do, but right then she almost wanted to be a child and forget silly important adult things like sex and rejection and love.
“Then I’ll be the Queen of Strife,” she told Samantha.
Once, a long time ago, Mr Parker (or maybe Bridgette – they never did find out), had killed Mutumbo. They had all said good-riddance as though it was the end, like another probably more crazy replacement wasn’t already on the way.
He wasn’t already on the way, he didn’t arrive for years but when he did he arrived in spring. Baby Parker was now toddler Parker, also known to the staff as The Tiniest Bastard. Mr Raines was dead, killed in Miss Parker’s take over attempt, incidentally the reason for his visit. Miss Parker had taken the Chairmanship after an unsuccessful coup from Lyle. Miss Parker really didn’t want the Chairmanship, didn’t want anything to do with it, she hadn’t expected to live through the attack, much less to win. Sydney, crippled and not long for this world, tried to tell her that she would do some good, maybe start the healing process. It was unlikely though, she knew power corrupts and she’d always been weak. She would be just like her father (God, which one?) and rule this place like they had. It was the ultimate irony.
She had Lyle executed, not for the coup, but for the deaths of his wives and all the other girls who had never stood a chance. Parker felt she owed it to them, and perhaps this would be her final ‘good’ deed.
“Sir,” she greeted the Zulu when he arrived in her office. “I hope you had a good trip?”
He sniffed in response and didn’t accept her outstretched hand, he was a huge man of at least 6 foot five. “Yes, the trip was fine.”
“So, sir, why are you here?”
“I was sent to check out Mr Raines’ replacement,” he said.
“Oh.”
“And if I find them … lacking, I’m to take the appropriate measures.”
Parker didn’t need to ask what the appropriate measures were.
“I’m sure that will not happen,” Miss Parker assured him. “Please, take a seat.”
The Zulu didn’t sit and didn’t make any motions to. “It has already happened, Miss Parker.”
Parker barely had time to blink when the gun was drawn and fired. She dropped to the floor dead.
Sydney too died that night. A young man, bald and nervous arranged for their burial side-by-side but Samantha was the only mourner at her funeral. She toasted her lost friend and told her daughter, Morgan, about the wonderful girl Miss Parker had been when they were at school. The girl she had known was troubled, yes, but a loyal friend to the end, intelligent beyond her years and clever too.
A few days later Miss Parker’s lawyer contacted her, informing her that she had left everything to Samantha. There was so much money Samantha didn’t know what to do with it all. She donated a quarter to St Marks, where against all odds, they had been most happy.
And so across the fields, down by the creek and under the Willow Tree sat a plague surrounded by yarrow that never touched it.
Lost friend and loved one.
Gone to a better place.
And perhaps, Samantha thought, she had.
