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Authors: Tanya Byrne
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I’m in my room. Lily is asleep on my bed, her eyelashes fluttering. I wish I could sleep like that; she looks so content. I think she’s used to it now – this place. I think she might even be enjoying it. She certainly seems to relish asking me question after question. She just asked me what it was like, being someone else. I didn’t lie. I told her that I enjoyed it; the lies, the melodrama, the weeks of smiling at Juliet and feeding her sweet little lies while she looked at me with wide brown eyes, devouring every word.
I expected her to be more suspicious – of me, of Sid – but she wasn’t at all. Our three lives knotted together the moment we met in that classroom. We went to classes together and had lunch together. In the evenings, we went to the cinema and, while it was still warm, we sat in the park, sharing bags of crispsand watching the sky change from pink to purple to black, like an old bruise. On Friday nights there was a pub in Camden that didn’t check IDs and on Saturdays there was always a party; Sid always knew someone who was DJ’ing somewhere or a mate who was turning eighteen. It was like the summer before I met them, the summer before Juliet stabbed Dad and everything fell apart, back when we were young and free and unbreakable.
I even started having dinner at Juliet’s house two, sometimes three, times a week. Her foster parents – Mike and Eve – ate up my grumbles about my parents’ divorce and how my mother was never home, just like Juliet had, and as soon as they did, as soon as they started feeding me roast chicken and asking about college, I knew that was it
. . .
I’d been invited in.
I didn’t tell Lily this, but the best thing about being Rose Glass was that I didn’t have to be Emily Koll. And the best thing about not being Emily Koll was that I could start again. I could cross that year out, the year Dad was on remand, the year I was in Spain, and be sixteen again.
It’s a terrible thing, I suppose, to be seventeen and to want to start again. It’s not like before then – before Juliet – I was unhappy. I was popular at school. Okay, I wasn’t one of the shiny-haired girls who looked at your bag before they looked at you and I wasn’t as cool as the girls who drank coffee and read Murakami, but I had found a corner for myself – I played the cello. It wasn’t the guitar and I wore black dresses instead of black nail varnish, but I was good, good enough to make Dad and Uncle Alex cry when they came to my recitals. And I had friends;I swapped clothes with Catherine Bamford and held Alma Peet’s hair every time we went to a party and Max Dalton fed her vodka shots until she puked. And when Olivia’s grandmother died, I got everyone to sign a card and we made a donation to Cancer Research.
But that was before. So forget about that Emily; she went away the moment Juliet stabbed Dad. Now I’m Harry Koll’s daughter. That’s all I’ll ever be, so forgive me if I wanted to be Rose Glass for a while.
I know it’s moments like this when I sound utterly insane, but I learned a lot from being Rose. Before I had to be someone else I didn’t think too much about who I was. I was who I was, if you know what I mean. I didn’t think that could change. I thought my personality was as much a part of me as the colour of my hair. But then I dyed it red and I didn’t look like me any more. I looked like Monday Fitzgerald.
Monday was in Year 11 when I started at St Jude’s. She didn’t have shiny hair or read Murakami, but every girl in my year was in awe of her. Where we were small with too much hair and not enough personality, Monday was tall and graceful with huge cardamom-coloured eyes and a smile that could stop a horse mid-gallop.
Every girl at St Jude’s wanted to be Monday Fitzgerald. Not because she was popular or pretty or destined for greatness, but because in a school where everyone looked the same and dressed the same and went out with the same handful of
I expected her to be more suspicious – of me, of Sid – but she wasn’t at all. Our three lives knotted together the moment we met in that classroom. We went to classes together and had lunch together. In the evenings, we went to the cinema and, while it was still warm, we sat in the park, sharing bags of crispsand watching the sky change from pink to purple to black, like an old bruise. On Friday nights there was a pub in Camden that didn’t check IDs and on Saturdays there was always a party; Sid always knew someone who was DJ’ing somewhere or a mate who was turning eighteen. It was like the summer before I met them, the summer before Juliet stabbed Dad and everything fell apart, back when we were young and free and unbreakable.
I even started having dinner at Juliet’s house two, sometimes three, times a week. Her foster parents – Mike and Eve – ate up my grumbles about my parents’ divorce and how my mother was never home, just like Juliet had, and as soon as they did, as soon as they started feeding me roast chicken and asking about college, I knew that was it
. . .
I’d been invited in.
I didn’t tell Lily this, but the best thing about being Rose Glass was that I didn’t have to be Emily Koll. And the best thing about not being Emily Koll was that I could start again. I could cross that year out, the year Dad was on remand, the year I was in Spain, and be sixteen again.
It’s a terrible thing, I suppose, to be seventeen and to want to start again. It’s not like before then – before Juliet – I was unhappy. I was popular at school. Okay, I wasn’t one of the shiny-haired girls who looked at your bag before they looked at you and I wasn’t as cool as the girls who drank coffee and read Murakami, but I had found a corner for myself – I played the cello. It wasn’t the guitar and I wore black dresses instead of black nail varnish, but I was good, good enough to make Dad and Uncle Alex cry when they came to my recitals. And I had friends;I swapped clothes with Catherine Bamford and held Alma Peet’s hair every time we went to a party and Max Dalton fed her vodka shots until she puked. And when Olivia’s grandmother died, I got everyone to sign a card and we made a donation to Cancer Research.
But that was before. So forget about that Emily; she went away the moment Juliet stabbed Dad. Now I’m Harry Koll’s daughter. That’s all I’ll ever be, so forgive me if I wanted to be Rose Glass for a while.
I know it’s moments like this when I sound utterly insane, but I learned a lot from being Rose. Before I had to be someone else I didn’t think too much about who I was. I was who I was, if you know what I mean. I didn’t think that could change. I thought my personality was as much a part of me as the colour of my hair. But then I dyed it red and I didn’t look like me any more. I looked like Monday Fitzgerald.
Monday was in Year 11 when I started at St Jude’s. She didn’t have shiny hair or read Murakami, but every girl in my year was in awe of her. Where we were small with too much hair and not enough personality, Monday was tall and graceful with huge cardamom-coloured eyes and a smile that could stop a horse mid-gallop.
Every girl at St Jude’s wanted to be Monday Fitzgerald. Not because she was popular or pretty or destined for greatness, but because in a school where everyone looked the same and dressed the same and went out with the same handful of
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