Under My Skin. Zoe Markham

real life guinea pig, all we can do is wait to see what happens to my body, and hope for the best. Part of me really wishes he hadn’t quit the Agency, however dangerous he says it was; because now if anything goes wrong… well… I’m not supposed to think about it. Don’t think. I’m waiting for that reaction to become automatic, but I suppose I’m not quite there yet. Nothing good ever comes from thinking about it all. A person could go mad pretty quick that way. Anyway, he’s got this research post at the hospital down here now, something to do with stem cells, saying it’s the nearest he can get to having the same kind of resources as before, so I suppose I just have to sit tight and hope that he’ll work it all out. Somehow.

      ‘I do know what I’m doing Chlo,’ he’s told me, more times than I can remember, but I worry that he does it as much to convince himself as me. ‘The Royal has some of the most up-to-date equipment available, and one of the biggest research budgets in the country. I didn’t just pick this place for the views.’ He’s put so much effort into it all. All the time I was sedated he never stopped working. And he still never stops. He must be confident this job will give him everything he needs, even though he’s going to have to do all his ‘Project Chloe’ work in secret. I mean, it’s not something you’d want to have to explain to your new boss. Oh, this? I’m just trying to perfect my death vaccine! Ha. Awkward.

      He’s kind of like a twisted superhero these days. Tirelessly working to save me. I feel bad sometimes that I don’t feel better towards him for it. I know why he’s doing it though, risking everything the way he is: Epic Guilt. He’s trying to make up for what he did to Mum. And I can’t stop myself from wishing that he’d put even a fraction of the effort in when she was still alive. The accident was his fault; I do think that, most of the time, but other times I convince myself it was mine. We never talk about it though. It’s like if we don’t say it out loud, it didn’t happen, and that way it can’t destroy us. It has destroyed me though. And here I am trying to hold it together because I don’t really know what else to do; I keep as much of it all on the inside as I can, trying not to let it show, but there isn’t a single day that goes by where I don’t wish that he’d brought Mum back instead of me. I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for that.

      I find my diary in the last box. I never kept one before all this, but when I was first starting to get better, Dad thought it might be a good idea for me to start writing one. It was a pretty poor substitute for being able to talk to someone, but I suppose it did help, in a way. It was all the emails and texts and tweets I could never send. Flicking through the pages my stomach twists as I see how weak and spidery my handwriting was. I close it again quickly, but not before some of the words leap out at me: frightened, confused, weak, alone. They’re like ghosts. I don’t want to see them. I don’t want to remember how I felt. And most of all I don’t want to admit that really, nothing’s changed. I’m still all of those things, I’ve just got a little better at hiding it. I wear my mask, even when it’s just me and Dad. Hell, I wear it even when it’s just me. I don’t dare take it off. Act happy Chlo, take the piss Chlo, don’t think Chlo. I slide the photo of me and Tom back out from under my mattress, slip it into the diary, and shut both of them in the bottom of the wardrobe.

      With the boxes all empty, I fold them down flat and fling them out of the window. It’s easier than carrying them down the stairs, and I’ll ask Dad to go out and move them later; if he falls over them in the morning I’ll never hear the end of it.

      I’m starting to ache again from bending and stretching, so I treat myself to a long soak in the elaborately sunken bath in my en suite. Dad had to help me in and out of the narrow, cracked tub in the flat, it was pretty manky and he was always worrying that I’d fall, always hovering outside the door just in case. Having a bath on my own like this, well, it’s a rare treat. Dad shouts in that he’s heading down to try and sort things out in his ‘office’, which means the creepy, cobweb-filled basement. It was on his list of must-haves for the new house – not the cobwebs, I mean, but a basement. I don’t know what it is with him and them, I’d be happy to never see one again. I yell back a ‘’kay!’ and then sink my head under the water and lose myself in the heavy, salty warmth.

      The salts I have to use each day feel like heaven while I’m in the water, but if I don’t use the shower to rinse off properly before I get out they scratch like crazy through the night. It’s such a bloody complicated process. Dad developed them himself, but, like everything, he’s still ‘tweaking’ them. I’m still running as ‘Chloe 1.1’ – he says there’s a long way to go yet. If I soak in them for at least thirty minutes a night, my skin looks clearer and brighter in the morning. An hour’s better, but some nights I just can’t be bothered, even though I know I should. It’ll be easier here, in a warm bathroom that isn’t crawling with mould. It’s my face that needs the salts the most, which of course is the one part of me it isn’t really easy to submerge for long. I soak my flannel in the mineral-enriched water, and lay it over my face, recharging it every few minutes as much for something to do as anything else. The heat of the water feels good on my back and legs, and after my meal and my soak combined I feel better than I have done all day as I shower off and then towel myself dry. Better than I have done in months. If I could feel like this all the time, I don’t think it would be so bad. It would be maybe a little easier to forget about things, at least. Not thinking might come a bit more naturally. I keep wondering if I should ask Dad if he can make me a pill for that.

      When I finally part company with the water there are two creams I need to douse my skin in. The first one’s fine, it’s just one of those water-based over-the-counter moisturisers. The second is a nightmare; it’s thick and oily and takes forever to sink in. And the smell, god. If there was one reason I had to give for why I’ll never be able to get a boyfriend, it’s this. No one in their right mind would want me sliding into bed next to them in this state. And the worst part of it is that if I don’t use the cream, I’ll look even worse in the morning. Even more of a monster. Damned if I do…

      Of course, there’s really a much bigger and more obvious reason for why no one would ever want to be with me than the smell and state of my skin, but it’s never going to come to that anyway, so why worry.

      Dad’s tried but he hasn’t been able to do much to help with the scar. I wipe the condensation from the mirror over the sink, and there it is, plain to see even in my horribly blurred reflection: a raised, white, jagged reminder, running across the bridge of my nose, over my eyelids, and then out in almost a straight line to just above both my ears. It runs further, but my hair hides the rest. It kind of looks like I’m wearing these weird comedy glasses, only it’s really not funny. I hate looking in the mirror, I don’t know what possessed me to wipe it. It starts playing in my head again. Glass flying towards me, shattering as it finds my face. I don’t feel it slice my skin open, the pain comes much later, now there’s only the warm wetness of the blood and the coppery taste of it as it fills my mouth. I smell the rain, mixing in with the burnt, rubbery tang of shredded tyres, and I hear the sick cacophony of crying and screaming and twisting metal, and then that awful silence that followed. The silence is always the worst part. The silence means she’s gone. And this is the moment, right there, when my world ended.

      I turn away, too late. Seeing the glass of the windscreen in the glass of the mirror like that, well, it’d mess with anyone’s head, I think. I’m frightened I’ll totally lose the plot if I look for long enough. Why would I want to look, anyway? I’m a twisted, broken mess. If I don’t see myself, I can sometimes almost convince myself, just for a little while, that I’m not a freak – a perversion of nature – a nightmare in my own right. When I see myself, I don’t know what I am. It’s better not to look.

      Dad said it’s a miracle my eyes made it. I used to feel sick thinking about what it would have been like to come back like this, but not to have my sight. It’s the only way I can imagine my world could be any darker. But now, a lot of the time I wonder if it would have been a blessing in disguise. See no evil… it works the same for ‘see no freak’ I’d imagine.

      After the cream, it’s time for my all-important injection – the one thing keeping my body under the illusion that all is well – before a variety of tablets get chased down by