Only Ever Yours by Louise O'Neill

Author:Louise O'Neill
Language: eng
Format: azw3, mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781623654559
Publisher: Quercus
Published: 2015-05-19T18:30:00+00:00

I had been feeling ill that day, four years ago, my gut twisting like a damp cloth being wrung out. “Go see chastity-anne,” isabel had told me, but I didn’t want to. I didn’t want to seem weak.

I remember crawling under my bedcovers, the new ones that had recently replaced my old pink blanket with yellow stars. “These are more appropriate for a 12th year,” chastity-ruth had said. “You do want to be appropriate, don’t you?”

I curled up beneath the white sheets, trying to hold myself together. The lining of my stomach felt as if it was ripping apart. I buried my head in my pillow, biting on it to stop myself from crying out in pain.

Good girls don’t cry. Good girls don’t cry.

I woke in the middle of the night. I could feel something seeping away from the very center of me. I blinked in the dim light of the nighttime lamps, blinking again and again, but it was still there, a shadowy puddle oozing through my new sheets. I shrank away, pulling myself into the corner, away from it, but it was on my hands and it was sticky on the backs of my legs and it was spreading everywhere. I couldn’t stop it.

And I screamed and screamed and screamed. I never could sleep without meds after that.

chastity-ruth hung the tainted sheets outside my cubicle for the five days that I bled as a sign that I was unclean. We knew then. We knew this was our curse. We knew it had to be hidden.

“And to think . . .” megan had said, passing her disgust on to the others to feed on, like a pack of dogs in a nature video chewing the bones of a carcass, “. . . you were the first.”

“Can I play too?” she asked later, peeking in from the corridor into isabel’s cubicle. I can’t remember what we were playing. All I can remember is a sensation of lightness, brimming with laughter.

“No.” isabel pulled the steel door down from the ceiling, unrolling it until megan disappeared behind it.

“I don’t trust her,” she had said, watching my nervous face in the mirror. Brightening, she rummaged under her bed and pulled out a tiny gold box encrusted with rare quartz gemstones. Opening it up, she pulled out a heavy silver locket on a fine chain. I was dumbstruck. I had never seen anything so beautiful in my life.

“I got it for my birthday,” she explained as she fastened the chain around my neck.

“From who?” I asked in amazement.

“It’s yours now,” she said. “Because you were the first. Now you’re special too.”

It happened to everyone else within two months of me, snow-white sheets splattered with their shame, the new anti-womenstruation medication included with our daily bread.

But at least the others were prepared. At least they knew it was coming.

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