In Sarah's Shadow by Karen McCombie Page A

bones.
    “So we get home and I just decided I’d had enough and went to my room. But Sarah hadn’t had enough – she barges in, wafting the big cheque she’s got off of Mum and Dad in my face, taped inside this card that says ‘To our No. 1 daughter’. She really liked pointing that out to me.”
    I pause, feeling the choke in my throat at the memory of her flaunting that under my nose. I know I should have just told her to get a life, but after years of stuff like this, I suddenly…well, I guess I suddenly ran out of steam.
    “You don’t know what it’s been like for years and years in my family, Conor…it’s as if it all –I dunno. It’s as if it all crowded in on me that one night.”
    I’m not sure if I can go on. But then I’ve come this far, and to be honest, with every sentence my long swallowed secret starts choking me that little bit less…
    “What happened?” Conor asks softly.
    “I waited till I thought they were all in bed, all asleep.Then I went down to the kitchen and got a knife – I got a knife out of the drawer…”
    I can’t do it – I can’t go on. I can’t tell him about Mum finding me; about her trying desperately to bind my bleeding wrists with tea towels while she screamed for Dad to get us to the hospital; about seeing Sarah standing there on the stairs when the ambulance arrived, smiling her Sweetpea smile of total innocence…
    “Megan,” I hear Conor’s voice somewhere above me and feel the electricity as his arm wraps around me.
    But all too soon his comforting warmth is gone.
    “Give me a couple of minutes. I promise, just two minutes. I’ll be right back.”
    Oh yeah? I think to myself, feeling that beautifully warm arm peel itself away from me, knowing I’ve frightened him off. God, how could I have landed all that on Conor and expected him to handle it? How can I expect him to understand a lifetime’s worth of drip-drip torture adding up and adding up to one night of sheer, black, bottomless madness? He thinks I’m a freak now – some mad, overemotional girl who flipped out over nothing. Please, please, please, why didn’t I just keep my mouth shut and my wrists covered…?
    It’s the end of the world…It’s the end of the world…It’s the end of the world…It’s the end of the world… Iwhisper over and over again inside the private world of my whirling mind. It seems like that’s a snatch of some forgotten lyric, but I can’t remember – it’s just how I feel right at this moment; the moment when I could forget all the fairy stories of spells and good fortune coming my way and realise that all I have to look forward to is a lifetime of luck, of the bad luck variety…
    And then as the rocking I’m doing seems to be comforting me in some deep, dark way, a two-note guitar riff shoots insulin up my spinal cord.
    Thank you, PJ Harvey; thank you, whoever’s acting as DJ here: the irrepressible strains of PJ’s Good Fortune blast out of the speakers, sending my heartache – and every hip-hop and R&B fan – shooting far away for one glorious, soul-enriching moment.
    “Dance?” comes his voice, like the best dream I’ve ever had. The soundtrack to my life; the most gorgeous, glorious, good guy I’ve ever met sweeps me off my feet to the most gorgeous, glorious, feel-good rock track that’s ever been recorded. “I requested this for you. I heard you playing it in your room a couple of times. You’re really into her, aren’t you?”
    “Yes,” I whisper to him, half-laughing, half-dying with relief that he’s come back to me, and let myself drift weightless to my feet and into his arms.
    Moving in slow, sensuous, on-the-spot circles among the other dancers, resting my head against Conor’s strong, wiry chest, feeling the pressure of the chain around his neck on my temple, I know it can’t get better than this.
    Change…
    Oh, yes it can.
    Change…
    Everyone’s allowed to dream, aren’t they?
    Change…
    A hand strokes the back of my