Fragile Monsters by Catherine Menon (100 books to read in a lifetime txt) 📕

one strap. Karthika lurks behind, her head downcast. She sneaks a glance up at me and then drops her eyes again. A little bit triumphant – hands off, Durga-Miss, what’s mine is mine – and a little bit scared at what she’s done.

‘I heard you all. Like some fishwives, upsetting everything.’ Ammuma looks irritable, but that’s all. Perhaps Karthika’s said less than I thought.

‘Everything’s OK, Mary-Auntie.’ Tom gives her a practised smile, a 100%-and-then-some smile, but it doesn’t soften her one bit.

‘Ar, then time to go. It’s late, no need to be all here like this, keeping us up in the middle of the night.’ She puts her hands on her hips and sends Tom a sharp look. ‘Too late for staying.’

Tom looks stricken. He holds out his hand, gives me a polite handshake while mumbling something about it having been nice to see me. We walk back through the front room. Karthika’s scuttled away to her fire again, now she’s done all the damage she can. With any luck she’ll trip on her own wagging tongue, end up in the cinders or down one of the wells.

Tom slips his shoes on and turns to give me an awkward smile.

‘Good luck,’ he says, and then, ‘Keep in touch.’

His voice sounds artificial and flat. The way goodbyes do in airports and on train stations, when everybody wants the next few minutes over and done with.

I stand on the verandah with Ammuma on my left, watching him walk away. I can’t think straight; I don’t know whether I’m glad to see the back of him or I’d be glad to see him back. There’s a pad of bare feet and Karthika comes to stand on my right. Three Graces, three Muses, three monkeys. Take your pick, Tom. Ammuma with her watchful eyes, Karthika guilty as sin and twice as unreliable, me still in a swamp from fifteen years ago. And behind us: laughing, tangled hair, ballpoint tattoos on her fragile wrists, always and for ever, Peony.

14. 1970

‘Truth or dare? Go on, Durga.’

We’re fifteen years old, in Tom’s father’s car. Cars aren’t exactly new in Lipis – Mother Agnes has an old shabby one – but most of them are just tin Milo things, as Ammuma says. Flimsy, lightweight. Tom’s father, on the other hand, has a brand-new Nissan Sunny in the brightest, most luscious red. Tom persuaded his father to let him and Peony come for a ride in it today. Me too, but only after Peony asked.

Catching Peony’s bright glance in the rear-view mirror, I look behind. She’s got ink on her collar and her mouth is red and clownish where she’s been chewing her cedarwood pencils.

‘Truth or dare?’

‘Truth,’ I say.

Tom, sitting on the front seat next to me, grins. ‘Right – truth, then. Durga, who would you rather kiss, Fat Ali or me?’

He’s laughing. I wish lightning would come and strike me dead right now.

‘Shut up, Tom.’ Peony reaches round from the back seat and gives my hand a quick squeeze. ‘That’s a stupid one,’ she says. ‘Durga … how about – did you copy Noor’s maths test?’

We’re an hour away from Lipis, waiting in the car just outside Kampung Ulu. Dr Harcourt – Tom’s father – parked next to the swamp and told us to stay put while he made a quick visit to the leper colony down the road. A leper colony sounds scary, but this one isn’t. Not really. It’s just sad. There are TB patients in it, too, and some poor people who were born wrong and can’t talk or move. Mad Ahmad lives there too, and he was in the San before it burnt down fifteen years ago. The remains of the San are just across the swamp – I can see one of the burnt-out buildings from here – and that is scary, just a little bit.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘I copied Noor’s answers.’

I didn’t, in fact – she’d got half of them wrong – but I want to join in. Make it exciting. Make me exciting.

‘Liar,’ Tom says. ‘You’re such a goody-goody, Durga. You’d never.’

‘I’m not lying! I’m not!’

‘Leave her alone, Tom.’ Peony rolls her eyes, and that’s that. Tom always listens to her. ‘Your turn, and don’t come up with anything strange. Durga and I won’t play if you do.’

Playing Truth or Dare was Peony’s idea. All the best ideas are. Tom keeps going too far with it, though. Teasing me about Ali, who’s chubby with a stupid little fuzz-moustache. As if I’d want to kiss him.

‘Truth or dare?’

‘Dare.’ Peony always picks dare. Tom grins.

‘Cross the swamp to the San,’ he says, and we all look up, out of the windscreen. The swamp’s thick and black. Overhead is the biggest banyan tree in Pahang. The roots curve and swoop overhead to make a cave where Dr Harcourt’s parked, and the water hums with dragonflies and mosquitoes. The colony’s on the other side.

‘And then sing “Locks on the Gates” three times,’ he adds.

‘No way!’ Peony’s eyes go round and wide. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘That’s dangerous,’ I say, although nobody’s listening. ‘Mad Ahmad might hear. It isn’t funny, Tom.’

Mad Ahmad was the only person they rescued from the San when it burnt down. Even though that was fifteen years ago, but he still isn’t normal. Some afternoons they say he walks right out of the leper colony and goes back to the tumbledown San, where he thinks he belongs.

‘Locks on the gates,’ Tom sing-songs, ‘and bars on the doors.’

‘Don’t!’ I push him.

Locks on the Gates is a chasing game. One person’s the lunatic from the San and the others are the guards. Locks on the gates, we sing, and bars on the doors. Coming to get you, ready or not! I’m not supposed to play it, though. Ammuma heard me once and lost her temper. She hates that game, she told me, but then she hugged me and didn’t