Cutout: The Wild Eyes of Jill Sinclair

Inspired by The Daemon Lover by Shirley Jackson. Cutout is an origin story for Jill Sinclair, a character from Malevolent Fairy, the final part of the Tangled Knot trilogy.
 
 
She had not slept well; from past ten last night, when Mary left her house, until gone six in the morning, when Jill at last allowed herself to get up and prepare for her final day as a tenth grader, she had tossed and turned, remembering Mary’s words. Jill spent almost an hour trying to perfect her look with the conditioner in her hair that Mary had told her to use, and the moisturizing lotion that, Mary said, had just the right kind of tint. She didn’t feel inclined to shower, she was that depleted in energy, and she longed to slip into some grey sweatpants and stay home in her bed. But Mary had urged her to try for just one more day. ‘Then you will have the summer,’ Mary told her, ‘and then you can think more on what I said. Maybe there are people who are better suited to you, who don’t care as much about their appearance or other people’s opinion of them.’ She probably thought that she was being kind, but Jill knew that she wasn’t kind, any more than she was speaking from her own heart. Long ago, Mary had carved out a space where her heart had been and, taking care to stay within the lines, Mary had filled that space with a shade of what others expected to see. Mary had been trained to defer to others because she had been raised by stern and domineering parents, so in kindergarten, when Mary met an equally stern and domineering girl, she knew her place. She was designed to form a link in the chain of others who would slowly cut out parts of themselves to perfectly replicate the image of one particular girl. The image of Suzy Grey.
 
Jill’s parents never helped with all that. They were constantly asking her what she thought, what she felt, and what she wanted to do, so all the while she was looking inwards for answers to these strange questions, all the other girls in her grade were looking outwards, and eventually in one direction only: To the example set by Suzy Grey. ‘You’re obsessed with her,’ Jill’s brother said, after she asked her parents yet another question about the girl. Jill claimed that she was trying to make sense of the girl, like working at an incredibly tricky formula; she figured that when she finally discovered the answer, it would feel so exhilarating and she would be able to sleep peacefully once more, before Suzy Grey ever featured in her mind. ‘I just want to know why she doesn’t look at me, why she holds me at such a distance when I try to lean in so close. Didn’t you tell me to meet people with a bit of eye contact?’ Jill asked her parents. It all seemed so unjust, that Jill would be the one to get into trouble for too much eye contact when she was always told to maintain eye contact and Suzy Grey, who gave her no eye contact, was adored by every student and teacher at her school. ‘It’s a balance,’ her parents would say, but they would use that phrase for everything, and she had never reached the exhilaration of decoding that particular formula.
 
The message Mary brought to Jill last night, the request that Jill find some other girls to sit with at lunch time, was not Mary’s words but Suzy Grey’s. That was the part that kept Jill from sleeping last night, because she would have accepted words from Suzy Grey, and she would have honored her wishes if she had communicated these to Jill herself. But it was Mary who was in Jill’s bedroom until late last night, and after almost an hour of light-toned conversation, Jill still didn’t know what Mary really desired. As she heard Suzy’s words and watched Mary’s mouth move, she asked herself what was she to do? ‘Tell the truth,’ her parents had always told her, so why was it that she was supposed to lie in response to a lie? It was a lie when Mary said, ‘It was good to see you,’ after Mary walked out of Jill’s door, and it was a lie when Jill replied, ‘It was good to see you, too,’ but she knew enough by now, at sixteen, to play it out this way.
 
Wild eyes. Last night Mary reminded her that she had eyes that scared people, that stared too intensely, especially when she appeared confused. ‘Maybe you’re trying to concentrate,’ Mary said with a smile, ‘so I can understand that you might not notice it, but it creeps us out, and people are starting to talk.’
 
‘Wild eyes,’ Jill had snapped back. ‘You used that phrase just now. Was that your words or Suzy’s?’ She knew this was not going to get her anywhere because it was far too risky for Mary to speak the truth. Mary froze, lips parted and left eye closed as she seemed to be trying to turn things around in her mind. ‘I’m not sure I follow,’ she finally said, which made her sound like she was much older than sixteen because it was something Jill had heard their mothers say. She wanted to ask this messenger whether this turn of phrase was also a hand-me-down, only this time from the mothers instead of their friend Suzy Grey, but she’d already confused Mary enough. Far better to let her catch up, if she was even capable of this.
 
‘It isn’t just your stare,’ Mary continued, and then she told Jill how her clothes were a problem, and the way she said such strange things. ‘You’re combative, adversarial, and everyone is tired of it.’
 
Jill sank back into the pillows on her bed. She’d stopped listening because she knew it was a waste of energy to try and deliberate with her. Wild eyes, she thought, like a wild animal, and she was tempted to snap her teeth and growl at Mary so she would leave, so Jill could rest because she knew that the last day of tenth grade was tomorrow, so she needed to sleep. She carried on chattering her teeth inside her mouth, but Mary didn’t seem to notice.
 
Still weary this morning, Jill ran her hand over the outfits that hung in her wardrobe. For every item that she thought she might like, she could hear Mary’s dry laughter and derision, dismissing them because, no doubt, Mary anticipated Suzy’s disapproval. Everyone in their group, all six sixteen-year-old girls, kept a close eye on Suzy’s ever-evolving taste in fashion; they were careful to never over-dress and shame her, but equally careful not to under-dress in comparison and bring Suzy’s group into disrepute. Jill realized too late that the girls were doing this, because no one really spelled it out, no one communicated explicitly about how they should dress, so for too long, Jill was dressing in grey sweatpants or navy-blue sweatpants or maybe, occasionally, a pair of shorts and t-shirt. By the time Jill realized that they were whispering about her clothes, they had probably made their decision to cut her from the group.
 
Surprising herself, and ready to surprise Mary, Suzy, and the rest of them, she opted for a lightweight lilac dress with a V-neck. Her Mom had chosen it for her last weekend, when they argued about her graduation, and her Mom tried to convince her that it was a special occasion to remember, when all Jill wanted to do was forget. Now, with the dress clinging tightly to her edges, she realized that she was regressing and returning to only know of her parents and brother. All these years of trying to keep up, trying to decode their sidewards glances and silly jokes, and Jill had nothing to show for it. The worst of it was that she wanted nothing of it in the first place, and these attempts were all for her parents, so they could produce a cardboard cutout of their desires to have friends and walk with a particular group. These attempts, Jill realized, made her no better than the cardboard cutout Mary Kane.
 
She would not accept that she had failed herself, so she fought it hard, so hard that her head felt like it was going to split in two. A headache on the last day of tenth grade, she hissed, as if things could not get any worse. She searched her bedside drawer for painkillers that she had taken from her parents’ bathroom cabinet and never bothered to return them. There were tweezers, too, and razors for the hair on her legs, her father’s earplugs, and his eye mask to help with sleep. How many times had he told her to return things after use, adding that there is a rightful place for everything, as Mary had explained, that Jill’s rightful place was not in Suzy’s group of six, soon to be five, girls. She winced when she thought of the cut again, surprised how deep it had gone, and all before she had tried to find some other place, rightful or just temporary, amongst the library nerds or the social activists or the goths or the gays.
 
Looking at the clock, she realized it was long past the time when Mary and Suzy and the rest of the girls would ring on her doorbell. No more walking to school together. They had made that decision already, and Jill felt foolish not to realize sooner that Suzy’s words of last night, delivered by Mary, would be followed up with swift action. This time she felt no pain. The cut had severed all nerve-endings, so she felt herself floating freely, levitating over her final day as she snatched her schoolbag from the closet in the hallway and pulled at her front door, remembering, too late, as the door slammed shut behind her, that it was expected of her to embrace her parents, and even ruffle her brother’s hair, instead of leaving the house unannounced. They had worked on this for years, all these little expectations, and yet she kept forgetting them, or even when the fleeting realization passed her mind, she didn’t slow her pace, let alone turn around and correct her misdeeds.
 
Outside, the light was too bright, transforming everything into a garish glare, like a painting by a half-hearted third grader, slapping any old colors onto the paper just to get the task finished, so she could play with the others instead. If someone had been here, she might have told them that the day looked surreal, and this was proof that nothing really exists, that we are all caught in a prism, our own imagination, and Mary would say that this was precisely the sort of thing that had caused Jill to be cut from Suzy’s group. Then she caught her reflection in the window of the house belonging to an elderly lady, someone Jill had never really talked to even though they lived on the same street. In this reflection, she saw how wide her eyes were staring, as she tried to take in more of her surroundings and make sense of this strange life that felt so alien.
 
Suddenly she was frightened. There was no one around, no other students making the short walk from her road, over the bridge, along the riverbank, and to the high school. This made her fearful that Mary, when she had delivered the message last night, had somehow tampered with her cell phone, adjusting the clock to another time zone, perhaps, so she had overslept, and everyone was already at school. If she arrived late, when they were already in class, Jill would have to navigate the sea of shoes on outstretched feet, some deliberately wanting to see her fall, and she would feel each pair of eyes staring at her, incredulous that she could arrive late on the very last day of tenth grade.
 
After a minute or two she climbed the steps to the school entrance and pulled at the metal handle. Countless times she had done this without any thought of it not opening, but this time it was locked, and the sudden pull of the metal handle jerked her shoulder out of place. She flinched at the thought of someone popping it back into the socket, and how much pain she would have to endure, but she was distracted from that fear by the sudden flash of a shadow from behind the glass window on the door.
 
‘Can you let me in?’ she called, and quickly dismissed any thoughts of stranger danger, and the endless warnings from her parents over the years, because anyone who was at this school was unlikely to be a stranger. She peered through the window, appalled by the thick layer of dust that had been left this close to graduation day, and she saw an unshaven man in a tattered shirt and jeans. She didn’t recognize him, so she assumed he must be someone’s parent, and she found it strange because most adults who visited the school did not turn up looking so scruffy. 
 
‘Yes?’ he called through the glass with a scowl, as if a teenage girl was the last thing he expected to see at the door to this school building. ‘What do you want?’
 
She noticed that the man was alone in the hallway, so she was certain that classes had already begun. ‘Can you ask a teacher to let me in?’ she asked, only, instead of nodding and walking over to the front office, he shook his head.
 
The man was silent for a moment and then he said, ‘Not a good idea, not unless you’re really sure. You sure you want to do this?’ It was such a strange thing to say that she scoffed a laugh that she instantly regretted, fearing that he might think her to be rude. Her parents had always impressed on her how important it was to remain polite to adults, even if you disagreed with them or found them strange. She could never reconcile this with their equal instruction to steer well clear of strange men, so she never knew how she was supposed to act if she encountered one.
 
With sudden courage she said, ‘I’m trying to get to class. Can you go and get someone to open up, or find a way to do it yourself? It’s probably just a latch on the inside of the door or something.’ She thought of lockdowns and drills, and she hoped he didn’t think that she was trying to storm the building, backpack ladened with weapons and vengeance. Then she thought that Suzy and Mary might have plotted all this, setting her up for some kind of swotting where she would be shot by the police, and they would finally cleanse their group, and their school, of one more inconvenience.
 
‘If you’re sure,’ he said with a shrug, and then he shuffled over to the door. Now closer, she could see that his eyes were sad more than threatening, and he seemed younger than before, not much older than her own father. She thought of all the ways her father had tried and failed to keep a hold of his temper, and all the ways he’d tried and failed to understand her. ‘Cut from a different cloth,’ she once heard him say to her mother, and there was a whine to his voice, like a petulant artist who is disappointed with their own creation.
 
From the other side of the school door, Jill could hear a grind and thud of a bolt sliding across a chamber and then hitting the other side, followed by a scratch and squeal of a key turning in a lock, and then the door swung open. The air was mottled with dust motes that danced in a beam of light that stretched only a small way from the window in the door, only to fade out after a few feet of the corridor.
 
‘Follow me,’ he said as he started to walk down the corridor.
 
‘Wait up,’ she called after him as she hesitated, hoping that someone else would join them in this dusky corridor. He didn’t wait for her, even hastened his pace a little, so she reluctantly started to follow. Each room she passed, each that should be stirring with bored students and a frustrated teacher, was empty. ‘Where is everyone?’
 
‘Haven’t a clue,’ he said with a shrug of his shoulders as he continued to walk.
 
What could she do? She had her cell phone, and she glanced at it with the thought that she could call the police. You go to them for a missing person, so why not tell them about a whole school building’s worth of missing people. She’s watched the crime documentaries where people are abducted from malls or even the street where they are kicking a soccer ball. She’s heard of the strange people who record themselves, and others, doing odd things to these people who are spirited away. But she could easily be made to look like a fool for this, and she can imagine how Suzy and Mary would snigger when they found out how she overreacted in this way. ‘Yes, I know,’ she would say to them, ‘I know it was foolish to call the police, but I thought that someone had abducted the students and staff at my school.’ She imagines how the girls would laugh at her some more when her eyes widened with fear, and they would call her wild again, like a lost deer or caged animal. The more she walked through these scenes, the further the man walked her down the empty corridor, and the more ridiculous she felt for even thinking of calling the police. 
 
‘You sad or something?’ the man asked her. She was never permitted to use such a direct manner, always punished if she didn’t wrap it up with a smile or a giggle that a man would have been punished for.
 
It was Jill’s turn to shrug in reply.
 
‘I suppose I should ask you what’s up, just so I don’t seem unkind or anything like that.’ He hadn’t stopped walking, and he hadn’t turned to look at her.
 
‘I suppose you can,’ she replied, ‘if you like.’
 
‘Okay, then. So, what’s up?’
 
‘My friends ditched me. At least, I thought they were my friends. One of them said that they were all talking about me, and that they all decided that I didn’t fit in with their group, only, I know it was really just one of them who wanted me cut out.’
 
‘And who’s that?’
 
‘Suzy Grey. She hates me. She wants me to go find some other group, only it’s the last day of school and most people will be away over the summer.’
 
‘So?’ he asked, sounding a little impatient. She wondered if he was next going to tell her to just get to the point already.
 
‘So I’ll be alone,’ she replied.
 
‘Is that so bad?’
 
‘My parents and brother say it is.’
 
‘And what do you say?’
 
Again, she shrugs her shoulders in reply.
 
‘What’s this Suzy got against you, anyway?’ he asked. ‘You seem okay.’
 
‘Mary said that Suzy doesn’t like the way I stare at people, that it creeps them out. Like a death stare or something, and Mary says the girls laughed when Suzy said, behind my back, that she wanted to run her hands over my face to shut my eyes, you know, like they do in movies when someone dies and their eyes are still open. I guess that would be kinda funny to some people, and I guess I do look strange. I certainly don’t look like her, I mean, she’s really pretty, and she dresses so well, and all her friends have started to dress like her and cut their hair the same length as Suzy’s.’
 
‘Sounds like she wants a cardboard cutout,’ the man added. ‘She wants a replica of herself. Maybe she’s intimidated by you, because you won’t follow her lead.’

‘Maybe.’
 
‘But cheer up, you’re graduating soon. Soon enough, you won’t have to worry about her.’
 
‘She organized a graduation party,’ Jill mutters into the darkness of the hallway. ‘And she didn’t invite me. She invited every one of the girls in our group, but she cut me out.’
 
‘That must have hurt,’ the man whispered. ‘So, what did you do when you found out?’
 
They both fell silent, and then Jill realized that both of them knew what the answer was.
 
‘I don’t want to talk about this anymore,’ she finally said.
 
‘You don’t have to say anything,’ he replied. ‘I heard you, and I know how deep the cut went.’
 
She flinched.
 
‘Don’t look like that,’ he said. Finally, he had stopped walking, and he was staring at her. ‘You shouldn’t look like that, so sad and all. That cut can’t hurt if you never felt it in the first place, never wanted any of it. So you miss a graduation party. Who cares!’
 
Jill wanted to believe the man. She wanted to believe that they were plotting her humiliation, where they set her up with some jock and made her the homecoming queen, only to pour a bucket of pig’s blood over her head. But her parents’ words were gnawing at her, pressing on her the importance of this graduation.
 
‘Here,’ the man said as he gestured to the darkness. ‘We’ve reached the end of the tunnel.’
 
She didn’t panic when she heard him use tunnel instead of hallway. She knew where they were going.
 
‘Will it hurt?’ she asked him, but he didn’t reply. ‘Will anyone miss me?’ she added, desperate now to get some kind of answer.
 
‘I miss you,’ he said with the first smile she had seen on him. ‘I miss you so much.’
 
By now she knew that Suzy and Mary and the other girls weren’t hiding in the shadows, they weren’t stifling their giggles, and they weren’t ready with some trick. She wondered if they were sorry, and she wondered if Suzy would let them have their own feelings about all of this. Probably not, she thought, and then she stepped into the darkness.

BB Clifford
 
Author of Tangled Knot, Rainbow Warrior, and Malevolent Fairy