Free Someday Find Me by Nicci Cloke

past. I found my name and stopped. Two plywood boards, painted white with emulsion and fixed to make a corner, one where my work could be mounted and pinned, where people could stand around hushed and look, some of them to point at a thing that captured their eye or their heart and whisper to their friend before moving on. I reached out a hand and ran my fingers over the smooth surface.
     
    Earlier that day, I’d stepped into the workshop and sat without taking any work from my bag. I’d wanted to capture the anger I’d felt before, to see what the others were doing and spur myself on, light a fire in my head that would burn away the blur. There were only a couple of them there, Gennifer hunched over her sewing machine, Millie studiously guillotining backing paper. I sat and watched her hand move back and forth along the board, sliding the blade along its runner. I fished for my camera in my pocket, captured by the thin strips of the paper being sliced away, the borders brought in nearer and nearer, the edges coming closer to the centre. She turned as I raised the lens and I looked down again, pretending to flick through pictures, hearing her neat step and hair swish behind me.
    ‘Whoops!’
    The sheets of thick paper fluttered to the floor in their perfect squares. She had caught her foot in the strap of my bag, spilling its guts onto the dirty grey tiles. I bent to pick up the things and felt my head spin.
    ‘Sorry, Saffy, I didn’t see you there,’ she said, crouching down with a hair flick to gather her perfect paper. ‘Gosh, what are all these for?’
     
    There is a time and a place for stealing cutlery. It’s mid-lunch-time on a weekday and it’s in the branch of Scoff nearest the Tube station, where the cutlery station is near the door and not the counter, and where the sets come shrink-wrapped, folded in a napkin, bedded in with a pinch of salt and a twist of pepper in their paper packets, sealed. You can slip through the door with as many as you can fit in your hands and your bag and nobody will notice.
    My fear of forks, and of knives and spoons too, though that doesn’t sound half as lovely, had started in earnest a few weeks before. I’d watched Quin do the washing-up, with the cutlery left till last in the bottom of the bowl, mayonnaise and butter and sauce and potato and fat all greasy around the teeth and the handles. I’d watched him run the dirty sponge over them once, a fat fistful of them, then dump them on the smudged metal draining-board. And I’d known, right away, that I would never be able to put one in my mouth again.
     
    I took the plastic packets from her and shoved them back into my bag.
    ‘They’re for a piece,’ I said. ‘About consumerism.’
    ‘Wow,’ she said, straightening up, hair falling back into place. ‘Sounds amazing.’
     
    I wondered if Millie had been to see her boards, if she’d stood there in the silence and stared at the space, like I was. The wall was flimsy to touch. I could push it over if I wanted to. Push it over and make it all go away, make everything stop whirling and stop the white panels staring at me. But I didn’t. I stepped back and I stood there for a very long time, staring at my tiny printed name and the blank space beneath it.

 
    The music is loud and I don’t know anybody here. I’ve taken all my coke and still haven’t found anybody I want to talk nothings about nothing with. I keep drinking my drink for something to do, but the ice is cold and it hurts my teeth. I came with Abby but she’s gone up to a bedroom with some guy who spilt a drink over her white dress and whom she kissed as a reward. I’m wearing a top I love, although I lose it somehow a week or so later. It’s covered with heavy sequins; not sparkly but dull, used sequins, like armour. It makes me feel small and light, like the top is the only thing holding me on the ground. I could take it off any time I want.
    I lean against the bookcase, watching people dance