Fish Boy Read online

  ‘Thanks,’ he says, ‘the angle of the head is a bit off.’

  ‘Want to draw on my shoes?’ I put my foot up on the desk.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Your drawings are amazing.’

  ‘I’ll have to do some sketches first,’ he says. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘You’re the artist,’ I say.

  He shrugs, ‘I think we should go with the fish thing.’

  Mr Neilson lets us use the art room at break and I sit with my feet on the desk.

  ‘How long’s it gonna take?’

  ‘A while.’

  It takes ages. First Ben does some paper sketches for scale and design possibilities. Then he draws on the shoes. Then he inks it in. I keep my feet in the shoes throughout the process. We tried taking them out, but it made the edges too squashy.

  ‘Finished,’ he says at last and stands back to squint at his work. They look totally amazing. Ben nods and half smiles. ‘Not bad,’ he says. I think how he must be the biggest perfectionist I know.

  Everyone gets bright white Shoe Fayre trainers after that. Mr Neilson chucks us out of the art room after the first few days. Luckily the fall wall’s just the right height for shoe sitting. Each of Ben’s designs are unique, like the person wearing them. He draws the stuff that makes them different, the stuff that makes them them. They are mint.

  The fall wall spot gets kind of busy. People just stay around to hang out together, even after their shoes are done. Harry, Shane, Todd, Leo, Alex, Sarah. Zadie. It feels strange but nice.

  At the weekend I give Patrick his first actual swimming lesson and walk up to Zadie’s house. I realise how this route isn’t really any kind of shortcut at all. It’s just the way I want to go. My magnetic north.

  I see Zadie. Alone. She waves and sticks her face up to the feature window, next to the cockles, in her new bloodsucker shoes. She taps the glass. I go over. She opens the window.

  ‘Nice shoes.’

  ‘Cheers.’ I look at the vampires on one, the werewolves on the other. Fur and blood drips and wings. ‘I didn’t want to pick y’know. They’re actually enemies. Traditionally.’

  ‘I’d pick the werewolves.’

  ‘Yeah, but they can’t fly,’ she says.

  ‘Vampires can’t howl,’ I say.

  She shrugs. ‘They can if they practise. A lot.’

  ‘They’re both good,’ we say together. She smiles and makes one shoe talk to the other.

  ‘Peace?’ say the vampires. ‘Never,’ say the werewolves.

  ‘Shame,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah.’

  She fiddles with her jeans. ‘We’re going out for Chinese for my birthday,’ she says. ‘D’you want to come?’ For the first time I’m not the only person to go red.

  In my mind Sir David points out the twelve-wired bird of paradise. ‘Courtship appears to be some kind of game,’ he says. The bird pole dances up and down a pole and pokes the female with its beak. I switch Sir David off.

  ‘Okay,’ I say, ‘thanks.’

  I poke my arm through the window and Zadie writes her phone number on the back of my hand. ‘See you on Saturday.’

  ‘Unless zombies take over the world,’ she smiles.

  ‘Okay, yeah.’ We grin. ‘Unless that happens.’ I wave and go.

  Once I’m past her house I practise walking as fast as a black spiny-tailed iguana. I move like the wind, like lightning, like the fastest no-shoes-and-reset-compass boy you’ve ever seen.

  The Future

  Me and Mum get the wheelchair out.

  I fold down the sides and bump it down the steps.

  Mum clicks the front door shut.

  We look at each other.

  ‘Ready?’ I say. I stand at the back and hold the handles.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She pulls a face. ‘I’ve got more energy this morning,’ she says, ‘can’t we just walk for a bit.’ She looks at me and we both start laughing. She rolls her eyes and gets in.

  We go to the end of the street. We turn right, turn left. I’m pretty good except for the curbs. An old lady in a purple coat comes up the street and grabs my arm. ‘Strong as lampposts,’ she says and whistles. She does a Tarzan and walks off again.

  We stop when we get to the cliff path. It’s too hard to push in the gravel. She takes the left handle, I take the right. We walk along looking at the empty chair, the empty space.

  I look down.

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I wish …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wish it would disappear.’ I pick at the side of my finger. ‘The ME. I don’t want you to disappear.’ She puts her arm around me and I lean into her chest and we stop.

  ‘Listen,’ she says. ‘Can you hear it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Me.’

  I listen. I hear her heart. BANG, BANG, BANG, it goes. BANG, BANG, BANG. ‘I can hear it,’ I say. ‘I can hear you.’

  ‘Good,’ she says and holds me tight. ‘Cos I’m still in here. Inside. Inside I’m ready, waiting, bursting to get back out again.’ She breathes out. ‘And I will,’ she says. ‘I will.’

  She ruffles my hair. ‘Shut your eyes,’ she says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Dr Winsall says I have to do visualisation.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Just shut your eyes.’

  I check she shuts hers first and then I shut mine. ‘What do you see?’ she says.

  I don’t see anything. ‘Nothing, darkness, black,’ I say. I see the blood in my skin.

  ‘Look harder,’ she says, ‘think harder.’ We both just stand there. My body wobbles about. ‘I see you,’ she says. ‘I see you and me at the beach. It’s sunny and I’ve got my swimsuit on.’

  ‘With the red spots?’

  ‘Yeah, with the red spots. And you’re wearing your sea slug trunks. Don’t splash me,’ she says, ‘you’re splashing me.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘You started it,’ I say.

  She taps me with an elbow. ‘Anyway I don’t mind. It’s okay cos I’m getting in the water.’

  ‘Me too.’

  ‘It’s cold,’ she says, ‘but very, very blue.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘And we’re swimming together again. Like a pair of seals.’

  ‘Like dolphins,’ I say.

  ‘And we swim out. To the crocodile rocks.’

  ‘Past the crocodile rocks.’

  ‘Okay. Past the crocodile rocks and back again,’ she says. ‘And Dad’s got the towels ready.’

  ‘And some hobnobs.’ I feel the sunlight making my eyes all gold. I see us together, running, laughing. Dad pretends to chainsaw our heads off and we fall down dead in a big laughing pile on the sand.

  ‘Mum …’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I think we can open our eyes now.’

  ‘Okay.’ she says. ‘Righto.’

  And we open our eyes and we just stand there, looking out into the world, at all the things that might or might not happen. And it’s okay.

  Sometimes hamsters need to curl up in a big pile of sawdust, and meerkats bolt back down their hole, conger eels pull their heads back in the rock crack and monkey beetles lie down in daisies and let the petals curl up over their heads and hold them out of the cold, all through the night, till morning.

  Life is full of hard-its and soft-its.

  I am Fish Boy. My mind goes up and down like the waves. My thoughts go in and out like the sea. I am Fish Boy. I am me.

  About ME …

  In Britain about 250,000 people are affected by ME.

  ME = Myalgic Encephalopathy.

  People’s symptoms are different.

  It can mean: a total lack of energy, aching muscles, that you’re unable to concentrate, that you can’t sleep well.

  Sometimes it happens after a bad illness, sometimes it just happens.

  There is no cure an
d no effective treatment.

  It’s still a bit of a mystery.

  *

  If you’d like to find out more, the action for ME website www.afme.org.uk is a great place to start and has lots of helpful information and links.

  Fish Speak

  anything hard – to be avoided

  anything soft – can be swum through

  food – any kind

  a suspicious feeling for something that cannot be identified and makes you stop

  the sky – the empty space without water that pulls the life out of all fish

  the surface of the sea

  a mackerel-eating bird – the shadow that comes from the sky into the big-shine

  Acknowledgements

  There’s a very fab David A fact about crows which didn’t make it into the book but is this: ‘In the city crows pick up nuts and drop them on zebra crossings. They let the cars crush the shells off and then hop along on the green man to eat the nut.’

  I love this and it makes me think about books and writing.

  Books are very hard nuts to crack.

  I’d like to spend a bit of time if it’s okay saying thanks to everyone that’s helped me along the way and been a part of this. Hopefully we are all now happily dancing up and down on the green man.

  Beep beep beep! Hooray!

  Thank you:

  Chris, Tom, Wilf, Twinks, Chang and the buzzard gang.

  Pam Matthews.

  Katie & Charlie Darby-Villis.

  Richard Jones for putting his heart into these pictures.

  David Almond for being a real inspiration and an all round lovely bloke.

  The big shouldered & contagiously enthusiastic Mr Ben Illis and the wonderful BIA family. I’m so happy to be with you all!

  The particular patience, kindness and care of Leah Thaxton, Naomi Colthurst, Natasha Brown, Lizzie Bishop, Emma Eldridge, Hannah Love & all the invaluable team at Faber.

  Writing champions Claire Malcolm, Anna Disley & everyone at New Writing North. Plus the existence of the brilliant Northern Writers Awards! Fantastic!

  The Newcastle University Creative Writing MA course and tutors, in particular: Ann Coburn, William Fiennes, Helen Limon, Sean O’Brien & Margaret Wilkinson. Plus the AHRC for their studentship. I wouldn’t be here without you.

  My university & Hexham writing gangs for the best support a person could want: Jill, Eleanor, Sue, Jamie, John, Annie H, Ian and Anouska. Debbie, Wendy, Sylvia, Berni and Margaret.

  The sage genius & encouragement of Linda France.

  To my lovelisome big sister and M&D.

  My first ever writing teachers, the fab Penny Grennan and Janine Wood.

  And all the other amazing people who’ve been there and given me a leg up or kindness or a hug I’m really sad that there isn’t the space to fit you all in here but I hope you know who you are.

  THANK YOU

  all of you

  in many many ways.

  About the Author

  Fish Boy is Chloe Daykin’s first novel, which she wrote while studying for her MA in Creative Writing at Newcastle University. It won the Northern Writers Award in June 2014, and has already garnered critical acclaim. An artist, designer, playwright and teacher, Chloe lives in Northumberland with her husband and two boys.

  Copyright

  First published in the UK in 2017

  by Faber & Faber Limited

  Bloomsbury House, 74–77 Great Russell Street

  London, WC1B 3DA

  This ebook edition first published in 2017

  All rights reserved

  Text © Chloe Daykin, 2017

  Illustrations © Richard Jones, 2017

  The right of Chloe Daykin and Richard Jones to be identified as author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  ISBN 978–0–571–32677–8

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly