Fish Boy Read online

  Mum strokes my arms. I see that my hands have clenched up into balls. As she strokes them they ease out again and my shoulders go down. I look at how her breath is making the Scottie dogs move on her nightie. They’re jumping up and down, but really slowly. I think about us in the park jumping on the red elephant and bouncy fire engines when I was little. When we went on the tyre swing, the way she’d fall over pretending like she was dead when the tyre touched her. Dad used to chase us and we’d run down the lane and over the field and I thought it would always be like that. We’d run like we could do it forever, like we’d never stop and our legs would just keep on going, on and on and on.

  Underwater Brain

  I look at my watch. It’s 8.37. School! I leg it upstairs and put my uniform on. It sticks a bit on my wet legs. I slam the door and run. I go round lampposts and over curbs like a shoal on the run from a pod of bottlenose dolphins.

  I get to school in sixteen minutes and fifty-seven seconds.

  But I’m still late.

  In reception Mrs Tulan looks at my wet hair dribble, and hands me a slip through the slidey window. The phone rings and she slides it shut again. I stare at the slip and think about the mackerel.

  I walk into class thinking about that fish. My feet go

  Sir David says, ‘There are many extraordinary creatures not in the limelight.’

  Mrs Ahira says, ‘Billy.’

  I say, ‘What?’

  She says, ‘Focus.’

  I spend the day like a fish zombie and walk home with an underwater brain.

  I go up the steps and into the kitchen.

  Dad is hydrating noodles with the light-up kettle.

  ‘Hi,’ I say.

  ‘Howdy.’ He sprinkles the yellow powder into the bowls. It spins. My head spins. The room spins. He looks me in the eye, ‘You okay?’

  ‘Hmmn,’ I shrug.

  ‘Hmmn?’ he says.

  ‘Hmmn,’ I say

  ‘Just hmm?’ he says.

  ‘Hmmn.’ I watch a bluebottle hide in the basil plant.

  ‘Okay.’ He picks up both bowls. ‘Let’s eat before we break into a musical.’

  Giant Kelp

  Next morning I don’t swim. Not today.

  I keep checking my skin to see if it is coping without the salt dunk. It is.

  My brain isn’t though. It’s full of talking mackerel.

  I don’t tell anyone.

  I get a lot of teacher eyebrow attention and three what’s up with you elbow pokes from Patrick, plus a cheek flicking when I miss the end of his ‘rub-a-dub’ card trick. The flicking only stops when I promise to go round to his after school and act like a normal person.

  Mum lets me go, as long as I promise to eat three carrot sticks on the way.

  I wonder what to tell Patrick. Everything? Nothing?

  I walk down the steps thinking.

  Fish

  Boy

  Fish

  Boy

  Fish

  And along our street.

  It’s long with houses on both sides packed in but pretty. We’ve always lived here. It feels good. Like the shape of a happy thing. Like when you get up off a bean bag and leave a dint. It’s cosy. You can tell you’ve been there. The dint says you’ve had a nice comfy time.

  I stop at the crossing. If you look straight on you can see the sea from here. You can also see Zadie’s house. Hers is sea view, beach front. We’re not. You can see the beach from my room though. From all the bedrooms. You just have to climb a bit, that’s all.

  I look down the road, to John’s Corner Shop, the street that leads up to school, into town. I see Zadie coming out in a zombie T-shirt with a Bounty. She stops and stares. I panic and wave. I hope that she’s too far away to see the colour of my face.

  She waves back.

  Sir David says, ‘Given the right environment giant kelp can grow between seven and twelve centimetres every day.’

  I cross over on to Crawcrook Drive feeling very tall, like I have grown seven centimetres in the last minute and I think, everything, I’ll tell Patrick everything.

  Free

  I go past Welford Street. Down Muston Road.

  The houses thin out. The gardens get bigger. The cars get shinier.

  I see the sign for Heather Hill Close. ‘Building communities,’ it says in a speech bubble from a hedgehog.

  Patrick’s is number 21. It’s on its own, detached, not in row like ours. I look around. No one’s playing in the gardens. No one’s playing in the street either. A tabby cat looks at me and runs away under a bush. I look for Sir David but he’s paddling downstream in a dugout. ‘Perhaps the musk rats are paying rent by providing fresh bedding for the lodge,’ he says. I raise an eyebrow, but he’s off, downriver and says no more. Nature is distracting. I turn back to the door and ring the bell.

  When I get in I have to take my shoes off. The house smells of paint and new carpets.

  Patrick’s mum slices up an apple and gives us half each in two plastic bowls. I take the blue one. We eat them in the food zone, on chairs with plastic wrapped cushions. My fingers make dirty marks on the apple slices. Patrick’s sister comes in wearing a Little Miss Messy T-shirt, shouts, ‘Nah ni, Nah ni, Nah ni,’ and bangs a toy vacuum cleaner against the door frame really hard. BHAM, BHAM, BHAM. It leaves blue plastic marks. She has to sit in the naughty zone and screams her head off. As we go upstairs Patrick pulls a plastic horse from out of his nose and hands it to her. She stops crying and grabs his legs like a northern clingfish (which can actually hold up to 230 times its own bodyweight and inspired the production of superglue). His mum sprays and wipes where we have been.

  In Patrick’s room there’s boxes on shelves with labels: SPACE, CARS, WAR, LEGO. I pick up the Millennium Falcon out of the LEGO one. I try and adjust the laser cannon. It won’t budge.

  ‘My mum makes me stick it together with superglue,’ he says.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘So the bits don’t go missing.’ He whacks it on the windowsill: no bits fall off. We take out the ‘SPACE’ box and look out of the window with telescopes for interesting things.

  ‘Over there!’ he says.

  I see the tabby cat squatting down in the garden, lifting its tail. ‘Is that yours?’ I say.

  ‘Buzzard!’ he says. ‘In the tree.’ I don’t see anything.

  We look at each other’s eyeballs through the scopes and watch his Masters of Magic DVD. A woman in a gold bikini goes into a cupboard and gets divided up into three parts. The magician slides her stomach backwards and forwards, away from her body. The woman wiggles it to prove she’s still alive. Watching the wiggling makes me feel strange.

  Patrick switches off the TV and turns round. ‘Ta-da,’ he says and makes a tortoise appear out of his trousers.

  ‘Oh,’ I say and pull a face by accident. I wonder how long the tortoise has been sitting there.

  ‘This is Rango,’ he says, putting him down on the bed. He doesn’t look too fazed by the trouser experience. I stroke the scales on his legs. He doesn’t seem to like this cos he moves them away. I watch him breathing, his neck going in and out under his chin. He yawns his snappy little mouth. The tiny pink tongue looks like a beak, like a baby bird.

  I look down into the garden. The grass, cut all neat. No flowers, no plants, nothing, not even daisies. ‘We should set him free,’ I say. ‘Just for a bit. We should let him go where he wants.’ Patrick lets me carry Rango downstairs, I keep my hand away from his tail in case he gets scared and wees down my sleeve. I put him down on the grass. ‘Off you go,’ I say and clap my hands as if he’s a dog.

  ‘Liberation, liberation!’ Patrick shouts. Rango sticks his head back in. When it comes out again we watch him go. He’s very fast for a tortoise. I think what the world must look like to him, tiny bumps like mountains, a grass jungle. I wonder if he thinks about it at all or if he just feels like he is swimming, swimming in a giant sea of green.

  Rango gets stuck behind a Hawaiian sunri
se flowerpot. We get him out with the handy grabber and put him back in his run. Patrick’s mum comes out with a plastic bag over her hand and picks up the cat poo. ‘You boys hungry?’ she says and slings it in the bin.

  ‘No thanks,’ I say, staring at her bag hand. She rubs it with antibacterial cleaner.

  ‘I’ve got something to show you.’ Patrick jumps up.

  ‘Like what?’ I hope he hasn’t got something else down his trousers. ‘I don’t like tarantulas,’ I blurt out.

  He squints at me. ‘Why would I have a tarantula?’

  ‘Just checking.’ Tarantulas like to make their homes in natural crevices.

  ‘Come on,’ he says and we go into the garage, through a side door. A corner has been cleared out, a small square of emptiness in amongst a forest of cardboard boxes. We squeeze past two sets of steel shelves into the space. ‘It’s sort of my magic set-up,’ he says. ‘Take a seat.’ He points to a red stacking chair. I sit down.

  ‘What’re they for?’ I point to a massive pile of playing card packs.

  ‘Don’t touch those!’ He spins round.

  ‘I’m not!’ I pull my finger off the deck.

  ‘I have different packs for different days,’ he says and picks up a black plastic tray from on top of a multipack of WD40 cans. He swooshes the black cloth off the top. In the middle of the tray there’s a kind of mini guillotine with a hole in. There’s also a carrot. He puts the carrot through the hole and slices it in half. I don’t say anything but I notice how he’s clearly had this set-up waiting, on the tray. It’s a nice feeling.

  ‘Put your finger in,’ he says.

  This is not a nice feeling. ‘Right now?’ I happen to like my fingers. ‘Can’t you just use another carrot?’

  ‘Billy.’

  ‘What?’ My hands are tucked under my armpits.

  ‘Don’t you trust me?’

  Are you kidding? I think but don’t say. ‘Yeah.’ I shrug, my voice coming out a little squeaky. My hands stay put.

  ‘Pick a number between six and ten.’ He puts the tray down on the lawn mower.

  ‘That’s a small range. Shouldn’t it be—’

  ‘Just pick one.’

  I think hard. Last time I picked three, so if we’re going for the same number formation I guess he’s guessing I’ll pick seven. ‘Eight,’ I say.

  ‘Look under the No More Nails.’

  I turn to the metal shelves and lift up the tube. There’s a yellow post-it underneath. I knew you would pick eight, it says.

  ‘Hmmn.’

  ‘Finger,’ he says and points at the guillotine.

  I wonder which one I would mind missing most. I choose my left little finger, nearly put it in and pull back. ‘Have you done this before?’

  ‘What do you think?’ He puts his hand to the top of the slicer part.

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Trust me. Okay?’ He stares right at me. I stare right back. I think of Jamie Watts, of the yard, of the rescue.

  ‘Okay,’ I say and put it in and shut my eyes. My shoulders go up.

  ‘Ready?’ I wonder how much blood will squirt out, if you can sew a finger back on. He lifts the blade. ‘Three, two, one …’

  Air whooshes past my skin. ‘Kezdodik,’ I say. It just sort of pops out before I can stop myself. The blade clicks down.

  ‘Kezdodik?’ Patrick says. I open my eyes. The room goes fuzzy. My finger is still there. I pull it back. ‘Kezdodik?’ he says, like he knows something I don’t.

  ‘It was a fish!’ I can’t believe the words are coming out of my mouth. Sirens start going off in my head. SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP ones. But I don’t shut up. My hands are sweating. ‘A talking fish,’ I say. ‘It was a mackerel.’ I feel the need to be specific, like explaining everything makes more sense. ‘With a scar and a kind of weird look like …’ I try to do the look. ‘It knew my name.’

  Telling him feels as if a bubble that’s been stuck in my chest weighing me down is floating away, like I’m light, free, like anything is possible …

  Then it doesn’t.

  Idiot

  I slam back down to earth. As if I fall so hard I make a giant hole in the ground. Like a Hummer dropped from a helicopter. Like Wylie Coyote over the edge of the canyon. Like there’s a me-shaped hole in the garage floor. Because I realise that I’ve just said the most stupid thing possible to my only actual friend, that I look like a complete and total idiot and I wish I could just disappear.

  On the other side of the garage door I hear a horn play the ‘Dukes of Hazard’ tune. It’s a total miracle. It’s Dad. I get up so fast the red chair clatters on the floor. It knocks the tray. The tray wobbles, then falls. The guillotine falls too and cracks on the floor.

  I look up at Patrick. I don’t know what to say. So I don’t say anything. I just run. I run through the garage, out the door, through the garden and into the street, without looking back. Dad is waiting with Howard in his red Cadillac with bullhorns. I get in. Patrick’s mum frowns from the window. Howard draws his fringe curtain back out of his eyes, flicks a toothpick between his teeth and presses the horn again. He starts the engine and the CD player plays Hank Williams singing ‘Hey Good Lookin’’. Howard likes his music loud. The windows are down. This makes the music blast out down the street. Faces appear in the windows of the other houses. Most of them are frowning.

  Howard blows smoke off his pistol fingers and waves. I wonder if he’s ever been embarrassed in his life.

  ‘You okay?’ Dad says, clocking the colour of my face.

  ‘What happened to the van?’ I say.

  ‘Van’s bust,’ Dad says. We are shouting with our hands cupped over our mouths to be heard above Hank.

  ‘Yes, siree,’ says Howard and makes the pistol hand point up to the roof of the car. I am squeezed in the back in between piles of Dixieland chicken takeaway boxes and Budweiser six packs. I’m glad the windows are down or it would stink.

  ‘Fancy the scenic route, guys?’ says Howard.

  ‘Not really,’ shouts Dad.

  ‘No,’ I say. I just want to go home, right now. I wish the Cadillac could teleport.

  I don’t know if Howard hears us or not but he says ‘Righty-ho, partners’ and turns off for a detour by the sea, down Marine View, Jamie Watts territory. Great. I wonder how low I can go in the chair. I slide till my knees buckle on the seat in front. Not low enough. I take a Dixieland box and hold it up to the window by my face. My legs stick to seat leather.

  In my head I ask Sir David but even he just holds up his hands and shrugs. ‘Coral polyps extrude their guts and eat their rivals alive,’ he says. Great.

  Then I see Jamie. And Archie. And Oscar. They point and laugh. Howard just waves and smiles. He blows the horn. I push the box up higher. As we go past, Jamie is shouting, ‘Nice wheels, man.’ Archie is making the loser sign. Oscar has a rock in his hand. He throws it but it misses and hits a parked BMW X3 on the other side. The BMW’s alarm goes off and they run.

  ‘Hey, aren’t those your Nikes?’ Dad says.

  I don’t say anything. I just keep seeing Patrick’s face. I am such an idiot. The words swim round and round in my head like a goldfish going past a sunken pirate ship skeleton wreck. Idiot. Idiot. Idiot.

  Seventy Per Cent of the Earth

  I don’t notice the rest of the journey home. My brain has gone on freeze-frame. Like it’s taken a picture of Patrick for a screen saver. I don’t even notice that we have stopped and that Dad has opened the door.

  ‘Getting out, son?’ he says.

  ‘That’s the Caddy effect,’ says Howard. ‘Once you’re in, you don’t ever want to leave.’ He strokes the dashboard like he’s touching someone’s face.

  ‘Cheers, Howard,’ says Dad.

  ‘No problemo,’ says Howard. I peel myself off the leather and feel the red lines on the backs of my legs.

  ‘Say thanks to Howard,’ says Dad.

  ‘Thanks to Howard,’ I say and click the door shut. Howard r
estarts the engine and the CD shuffles and plays ‘Stand By Your Man’. When we get inside Dad makes some beans. There isn’t anything else and we can’t go shopping without the van. Mum is asleep upstairs. Again.

  We eat on knee trays by the TV and watch championship darts. Dad taps his fingers and doesn’t jump up, or punch his fist at the one hundred and eighties. Neither do I. I don’t eat many beans either. Neither does Dad. Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor loses the match and we switch off.

  I put my tray down and see there are letters on the table. ‘Has you bean going to open these?’ I say. Dad just shrugs and goes into the kitchen.

  ‘Bills,’ he says. ‘It’ll just be bills.’

  ‘This one isn’t.’ I pull the top one out. It’s from Mum’s job. I know as it says ‘Ferry Good Travel’ on the envelope in blue with a picture of a ferry in sunglasses waving two palm trees in one hand and a cocktail in the other.

  He takes the letter and rolls his eyes. ‘Great stuff,’ he says. He doesn’t open it. Mum hasn’t been at work for a while now. I don’t know how long. I gave up crossing the days off on my Moods of Nature calendar.

  I lie on the carpet and try to build a tower with the Flamenco drink mats. It keeps falling over. I give up.

  *

  When I go to bed I look up at my Oceans of the World poster. Sir David says, ‘Over seventy per cent of the earth is covered by sea. The Pacific Ocean alone covers half the globe. You can fly across it nonstop for twelve hours and still see nothing more than a speck of land.’ Our planet is a blue planet. I am just a tiny speck bobbing on the surface. From space you can’t even see Stepson beach at all cos in amongst everything else it’s so small. This makes me feel strange but not any better. I think of global warming and ice caps melting and water rising and rising and covering everything, till there’s no land left and no school and no things to break down and go wrong and I think this might help me get to sleep, but it doesn’t.