Fish Boy Page 4

  Coming or What?

  I do fall asleep though.

  I know cos I have this dream.

  It is dark. Watery dark and floaty.

  I am in the sea.

  The mackerel is here.

  It swims up to my face. Its eyes are big and shiny.

  It says.

  I wake up with a bump.

  Eating Dirt

  The next morning I don’t swim. I feel sick. I don’t even want to go outside.

  Patrick must think I’m nuts.

  What.

  Definitely what.

  I feel dried out and stiff. Like a salt cod on a Norwegian house rack.

  It’s been forty-eight hours and counting.

  I go downstairs. Dad has already got up and gone early, even earlier than the barn owl. He’s left his coffee mug out, his favourite one. One side has a picture of a puffin, on the other it says ‘Nuffin’. I bought it for him last Christmas. There’s something else too – a piece of toast with a smiley face cut out. Dad is great at art. He did a degree in sculpture. On the wall next to the stairs there’s these insects he’s made, out of wire. The preying mantis is the best. In my bedroom I’ve got a polar bear made out of Mod Roc hanging over the edge of the wardrobe. In the corner there’s a globe we did with a balloon and paper maché. The North Pole is covered in dust. We haven’t made stuff for ages. Now he’s always so tired. His fingers twitch. I think they’re bored behind the desk of Bang and Blast. They need to move, make stuff, be free.

  Sir David is watching a family of ring-tailed lemurs eat dirt. ‘Soil is thought to help with digestion,’ he says, ‘but it also provides minerals and even helps with gut parasites.’

  Mum comes downstairs. ‘You not bean swimming,’ She points at the counter, no bean tin.

  ‘I’m ill,’ I say. She puts a hand to my forehead. I pull my best sick face.

  ‘Dad out?’ she says.

  ‘Uh huh.’ I’m trying to sound weak. I see the Ferry Good travel agent’s letter open on the table. I look at the ferry logo waving and read the words: ‘We are regrettably writing to inform you …’

  Mum picks up the letter. ‘There he is,’ she says and looks out the window.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The bullfinch.’ She points into the garden. I pull myself up on to the worktop to see out. I love bullfinches. They’re crazies. The way they bounce sideways on the long grasses. We watch it eat a dandelion. It tries to stuff the whole thing into its beak a piece at a time. Peck, peck, peck. The more it stuffs the more bits fall out. It looks around in between each peck like there might be something coming for it, like it needs to watch out. I think of a giant Jamie Watts bird. A Jamie sparrow hawk. And me with no protection. No saviour Patrick bird. The bullfinch flies off.

  ‘I don’t think I should go to school today,’ I say. Mum looks into my eyes. I look at the floor. My legs hang down on the cupboards. ‘Don’t make me go.’ I lean into her. ‘I think I’m going to be sick.’ My voice comes out like I’m going to cry.

  ‘Okay,’ she says and sighs. She folds the letter up and puts it into her dressing gown pocket. ‘Just for today.’

  The Sea of Questions

  Mum says we’re not going to watch TV, we’re going to exercise our brains. ‘If the body gets sick, you’ve got to keep the brain alive,’ she says. We play Scrabble and Star Wars Labyrinth. You have to keep moving the board around each turn, creating new passageways to get to where you need to be. Mum keeps picking up the character cards and going:

  ‘I’ve got to find the wrinkly guy.’

  ‘Yoda.’

  ‘The hairy guy.’

  ‘Chewbacca.’

  ‘The need-to-see-the-dentist guy.’

  ‘Darth Maul.’

  I win the Labyrinth. Mum wins Scrabble with existence on a double word space. In between games Mum rests and I watch my Frozen Planet DVD, which is allowed as it’s educational. Sir David’s voice comes out of the speaker. The wind blows snow over the icy wasteland. ‘The frozen seas are worlds unto themselves,’ he says. ‘Beneath their ceiling of ice they have an eerie almost magical stillness, cut off from the storms that rage above them.’ I put my head on Mum’s shoulder, on to her fleecy blanket.

  It ends and we play Trivial Pursuit. Neither of us is any good. We get a bit daft and laugh at strange things and over a question about the lifecycle of frogs.

  ‘Which country invaded Cyprus in 1974?’

  ‘Haven’t got the foggiest,’ she says. ‘Which Royal invented the dipping headlight?’

  I shrug and bulge my eyes. She chucks the card in the air. ‘What’s the height of a basketball hoop?’ Chuck.

  ‘What is a group of bears called?’ Chuck.

  ‘A sleuth,’ I say.

  ‘Smart arse,’ she says but looks kind of proud.

  ‘What do two dings on the Lutine bell signify?’

  Chuck. Chuck. Chuck.

  ‘It’s all so trivial,’ she says and laughs. She gets some out of the box and throws them at me. I throw them back. And then we’re both throwing them at each other. They go up in the air and on the floor and behind the sofa. Everywhere. As if it’s raining facts, rectangular raindrops. Until the box is empty. We lie on the carpet and move our arms and legs in the sea of questions as if we’re swimming, the way you make snow angels. Then we stop. She holds her hand out and I take it. We look up at the ceiling, the big white wavy patterns. It makes my mind go all floaty.

  ‘When are you gonna get better?’ I say.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says. ‘No one knows.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Life is mysterious,’ she says. ‘There’s no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Camus, Albert Camus.’ She balances a card on her nose. ‘He’s a philosopher.’

  ‘Mice can fit through a hole the size of a ballpoint pen,’ I say.

  ‘Really?’ She rolls her finger, to make a pen size.

  ‘Mum.’

  ‘Yeah.’ She squints through the hole. I think about her disappearing down into it. About her disappearing altogether. I try to push the thoughts away. ‘I miss swimming with you.’

  ‘Me too, love,’ she says and squeezes my hand a bit too tight, ‘me too.’ We hear the kitchen clock tick. It hits one and makes the call of the chaffinch. ‘I need a rest now.’ Her eyes look tired. ‘You can watch TV if you want.’ I help her up. She gives me a hug. ‘Can you put the cards away?’ she says. I pull a face. ‘And Billy …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Back to school tomorrow,’ she says and my heart dive-bombs. She goes upstairs. I make my hand into a mechanical grabber. Up, out, over, release. Sometimes the cards go in the box, mostly they don’t. I watch it filling up as if it’s counting the time down to tomorrow, as if each card’s a minute. I move slow cos I don’t want the box to be full. I want to pull them all out again, so tomorrow never comes and I can stay here in the in-between time, where it’s safe, forever.

  Unexplained Mysteries of the Universe

  U.S. Navy Avengers Flight 19

  On December 5th, 1945, Flight 19 set out in a Gruman TBF Avenger (see fig.5). There were five highly experienced pilots. It was a routine patrol. The weather was fine and sunny.

  They left at 1.15 p.m.

  At 3 p.m. flight leader Lieutenant Charles C. Taylor contacted the operations tower in distress. They were lost. None of the compasses were working. Everything looked wrong.

  They were never seen again.

  The Navy investigated but found nothing to explain the disappearance. There were many searches, but no one has ever found Flight 19.

  I think about Mum.

  I think about her disappearing.

  I shut the laptop.

  Kesz

  The next morning I pick up my bag, ready for the longest day of my life. No more Patrick. It’s over. Who wants to be friends with a weirdo? Jamie Watts will eat me alive.

  Sir David says
, ‘For baboons, it’s not how big they are, but who they know, that counts.’

  Dad has left a picture of a doughnut singing, ‘I believe I can fly.’ I draw a coffee mug around the doughnut, its head dunked under the coffee and a giant mouth heading its way. To toothy doom. Then I feel bad and scribble it out and turn the scribble into a big cloud. A black one.

  Idiot, idiot, idiot. My head chants. I wonder who Patrick was hanging out with yesterday, who he’ll be hanging out with now instead of me. We didn’t even make it past the first week.

  I walk down the street, looking at the cracks in the pavement and stepping over them, looking at my squashed-up feet in the gym shoes. If I keep looking down I won’t be able to see everyone laughing at me. It must have spread round the school pretty fast. Fish Boy talks to fish. It’s stupid enough to be interesting. Interesting enough to get passed on and on and on. I wonder who Patrick told first.

  I see Zadie Eccleston’s silver Doc Marten laces. ‘Hi,’ she says and walks next to me. Her hair bounces. I don’t say anything. She must have heard by now. She must think I’m crazy.

  Sir David says, ‘Vampire bats scratch each others backs and share their meals of blood.’ Zadie just shrugs and walks past. When I look up she’s already reached the end of the street. Zadie Eccleston walks at the running speed of a black spiny-tailed iguana.

  I get to Boothby Street and wait until I hear the bell and then I go in, head down, not seeing anyone, not looking up at all.

  I avoid Patrick. This is made easier by him being in Mr Sim’s class rather than mine. He has English, I have French. He has science, I have food tech. I have cross-country running, he has personal social health education. We both have maths but he’s in the top set and I’m not. This just leaves lunch and break times to sort. Avoiding everyone else is harder.

  At break I hang around behind the DT workshop block. People don’t go there because it’s dark and because of the bins. I sit on the rusty manhole cover behind the black bin. There’s a pile of fresh sawdust next to the green one. The smells come one after the other, like they’re playing pile-on, trying to keep on top. Rot, wood, rot, wood, turpentine, rot, wood, rot. The wood smell is actually nice. I notice how noticeable things are when you’re not doing anything.

  Zadie appears from nowhere, like a musk deer. They’re expert hiders. They only let you see them when they want you to.

  We stare at each other. Mist rises off the bins.

  The bell goes.

  She strides off and the skull key ring on her rucksack jingles along behind.

  *

  Avoiding Patrick goes well until the final bell. I’m walking down the hall, past Year Six’s Save the Rainforest posters to the coat racks when he catches up with me.

  ‘Billy.’ He taps me on the shoulder. I shrug his hand off and keep walking. It’s so embarrassing. I don’t even look at him. He speeds up and goes in front of me. He stops. I have to stop too or I’ll get his niceday ring binder spine in my peanuts. Not that it’s a threat, it’s just how he’s carrying it.

  ‘What’s up with you?’ he says.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Nowhere.’ I look away. ‘What do you want?’ He takes a step back. Becky and Sheree walk past, look at each other and laugh. You told Becky? I think but don’t say.

  I go to start walking again. I feel redder than the foam balls.

  ‘Stop!’ He puts a hand out on to my chest. ‘Kesz,’ he says. Archie and Oscar go past and make kissing noises. Patrick doesn’t even notice.

  ‘Get off.’

  He looks into my eyes. ‘I believe you,’ he says. ‘Kesz.’ He looks round both ways to check no one is listening. He leans over and says it by my face. ‘Kesz kezdodik, it’s the other half of the code.’

  Cool

  Patrick texts his mum and we walk back to my house. We talk about the pet values of guinea pigs versus bearded dragons. He doesn’t look at me funny. Things feel okay.

  He buys us two ninety-nines from the Mr Whippy van. The sign on the back says MIND THAT CHILD with a cross-eyed Donald Duck eating an ice pop. ‘I got monkeys’ blood on,’ he says. I stare at the sauce dripping off mine.

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘It’s not from real monkeys.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I say, ‘I know.’

  ‘It is from real beetles though,’ he takes a big lick round the side of his. ‘Cochineal, crushed beetles.’

  I look at mine and shrug. We get to my steps. ‘This is it,’ I say and sit down. I take the flake out and eat the ice cream off it like a spoon. ‘They taste good, beetles.’ I look at Patrick. He’s a very messy eater. ‘Where’d the other colours come from then?’

  ‘Yellow’s crushed bees, green’s grass snakes, purple’s I dunno …’

  ‘Squeezed scars.’ I make like I’m squashing my head and stick my tongue out the side of my mouth. ‘They wring out scarred people’s faces.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  Francine from up the street goes past on her Cosmic Light scooter. ‘All right, Billy,’ she says and smiles, looks Patrick over.

  ‘You wanna go inside?’ I say. He nods. We break off the bottom of the cones to drink the ice cream out, crunch up the rest and go in.

  Round ours we don’t do zones like Patrick’s house. We do spillage and mess and stuff, lots of stuff. Patrick keeps touching things and saying ‘cool’ and ‘awesome’. We walk through the kitchen and I show him the back garden. I like doing the house tour. I used to do them when we had people over. Which we haven’t. For ages.

  Our back garden is ‘very unexpected’. That’s what people always say when they see it for the first time. There’s walls all around and a gate in the back one. You’d never know it was here if you hadn’t been. It’s like an oasis in between concrete. Mum says that’s why they bought the house, why she fell in love with it. ‘A gate in a wall proves anything’s possible,’ she says. ‘There’s always a way through.’

  I show him the strange weed thing that’s grown higher than my head by the side wall. ‘What’s it gonna be?’ He boings the stalk so the stem sways into my face.

  ‘How would I know?’

  ‘Strange,’ he says. ‘What if it grows into an alien plant?’

  ‘What if it does?’

  ‘What if it eats you while you’re asleep.’ He makes his arm into jaws and bites my head off. We fall over on the grass and roll about. I pull myself up on to my knees and rub my elbow, get the bits out of my hair.

  ‘Wanna go upstairs?’ I say.

  ‘Okay.’

  On the way up I show him the bathroom and the spare room. He stares at the flying man sculpture over the bath. ‘Superman,’ he says and stretches a leg out as if he’s flying. The spare room’s kind of an office. We keep loads of stuff in there. Shelves and shelves of it. Teach Yourself Russian, two plastic daffy ducks, Dad’s collection of snow globes. I miss out Mum and Dad’s room with Mum still in it and we go up the last flight of stairs to mine. Up to the old attic.

  ‘Nice preying mantis.’ He stops on the way up to stroke the metal legs.

  ‘They say when they made my room, when they converted the attic they heard this yapping, this howling of a dog like it was trapped in a wall. And when they were done, doing the plastering and painting on the last day, they went in and found these paw prints on the floor.’

  I go in first and hide behind the door. When Patrick comes through I jump at him and bark like a dog. He looks properly terrified. I start laughing. I can’t stop. He climbs on top of me and raises the fingers of steel. ‘Sorry.’ I bite my lip. ‘I’ve stopped laughing, promise.’ I grab my sides to make myself stop. He puts the hands down and starts to howl. Then we both lie there howling.

  I think of Sir David watching timber wolves running over the slopes of Canada. ‘Wolves howl to warn neighbouring packs to keep their distance, but they also do so to reunite with their own pack if it’s got scattered after a long hunt.’ I feel our howls rise up togeth
er, out of our chests. It feels good.

  It’s a bit weird having Patrick in my room. He keeps picking things up.

  ‘Range Rover Mark One.’ He pulls the model out of my cube shelves. ‘Nice.’ He turns it round in his hands and puts it back in a different place.

  ‘Thanks,’ I say and move it back, where it’s meant to go. ‘Airfix kit, over a hundred parts.’ I look at the box. The GO ANYWHERE VEHICLE it says.

  He takes my electric guitar off the stand. ‘Awesome!’ He jumps up and down and headbangs.

  ‘Don’t!’ I take the guitar. ‘My mum’s asleep.’ I put it back on the stand.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She just is.’

  He looks through my board game stuff and pulls out Wings of War. ‘Cool, let’s play this!’

  We don’t talk about the fish. It’s nice to just do stuff for a bit.

  We sweep a pile of clothes under my bed and set it up. I’m the Albatros; he’s got the Fokker Triplane – guest’s privilege. The Fokker does different moves, has got a tighter turning circle. We play for fifty-seven minutes. He wins – the Fokker usually does. We shake on it and he puts the cards back in the box. I straighten out the bent ones with my sleeve and slide the box back on the shelf. ‘Sorry,’ I say.

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Today.’ I turn round. ‘And before. Sorry about your guillotine.’ I picture it crashing to the floor when I ran. I picture Patrick’s face.

  ‘I fixed it.’ He shrugs, ‘with the superglue.’

  ‘I thought …’ I sit down and start fiddling with an Angry Birds sock on the carpet. ‘I thought …’