Fish Boy Read online

  I tell Patrick this while he’s picking up conkers and nearly touches the tree by accident with his steely fingers. He just laughs and tries to poke it.

  ‘Don’t,’ I say and grab his hand off. Just in case.

  We play championship flicker, with beech nuts and stuff from under the trees. We play in three shot runs. I’m good with short sticks and beech nut cases, Patrick specialises in old conker shells. The shells are brown and wrinkled inside where they used to be smooth and white. I flick a conker – it goes about two centimetres. Patrick laughs and flicks a stick. It misfires and hits him in the eye.

  My second shot get stopped by the first conker, but my third goes for miles. It hits Sheree. She picks it up and throws it back. ‘A nut case for a nut case,’ she shouts. The shot wins the run and we re-fuel ammo.

  We stuff our pockets till they bulge. ‘So what are you gonna do?’ he says.

  ‘About what?’

  He makes a fish mouth, puffs his cheeks out.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I turn a beech nut over in my hands.

  ‘Are you going to go back in?’

  ‘Maybe.’ I strip some bark off a stick. ‘It depends.’

  ‘I wonder what they want. The fish. Why they picked you out in the first place?’

  I shrug. ‘I’m Fish Boy.’ I look up at the tree. ‘I’m one of them.’

  We fiddle with our conkers.

  ‘Billy,’ he says.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Can I ask you something?”

  I shrug. ‘Fire away.’

  ‘The question or the stick?’ He laughs his donkey laugh. ‘Your mum.’ He lays down his best three in a line. ‘Is something wrong with her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She sleeps a lot.’

  ‘She doesn’t.’ I feel my face getting hot. I want to Megallas out of this conversation, fast. ‘You don’t know anything about her.’

  ‘Okay.’ He does a long haul with a paperclip. ‘She seems nice.’

  ‘She’s not nice.’ I lie down to aim. ‘She’s the best.’ I ace the flick.

  ‘Good shot,’ he says and pulls a flier with his.

  He looks at my hands. ‘Billy.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘I think you’ve run out of ammo,’ he says and I look down at my finger flicking an empty space.

  When

  When I get back from school I get the key out from under the tap-dancing goose (Dad likes to rotate the key hunt options) and let myself in. I get the cheese puffs multipack out the crisps box and watch TV. Mum doesn’t come down. I think about Bob. I wonder if he’s waiting for me. I don’t notice the bird calls slipping by in the kitchen.

  The front door slams. Dad’s footsteps go upstairs and come back down. He opens the door. ‘Blummin‘ heck, Billy, what’s all this?’ He looks at the carpet. It’s filled with empty cheese puffs bags. Sir David says, ‘The sparrow hawk flies very fast and low and takes its victims by surprise.’

  I look up. ‘What?’

  ‘Just …’ He runs his hand through his hair. ‘Clean it up, all right.’

  I lick the orange off my fingers and pick the packets off the floor. They stick a little where I licked them. I get bean juice on my hand from the bin. I lick it off.

  I stick my tongue in the sink.

  Dad switches the radio on. It says something about budget cuts. ‘Champion.’ He rolls his eyes and switches it off again. ‘Beans?’ he says and takes a tin out.

  ‘Can’t we have fish and chips or something?’

  ‘Make mine a butter chicken with a garlic naan and mushroom pilau.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I wish,’ he says and rattles in the drawer for the tin opener. I watch the tin spinning as he opens it. A little line of paper peels off the top.

  ‘When’s Mum coming down?’

  ‘She’s not.’

  ‘What? Why? I thought she was getting better.’

  He holds up his hands. ‘I’m just the messenger,’ he says. ‘Maybe later, eh.’ He pours the beans into a pan.

  I go upstairs, into their room. Mum’s got the covers pulled up and I can’t see her face. ‘Dad says you’re not coming down,’ I say and sit on the bed.

  ‘Hmmn.’ She pulls the covers higher. ‘Not today, Billy.’ Her voice is small.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m not in the mood.’ She pulls the duvet over her head.

  I feel the sheets shake and peer in over the top. I think of how we used to play moles in there, when I was little. How it felt like we were at the centre of the earth, away from everything. I see Mum’s crying. I don’t know what to do. I stroke her back like we learned in massage class with Mrs McQueen. The way we’d rub each other’s shoulders before RE.

  ‘I’m so tired,’ she’s murmuring all quiet. ‘I’m tired of being tired.’ She wipes her nose with the back of her hand.

  Dad comes in with a mug of tea. ‘Hey.’ He puts it down and climbs on to the bed, takes her head to his chest. ‘It’s okay, it’ll all be okay.’

  ‘When?’ she says. ‘When’s that gonna be then?’

  He breathes out a big long breath. ‘As long as it takes,’ he says. ‘Anyway, we’re not going anywhere, are we, Billy.’ He winks at me. ‘We’re not going anywhere at all.’ He puts his other arm around me and I put both of mine round Mum and lie with my head on her shoulder. ‘So you’re stuck with us,’ he says, ‘till you get wrinkly.’

  ‘Really wrinkly.’

  ‘Yeah, like a raisin.’

  ‘Like a Dogue de Bordeaux,’ I say.

  ‘A what?’

  ‘A dog, a big wrinkly dog.’ I think of them getting old, me getting old. It’s too weird.

  ‘Yeah, like a wrinkly French dog.’ Dad strokes her ear. ‘But without the ears.’

  ‘I like the big floppy ears,’ she says and smiles.

  ‘All right then, we’ll save up for plastic surgery, for an ear transplant.’

  ‘Remember that Alsatian? On Brook Hill,’ she says. ‘The one that used to bark up at the gate.’

  ‘Miso,’ I say. ‘Miso Angry. It was a Japanese fighting dog.’ Dad gave it the nickname. He used to bark right back at it and it used to shut up and run away.

  ‘The blackberries will be coming out now,’ she says and sighs. ‘I used to love that walk.’ She puts her head back down on the pillow. ‘I can’t go on like this,’ she says really quietly.

  ‘When the tests come back,’ Dad says. ‘It’ll be better when we know what we’re dealing with.’

  I think of the Bermuda Triangle. How knowing it’s called that never helped anyone, how it made no difference at all. The idea of giving it a name makes it feel like it’ll never go away, like it’ll be there forever. I just want it to disappear. Go away, I yell inside, leave her alone, as if it’s a thing I can push out just by thinking.

  My face screws up.

  ‘You okay?’ Mum says and strokes my hair.

  ‘Fine,’ I say and wipe my eye with the back of my hand and we all lie there in this big soggy heap, like blind mole rats, a big hot heap of rats in a hole.

  DC-3 Flight NC-16002, 1948

  On December 28th, 1948, pilot Captain Robert Lindquist of Flight NC-16002 was flying from San Juan in Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida.

  When he was fifty miles away Captain Robert Lindquist radioed the Miami control tower. He asked for landing instructions. Miami radioed back with instructions. They got no reply. Reports state that there was no radio trouble and the weather was clear. The plane never arrived at Miami and Flight NC-16002 was never heard from again.

  Surprise

  When I get back home the next day Mum’s all bright eyed. Her best friend Leslie comes out of the bathroom with hands the colour of school toilet block.

  ‘What d’you think?’ Mum flaps a bit of hair over her shoulder.

  ‘It looks nice.’ I tilt my head sideways.

  ‘Starry Night Blue Black,’ Leslie shouts over the banister and twiddles her inky fingers. She come
s down and pours tomato soup out into two bowls and puts her coat on.

  ‘You not stopping?’ Mum says.

  ‘Nah, I’ve got a date with a nailbrush.’ She hugs Mum, waves and leaves. I stir the soup, checking for any bits of blue. I get a tissue and wipe a thumbprint off the side of the bowl.

  ‘Dad’s coming home early,’ Mum says stirring hers, ‘with a surprise.’

  ‘A surprise? Like what?’

  ‘Beats me.’ She gets up to butter the not-burnt toast. I see she’s been drawing a picture in a sketch pad on the table. She sees me looking and flips it shut. ‘I’m a bit out of practice,’ she says and pulls a face.

  I open the pad back up. ‘It looks good,’ I say even though the seagulls are a bit wonky, the wrong size for the mountains.

  ‘Ta anyway,’ she says and ruffles my hair. I think of all the things a surprise could be. A dog? A car? Chicken chow mein?

  I hear Dad’s keys in the lock and he springs in through the door.

  ‘What is it?’ I put my spoon down in the soup and the handle slides under. I rush over to see what he’s got. He hasn’t got anything.

  ‘What it is, is the solution. What it is, is movement, freedom, us lot together again in the wild blue yonder.’

  ‘A new van?’ I say.

  ‘A holiday?’ Mum says.

  ‘Better,’ Dad says and taps the side of his nose and won’t tell us anything else, not even when I tickle him in his underarm weak spot. He just chucks me on the sofa and arm chainsaws me until I shout ‘Mercy’. The doorbell goes and we jump up.

  ‘I’ll get it!’ Dad shouts and runs over. There’s someone there in a white shirt with a badge that says Nina and a big red cross underneath.

  ‘Mr Shiel,’ she says.

  ‘That’s the geezer,’ Dad says.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘Yes,’ says Mum. ‘He means yes, it’s him.’

  ‘We’ve got a delivery for you.’

  ‘Bingo,’ says Dad. ‘Great stuff.’

  ‘If you can just sign here.’ Nina gives him a clipboard.

  ‘Shouldn’t I write my name instead?’ She looks back at him, blank. ‘Instead of here?’ he says.

  ‘Just sign it, Dan,’ Mum says.

  I look round the side of them and see a big white van outside, a really good one. Nina goes to open the van door, Dad goes down the steps after her. ‘I’ll give you a hand,’ he says. ‘In fact, I’ll give you two.’ He waves both hands.

  I kind of want Dad to shut up. I think Mum does too as she folds her arms and rolls her eyes. We wait for the surprise. Nina unlocks the van door. The surprise isn’t the van – it comes out of the van. Dad carries it up the steps. It isn’t anything I was thinking of. When I see it I wish I hadn’t. My heart thumps down into my shoes.

  ‘Ta-da!’ Dad pushes the sides to open it up, to make the seat.

  ‘It’s a wheelchair,’ Mum says.

  ‘It’s your passport to the outside world,’ Dad says.

  I don’t know what to say. Inside I’m screaming NO WAY, I don’t want my mum in that! I feel like everyone will look at us and feel sorry for us, like it’ll make what’s inside outside, so everyone can see and I don’t want them to, I don’t want them to see her that way.

  ‘We can go everywhere, just like we used to,’ Dad says.

  ‘It’s great,’ Mum says and looks like she’s going to cry.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s all right.’ Mum wipes her nose with her sleeve.

  ‘It isn’t.’ He puts his arm round her and she leans into his chest.

  ‘It won’t be like it used to be, cos I’m not. Am I. Things can’t be, you know …’

  ‘I know,’ he says. ‘I know. But you can get out can’t you and Billy can help. He’s a big strong lad, aren’t yer, Billy. You’ll help Mum won’t you.’

  I just stand there looking at the wheelchair on the step like it’s an alien come into our world, like when an ant comes to join a colony and they have to decide if they want it to or not, if it’s going to be part of them or they’re going to send it away or eat it.

  Dark clouds gather in my brain and Sir David says, ‘Since life began around four thousand million years ago it has gone through some extraordinary changes in its climate. You and I belong to the most widespread and dominant animal on earth. The fact is that man has unprecedented control over the earth and everything in it and so whether he likes it or not, what happens next is very largely up to him.’

  I feel the storm stirring inside me. I see the wind sweeping over the Atlantic cranking itself up, sucking moisture and twisting, reaching a hundred miles an hour, a hundred and fifty, round and round, getting ready to go inland, to find its way out over the sea. I see Sir David open his mouth like he’s about to speak. But he doesn’t. My head buzzes. And then there’s just nothing, just silence, like the screen’s flicked off and David’s face fades out into darkness.

  He is gone.

  The King of Hearts

  We’re in PSHE. Mr Norbund is trying to talk about third world child labour and his head is sweating.

  ‘Terrible isn’t it, sir.’ Jamie Watts says. ‘Nightmare.’ He winks at Oscar and sticks two fingers up behind his back, so it gives him horns on the overhead projector.

  Mr Norbund rubs his head with a white handkerchief and puts a DVD in the machine. It doesn’t work. ‘Ah.’ He says and scrubs his head harder. ‘A little help, someone? Anyone?’ Robert Brentwood presses some buttons. The screen goes from blue to black and we watch a programme about sweatshops in India. It’s actually horrible. Kids make trainers all day every day and earn like £15 a month. I totally had no idea. I look at them sitting on a concrete floor, squinting, sewing. I look over at Jamie’s feet under the table. At the Nikes. I feel a bit sick.

  *

  When I go outside Patrick is talking to Robert Daynard and Joel Harris by the fall wall. I sit on the wall waiting for them to go away and watch Zonky fall off on to his knees. Blood starts to soak through his trousers, except that they are black. So the blood just looks like black on black, like marmite on burnt toast. You just sort of know it’s there.

  Joel does an impression of Mr Norbund. ‘Someone, anyone.’ It sounds exactly like him. Robert and Patrick laugh. I bite my cheek so I don’t. Robert and Joel go to the canteen. ‘Catch you later,’ Patrick says and makes foam balls appear in their hands.

  ‘Cool,’ Robert says. Joel puts them in his eyes as if he’s got zombie eyeballs. They throw them back. Patrick catches them and opens his hands, to show that they’ve disappeared. They turn and wave. I stare at Patrick. The look is meant to say whose friend are you anyway?

  ‘Watch this,’ he says and takes out his card deck from his shirt pocket. I think that Patrick is seriously not good at reading eyebrows. He pulls up on to the wall. His pocket stays square where the cards have been.

  ‘Pick a card,’ he says and fans them out.

  ‘I’ve been thinking,’ I say.

  ‘Any card,’ he says.

  ‘About why.’

  He puts them right up by my eyes so I can’t see. ‘A-n-y c-a-r-d,’ he says really slowly. Sheree and Becky look over. I pick a card and hold it in front of my face. It’s the king of hearts. ‘Put it on the bottom of the pack,’ he says, ‘and slide the pack back in the packet.’

  ‘You mean the deck,’ I say. ‘Slide the deck back in the packet.’

  ‘Whatever,’ he says. ‘Make sure I can’t see it.’

  ‘How would I know if you can see it? You might have mirrors up your sleeves.’

  ‘You want to check?’ He holds his wrists up.

  ‘No.’ I slide the deck back in the pack.

  ‘Okay,’ he says and places the pack on his face. He starts slamming it into his forehead. ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Imprinting your card on my brain,’ he says and slams it into his head again. He makes the Psycho noise each time he bangs. ‘Ree ree ree ree.’ I try not to laugh but can’t help it. He st
arts laughing too and blinks each time he bangs.

  ‘Okay okay, stop,’ I say. There’s a pink mark on his head.

  ‘Your card was …’ He closes his eyes. ‘The king of hearts,’ he says and opens them.

  I pull out his cuffs and look down his sleeves. No mirrors. ‘What if it wasn’t?’

  ‘I know it was.’ He puts the deck back in his pocket and fastens the button over.

  ‘You’re crazy,’ I say and elbow him. He nearly falls off the wall. He elbows me back. We both stop when Jamie Watts and Oscar walk by.

  Their shadows spread up the concrete.

  There’s nowhere to go. Jamie kicks a rock, I pull back and it misses my head by millimetres. We both look at the grass where it lands. Oscar makes his hands into a bra and pogoes past us. Random. We look at him. We look away.

  ‘So, you were thinking,’ Patrick says.

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘Maybe they just want company?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The fish.’ I kick my heels against the wall.

  ‘Right.’ He cocks his head. ‘I thought you said there were hundreds of them.’

  ‘Different sort of company.’

  ‘Human flesh?’

  ‘No.’ Since the surprise I have been practising how this would go. This is not how I thought it would go. ‘Maybe I should go back in to find out.’ I try to sound casual.

  ‘Really?’ He sings the Jaws tune. Duh dut duh dut duh dut.

  ‘If I don’t I’ll spend my whole life wishing I had.’

  ‘Not if you’re dead,’ he says. ‘If you’re dead you’ll spend your very short life wishing you hadn’t.’

  ‘It’s safe, okay.’

  He looks at me.

  ‘That’s why they have shoals.’ I poke him in the card deck. ‘It keeps them safe.’

  ‘They have shoals so one of the others gets eaten not them,’ he says.

  ‘They don’t.’