by William Wall
My dad’s heart attack went well. Or so I believe. He got a stent and they told him to stay away from work for a while. Which He Did Not Do. It’s not that my dad does much work, it’s just there’s really nothing else in his life except driving around to look at places for sale, arguing with tenants and seeing solicitors about evictions. The evening he came home from hospital was one of those cold clear January days when it looks like the distance is made of glass. My mam drove him home. He looked thinner, paler, maybe a bit older too. Or just a bit angrier. I think he was angry at his heart for letting him down. My dad’s heart has always been strong. Like he always thought he was some kind of Transformer, or like the droid in Chappie. I saw the trailer. It looks like crap. It’s just boys are into machines killing things. Like Transformers. The autobots and the decepticons going for it like there was no tomorrow. That and calling each other cunts. I don’t get it.
They also told him To Lose Weight. When I saw him in his pyjamas sitting up in one of those really narrow hospital beds I thought his belly would just pour out over the sides. How come I never noticed that happening? My dad is fat like in American TV shows. I blame Colonel Grace. My mam thinks KFC is a good way to feed a family of four. But maybe you get that way from sitting all day in a Lexus and only getting to tell people they are in breach of contract. Or maybe it’s The Crash. Maybe it’s the Revenge Of The Tenant. Or The Bank. In this country Banks are shit even at making money. Like what else is a bank for? Love and affection? Maybe my dad was always fat idk. Whatever, he is a tub of lard and it’s surprising that his heart can even get up in the morning.
So he stayed home for a couple of weeks. He got his laptop and the portable phone. We had to keep the phone charged and eventually he got Mam to buy him a second one. I could hear his voice rumbling away all afternoon. I had to get the bus home so I didn’t get back until after four. I would go up to his room and stick my head in. Hi, Dad. He would be on the phone. He would wave and sometimes smile. The properties of waves. Light is a wave but also a particle. Frequency, amplitude, period. There’s always a fucking period. Every day, at school as it got closer to the last bell I would start to think, What if I find him dead? What if the stent fails? Or what if his heart just stops? What if I’m the one who finds him? So when he waved or smiled I would have to close the door fast in case I burst into tears. Sometimes even in the hallway, inside the front door, I could hear him talking.
During his recovery he evicted a Lithuanian couple.
Holly said a transplant might have been better than a stent.
18
Of course my mam didn’t want Holly sleeping over. She said she had nits or lice or something. She said hippies are all the same. She said she was feckless and would end up pregnant at fourteen, even though she was already seventeen. None of it was true, but my mam just hated everything the Kellys stood for, whatever it was. Holly said it was just Capitalism against Anarchism and she didn’t care. But she doesn’t mind me sleeping in Holly’s so that makes no sense. It was like catching nits or lice was a non-symmetric relation like in Maths when A is related to B and B is related to C but for some fucking reason that no one ever explained to me, A is not related to C. Like who would have thought. I would say my mam is racist except Holly is not ethnic. And my mam is Totally Racist when it comes to actual racism. She thinks immigrants are destroying the world. Holly says Capitalism is destroying the world. Serena says it’s her parents and I say Whoever Is Destroying It Has Made A Good Job Of It.
Holly says I’m a Resistor. We did resistors in Physics. She sings that song about resistance being low. She teaches me the words and we sing it together. I like the bit about keeping your distance because she can’t really resist. I kinda feel like that about Holly.
Holly told me a story about a neighbour of hers who had a cat that liked hunting. One day the cat came home with the next-door neighbour’s pet rabbit all covered in blood and muck. She panicked and gave the rabbit a wash and blow-dry and sneaked into the neighbour’s garden and put the rabbit back in the hutch. This happened two more times. On the morning after the third event she met her neighbour. Something weird is happening, the neighbour said. My rabbit was knocked down by a car a few days ago but she has risen from her grave three times.
Holly thinks it’s hilarious. She tried to tell it to Miss Leahy our Religion teacher. You can’t escape Religion in my school. Even though Holly is a Conscientious Objector they make her sit in the back of the class and do her homework in case she might absorb holiness by osmosis. She says it is Subliminal Advertising. I googled it and she could be right.
Whatever. I caught my mother praying one night. She was kneeling against the couch with the Bake Off on mute. She had her hands joined like you see. I said, What are you doing, Mam? And she totally flipped out. She went from the prayer position to nuclear in one swift movement.
Your father has a heart attack and you JUST JUST carry on JESUS CHRIST I don’t know where I got you, you NEVER TIDY YOUR ROOM, look at you, DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA? YOUR FATHER NEARLY DIED. JESUS CHRIST –
She didn’t even stop when I backed out and closed the door.
19
According to Miss Leahy religion is all about meaning. But get this: God created the world out of chaos, then he created man, then he organised the days of the week so that Sunday was boring af, then he had the Jews faffing about trying to find the Promised Land which turns out to be Palestine which is an excuse to kill Palestinians, then he sent his own son to be crucified like you do, then he encouraged his true believers to crucify a lot of other people to save their souls, then finally we get Sunday Mass, The Blessed Sacrament, Forgiveness Of Sins, The Parish Fucking Priest, The Pope, Michelangelo, The Sacrament Of Marriage, The Assumption Of The Blessed Virgin Into Heaven and Giving Up Sweets For Lent. If I ever saw a completely fucking random get-up, this is it. Like he should have left it at chaos. If God was the CEO of a Fortune 500 company he would be toast by now. Come to think of it, maybe he’d just be a billionaire and making a major contribution to Global Warming and the Extinction Of Planet Earth aka Armageddon. Which is kind of cool, when you think about it; chaos coming again. Come back, God, all is forgiven lol.
Actually I think Armageddon is an actual God thing from the Bible idk I should google it but I’m like totally cya.
Serena doesn’t like Holly. She tells me things she thinks I don’t know. Like Holly Had A Urinary Tract Infection in second year and according to Serena It Was Because She Was Having Dirty Sex. I told her I already knew about it and it wasn’t sex just some infection. Serena thinks that’s hilarious. Or she pretends she does. She’s studying all the news reports about the Graham Dwyer trial. She has googled them all. She has screenshots. She wants to talk about what it would feel like to be completely in the power of a man.
I say: Try my dad.
Serena puts on the concerned medical professional face. How is your poor dad?
He’s in the recovery position, I say. If he obeys orders he’ll be fine.
I worry about him, she says.
Like totally randomly she’s worrying about my dad. She has her own dad to worry about and frankly if I was her I’d be worried just being in the same house as him.
She tells me that Holly’s dad did time in prison. She’s wondering if doing time in prison makes you a dominant. Less like a dominant I never met. Holly’s dad is a total pussycat. Serena doesn’t know why he was in prison, but I do and I won’t tell her. I pretend it’s a mystery. For a while we make up things he might have done. Serena’s favourite is some kind of murder – with knives or an axe. I point out that you don’t get out in under a year for an axe murder. Her second fave is pyromaniac. That’s because she likes fires. When we were kids she used to light fires in a part of her garden where she couldn’t be seen. They have this huge garden with a glasshouse and a boathouse (disused) at the bottom and a view over the sea. They have a see-saw and a climbing frame. They have a paddling pool (disused). We used to say we were e
xperimenting with how different things burned. She even started to get petrol out of her mother’s car using a tube and a bottle. She watched YouTube videos of people throwing petrol bombs during riots. I know an OCD when I see one believe me.
20
Serena has a dinosaur onesie, like with dinosaur-coloured scales on the back and a tail. The hoodie has a sort of head on it. With a beak and eyes. It is the scariest thing you could possibly wake up to. I always sleep in my T-shirt and panties but because I’m sharing a bed with Serena I wear my jammies. So we get in and turn the light out. I’m really tired but Serena wants to talk about my dad’s heart attack and his stent. She found an amaaaazing video of open heart surgery. You can see the heart beating. It’s an operation in India and all the doctors and nurses are Indian. I said I imagined the patient was Indian too and she said you couldn’t see because he was all covered in green cloth. I said I was joking and she bitch-slapped me on the shoulder, not hard because she was lying beside me. And they had a big square hole in the chest with a set square or something to measure it. And everybody was totally cool like it was someone cutting up a chicken.
I said I didn’t want to know but she kept going. Serena is psycho, like if you look up psycho on Wikipedia you’re looking at a description of Serena. She has NO empathy with another human being. Or an animal. She has no idea what goes on in someone else’s head.
I said: Serena, my dad had a fucking heart attack, OK? Like the whole Ballyshane thing nearly killed him. I don’t want to know about the inside of his heart? OK?
So then she noticed I was shaking and she was all over me. She started FUCKING HUGGING ME and calling me BABY. Jesus wept twice.
I sat up. I said, Serena, I just want to go to sleep. I don’t want to know what the inside of my dad’s fucking chest looks like. So drop it, OK?
She rolled over onto her side and pretended to be falling asleep. So I did the same. After like three minutes she said, Are you really a lezzer?
Go to sleep.
Like, I’m wondering what it’s like. Is it like sex?
Well, I said, you don’t get a dick inside you…
So you are.
She sat up again. I knew it, I fucking knew it. Who did you do? Was it Holly? Of course it was Holly, who else for fuck’s sake. What’s she like?
Serena, if you google lesbian porn you will see that they don’t have dicks.
Except for strap-ons.
They’re strap-ons not dicks.
So you’re not lesbian? Yes or no? I have to know.
Why?
Because I want to try it.
Well don’t fucking try it on me. Stay in that fucking dinosaur or I’ll kill you I swear.
Now silence. Now she’s pouting. Like I’m supposed to have Rejected Her Advances. At times like this I see why she has no friends. Like why did I invite her to sleep over? Idk. It must have been a moment of weakness. If I remembered the dinosaur I certainly wouldn’t have done it.
21
So I tell her about my dad and his obsession and I know I’m making a mistake before I have said five sentences. But still I tell her. It’s three in the morning and it all pours out. I even tell her about the fanlight over the door. And I tell her I think hating this Tom Bowles guy gave my dad his heart attack. And after a while I feel this dinosaur paw holding my hand and that’s just it. We just lie there and talk properly. And it turns out that she admires my dad and she thinks I’m so lucky, and it must be lovely to have a dad who understands, and I should love him better, and other strange crap. Like, He’s so handsome. But I’m worried about him more or less permanently, so I just lie there in the dark and maybe cry sometimes idk it’s just he nearly died. So. And sometime around four o’clock we fall asleep and we wake still holding hands. Who knew dinosaurs had hearts? I wake before her and I look at her and she’s beautiful in sleep. All that craziness and bitchiness and spite is gone. I think, Serena would make a beautiful corpse. I can even see her in a coffin. If I could I would bury her in her dinosaur onesie.
So now she has a new idea. She wants us to go up to Ballyshane in the middle of the night and scare the people. She wants to buy crow-bangers or fireworks or light a fire. First of all, I say, how are we going to sneak out of this house? My dad is a light sleeper. Even when I go to the toilet he knows. Secondly, what’s the point? Thirdly, no way am I lighting any fires like she can do her pyromania stuff on her own. Same difference for thieving. And she can forget about the fireworks and bangers, I have too much respect for my life. She says I’m just a pussy and we have a good laugh about that. It’s the first good laugh we’ve had since we got back together and it feels nice. Like Serena is not the worst. Idk. And she says, Your dad is out of it, he’s on painkillers and antibiotics and shit, he won’t wake! Then we started looking at old photos in my desk drawer, like actual printed photos, and Serena found my First Year copybook and we had a good laugh about the kind of homework we got which we thought was way too much. Back in the day. Like if it took half an hour it was unfair. Now we devote our life to homework. It’s like the thing we did in Religion about the season for all things and this is the Fucking Season For Homework. Jesus fuck my life.
22
Story for English. My Exciting Discovery
Suzy Regan First Year
My name is Doctor Johansen and I am a professor. I found an exciting discovery forty years ago. It was the skeleton of a little girl. It was three point two million years old! That is a record for the oldest child ever discovered.
I was working on a archaological dig in Afar, Africa and that day wasn’t going too well. It was very hot and I was real thirsty and we weren’t finding things. We looked everywhere but there was nothing. So I was thinking of giving up and just writing something when I thought ‘Why not go over the place again.’
It was then I decided that the dried up river might be a good place. Even though guys already done it. I went down there and had a walk and took a good look around. To my surprise there was a bit of a skeleton sticking out of the mud. It was a elbow.
Then I started digging and I found a bit of her skull and other stuff. I was really excited. I called all my friends and we got her out. We were really happy because we knew she was three point two million years old. How we knew that was we knew that was how old the mud was.
So that night we had a campfire and a bit of a sing-song and someone sang the Beetles hit Lucy In the Sky With Diamonds. And I said that’s what we’ll call her, Lucy. And that is how she came to be named. She was forty per cent complete, which is a lot for a three point two million year old person. I got famous then because I disocvered her. Now i am a professor and I have a good job. And it is all down to finding Lucy. She was the most exciting discovery of my life.
23
So we set a fire. It was not a big fire. And it did not go well. It happened a night Serena was sleeping over again. My mam was happy that Serena and me were back together again because Serena’s father is idk a surgeon of some kind maybe eyes and my mam is impressed by that. My dad is impressed too but he never says anything. Like doctors are gods in this country. She even bought us a Chinese to eat in my room. I hate the smell of ex-Chinese food. Or Chinese ex-food. The sweety-soury smell. I like noodles though. And crispy duck is ace.
We consumed the Chinese. Or I consumed it and Serena had some noodles. Like maybe four. We listened to music with one earphone each (Serena’s set fell into the toilet and she flushed it because it was ew), watched a movie, Love Actually. My third time. But watching it with Serena is hell. She can tell me that the CD track that Karen is listening to when she’s crying is track 7 – she pauses it to show me – but the correct track on the correct Joni Mitchell CD is like 12 or something, and time goes backwards when Sarah and Karl are in the bedroom according to the bedside clock, and when David goes to Downing Street his tie keeps changing between scenes, stuff like that. I like Joni Mitchell but I’d say Serena has never even heard her. Serena totally ruined Love Actually. Then we
took selfies in various poses. And basically we waited until three in the morning because Serena said nobody wakes up between three and four. Except I know my dad often goes for a pee around four. Except since his operation he has been out of it on drugs, so he holds on to it until Mam wakes him. I wish I had some of what he’s taking.
To stay awake we made up names of books for porn: Hard Time by Nobby DickIn, and the sequel Harder Time, Knobhanger Alley by Jane AssTon, CurlyOldAnus by William ShagsPair. Then we told jokes. When we ran out of jokes we googled them. Some interesting ones turned up. Like I didn’t know that strap-on backwards is no-parts. It’s easy to stay awake when you want to sleep but when you want to stay awake you keep falling asleep. Then we watched Creepy YouTube Videos with the Sound Off. Serena practically has her own channel. She majors in Shit That Makes Me Sick. The creepiest was one called Crooked Rot which featured a Play-Doh head with a bloody tube going into its brain. I swear. I had to close my eyes. Then there were ones about squeezing pimples. Idk. Serena worries me, she really does. But then I worry me too.
She told me she registered with alt.com. She showed it to me. It had a photo of a girl with a dog’s collar and the leash in her hand. The girl’s cheeks were blushing. She was naked. The text said: Find who shares your kinks, 1,186,040 Active Members. Join For Free. Her username was Hrt.me.Hrt.me. She wanted to click Login but I said, Enough already. It’s time to go. She went. I’m guessing that the fire kink was stronger than whatever she had going on alt.com.
We got dressed and went downstairs. I already disabled the alarm just after Mam and Dad went to bed. I pretended I was just checking that it was on. I’m slightly paranoid, so…
Outside we walked on the grass not the gravel. My dad imported the gravel from The Isle Of Wight. It is this incredible golden-brown colour and I googled it and it’s practically an endangered species, they have to scoop it up from the bottom of the English Channel. It is one of the stand-out features of our property, if we ever went to sell it, a gravel feature. Like we also have a pond feature and a gazebo feature and in the sitting room we have a fireplace feature. I get to read all the property specs while I’m driving home with Dad. It’s all he has to read.