All the Invisible Things

by Orlagh Collins

  His bedroom is the large window to the left on the floor below and his shutters are wide open, like always. I can make out shapes of picture frames and posters against his wall and the faint glow from a TV or screen in sleep mode. It’s tricky to see inside properly. It needs to be fully dark with the lights on for that, I remember suddenly. I spot the angry dog dragging the man back up the street and as I turn a tiny flash disturbs the light in Pez’s bedroom. I press right up against the glass, straining to see. It’s him!

  I push back into my room, pacing up and down before peering back through the corner of the window frame again. He’s leaning forward, watching something on the screen that casts a strange light on his face. I half expect him to come to the glass or to flash his bedside lamp like he used to, then I imagine flashing mine back and our two lights beating like hearts in the dark as we make silly faces against the glass. He reclines in the chair and as more of him unfolds into view I log all the changes I see: I can’t help noticing how his body takes up more window than ever before. A loud bang makes me jump.

  ‘Vetty!’ It’s Arial at the front door and I walk into the living room to see a slice of her face is framed in the letter box. ‘Let us in,’ she shouts. ‘We’ve got pizza … and there’s a truck full of boxes!’

  Before we left the farm, Wendy insisted on a traffic light packing system. Dad, Fran and I laughed as she ran around the cottage labelling everything with her sticky coloured dots. Boxes with green stickers have essentials like the kettle and mugs and teabags and duvets and towels inside. These are first-tier priority to be unpacked first and as soon as we finished eating we started on these and kept at it until all of the beds had sheets. Wendy was right. It was really useful to know which to unpack first, but to be honest I doubt we’ll ever open a box with orange dots. Reds can forget it. Come bedtime Arial wanted a story and for some reason, I said yes.

  I close Anne of Green Gables, which we’ve been reading for months, tucking down a tiny corner at the top of the page. She’s watching me like she’s waiting for more but I’m too tired. I stick my tongue out and reach over for her bedside light. ‘It’s late.’

  ‘She reminds me of you,’ she says, burrowing into the duvet.

  ‘Anne-with-an-E?’ She tries to nod but her long plait is twisted behind her head. I tug it free and drape it across the pillow like a blonde snake. ‘Mmmm … must be the red hair.’ I’m so used to people saying things like this it flies out. I’m uneasy about physical comparisons; always have been. I should probably encourage Arial to avoid making assumptions based on people’s looks but not tonight.

  She props herself up on her elbows in the dark. ‘Do you ever imagine you had a different name?’

  ‘Something romantic like Cordelia?’

  ‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘Do you like being called Helvetica?’

  I roll my eyes, but the question makes me sit straight. ‘People confuse your typeface with mine all the time,’ I say. ‘Did you know that?’ She shakes her head. ‘They mix them up, just like sisters.’

  She tries not to smile and the way she shifts about makes the stiff sheets rustle. I pinch her nose and push up off the bed. ‘Hey,’ she shouts out. ‘You haven’t answered the question.’

  ‘Goodnight!’ I call out from behind her door.

  It’s almost midnight when I finally get to my room. I should sleep but I can’t. I think about rewatching Stranger Things but then I think about Pez and how much I’d like to watch it with him. I go to the window and drag the blind back. It’s as dark as London gets outside and I can see inside his room so much better now. He’s still up, sitting at his computer playing games like I left him hours ago. The strange glow is the only light and its pale beam makes his face look far away.

  He looks like a ghost.

  5

  A clatter of smashing bottles announces the day. Hundreds of them thrash into the hungry belly of a recycling truck. I lift my arm and check my watch. 7.52 a.m. Saturday. I try to relax into the relentless clink, clank, crash but it’s useless. When it finally stops I close my eyes but then the house gives a thunderous rumble and something seemingly endless passes very close by. Ah yes, the Overground train. Good morning, London.

  I crawl out of bed, grab a hoody from the back of the chair and zip it up to my chin. Then I shuffle down to the window as the recycling truck trundles off, leaving the street hushed and still. Staring at his sleepy house, I imagine warm bodies in their soft beds and my early eyes blur as my mind drains to nothingness, until THRUMP! His front door slams. And I mean SLAMS, so loud that my fingers tremble on the windowpane in some imagined aftershock. I blink and move nearer the glass. I’m so close that my warm breath fogs it up.

  Harland, Pez’s dad, thumps down the front steps towards me, something hot sloshing from the mug in his hands. He dumps it on the front pillar and pats his pockets down. I slink back behind the blind until a car engine springs into life and I peer into the crack between the wall and the blind, which, not for the first time, I notice smells like some spice. That’s when I see Pez standing in their doorway; stretched thin by a rolling pin and looking slept-in too, as though ripped from the bed seconds earlier. My chest tightens. If it weren’t his house I’m not sure I’d recognise him. Where are the cornrows and the baseball cap? All that’s left is a short back and sides, buzzed on top. I want to smile but I can’t. Not when he has that look on his face. It’s pure anger.

  I pull back the duvet to check on Arial, my 3 a.m. visitor, and reassured by her snores, I step into my flip-flops, shoving my phone into my pocket and then I’m out of the hall door and into the brand-new day in seconds. It’s cooler than I expected and as I sneak along the side wall goosebumps dapple the length of my arm. I crouch down by the pillar at the bottom of Giles’s steps, unsure as to why exactly I’m hiding. When I peek my head around Harland squeezes his car out of the narrow space and on to the road. I press further against the wall as it passes but he doesn’t look back. My eyes return to the house where Pez is now bounding down the steps, BMX gripped under his arm, its wheels leaping about wildly.

  I hadn’t planned to stand up, but I do, and Pez and his bike are alone in the empty parking space. His long arms are straight and stiff on the handlebars and my heart springboards off my ribs, like it’s trying to vault right out of my chest. He slings his leg over the saddle and then, like he feels my eyes on his, he looks up.

  It’s just us in the middle of the street, staring at each other in the early morning, and for a few seconds there’s only silence as I slosh about in a torrent of words I can’t get out. That’s when he moves closer, looping the empty air.

  ‘C’mon, if you’re coming,’ he says, in a voice that’s his but not his. Our first words in over three and a half years. At first my feet won’t move. ‘Get on,’ he says. ‘Quick!’

  Despite how big the rest of him is, I notice his thin wrists and how they look just as they did when he was nine. I pull my hood up and grasp his T-shirt, hauling myself up on to the pegs. I have a sudden urge to run my fingers over his new hair and feel it rough under my skin. Instead I grip his shoulders, which are thick in my hands. It’s all I can do to stay upright.

  ‘What are we doing?’ I shout it into the wind.

  He tilts his head towards mine. ‘Following him,’ the new voice shouts. ‘Hold on!’

  He takes the corner wide and we dart and dive, flying into Murray Street like chairoplanes at the fairground, in time to see the brake lights on Harland’s navy Jeep before it turns left into Camden Road. Pez’s feet pound the pedals and we speed past the recycling trucks, towards the already steady traffic in front. He bursts on to the main road without stopping, milliseconds before a duo of double-deckers heading into town. Adrenalin shoots through me and I’m suddenly more awake than I’ve been in my life. Once we’re well on our way down Camden Road, I squeeze my eyes shut, savouring the wind on my face, allowing the roar of traffic to fill my ears. I understand now just how long it’s been since I’ve fe
lt this.

  When I open my eyes again, the Jeep has stopped at the lights, but they go green as we approach and Pez speeds up, following it right into St Pancras Way. After the turn, we slink up on to the pavement, weaving between the trees, hurtling along the footpath in the shade.

  Roadworks and temporary lights ahead. Pez sees them and he cuts up into Rochester Place, heading left towards the high street. Within seconds we’ve reached the pedestrian barrier at Kentish Town Road, where the Jeep approaches from the left and comes to another stop at the lights by Pizza Express. Pez stands firm, right foot clawing the ground, anticipating Harland’s next move. When the lights change Harland goes left and Pez pounces, swooping after him like a hawk, and soon we’re on his tail again. The Jeep passes the Overground station and we watch it go right again. We follow and shadow the car to top of the road, where it takes another right at the sandwich bar. At the next corner, Pez stops to peer around it. I stick my head around too.

  ‘He’s doing a loop,’ Pez says, and soon we’ve taken off again. Up ahead, the Jeep indicates left, but slows at the turning. ‘That’s a one-way, dickhead.’ Pez says it under his breath and the Jeep continues ahead as we go left into Inkerman Road, bumping up on to the pavement the way Harland’s car couldn’t. At the junction, we stop by the pub and wait. My chest rests on his back as drips from an overhead flower basket rain into my hood, trickling icy drops down the back of my neck.

  ‘Do either of you know where we’re going?’ I ask, but Pez just stares ahead. I hop off the bike, Pez too, but suddenly he reaches behind and pushes us both back up against the wall just as Harland’s car reappears and turns right into Inkerman Road where it finally slows. Together we watch the car slot expertly into a tight space by the dead end, then the door opens and Harland stretches out on to the pavement. Skin colour aside, Harland and Pez are like peas in a pod, their stature and mannerisms eerily close. His tall, lean frame stoops to open a small gate in front of a terraced house, then quickly he disappears inside the door in front.

  Pez grinds his teeth. ‘Wait here,’ he says, ‘I’m going back home for something but I’ll be quicker alone.’ He looks at his watch. ‘Nine minutes max. Don’t take your eyes off his car.’ Before I’ve said anything, he’s cycled off.

  I stare at the house, trying to take it all in. I’m afraid to move so I sit up on the table of the pub bench for a better view but there’s nothing else to see and Pez has only been gone two minutes. I stare at a lonely cigarette butt floating in an ashtray beside me, wearing a trace of peach lipstick on its tip. My hands shake with excited adrenalin as well as fear as I take out my phone to check the time, then I hear a door shut close by and I look up, but it’s only a neighbour on the far side of the street. I hold my phone up, framing Harland’s car up ahead, and for a while I pretend to take pictures like some undercover detective. I think about how many minutes it’s been as a man with a long green hose reaches a sprinkler into the flower basket above my head. I’m moving out of his way when Pez shoots up from the top of Alma Street, between Harland’s Jeep and me, his arm slinging the air again. I run towards him. He pushes the handlebars of the bike towards me and fumbles in his pocket.

  ‘Be ready, yeah?’ he says.

  ‘Ready for what?’

  ‘To follow me!’

  I’m about to ask where but he’s already slid off, jeans slung low on his hips and his arms heavy, like he’s still not sure how to wear his suddenly broad shoulders. He quickly reaches the house and I notice the way he bends like he’s apologising for growing so tall. Then he stops. I’m not sure what I’m expecting next but it’s not for him to open Harland’s car and climb inside. I’m wondering what’s in there that he wants when the engine fires and suddenly the whole giant Jeep jolts forward and crashes straight into the silver Honda in front. Alarms cry like angry bells. Two of them, ringing furiously out of sync. DING BOING DING BOING DING BOING. It’s loud enough to wake the entire world.

  Pez tumbles out of the car and races towards me. ‘Go, go, go,’ he shouts. I do what he says and climb on to the bike but I can’t not glance back and when I do, Harland is out on the street, his back to us, staring at his car with its door open and engine running. A woman with long dark hair joins his side. ‘Move!’ Pez says again, and I push off and cycle away. He grasps on tight behind me and we slip down a tiny alley into some road I don’t recognise, Pez shouting out directions as we go. With a sharp left and a right, we’re back out into the Kentish Town Road and I’m whizzing past the familiar sights of Poundstretcher and Superdrug, breaking the lights by Nando’s, past Peanut Butter Books where we used to go to with Mum and a tiny new cafe, painted bright orange, that’s already open for business. Soon we reach the lights for Chalk Farm, where I jump the kerb on the other side and we ride the empty footpath before tucking into Rochester Road. I keep going, peddling as fast as I can, and mixed up in the fear there’s a thrill too; it’s like our own Stranger Things moment.

  ‘In there!’ Pez shouts, pointing at the residents’ garden in the middle of the green. It’s only once we’re inside the gate and safely hidden by the bushes that he bounces down. I hop off the bike like the last four years were nothing but as I lower it on the grass I’m panting to catch my breath. ‘Shit, shit, shit!’ he says, pacing around it.

  ‘What was that? Did you deliberately total your dad’s car? Or were you trying to steal it? I can’t work out which is crazier?’

  ‘Gimme a minute,’ he says. ‘I can’t think.’ His voice is quiet and he rubs his hand up and down over his tight curls, just how I wanted to earlier. ‘I didn’t mean to crash it,’ he says then.

  I’ve never been in this garden and I pace the grass opposite him, watching a woman walk her dog on the other side of the hedge, praying she doesn’t come any closer. When I look back Pez is staring blankly at his purple BMX. ‘Pez, what’s going on?’ He looks up, finally showing me all of his face up close. The shadow on his top lip is a surprise and there’s one on his chin and jawline too. ‘Pez?’ I say it again but he flicks his eyes back to the bike like he didn’t hear me. ‘This is serious,’ I say, stepping closer and pushing him back. It’s instinct or muscle memory from a hundred joke scraps and I’m expecting him to stumble but when my hand hits his chest he doesn’t flinch. When did he get muscles under that T-shirt? Please say he doesn’t work out. Please tell me he hasn’t changed that much.

  He’s looking at me; looking like he’s thinking, and it’s suddenly clear that nobody has looked at me this way for a long time. I don’t mean he’s doing some staring-into-my-eyes kind of bullshit. Nothing like that. He really is just looking, but he’s paying attention, like he’s thinking or trying to work something out. I’m not sure what, but suddenly I’m conscious of yesterday’s mascara under my eyes, even though I know that’s not what’s important now. I try to get back on track. ‘We tail Harland for miles, then you get into his Jeep and—’

  I stop because his hands are on his knees like he doesn’t want this interrogation. He’s shaking his head from side to side, staring at his Nikes, which look fresh out of the box this morning.

  I sit down cross-legged on the grass. ‘C’mon,’ I say, hoping he might sit too. He does and he glances at me, but he says nothing, and I’m left counting the lines that furrow his forehead. They’ve gotten deeper and more creased: like a Wi-Fi symbol etched into the space above his eyes. He pulls the car key out of his pocket and wipes it with his T-shirt, staring up at the white sky.

  ‘Is everything OK?’ I ask, softer now. It’s not like I didn’t see Harland’s face coming down the steps before he drove off but it’s been so long since I’ve asked this kind of question I don’t know if I should. Pez finishes examining the car key and pushes it further down into his pocket. I crawl my fingers across the dry grass towards his. ‘Pez?’ His hand creeps back on to his lap and I watch it slowly become a fist inside his other. ‘I’d like to know,’ I press.

  His jaw tightens and he inhales air sharply up one sid
e of his nose. ‘Now you want to know?’

  The face he makes twists all the strange energy around us and I realise the look in his eyes and the taut muscles around his mouth could be because of me, not Harland or anyone else, and I’m lost for what to say. I stare at the tops of the houses around us, thinking about the people behind the still-drawn curtains, yet to stir from their beds, the only thing worrying their sleepy heads being what to have for breakfast. It’s like the ghost of us sits on the scorched grass between us, growing bigger in the silence, but I’m tired of ghosts and soon the words that have been circling my mind since I hopped on that bike leap free. ‘This isn’t how I imagined.’

  Pez snorts. ‘This?’ he says, throwing his arm behind him. ‘Or this?’ He points a finger towards his chest. I don’t answer, I can’t, and he starts to rub at the back of his neck again. ‘I had no idea you were moving back,’ he says. ‘Not until your dad pulled up outside the flat last week.’ He looks straight ahead now like he can’t take my face. ‘He spoke to me like I knew, as though you’d already told me. You know, like a normal person would?’ The word normal irks me but I reach a hand into the space between us again. ‘Don’t worry,’ he says, shrinking away, ‘I went along with it. But forgive me if I’m not ready for all your movies-and-marshmallows chat just yet.’

  I feel sick. ‘I wasn’t sure how to tell you.’

  He nods at my pocket. ‘Still got your phone, I see.’ He tugs tufts of dry grass from the hard ground, breathing out for long time. ‘He’s moving out,’ he says, scattering the short burned blades over his knees.

  I let the words sink in, letting them soak up the image of the crashed cars and the lady with the long, dark hair. I haven’t had an update on Harland and Luna for a long time but before I left, four years ago, Pez told me the only reason his parents stayed together was because they spent so much time apart. ‘That woman with Harland, back there, outside that house—’