The Boy with the Butterfly Mind

by Victoria Williamson

  Jamie had a weakness, though. A big one.

  He wasn’t perfect like Beth. His ADHD meant he had trouble controlling himself. All I had to do was keep poking him to get a reaction and pointing out his faults until Mum realised what a terrible idea it was for him to stay here.

  “Can you stop talking with your mouth full?” I interrupted him halfway through a long speech about his favourite video games before he could spit any more bits of carrot across the table. “I don’t want to see your half-chewed food, it’s disgusting.”

  Jamie stopped talking and shut his mouth tight, blinking at me like I’d slapped him in the face.

  “He’s just excited to be here, Elin,” Paul said quickly. I could tell he was scared I was going to start an argument. He was right.

  “But that’s no excuse for bad manners, is it Mum?” I tried to get Mum on my side, but it didn’t work very well. She hesitated, then smiled a big fake smile at Jamie.

  “Would you like some more casserole? There’s more in the dish on the cooker. I’ll just—”

  “I’ll get it!” Jamie jumped up and dashed across the kitchen before Mum could finish.

  “Wait Jamie, it’s hot! Don’t—”

  “OW!”

  Jamie burned his hand trying to pick the casserole dish up and the whole thing crashed to the floor, spraying chopped carrot, chicken and gravy all over the freshly mopped tiles.

  “Are you OK, son?” Paul hurried over and ran Jamie’s hand under the cold tap before Mum could react.

  I knew exactly what I had to do. I rolled my eyes at Mum and went to fetch paper towels and the mop, whispering to her as I passed, “He doesn’t listen, does he? That’s why he’s always in trouble at school.”

  “It was just an accident,” Mum whispered back. But her eyes went to the floor, where the casserole she’d spent hours making lay in a sorry squelched heap, and I could see she was biting her lip to keep her real feelings hidden.

  “You need some help there?” Paul asked me when he’d finished making sure Jamie hadn’t burnt his hand off.

  “No thank you, I can manage.” I never let Paul help me with anything. I didn’t want him thinking I needed him around.

  “Why don’t you make us dessert, Jamie?” Paul said, trying to lighten things up again. “I bought jam and cream, so you can make us a batch of your Sandwich Man Specials.”

  Jamie was still sniffing and cradling his hand like he was scared it was going to fall off, but his eyes suddenly lit up. He rushed to the fridge and started pulling out jam and a can of whipped cream as if he owned the place.

  “Hey Elin, you want to try my sandwiches?” he asked as he flung pieces of bread onto plates and started slopping on so much peanut butter he used up half the tub.

  “No thank you,” I said frostily. I didn’t want Jamie doing anything for me either.

  “You’ll like these,” Paul winked at me and Mum. “No one can resist one of Jamie’s special sandwiches.”

  I could, and I was pretty sure Mum could as well. Her polite smile had faded, and her mouth was now a flat line as she watched Jamie getting jam all over the freshly scrubbed worktop and whipped cream on the floor. Ever since Dad left, Mum had been much fussier about keeping the house neat. I helped out a lot with the cleaning too, doing the laundry after school, and hoovering the whole house. Maybe if there hadn’t been so many arguments about the mess before, Dad would still be here instead of Paul and his stupid son.

  Mum was ready to tell Jamie off. All I had to do was stir a little bit harder and he’d be in trouble.

  “Jamie!” I rolled my eyes in an exaggerated circle. “I just cleaned your casserole mess off the floor. Now I’ll have to clean your jam and cream mess up too. Could you stop spraying food everywhere?”

  “Elin, the casserole was an accident, and this is just a bit of fun,” Paul frowned. “We’ll clean it up in a minute.”

  “Elin’s right, Paul.” Mum stood up and grabbed a cloth from the sink and started wiping down the cupboard doors that were covered in blobs of whipped cream. “Jamie, that’s enough cream, it’s going everywhere. Next time use a spoon for the jam, you’re getting it all over the floor with that knife.”

  A flicker of annoyance crossed Paul’s face. It was the first time I’d ever heard Mum contradict him, and the first time I’d ever seen him bothered by anything she’d said.

  Good. I smiled to myself as I dumped the last of the casserole in the bin.

  The war had begun.

  14

  Jamie

  Elin doesn’t like me.

  She didn’t even try my Mad Jamie Specials, and they’re my best thing.

  Maybe if I give her my Transformers torch she’ll be my friend. It’s my best thing too, but if it’ll make her stop looking at me like I’m a monster then she can have it.

  I’m rummaging around in my backpack to look for it when there’s a knock on my door and Dad comes in.

  “Going to bed already? I thought you’d want to stay up and watch a film. You haven’t seen the new Star Trek one yet, have you?”

  Dad knows all my favourite things, everything I’ve ever watched or read, all the science experiments I’ve ever done, all the food I like to eat and what music I like best. He sometimes even knows what I want for Christmas before I’ve decided myself. He knows me better than anyone on the planet.

  The only thing he doesn’t know is how much I hate it here and how much I want to go home to Mum.

  “I’m tired,” I lie. I don’t like lying to Dad so I add, “It was a long drive up, and it nearly killed me.” That bit’s true, at least. I give a fake yawn and pat the Southampton F.C. quilt on my bed. “Thanks for the football stuff.” I know that was Dad’s idea.

  “I wasn’t sure what team you’d like up here – most people go for Rangers or Celtic, but that’s up to you. When you decide who to support we’ll start going to matches like we did in Southampton, OK?”

  “Yeah. That sounds good.”

  Dad’s trying really hard, so I give him a big smile when he sits next to me on the bed, even though I’m feeling so sad my whole chest is aching with the effort not to cry.

  “I was going to get a TV for in here, but I thought you’d like to pick one yourself. I’m taking the day off work tomorrow so we can go and do a bit of shopping together, would you like that?”

  That makes me smile for real. Mum never let me have a TV in my room. Dad’s way less strict.

  I usually hate shopping. Supermarkets are full of distracting smells and noises and things to touch, and every time I go out with Mum I end up having a meltdown by the time we get to the checkout. Unfamiliar places make me really nervous, but as long as I’m out with Dad I know it’ll be OK. Even if I have a major freak-out he won’t be mad at me. Dad’s always on my side.

  Always.

  “Look Jamie, I’m really sorry about America. Your mum and Chris are still getting to know each other, and they just need a bit of time together on their own. It’s not that your mum doesn’t want you around any more, don’t ever think that, OK?”

  “OK,” I say automatically without really meaning it.

  “When I moved to Scotland, we didn’t lose touch, did we? We’re still friends, hey Sandwich Man?” Dad nudges me and I nudge him back, and then we have an elbow fight that only ends when I fall off the edge of the bed.

  “Is everything alright in there?” Liz calls from down the hall. I think she’s worried that I might be wrecking the house already.

  “We’re just horsing around,” Dad calls back. “I’ll be down in a minute.”

  That makes me laugh. He can’t go down – there’s no downstairs in this house, everything’s one level. It was our old home in Southampton that had upstairs bedrooms. I think Dad’s forgotten which house he’s in for a moment.

  He helps me straighten my quilt and find my pyjamas in my suitcase, then he switches the lamp on and turns off the main light.

  “Night, son. I’ll see you bright and early fo
r that shopping trip, yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I nod, struggling to get my T-shirt off. This one’s got casserole on it as well as jam. I’m like a one-man walking vending machine. They could start serving my T-shirts up in fancy restaurants as five-star cuisine. I could get my own cooking show where I fling food over myself and then get Gordon Ramsay to give it marks out of ten. I could have roast beef t-shirts and chocolate cake T-shirts and—

  “Dad!” I call, just before he closes the door. I nearly forgot to ask him the question that had been burning me up all the way here.

  “What?” He sticks his head back round the door.

  “Can they fix me here? Can the doctors here in Scotland make me normal?”

  I’m not good at reading people, but I can read Dad. Right now he looks really sad.

  “Jamie, there’s nothing wrong with you, you’re fine just the way you are.”

  But I’m not though. I’m broken and splintered and I hurt people on my jagged edges. I was going be a normal boy in California. That was my American Dream. I know the doctors there must have a cure for my ADHD, I mean, they have everything in the USA – baseball and monster trucks and hotdog stands and living it up in Las Vegas.

  That’s all just a big broken promise now.

  I pull on my pyjamas and climb into bed, tucking my Transformers torch under my pillow and turning off the lamp. In the dark, my fake smile falls off and I start crying.

  If I can’t go to America and become a whole new and improved me, then there’s only one thing I want to do.

  I want to go home.

  15

  Elin

  This war wasn’t going to be as easy to win as I first thought.

  It was quarter to eight on Monday morning, and I was so tired I could barely keep my eyes open. Jamie had been here less than a week, and already he’d turned the whole house upside down. If he stayed here much longer I was going to die of exhaustion, and not just from spending all my time cleaning up after him.

  “Did you get much sleep last night?” Mum asked, yawning into her coffee as she frantically re-typed her office report. She’d finished it on Saturday, but last night Jamie had been mucking about on her laptop without asking and accidentally deleted a whole bunch of files. He was always touching other’s people’s stuff without permission and breaking things. It was driving me and Mum crazy.

  “How could I sleep?” I moaned, arranging the cheese slices carefully on a pile of bread for our packed lunches. “Jamie was up all night again! Can you get Paul to take that TV out of his room Mum, please? He had it on at four in the morning, and he was in the bathroom for over an hour just playing with the taps. I’m never going to be able to stay awake in school. When’s he going home?”

  “We’ve talked about this, Elin,” Mum sighed. “He’s Paul’s son and this is his home now too. He’s just taking a bit of time to settle in, that’s all. It’ll get better.”

  “When?”

  Mum didn’t have an answer for that. She just frowned and went back to bashing the keys on her computer.

  By the time it was ten past eight her report was done, and I’d finished loading the washing machine and tidying up the kitchen. Mum made me keep a bowl and a box of cereal out for Jamie, but if it was up to me he’d be going to school hungry. It wasn’t fair that he kept us up all night then wouldn’t get out of bed in time for breakfast. He was so selfish.

  “Jamie!” Mum called down the hall for the millionth time. “I’m leaving in ten minutes. If you’re not ready you won’t get a lift to school and you’ll have to go and meet your new teacher on your own.”

  There was a loud thump from Jamie’s room as he went banging about, and five minutes later he finally emerged, yawning and licking off the felt-tip pen marks he’d somehow managed to get all over one hand. He slumped down at the kitchen table and began eating Honey Flakes out of the cereal box, examining his face in his spoon like it was the most fascinating thing he’d ever seen.

  “I told you to get dressed!” Mum rolled her eyes when she saw what he was wearing.

  Jamie looked down at his pyjamas in confusion. “I am dressed.”

  “I meant put your school uniform on! I told you to lay it out on your chair for this morning. Elin, help him find it, I’m going to be late for work at this rate.”

  “He’s not a baby! Why should I—”

  “Just do it Elin, please! Paul couldn’t get time off work, and one of us has to take Jamie into school on his first day. I’ve got a big meeting this morning and I need to be out of the house in five minutes.”

  “Fine!” I muttered, grabbing Jamie by the arm and dragging him back down the hall.

  “Hey! I haven’t finished breakfast!”

  “Then you should’ve got up earlier, shouldn’t you? Mum’s going to be late for work, and I’m going to be late for school. Stop being so selfish and get your stupid clothes on. Where are they?”

  I gazed round the wreck of our spare room in dismay. A few weeks ago it had been ready for the visit from Dad I’d been dreaming about. Now it was a total nightmare. Clothes were strewn all over the floor, the football quilt was strung over two chairs to make a tent, and there was a greasy layer of empty crisp packets and snack wrappers covering every surface. On the table in the corner was a long rack of test tubes with funny-smelling liquid inside, and the TV was blaring even though Jamie had been warned not to switch it on in the morning. Mum said we needed to give him space, so she hadn’t come in here with a hoover all week. If she knew the toxic health hazard he’d turned our nice clean spare room into she’d go ballistic.

  “Where’s your uniform?” I demanded, pulling the quilt off the chairs and searching for his shirt.

  “Um…” Jamie went fishing around in his sea of clothes and finally came up with a creased shirt and a pair of new trousers that had an ink stain on them already. “Got them! Er… You’re not going to stand there and watch me get dressed, are you?”

  “You’ve got thirty seconds before I come back in.” I closed the door and drummed my fingers on the other side so he could hear me counting down. When I opened it again Jamie had at least managed to get his trousers and his shirt on, but his socks and his school shoes were nowhere to be found. As we searched though the piles of discarded clothes and tangled bed sheets, I started to panic. I’d never been late for school in my life. Would Miss Morrison be angry with me? Would she give me extra homework? Would my perfect record be ruined? This was all Jamie’s fault!

  “That’s it, we’re leaving right now.” Mum was at the door, tight-lipped and pale-faced. “Get in the car. I’ve only got time to take you as far as the park or I’ll hit the worst of the traffic. I’m really sorry Jamie, but Elin will have to take you into school and introduce you to your new teachers.”

  “I can’t go to school,” Jamie wailed, sounding like he was about to cry. “I’ve only got one shoe, look!” He held up the black school shoe he’d found behind the curtain on the windowsill. “I can’t go to school with just one shoe, can I?”

  That was when I realised what he was up to.

  He was doing this on purpose. He was trying to make us so late that Mum would just leave him behind. It was the dumbest plan ever, and I was so mad at him I wanted to clobber him over the head with his one shoe.

  “Then put your trainers on. They’re in the hall cupboard. Elin, can you get his schoolbag and—”

  “His schoolbag’s here and the lunchboxes are sitting by the front door.”

  “Good girl. Let’s go.”

  We waited on the front step as Jamie went banging about in the cupboard for his trainers and jacket. He took so long I thought he’d wandered off into Narnia.

  “I’m starting the car now!” Mum warned, rattling her keys. “If you’re not out in ten seconds there’ll be no TV for a week.”

  “Wait! I need to get my Transformers torch! I can’t go to school without it,” Jamie yelled as he ran back down the hall to his bedroom. “Just hang on a second…”


  “Jamie, for goodness’ sake! Will you just DO AS YOU’RE TOLD!”

  16

  Jamie

  They think I’m being bad on purpose.

  They’ve got no idea how hard it is for me to stay focused long enough to get easy things done, like putting on my school uniform or brushing my teeth after breakfast. My mind goes off in twenty-five directions at once and I’m always left behind. If you add in the stress of something new and scary like starting a different school, then it’s like one of my science experiments has gone wrong inside my head and my brain’s about to explode and come fizzing out of my ears. I’m so scared I want to throw up the seven-and-a-half Honey Flakes I managed to choke down this morning before Elin made me go and get my uniform on.

  My stomach is churning and burning and flipping and flopping and—

  “Jamie, will you please STOP kicking my seat!”

  That’s the fourth time Liz has told me off. Her eyes are green instead of brown like Aunt Cath’s, but in the rear-view mirror they’ve gone just as small and angry.

  I wish Dad was driving me to school.

  He knows the best way to stop me kicking the seats is to let me sit in front. Elin’s hogging the front seat though. She’s worse than Chris with the fun stuff in Mum’s living room when it comes to sharing anything. If Dad had been here this morning instead of going to work at six then I wouldn’t be so scared. I can’t think straight when I’m scared. Chewing gum helps me calm down, but I finished my last packet before breakfast.

  This is all so new and strange. I hate it, I Hate it, I HATE it!

  I want to go home.

  “Right, I’ll need to let you two out here.” Liz stops the car at a line of trees by a park and turns in her seat. “Sorry I can’t take you all the way, but I need to get to work on time. The school’s expecting you though Jamie, so don’t worry, it’ll all be fine.”