by Polly Ho-Yen
I think: this is what friends are to each other – someone who knows, without you having to explain, that right at that moment all you need is their help. I’ve not really had that before. I like it. It makes me wonder if Sylvia’s rule for not trusting anyone is completely right; surely it’s better when there is someone on your side, someone you know you can rely on. It’s a good feeling, like solid ground under your feet.
Anwar returns with a needle and thread, a few plasters and a small pencil.
‘You know,’ he says as he walks back towards me, ‘I thought you were seeing Angharad yesterday – that maybe you don’t want to be friends with me so much any more now. Because you’ve got her to hang out with.’
‘No way!’ I say in a rush. ‘Why’d you think that?’
‘Oh, no reason really. It’s just that that’s happened before. They’ve met someone else they want to be friends with more and then kind of… left me out.’
‘Anwar, it’s not like that at all. I wanted to see you yesterday. I just forgot my phone in the morning because we left in such a rush – otherwise I would have told you where we were going – and then I was really tired when we got home.’
‘It’s okay.’
‘And I’m not sure I’ll be seeing Angharad that much any more because Steve and Julie probably think I’m a bad influence on her for making things up.’
‘Okay,’ says Anwar, more cheerfully. ‘What else do we need?’ He looks at my list. ‘Condy’s crystals,’ he reads. ‘Where are we going to get those? What do they do, anyway?’
I consult the book. ‘You can use them for lots of things. A little bit will sterilize water or if you use them in a more concentrated dose then they can be used as an antibacterial wash if you get cut or something. You should be able to get them from the chemist.’
‘Maybe we could ask Diric to get us that?’ Diric, an older cousin of Anwar’s, helps Anwar buy things he can’t get sometimes.
I feel myself get calmer at the thought of collecting all the things on the list. Of getting ready, being prepared. I hear Sylvia’s voice again, like I did yesterday at the hospital. Master your fears. Always be prepared: have everything you need ready and with you at all times.
‘We also need a box that we can put everything in that can also act as a heliograph. It says in the book something like a small tobacco box, but I don’t think you can get them any more. I wonder what it was that Sylvia wanted to tell me about heliographs?’ I think aloud.
‘It doesn’t have to be a tobacco box though, does it?’ Anwar asks. ‘Just something that is that kind of size that’s a tin and has a shiny lid.’
‘Yes – anything like that.’
Anwar rummages through one of the cupboards in the kitchen and produces a small tin with a purple-flowery design on it.
‘It came with chocolates in it but it’s the same kind of thing, isn’t it?’
I smile. ‘It’s just right,’ I tell him.
HOW TO SHARE (AGAIN)
As Steve and I walk over to We The Curious, the science museum in Bristol, I can feel the weight of my pocket survival kit swinging in my jacket.
Anwar and I punched a hole in the top of the lid so it could be used as a heliograph, and filled it with almost everything from the list.
When the box was full, we sealed the edges with electrical tape so it was waterproof and covered up the hole in the lid with a little more.
I can’t really explain it, but gradually filling the little tin box with the odd bits and pieces made me start to feel a lot better.
I wonder if this is how Sylvia felt when she learned how to make fire using a firebow, or when she stocked up with tins from the supermarket – each small bit of preparation adding up to make her feel a little more relaxed and settling the desperate beating inside of her.
‘Here we are,’ Steve says with a triumphant grin and holds the door open for me. I was wrong about not seeing Angharad as much any more. When I got home from school on Monday, Steve told me that we were going to spend Wednesday evening together and that I had to come home from school straightaway and not ‘dawdle back with Anwar’. It has been strained between me and Steve since we got back from seeing Sylvia and I can’t help but wonder if he wants us to spend time with Julie and Angharad so it’s not just the two of us, unable to speak or understand each other properly.
‘Steve! Billy! We’re over here,’ Julie says. I’m not sure whose idea it was to meet at We The Curious but I wonder if Julie and Steve think it’ll make us not want to talk about men with grey skin. It’s a special evening at the museum where they only let a small number of people in after opening hours and so you can have more of a go at everything.
‘Hey, Billy,’ Angharad says and then when Julie and Steve are greeting each other and not looking at us, she mouths, ‘I need to speak to you’ in an exaggerated whisper.
I nod back. I need to tell her about the people who fell sick and see if she can remember any of the people from the day the man fell, too.
As soon as we are wrist-banded, we tell Julie and Steve we’ll meet them later.
Steve starts saying, ‘But shouldn’t we go round togeth—’ but Julie puts her hand on his arm to stop him.
‘We’re trusting you to be sensible,’ she says. ‘We’ll meet at the way we came in if we can’t find each other at the end, okay?’
Angharad and I both nod.
‘Okay?’ Julie says again in a louder voice.
‘Yes, Mum.’
‘Yes, Julie.’
‘So what did you want to tell me?’ I ask Angharad as soon as we’re out of earshot.
‘I found this,’ she says, swiping on her phone and handing it over to me. It’s about Ted, he’s been reported missing by his wife. It’s an article on a local news site and there are photographs of Ted, wearing a T-shirt in front of bright blue sky, squinting into the camera, and another from his wedding, grinning in a blue suit. I suddenly remember the way his ginger hair fell from his head and I feel as though I can’t breathe. I hand the phone back to Angharad.
‘There’s more,’ she continues. ‘There’s been a rise in missing people reported in the last few days. It’s not a huge number but there’s definitely more than normal.’
‘I’ve got something too. Did you hear on the news about that group of people who got really ill all of a sudden and no one knows what’s wrong with them? Well, I think that they might have been the people who were on the street that day and helped the fallen man. I recognized one man who was definitely there and then there’s two paramedics in the group. Here, look, maybe you’ll remember someone?’
I find the website on my phone; I’d found the news article online after I saw it on the television in the hospital. She scrolls through. ‘That woman looks familiar,’ she says, ‘but I can’t be completely sure because I wasn’t really watching for long.’
We hear the sound of someone whooping loudly and look over to see Julie and Steve on one of the exhibits, releasing miniature parachutes into the air.
‘Let’s go upstairs,’ Angharad says.
We find a quiet corner we can talk in.
‘There’s something else,’ I tell her. ‘Steve took me to see my mum on Sunday. I got to speak to her alone for a little bit. She completely believes us about the fallen man.’
‘Were you able to ask her about those diagrams you mentioned?’
‘No, there wasn’t time – we only had a few minutes before Steve came. She told me that I needed to get ready though. I think she thinks that things might get a lot worse.’
‘Really?’ Angharad says, her eyes widening. ‘So, what have we found out…’ she says, twisting one of her braids round and round and tugging on the bright-pink bead at the end of it, ‘that people are being changed, that people are getting ill and dying. And no one thinks it’s serious, not really.’
I nod.
‘And we know that we have to keep away from anyone who’s infected in case it happens to us.’
�
�Although it doesn’t seem like the people that just got sick are making other people ill, unless they haven’t reported that in the news,’ I say. ‘We can’t trust anyone. Sylvia taught me that. It’s Rule three.’
‘What do you mean – Rule three?’
‘It was just something me and my mum did,’ I begin awkwardly, but there’s no trace of judgement on Angharad’s face and Anwar has been fine about the survival stuff, so maybe she will be too? ‘We just had these rules that we needed to follow,’ I finally say.
‘Trust no one? What about each other?’
I falter. Really the rule meant that Sylvia and I should only rely on the two of us, but surely now I could include Angharad and Anwar too? ‘Well, I guess we can trust each other,’ I say. ‘I think.’
‘I don’t think they would be able to keep that secret, that there were a lot more people who were ill in the hospital. But I suppose there’s only one way of finding out – we’ll have to go to the hospital,’ says Angharad.
‘Angharad! Billy!’ Julie calls over to us in a sing-song way. ‘There you are! Come and see this – it’s really fun.’
There’s a dark wall laced with a chemical that reacts to light and so you can use the torch on your phone to write words and draw pictures that fade away as soon as you have made them. It’s like having a sparkler that you can use over and over again. Julie and Steve are drawing squiggles and lines and laughing away.
‘Come on, you two,’ Steve says. ‘Have a go!’
Angharad looks over at our parents and then back to me, with a small smile on her face.
‘What do you think – shall we have a break from predicting the apocalypse for five minutes?’ she asks.
‘All right,’ I say, smiling back. ‘But only for five minutes.’
We draw swirls and scribbles with our phones and draw large looping lines around each other. I’m having so much fun that I start to forget myself and everything that’s happened, but then I think I see a flash of grey. It rushes past us, in the distance.
I drop my phone as I spot it but when I look around there’s no one grey, it’s just normal people with normal-coloured skin doing normal things. I try to push the thought of the fallen man out of my mind.
Angharad hands me my phone from the floor.
‘Are you okay?’ she asks me. ‘Did you see something?’
‘No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure.’
We step out from the photon wall and I spot immediately what I saw. There’s a dressing-up stand and someone’s wearing a sort of cloak made out of a dull silver material. I point it out to Angharad. ‘It was only that,’ I tell her.
I try to take a deep breath but something inside me won’t completely relax.
‘How about we get some pizza?’ Julie suggests when we get outside and we all murmur in agreement. We drift from the museum towards the harbourside walking as a pack: Steve and Angharad lead the way, Julie and I walk at the back.
‘Did you enjoy that, Billy?’ Julie asks me.
I nod, trying not to remember the feeling of dread as I glimpsed the grey body rushing past us. Instinctively my hand reaches for my pocket survival kit in my jacket but my fingers close around nothing; the solid shape of the tin is missing.
I check the other pocket, I check again. I look on the ground, I look behind me.
‘Have you lost something?’ Julie asks.
‘I’ve got to go back,’ I say.
‘Steve – wait up – Billy’s left something at the museum.’
‘What is it, Bill?’ Steve says. ‘Maybe we can go and pick it up tomorrow. We’re almost at the restaurant now.’
‘No! I need it now,’ I say. I search again through my pockets even though I know they are quite empty. I hear the heavy exhale of a sigh, and without even having to look up, I’m sure it’s coming from Steve. I feel it too. It snakes around my shoulders, an ache I cannot ignore.
‘Billy, what is it that you’ve lost?’ Steve asks.
I can’t tell him.
I can’t let him know about the survival kit.
My mind races with what else I could have left there which would be so important.
But then Angharad makes the decision for me. She simply pulls me along with her and starts running back.
‘We’ll see you at the pizza place,’ she shouts over her shoulder. ‘Get a table!’
When we get back to We The Curious, they’re starting to close up but they let us dash up to the photon wall where I am sure I dropped it. Angharad points at the tin lying on the floor at an angle.
‘Is that it?’ she asks.
I run forward and grab the pocket survival kit and shove it deep into my pocket.
‘What is it?’ she asks, breathless from running. ‘What’s so important?’
‘You won’t tell my dad? Or your mum?’
‘I won’t,’ she says straightaway.
‘It’s a pocket survival kit. I just made it and it’s got things we might need for an emergency.’
‘What kind of things?’
‘Like… matches and fishing line… just some things…’
Angharad wrinkles up her nose just the tiniest bit, making me think she thinks I’m crazy for doing it. ‘Why can’t you tell your dad?’
I take a deep breath.
‘Steve’s funny about things like this because of my mum. She’s the one who taught me about this kind of thing and he thinks it’s bad for me. He thinks that she’s made up why it’s so important – because she’s sick. It’s like that book that I was hiding on the first day we met – I have to keep things secret from him because he won’t understand.’
‘Your dad did go a bit funny when you mentioned your mum the other day.’
‘Yes – he doesn’t believe in any of it. He hates me mentioning it because he thinks that it means I’m sick like he thinks my mum is. She’s… she’s in hospital, you see. That’s where we went to see her, on Sunday.’
The words catch in my throat and I suddenly feel tears building out of nowhere. I blink them furiously away.
‘Well,’ Angharad says quickly, taking care not to look at me in the eye. ‘I think it’s good to be ready. Especially if we’re right about the fallen man and people getting sick. I won’t say anything to anyone. But we’re going to have to come up with an excuse for coming back.’
I haven’t got an answer.
‘Money!’ Angharad says all of a sudden. ‘Say that you dropped ten pounds or something and you were really worried Steve would be cross. They won’t ask you any more about that.’
‘Do you think that will work?’
‘I’m certain of it. Adults worry about money.’
I try to tell myself that everything is going to be all right as we walk out of We The Curious. But then I catch sight of the grey sweep of the dressing-up material as we pass it.
Be ready, I correct myself. Always be ready.
HOW TO GET INFORMATION (FROM MEDICAL STAFF)
Anwar and I see Angharad locking her bike up just outside the hospital. I told Anwar that Angharad and I were going to try to find out more. We’d made a plan on our way back to the pizza place last night to meet here after school. Anwar insisted he come along too.
‘That’s her,’ I tell him.
‘Hi,’ she says shortly when she sees us. Her eyes look a little puffy, and she’s not standing as tall as she normally does, as though the air has gone out of her a bit.
‘Are you okay?’ I ask.
‘Yes,’ she says in a short sort of way which I know means that she’s not really.
‘Did something happen…’
‘I’ll tell you later,’ she says to me, glancing towards Anwar.
‘Um, okay. Well, this is Anwar,’ I tell her and then I turn to Anwar. ‘This is Angharad.’
They eye each other up but don’t actually say hello. Then Anwar looks past Angharad as though she’s not even there and Angharad’s eyes are on the floor, blinking something away. They’re both acting so different
ly to how they are when I normally see them that I don’t know what to say. But when neither of them speaks, I try to fill the silence.
‘So…’ I say. ‘Shall we just go in then?’
There’s another awkward pause.
Finally Anwar speaks. ‘So do you have a plan then? Does anyone know which ward the group of people were on?’
Angharad and I both shake our heads.
‘We really just want to see if there are more sick people than normal,’ I say. ‘If the group of people that met the fallen man can make other people ill, that should be spreading through the hospital pretty quickly.’
‘Well, maybe we don’t have to go in to see that,’ Angharad says, pointing to the hospital entrance.
There are a few people waiting outside in wheelchairs and a couple of nurses wearing blue overalls walk through the doors chatting. There’s nothing to suggest that things are out of control.
‘But now that we’re here, we should take a closer look, shouldn’t we?’ I say. I look over to Angharad. Something’s wrong with her. This was her idea and she’s been the one pushing me to do things all along, but now it’s like she doesn’t even want to be here.
‘I guess…’ she says and then, as though she can’t help herself, she starts suggesting ideas. ‘We could try and find the doctors and nurses who looked after that group. Maybe even find out if they’re okay because they would have been with them the most. If anyone’s going to have been infected, it’s them.’
‘But we mustn’t get too close to them,’ I remind them. ‘In case they are infected and they infect us.’
‘Maybe we don’t have to go inside,’ Anwar says quickly. ‘Maybe seeing the hospital is just like normal, is enough.’
‘Why don’t you stand watch outside?’ I suggest. ‘We won’t be long.’
‘Stand watch?’ Anwar says.
‘If loads of ambulances turn up,’ Angharad says. ‘We’ll need to know so we can get out. Or if you see a Grey.’
‘A Grey?’ I question.
Angharad turns towards me a little. ‘That’s what I thought we could call them. Greys. The people that are transformed, when their skin turns grey.’