A Godawful Small Affair

by J. B. Morrison

  “That’s out of the question,” his dad said.

  “Can’t someone else take me then? Craig or one of the neighbours?”

  “No.”

  His dad lifted the sofa cushion. Could he still be searching for his laptop and phone?

  “But it’s an astronaut, Dad. ‘The intergalactic journey of a lifetime’.”

  His dad gave him a look suggesting that might be the one line of the letter he’d managed to read. He put his glasses on.

  “I made you a coffee,” Nathan said.

  His dad took the coffee. He sighed. “I suppose maybe I could ask Maureen—”

  Nathan could see there might be a way out of the black hole after all. He sat on the sofa next to his dad.

  “It’s going to be an out-of-this-world, unforgettable space experience,” he said. His dad raised his eyebrows over the top of his reading glasses and Nathan realised he might have overdone it.

  26

  Maureen walked so slowly. She held Nathan’s hand when they crossed the road, like he was six, and she insisted on waiting for the green man, even when there were no cars. When there were cars, she squeezed his hand until they passed. If Nathan’s dad saw Zoe everywhere, his aunt saw her killers and her kidnappers.

  When they got to the school Maureen took a pink plastic lunch box out of her bag. It had an equally pink lid with pictures of unicorns and rainbows on. She gave it to Nathan and said, “Lunch”. Nathan thanked her and stuffed the lunchbox into his bag before anyone saw it and he got his head kicked in.

  “I’ll be waiting right here at the end of the day,” Maureen said, pointing at the pavement, possibly at a precise spot. She tried to kiss Nathan goodbye and didn’t seem to want to let go of his hand. When he was safely inside the school gates, Maureen stood in the street until the bell went. Nathan told Arthur she was a fed.

  Everyone wanted to know about Zoe. Nathan’s friends crowded around him, asking the same questions newspapers and people on Facebook asked his dad every day. At first Nathan enjoyed the attention and he told them about the FLOs and the Joes and the Deltas and the India99 and the drone, even though it had nothing to do with Zoe. He boasted about how many likes his sister’s Facebook page had and he gave everyone leaflets. Two girls asked him to autograph theirs and they took selfies with him. Everyone thought it was cool that he’d been on television.

  Christian Sandel said everyone knew Nathan’s dad was lying about Zoe. Nathan asked him how he knew that, and Christian said his mum had told him. Nathan told him to fuck off. If Nathan had been worried that missing a week of lessons would have left him behind the rest of his class, he soon realised he needn’t have worried. Everyone seemed just as stupid as they were when he’d last seen them.

  That was why Nathan didn’t tell anyone he knew where Zoe was or that he was going to bring her back. They wouldn’t have believed him anyway. They would have teased him or laughed at him. Or even worse, his friends would take him seriously and they’d tell a teacher or his dad or they’d ask if they could go into space with him. Nathan decided it was best for his mission to remain a secret. He did feel bad for not telling Arthur, but if he was going to tell a blabbermouth like Arthur, he might as well tell the whole school.

  The day seemed to last forever. Lessons and break times dragged and even the Space and Science Far Beyond Infinity Workshop that Nathan had waited so long for couldn’t end soon enough. It had only really been an excuse to get him out of the house anyway, to get to the park and find the Luigi board before his dad was arrested for something he hadn’t done. After school Nathan would go to the park. He’d get the Luigi board out of the dog poo bin and leave new directions for the aliens just in case they didn’t know where to return Zoe.

  The park gates would be locked ‘Fifteen minutes before dusk’. In the winter that was about 4:15. If Zoe had gone missing in the summer, Nathan would have had another three hours to get to the park. But if he was quick enough, he could still easily make it. The one thing he wasn’t sure of was how to get past Auntie Maureen when she came to collect him. Towards the end of the day Astronaut Buzz lined up his plastic rockets at the front of the class and prepared them for launch. It was the grand finale of the Space and Science Far Beyond Infinity Workshop and it would give Nathan his escape opportunity.

  So far, the intergalactic journey of a lifetime had been rubbish. Astronaut Buzz got everything wrong. He really needed to read Moonmen (and Women). He wasn’t even a real astronaut. His spacesuit was less convincing than Nathan’s own Mission to Mars fancy-dress costume. His helmet was made from a plastic so flimsy that he had to pull it back into shape every time anyone tried it on. The ‘portable life support system’ he had strapped to his back looked like a cereal box covered in white wrapping paper. Nathan could see the Sellotape peeling away. Buzz claimed it provided him with enough oxygen for a half-mile spacewalk and also removed dangerous carbon dioxide. It monitored his heart rate and had a built-in two-way radio, with a signal strong enough to hold a conversation between Earth and Mars. When Arthur asked if he could have a go on the radio, Astronaut Buzz said the battery needed charging.

  The ‘actual items from space’ that Nathan had been looking forward to, ever since reading about them in the letter, included a piece of Moon rock and some freeze-dried space strawberries and ice cream. The strawberries and ice cream were okay, but Nathan had seen real Moon rock at the National Space Centre. People hadn’t been allowed to touch their Moon rock either, but that was because it came from the Moon. The only reason Buzz didn’t want anyone to touch his Moon rock was because they’d find out it was just a lump of modelling clay from Poundworld.

  The only really good bit of the Space Workshop was the end. Astronaut Buzz lined up six foam rockets on the floor and asked for volunteers to step on a sort of half a basketball launchpad. The launchpad would pump air through a tube and send the rockets up towards the ceiling. Arthur volunteered, of course, and he jumped so high and landed so hard that he hurt his ankle. The workshop had to be stopped and Arthur was taken to hospital. It was so funny. Even Arthur, who was in agony, couldn’t help laughing. The unexpected sudden end to the workshop also presented Nathan with a way past his aunt, as the class was allowed out of school ten minutes early.

  Nathan rushed out of the building and when he saw his aunt wasn’t waiting for him, he crossed the busy main road. He turned up a side street and started walking a way he knew Maureen wouldn’t come. He could always say he must have missed her. He took Zoe’s MP3 player out of his bag, put the earphones in and found the David Bowie playlist and turned it up loud. If Maureen called out to him from across the street, he’d pretend he hadn’t heard her.

  By the time the playlist was on its third song, Nathan had taken so many left and right turns, he didn’t know where he was. When he saw the big church at the end of the road, he at least knew he was heading in the right direction. He’d stood outside the church a week ago, while his dad removed the screws so he could lift the glass front of the noticeboard and pin a poster to the green felt board inside.

  Almost every street Nathan had walked along had at least one poster for his missing sister. Either stuck to a lamppost or pinned to a tree or fencepost. There were more pictures of his sister in Brixton than there were of David Bowie a week earlier. If their dad could have arranged it there’d be a Zoe Love mural opposite the Tube. If he hadn’t sold his old film projector there’d be an enormous picture of her face filling the Bovril wall.

  Nathan stopped outside the church. The poster was still there among the notices for pet blessings, Holy Communion and pilates. But it was different to all the other posters he’d walked past. Underneath Zoe’s picture, where it said: ‘Zoe Patricia Love (15) has been missing for 2 days’, the ‘2 days’ had been crossed out with a black pen. The poster now said Zoe had been missing for ‘13 days.’

  Nathan carried on walking, seeing posters wrapped around signposts and bollards and one stuck to a glass-recycling bin. Every poster had be
en altered. Nathan couldn’t think of anyone other than his dad who could be responsible. He wondered if he’d changed the posters because of what Craig had said about the police using age-progression software. Updating the number of days Zoe had been missing on the posters was his homemade age-progression software.

  Nathan’s phone rang as he walked into the big estate. He took it out of his blazer pocket, forgetting two things his dad always told him – don’t use your phone in public and don’t walk through the big estate. The phone call was from an unknown number, but Nathan knew it must be Maureen. He let the phone ring out before switching it to silent and hiding it down the front of his underpants. A trick Zoe had taught him to avoid getting robbed. He hoped it wasn’t just another one of her jokes. He took his school tie off, zipped his coat up to hide his blazer and, doing his best to look like he belonged there, walked through the estate.

  27

  There were two tall blocks at the centre of the estate, the wider block on the left with the flats inside and a thinner block on the right where the stairs and the lifts were. A gap between the two blocks, about the width of a car, was the shortest route through to the other side of the estate and the quickest way to get to the main road where Nathan lived, and where the park and the Luigi board were. Five or six boys were standing in front of the gap. They’d dropped their bikes on the ground, like a roadblock or a border that Nathan was going to have to cross. He knew there was bound to be a toll.

  The boys hadn’t seen him yet, and if he turned back now he could take a different, longer route home. He’d have to forget about going to the park. There wouldn’t be time. He considered his options. The MP3 player was still playing. He needed to stop that first. When he pulled the earphones out, David Bowie sang Turn to the left. It was as though he was trying to help Nathan by showing him the safest way through the estate. But it was too late to take his advice as one of the boys had seen him. He quickly stuffed the earphones and the MP3 player into his pants with his phone and carried on walking.

  The boys shuffled about, zipping up their jackets and spitting, preparing themselves for Nathan’s arrival at their makeshift border crossing. They were older than Nathan, maybe twelve or thirteen. He thought he knew what school they were from, even though they were all wearing dark coats or jackets, zipped up to their chins, hiding their uniforms. One of them had covered his face with a yellow scarf. Another had a plastic fork in his mouth. When Nathan was just a few feet away the boy removed the fork. He put his hand out like a stop sign and asked Nathan where he was going and, more crucially, where he was from. Nathan lied to both questions, “Here.” He looked up at the two blocks that towered over them like the Blue Streak and Thor Able rockets. He felt just as giddy and twice as sick.

  “You’re getting taxed,” the boy said. He dropped the plastic fork on the ground and put both his hands in Nathan’s coat pockets.

  “I haven’t got anything,” Nathan said.

  The other boys surrounded him. Someone pulled his bag off his shoulder. Plastic fork boy counted a handful of loose change and studied Nathan’s travel pass as though he was checking his passport. He gave the pass back and for a moment Nathan thought they were finished with him. But the boy with the scarf over his face said, “What’s this?”

  Nathan couldn’t remember putting the fallen ceiling Jupiter in his school bag. The boy waved the rubber planet about, making it flap like a drowning fish.

  “It has to be dark to work,” Nathan said.

  “What?” the boy said. He spat on the ground. If he was aiming for Nathan’s shoes, he missed by a mile.

  “It only glows in the dark.”

  The boy threw Jupiter on the ground. Nathan wished the real planet would fall out of the sky and land on him. Two of the other boys were playing tug-of-war with Nathan’s school bag. He watched his homework and his Star Wars pencil case fall out. When his lunch box fell out of the bag, Nathan thought the lame pink unicorns on the lid would get him murdered, but no one seemed to notice it. One of the boys threw a plastic alien with a parachute on its back into the air. The parachute failed and the alien crashed to the ground. The scarf-faced boy picked up the head of the Bratz doll and turned it around in his hand like a rare diamond.

  “It’s my sister’s,” Nathan said, and the boy threw the doll’s head in the air. He tried dropkicking it but missed and the others laughed at him. Nathan nearly laughed himself, thinking the best way to stop being the victim was to join the bullies.

  “This is that girl what’s missing,” fork boy said. The others leaned in to look at the poster in his hand.

  “I know her,” one said. “Her dad killed her, isn’t it?”

  “No, he didn’t,” Nathan said, luckily too quietly to even register as a sound.

  He couldn’t remember whether he’d seen any posters on the big estate. If his dad hadn’t updated them yet, he might be here right now. Nathan could call out his name. His dad would really mess these boys up.

  “She’s run away. I know,” the boy with the scarf mask said. He read aloud from the poster. “Zoe Patricia Love has been missing for two days—”

  “Thirteen,” Nathan said. They ignored him.

  “Nah, man. She’s dead.”

  “She’s fuck ugly.”

  “Gis it.”

  Nathan prayed for a supernova a billion times brighter than the sun, to explode and fall onto the boys and their bikes and their stupid shitty flats. If he had the Swiss Army knife with him, he definitely would have used it. He felt a strange sensation in his trousers. He thought he was wetting himself, but it was just his phone vibrating in his underpants. Not now, Auntie Maureen. He wondered what time it was. The sky was a sort of off-white, like slush or ruined snow. Neither night nor day. Was that what dusk was? Soon the man from the council would be driving around the park in his car with the lights flashing to warn everyone it was about to close.

  Nathan watched the boys fighting over the poster, wishing a meteor as big as the one that crashed into Russia, that Zoe had watched so many times on YouTube, would hit Brixton now. No, not a meteor. It was a meteoroid. The memory of Zoe correcting the man on the news like he was an idiot almost made Nathan laugh out loud. He really had to get to the park and find the Luigi board so he could speak to his sister. He couldn’t let a few stupid boys stop him. What would have happened to E.T. if Elliott had such a defeatist attitude? What would happen to Zoe?

  The boys were playing a violent game of pass the parcel with the poster now and they seemed to have lost interest in Nathan. Zoe would have called it their ‘short attention span’. While they were distracted, Nathan picked up Jupiter, the lunchbox, his pencil case and the doll’s head. He put them in his school bag and stepped over a silver mountain bike. He entered the gap between the two tower blocks without any of the boys seeming to care. They were too busy fighting over the picture of his sister. In a way Zoe had saved him. He had to save her in return. About halfway through the gap, Nathan realised he shouldn’t have said that he lived in the flats. If he didn’t get in the lift or go up the stairs, it would be obvious he’d been lying.

  Without stopping to think, he started running. He jumped over a low bush and almost tripped in a pothole. It wasn’t easy running fast with a phone and an MP3 player in his pants. The phone was vibrating again, and the earphones had started to slide down his thigh. He carried on running, not looking back until he reached the main road, and then he still kept running. He only stopped when he was on the other side of the road where there were more people about.

  He bent over with his hands on his knees and waited for his stitch to unpick itself. He took the MP3 player and the phone out of his pants. There was a text message from the same unknown number as the other calls. Nathan knew how difficult it would have been for Maureen to write the simple Nathan where are you?? text. She was obviously worried about him and it should have been enough to make him go straight home. But he thought he could still make it to the park before it closed. He sprinted up
the road next to the big pub and went through the entrance to the park. Just inside the gate there was a poster on the noticeboard. It hadn’t been updated yet and Zoe had only been missing for two days. It was like stepping back in time.

  28

  Zoe’s favourite tree had been cut into two, and one half was already covered in tags. Zoe was right. Humans were terrible. Nathan didn’t recognise any of the squiggles or swirls as those belonging to any of his friends or anyone he knew on the estate. He put his hand on the graffiti to see if the paint was dry. He looked at his fingers and thought he saw glitter. But when he looked again it was gone. There was no sign anywhere of twigs or branches that might once have formed the shape of an arrow. He searched the two halves of tree trunk for the Post-it notes that Zoe had written their names on. So much had happened since then and it felt like such a long time ago.

  Apart from an old man in running shorts jogging down the hill towards the Lido and a woman walking Digby, the biggest dog in the world, along the path between the park and the estate, the top of the park was deserted. Nathan couldn’t see the man driving around telling everyone it was time to leave yet.

  He leaned over the tree and looked inside the hollow, but it was too dark. The Post-it notes could have fallen further inside. He should have brought his Space Torch with him. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and put his hand in the hole and felt about inside. His face was squashed against the bark. He pulled his hand out, stood and shook it and brushed it against his coat, convinced it was covered in insects even though he couldn’t see any.

  Nathan took a poster out of his bag. His dad had given him six that morning to put on the school noticeboard, but he’d forgotten. He’d been too preoccupied thinking about how he was going to avoid Maureen and get to the park. He folded the poster in half and put it in the hollow of the tree. He was about to leave when he stopped and took the poster out again. He found the best pen in his school bag and changed the number of days on the poster from 2 to 13. He wondered if he should have brought a picture of ‘Alex’ as well. But he didn’t even want to think that Zoe might have gone into space with someone instead of him.