A Godawful Small Affair

by J. B. Morrison

  He heard a car. He could see it down by the café, the lights flashing to announce dusk and time for the park to close. Nathan put the poster back inside the tree and arranged three short branches in the shape of an arrow on the grass next to it. He collected as many more branches as he could carry and picked up his school bag. He walked towards the estate. When he was almost at the dog poo bin, there were six arrows behind him, leading from the tree and the picture of Zoe to the house she’d been taken from.

  The dog poo bin hadn’t been emptied since the other night. It was so full the lid wouldn’t shut properly. But people had continued to throw bright blue and black bags into the overflowing bin and onto the ground beneath it. There were a few plastic bags trapped between the bin and the lid.

  Nathan put his school bag down. With one of the two branches he had left, he lifted the lid. He wedged it open with the other shorter branch, and holding his nose he started poking around inside the bin with the first stick, lifting and separating the sea of bagged dog mess. The first thing he saw was the empty glitter tube. He was going to have to let go of his nose to reach into the bin to retrieve it. He turned his head away and took a deep breath. One small step. He reached into the bin. The thought of the dog shit, as much as any actual smell, made him gag. When he had the glitter tube between his fingers, he pulled it out at arm’s length. He pushed his hip out and expertly dropped the tube into his trouser pocket.

  The car with the flashing lights had stopped next to the row of white builders’ vans in front of the café. The driver of the car got out and was talking to the builders. Nathan used his stick to root around in the bin again. There was a nappy in there and a Lucozade bottle. Humans are terrible. He moved a few more bags about, and then he saw the unmistakable twinkle of Zoe’s Ziggy stardust on the corner of the Luigi board. He had to flick two poo bags out of the bin to reach it. The dull sound they made when they landed on the grass made him gag again.

  He poked the branch under the Luigi board and managed to lift it free. He had it almost the whole way out of the bin when everything seemed to happen at once. What his mum would have called one thing after another. First, the surprise of his phone vibrating in his pocket made him knock the branch holding the bin open. The lid slammed shut, not with the loud clang of metal on metal like the other night but with a dull thud as it landed on a cushion of dog shit. The Luigi board fell on the grass, and when Nathan bent to pick it up he saw the lid of a red Sharpie pen. His phone was still vibrating so he took it out of his pocket to cancel the call. He expected to see Auntie Maureen’s unknown number again or another badly typed message, but the display said: DAD. Before he had the chance to consider how much trouble that meant he was in, a boy wearing a skull balaclava and riding a Boris bike snatched the phone out of his hand and sped off down the hill like a seagull with an ice cream cornet.

  29

  Nathan’s dad wasn’t about to risk losing a single second of what so many people had told him was the golden hour that followed a person going missing this time. When Nathan walked through the front door his dad was already on the phone to the police. Maureen came out of the living room. “Thank God,” she said and pulled a tissue out from the sleeve of her cardigan and loudly blew her nose, like a trumpet fanfare announcing her nephew’s safe return.

  “It’s all right,” Nathan’s dad said into the phone. “He’s here. I’m sorry to have wasted your time. Yes, don’t worry. I’ll definitely be doing that,” he hung up the phone and glared at Nathan. “Where the hell have you been?”

  Nathan dropped his bag in the hall by the coats.

  “The Space Workshop finished early, and I walked home with Arthur.”

  “Is that right?” his dad said, and Nathan quickly realised that if his dad was phoning the police, he might have already made the same series of phone calls he’d made when Zoe went missing. Presuming he made them in the same order, before calling the police he would have phoned the hospitals and before that his dad would have rung Nathan’s school and spoken to his friends or their parents. From the satisfied look on his dad’s face Nathan knew he’d spoken to Arthur’s mum. She would have told him that Arthur had spent the afternoon in A and E getting his ankle X-rayed.

  “I suppose you’ve noticed your sister is missing?” his dad said. Nathan recognised it as one of his famous rhetorical questions. He wasn’t expected to answer it. If he stood still and looked sorry for long enough, the storm would pass.

  “You must have been aware of a heightened police presence? All the people in uniform in the house? The helicopter? All those leaflets we’ve been giving out? The posters? The television appearances—”

  “You changed them,” Nathan said, forgetting the rule with rhetorical questions.

  His dad stared at him. Blinking like he’d woken up with the sun in his eyes. “What?”

  “I saw the posters you’ve changed.”

  His dad thought for a moment and then waved his hand dismissively.

  “Why weren’t you answering your phone?”

  There was a chance that if Nathan told the truth about his phone and about the boys on the big estate, it might not be too late to turn himself into the victim. His dad could never be angry with Nathan if he’d just been mugged. He might even get a new phone out of it, one with better games and more memory. Nathan looked at his dad’s face and the house phone still in his hand, his thumb poised over the nine. He thought about having to go to the park with the police, to show them where his phone had been stolen. Everyone on the estate would see him and know he was a snitch.

  “I lost it,” Nathan said.

  “You lost it? Jesus Christ, Nathan. How? Where?”

  “At school.”

  “How did you lose it at school?”

  “I just lost it.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know,” that’s what lost means, he really wanted to say.

  His dad shook his head, turned his back and went into the living room, presumably to put the only remaining phone in the house back in its cradle. Because it didn’t matter what else was happening in the world. His son could be mugged, there could even be a war going on. Nathan’s dad wasn’t going to forget to keep the hotline to Zoe open and fully charged.

  “It’s not my fault she’s gone missing,” Nathan shouted.

  His dad came back out of the living room so quickly that Nathan stepped backwards and put his hands up in front of his face. His dad stepped back as well.

  “I’m not going to hit you, Nathan. Jesus. Is that what you think? When have I ever hit you?”

  Nathan shrugged, which was unfair because his dad had never hit him.

  “Nathan can have my old phone,” Maureen said.

  “It’s all right, Mo,” Nathan’s dad said.

  He looked like he was about to say something else to Nathan, but he couldn’t seem to find the words. Nathan recognised his expression from the last time he’d lost his phone. Zoe had called it ‘exasperation’. His dad turned and looked like he was about to go back into the living room, but he stopped.

  “You know how important looking after your phone is, don’t you?” he said. “I must have said it a hundred times this week.” Nathan could tell his dad was about to make it all about Zoe, as usual. “If Zoe had taken her phone with her…Or if she’d just ring to say she’s all right. I don’t care where she is. I just want to hear from her.”

  Nathan bent down and opened his school bag. He reached inside and pulled out the filthy Luigi board. He stood up and held it out to his dad.

  “What’s that?” his dad said, looking at the grubby and damp clump of paper.

  “It’s why I went to the park.”

  “You’ve been to the park?”

  “I’m trying to tell you,” Nathan said. “It’s Zoe’s.” It was the magic word for getting his dad’s attention.

  “What is it?”

  “It’s a Luigi board.”

  “A what?”

  “He means a Ouija boa
rd, Steve,” Maureen said. Nathan’s dad turned to look at her and then back at Nathan.

  “Why have you got a Ouija board?”

  “Zoe left it in the park.”

  His dad unfolded it. The paper had stuck together in places. Nathan’s dad watched specks of glitter fall onto the hall carpet like shooting stars.

  “That was supposed to be for David Bowie’s birthday card,” Nathan said. “But Zoe forgot and most of it’s rubbed off now.”

  His dad looked at the letters and what was left of the stars. He had glitter on his hands.

  “I just don’t understand why you’d be playing with a Ouija board,” his dad said.

  “We weren’t playing.”

  “Do you think your sister is dead, Nathan?”

  “It’s not for that. It’s a different one. We were trying to make contact.”

  “Who was?”

  “Me and Zoe.”

  “Why? What do you mean make contact? Who with?”

  Nathan didn’t know why his dad couldn’t seem to understand something so simple. “It didn’t work indoors because of interference,” Nathan said. “So we took it to the park, but Zoe forgot to take a glass.”

  “Please tell me you don’t mean the other night?” his dad said.

  “I thought we could try again now. Me and you, Dad, and Auntie Maureen. I think it needs more fingers on the glass to make it work,” he looked at Maureen. “Three people’s fingers might make it work. We can contact Zoe with it. You said you wanted to hear from her.” Why wasn’t his dad getting it? “Because she’s an alien again. Like when we went to France.”

  His dad glared at him. “Zoe isn’t dead, Nathan.”

  “I know. I didn’t say that.”

  His dad said something under his breath and then screwed the Luigi board up and started along the hall towards the kitchen.

  “What are you doing?” Nathan said.

  “This sort of nonsense is not good for you.”

  Nathan’s dad walked past Maureen. “Steve,” she said and then, “Nathan,” as he followed his dad into the kitchen. His dad walked over to the bin. He put his foot on the pedal to open the lid.

  “Don’t,” Nathan said.

  “It’s nonsense.” His dad dropped the Luigi board in the bin.

  “No!” Nathan shouted. He tried to reach the bin but his dad stood in the way.

  “Steve,” Maureen said.

  Nathan’s dad took his foot off the pedal and the bin lid slammed shut.

  “I wish she was fucking dead!” Nathan screamed. He ran past his aunt into the hall. He grabbed his bag and stamped up the stairs to his bedroom. He slammed the door closed and then slammed it three more times in case his dad hadn’t heard it.

  He threw his bag on the floor and sat down hard on his bed, making the springs creak. He kicked his trainers off so they crashed into his wardrobe door and lay on his bed. He pulled the hood of his parka over his head, tightening the drawstring to make the opening as small as possible. He wished the aliens didn’t only come at night. He wanted to go right now and never come back. He felt in his coat pocket for his phone so that he could text Arthur about his phone being jacked. When he realised why that was impossible he turned his head around inside the hood of the coat and screamed into the material.

  He lay like that for ten minutes. He’d expected his dad to chase after him. For swearing and for wishing Zoe was dead, for the Luigi board, for going to the park to get it, for losing another phone, for making Zoe go to the park with him in the first place, for snitching to the police and to the breakfast television presenters, and who knew what else.

  Five more long minutes passed. Nathan wasn’t going to be the one to back down. He’d stay in quarantine inside his parka forever if he had to. His dad had destroyed the only means of communication with Zoe. And it was something Zoe had made. The Luigi board should be in the Zoe Love Museum, not in the kitchen bin covered in cold curry.

  He put his hand in his trouser pocket. He poked his little finger inside the red Sharpie lid and thought about the last time he’d seen Zoe using the pen. She’d written on the wall next to the mural and used it again when they played the Post-it notes game. After that Zoe had used the pen to write the letters and numbers and draw the stars on the Luigi board. And she’d written in Nathan’s Space Cadet notebook. The last time Nathan had seen the red pen was when Zoe wrote both their names on Post-it notes and stuck them to her favourite tree. Nathan clearly remembered Zoe replacing the lid and putting the pen in her jacket pocket after that. He remembered because he’d waited to hear the lid click firmly into place because of all the times Zoe had told him off for not putting the lids back on her pens properly. He couldn’t imagine she would have made the same careless mistake herself. The arrows were gone and the Post-it notes were gone, but the pen lid was somehow in the park. None of it made sense. And where was the actual pen?

  Like the police, Nathan thought Zoe must have gone back to the park when he and his dad were asleep. But not to look at stars. There weren’t any that night. Because of light pollution. Because of the streetlights and tall buildings. Zoe must have gone to the park for another reason. To leave a message for the aliens or maybe for him. As soon as he got the chance Nathan would go back to the park and find the message. He’d start by looking on Zoe’s favourite tree. That was the most likely place. At the very least he’d find the pen and replace the lid before the ink dried up.

  Nathan sat up and took his parka off. He pulled the grey cardboard folder out from under his mattress and tipped the Alien Guess Who? pictures out on his bed. He got the version of the Luigi board he’d made out of library book pages down from the top of his wardrobe. He opened it out on the carpet next to his bed. He took the glitter tube out of his trouser pocket, poking his little finger inside to scoop out any leftover glitter. He wiped the few specks onto the Luigi board’s stars. He placed the glitter tube with the Sharpie lid, the blue asthma inhaler, the head of Zoe’s Bratz doll, the ID badge from the television studio and the rubber Jupiter that had fallen from his ceiling around the edge of the board like Monopoly pieces. He put the upturned Caffè Nero cup at the Luigi board’s centre.

  Next, Nathan arranged the Alien Guess Who? pictures in five rows on the carpet next to the Luigi board. When he was ready, he asked the same questions he’d asked Zoe last year when he’d made the guessing game. This time though, instead of asking whether the aliens were green or if they had tentacles, he asked are they green and do they have tentacles? He had to imagine Zoe’s answers, of course, but she said no to all of them. When Nathan had turned over every single green man, bug-eyed grey and tall white, when he’d discounted mutants and reptilians and a number of celebrity aliens that included Marvin the Martian, Mr. Spock, Darth Vader, Jar Jar Binks, a Klingon, two Doctor Whos, a Dalek and a picture of David Bowie with no hair or ears, there was only one picture that remained face up on the carpet. It was the same picture Nathan’s dad had given to the police and posted online and stuck on to walls and to street furniture all over Brixton. It had been on television. Twice. It was the same picture that Nathan was going to take into space.

  Nathan collected all the alien pictures together and put them back in the folder. He poked his little finger into the red Sharpie lid and flicked it in and out, making a satisfying popping sound. He held the lid up to his mouth and pretended it was a microphone, a walkie-talkie to Space.

  “I don’t know how much you can see what’s happening on Earth, Zoe, but Dad threw the Luigi board in the bin. I took it out of one bin and he threw it straight into another one. How funny is that? I found your pen lid in the park, so I think you must have written me a message with it somewhere.”

  Nathan could hear his dad and Maureen arguing downstairs, probably about him. His dad was probably working out how to punish him. Nathan couldn’t think of anything. He couldn’t take his phone away or ban him from leaving the house. Nathan didn’t care about television anymore, or toys. And there’d be no birthd
ays or Christmases until Zoe came back anyway.

  “Dad hates me, Zoe, because I didn’t wait after school for Maureen and because I had my phone snatched in the park. It nearly got taken in the big flats, but I hid it in my pants like you told me to do before. It was only a cheap Nokia, with a broken screen and no memory or proper internet and it had a rubbish camera, but Dad acted like I’d lost contact with the Apollo Lunar module. I read about that in that fat library book. I’m going to show you it when you get back. Did you know a boy got stabbed right outside our house? He’s not dead but he nearly was. Dad’s smoking because you’re not here but mainly because I think I made him look bad on telly. You know that programme you hate? We were on it.”

  Nathan reached across for the ID badge. He held it up above the Luigi board.

  “See? So, you should come home before Dad gets Earth cancer. I don’t want to live with Maureen if he dies. She puts spices and pepper in everything, even though Dad keeps saying he only wants plain food. We’re both vegetarians now, Zoe. I haven’t eaten one animal since you went. Auntie Maureen says Haribos have got animals in, but I think she’s just saying it because she can’t cook anything vegetarian. I’m going to keep on eating Tangfastics until you come home and tell me if they’re for vegetarians or not. Did I tell you I found the lid off your pen? I think I did. Anyway, if you don’t come back soon, the ink is going to dry up. And is that boy your boyfriend or something? Is he called Alex?”

  30

  Nathan had never been so grounded. When he did leave his room the atmosphere downstairs was so tense, he didn’t want to stay for long. He ate his meals quickly in silence and went back to his room, only coming out again when he heard the front door opening and saw his dad leaving the house to hand out leaflets or update the posters again.