‘Lewis is normal.’ Even as I said it, I knew it wasn’t true. He was Lewis-y, and being Lewis-y was something you carried about with you. Kids can smell these things from the other end of the playground.
‘Of course he’s normal,’ Mum said. ‘Your dad means that we want our kids to take the easy path in life. That’s what Geoff will be thinking with this red-blooded stuff.’ She hunched her eyebrows. ‘Don’t ever – ever – tell Geoff I said this.’
‘But normal. Mum, what—’
Mum moved round on her knees so she was looking at Dad. ‘Jonathan, you started this conversation.’ She dug at the soil with her trowel. ‘You can have the pleasure of finishing it.’
Dad put his clippers on the grass and sat down at the bench. He patted the seat.
I placed my secateurs and basket on the ground and sat next to him.
‘Lewis is a sensitive boy.’ Dad smiled. ‘Sometimes sensitive boys can take different paths from the herd. Not necessarily. But sometimes.’
I folded my arms at this. ‘Can girls take different paths too? Or is it another thing that’s just for boys?’
Mum put down her trowel. She and Dad looked at each other.
‘Do you think that you’re on a different path?’ Dad asked.
They were both looking at me closely.
Mum shook her head at Dad. ‘We’re confusing her.’
‘But if—’
Mum cut me off. ‘Another time.’
Frustrated, I snipped off two not-completely-dead heads and tipped the content of the basket onto the compost heap.
And maybe it’s because I was frustrated. Maybe that’s why I chose that day to ask.
I’d got money for the fair now, but I was still no closer to getting Mum and Dad to let me go. I needed to do some concrete investigating.
And that meant asking about Danielle.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew, by asking, my parents probably wouldn’t tell me about her death. But they probably wouldn’t be able to help giving me something, would they? Give me some clues to work with?
And while Lewis had said it would be a bad idea to ask Mum and Dad how Danielle died, he didn’t know how much chattier my parents got when they were talking about England winning the football and besides – as had been proven many times – Lewis Harris didn’t know everything.
I waited till we were all eating Dad’s spaghetti bolognese that night.
‘Thing is,’ Mum said twirling spaghetti on her fork, ‘we’ve had penalty practice now. So that stands us in good stead.’
I ate a mouthful and swallowed. ‘Can I ask something about Danielle?’
Mum stopped chewing for a second. ‘This had better not be about bedrooms.’
‘You know when Danielle died . . .’
I said it casually, but it didn’t matter.
Dad put his knife and fork down on the peninsula, so quietly they didn’t make a noise.
Mum stopped chewing, properly now.
I looked down at my plate. I made swirls with my fork, leaving parallel tracks on the plate, like four ice skaters had made trails through the sauce.
‘I hope it was quick,’ I said. ‘For her sake.’
Mum took a deep breath. She looked at Dad again. ‘Fiona.’
‘I like Fi now.’
‘Fi.’ Still looking at Dad. ‘We talk about how your sister lived. Not how she died.’
I crunched my toes up in my shoes.
‘People want to talk about how she died all the time,’ Mum said. ‘And she was so much more than a tragic story. She was a wonderful, wonderful little girl. And I will tell you anything you want to know about her. I will talk about her all day, if you want. And I will talk about anything, except how she . . .’
When Mum tailed off, Dad squeezed her arm.
I swung one foot out and kicked the metal leg of the peninsula. Clang.
Hurt charged through my toes.
Frustration bubbled up in my chest.
I took a deep breath. ‘OK.’ A different angle. ‘Was she fun? What did she do for fun?’
Mum looked at her plate. ‘She was so much fun.’
And Mum looked up and told me the story about the routine they had when they danced round the kitchen to a song about a highwayman. I didn’t listen. The whole point of these stories is they never actually changed. They were as dead as my sister.
Though I will say, I feel embarrassed for Danielle when Mum tells these stories to Danielle’s mates, when they come to see Mum and Dad on her birthday. Dead or not, Danielle wouldn’t want her mates hearing that, would she?
Not unless high school was a really different place in 1982.
‘She was our miracle baby, you know. We didn’t think we could have children, and then she came along.’ Mum looked at Dad softly. ‘Everyone said she was special.’
‘Special,’ I kicked the peninsula leg again. Clang. Toe-pain. Don’t say it.
‘She lit up a room,’ Mum said. ‘She was just one of those people. So special.’
‘Special.’ I kicked it again. Clang.
Don’t say it.
‘The world wasn’t made for people that special,’ Mum said.
Don’t say it. No, don’t –
‘Special?’ The words just rushed out on their own. ‘Like the kids at St Joseph’s?’
Mum dropped her knife and fork.
‘GO TO YOUR ROOM! NOW!’
Her voice was the shakiest I’ve ever heard.
And Dad spent ages in my bedroom that night, explaining that Mum just needed some time, and that I probably didn’t understand what I was saying – that I was being mean to both Danielle and to the kids from St Joseph’s, and those kids don’t find life as easy as I do. And I can’t have meant it, because making fun of both Danielle and those kids was the worst thing I could ever do – and surely I wasn’t the kind of kid who meant to say things like that?
I listened. Thinking I didn’t know how in seven words I’d managed to deeply offend both Danielle and the kids in the special class, and that was quite special in itself.
But that was me. Scar-bad again.
The Bad Scar Things I’ve Done 1996 Summer Term Update
1)Called Danielle special, which made fun of her and the kids from St Joseph’s
2)Cut up Mum’s curtain fabric to make a secret pocket
3)Tried to sell stuff from Danielle’s room
4)Sold jazz mags to underage boys
I haven’t put these in order because I don’t know what order they’re in.
And I don’t want to think about it anymore.
14
Tiny arteries and veins serve the individual muscles and skin on your head, so it can bleed a lot if you get a head injury. For example, if you were hit on the head with a whack-a-mole hammer.
Fiona Larson, 7E’s Blood Project
Twenty-five days to the fair
On Monday morning, in Dr Sharma’s lesson, everyone was meant to be working on their science projects on their own. But kids were really talking about the game and how they’d step over the ball to fool the keeper when they were taking penalties for England.
Dr Sharma must have known she wouldn’t get people to stop talking because she pretended not to notice.
She saw me with my hand up. ‘This had better not be about penalty kicks.’
She sat at the stool next to me.
‘I’ve got a question. Two questions.’
Dr Sharma raised her eyebrow. ‘And?’
I looked down at my lap uncertainly. ‘Do you know I had a sister? Danielle?’
Dr Sharma straightened her blouse around her waist. ‘I do.’
‘Did you teach her?’
Dr Sharma kept straightening. ‘What has this got to do with your project?’
/> ‘I was just wondering what you knew about her.’
‘Very little, I’m afraid. And Fiona, this is no place for soap operas. Science questions only.’
I stared at the edge of the table. I should have known she wouldn’t help.
I noticed the outline of the special shape I’d drawn there earlier that year. Before I’d learned the word swastika. Before I’d learned it wasn’t my special shape, after all.
I moved in front of the shape so Dr Sharma didn’t see.
‘Was that both questions?’
‘No. Just one.’
She sighed. ‘Is your second question about your project, at least?’
I nodded. ‘What does it mean if you say someone’s red-blooded?’
‘Nope. Not science either, Fiona.’ She got up from the stool. ‘It’s a metaphor.’
‘That’s what I thought.’ And now I had to look up the word metaphor.
‘When someone says red-blooded,’ Dr Sharma said, ‘they’re talking about a person being full of life. They eat a lot, that kind of thing.’
I wouldn’t exactly call Lewis full of life, but he did eat a lot of raspberry laces.
If red-blooded wasn’t a science thing, that made it an English thing. A metaphor would be something like a paradox, something to make conversations more confusing and take longer.
I arrived in the classroom for English later than some of the other kids. Sean nodded at me, but didn’t say hello, just looked away again.
What?
I sat down and got out my pencil tin. I rearranged my pens in confusion.
But aren’t I the best girl in school now?
Surprisingly, Mr Kellett hardly spoke about the football. He just stood at the front, banging on about the play we were reading.
Finally, he looked up from his book. ‘Any questions?’
Loads of hands went up.
‘Were you any good at penalties when you played for Alty Town, sir?’
‘Are we going to beat Germany five-nil?’
‘Questions about Katherine or Petruchio? Or Shakespeare? Even Italy?’ Mr Kellett looked round the room. ‘Anything related to The Taming of the Shrew at all?’
All the hands went down.
I put my hand up. ‘Can I ask about something else?’
Mr Kellett closed the book in his hands slowly. He hugged the book to his chest. ‘Everyone discuss the play, in your pairs.’
He came over to me.
I put my hand down. ‘It’s another word question. Something I’ve been wondering since the weekend.’
Mr Kellett slowly crouched next to me. One of his knees made a crunching sound, like a rustled-up crisp packet. ‘Go on.’
‘I just wanted to know. What does red-blooded mean?’
He stared at me.
‘Mr Kellett?’
The bell rang. And kept ringing.
Mr Kellett sprang up despite his crisp-packet knee. ‘Fire drill!’ He grabbed his yellow vest-thing from the back of his chair, the one the colour of a highlighter pen.
And all us kids hurried after him onto the school field, hoping and hoping – some crossing fingers and everything – that it was a real fire this time.
Even better than a fire! School news, school news, school news!
It was a bomb threat. Someone threatened to bomb our school!
Well, not exactly bomb our school. They threatened to bomb the train station nearby, and our school’s really close to the track. Someone had called the police and used an IRA codeword – that turned out not to be an IRA codeword after all. Or an old one. Or something.
There were so many rumours.
It wasn’t the IRA after all, but angry ex-pupils trying to get their own back. It was that kid who got his face blown off in a science experiment. It was Simon Rutherson, losing it after twenty years of kids shouting orgasm up scaffolding.
Either way, there was no bomb.
But you should have seen the teachers! Mrs Vernal kept muttering with the New Head about whether we should regroup in the car park instead, even though that wasn’t the instruction when there was a fire drill. Miss Jarvis rushed back and forth like a mad rabbit, telling us to step back from the railway line, no, further back, please kids, listen to me, kids, it’s important this time – PLEASE! Her face was so red and strained, Dr Sharma put her hand on Miss Jarvis’s arm and said calm down, Carrie. Nothing good comes of getting agitated.
Carrie. The day of the bomb was getting better and better. Carrie!
It wasn’t all good though. At one point, the New Head looked up and I met her dark gaze. It was like I was looking at Medusa and her head of hissing snakes. A coldness spread across my neck and my back and it stayed there, tingling and spreading, long after the New Head had turned away.
Mr Kellett wasn’t happy either. He stood in his highlighter vest, directing kids, looking more serious than I’d ever seen him. I caught his eye once and he stopped directing kids and looked really worried.
But the most worried faces of all were on the poor Year Nine girls who’d been doing gymnastics when the bell rang. Now they were on the field with no skirts on, all standing in just Aertex T-shirts and gym pants – all of the class. The fat ones, the skinny ones, the ones whose boobs had grown too quickly, the ones whose hadn’t grown quickly enough – all trying to cover themselves up, with only their arms to do it. All the while, everyone – everyone, the whole school – made comments on how thick their legs were, or how much their boobs had grown, or not grown, like we were presenters on a nature show, or observing penguins in their pool at the zoo.
At teatime, I sat at the peninsula and practised reading the newspaper.
I turned over pages of the business section, waiting for Mum to notice.
On the next page was a cartoon. A man in a suit with a big red face held a bottle labelled The Economy. He was trying to protect the bottle from a hunched-over devil, who was trying to take the stopper out of the bottle.
I stared at the cartoon, waiting for it to be funny.
I turned another page.
‘Fiona?’ Mum said.
I put the paper down flat on the table.
‘Fiona, while you’re not doing anything, do you want to help me with laying the table?’
‘I was doing something. I was reading the business section.’ I got down off the stool and opened the cutlery drawer. I put the cutlery on the table in a heap. ‘Should I put my paper away?’
Mum looked at the paper open on the peninsula. City jitters expected to stabilise after chancellor’s statement.
She looked at me for a long minute.
I folded the paper up neatly and started arranging the knives and forks in our places.
Mum eventually went back to stirring her sauce. ‘Oh.’ She jerked her head at the sideboard. ‘You’ve got some post. What’s it about?’
‘Could be anything. I get letters all the time.’
I took the letter up to my room to open it.
Dear Miss Larson,
Thank you for your recent application for the position of hairdressing assistant.
We have been overwhelmed with applications and have received an abundance of CVs for the role. After careful consideration, we have decided to go in a different direction. I’m sorry to tell you we won’t be offering you an interview at this time.
We will keep your application on file in case any positions come up in the future, so there is no need to reapply.
We wish you the best of luck with your continued job search.
Kind regards,
Katie Guest
Salon Manager
I was getting a bit bored of words now, to be honest. So I wouldn’t be looking up abundance.
I never wanted to be a hairdresser anyway.
15
Calling someone ‘red-blooded’ has nothing to do with actual blood.
It’s a red herring.
Which has nothing to do with actual herrings.
Fiona Larson, 7E’s Blood Project
Twenty-four days to the fair
The next day, I waited for Lewis by the lamppost. I still had my glasses on, after wearing them with my parents all through breakfast.
I watched Lewis walk towards me, his edges much sharper than usual. I was about to take the glasses off when I glanced at 56 George Street.
The house had sharper edges too. As did the man inside.
After a moment, the man raised a hand in a wave.
My stomach swished with cold water.
The man Mum had met at the supermarket – the one she called strange – was the man in the window of 56 George Street.
‘Lewis,’ I grabbed his arm, ‘run.’
‘Why are we running?’
I slowed as we reached the park. ‘You know the man in the axeman’s house?’
‘It’s not an axeman’s house.’ Lewis saw my face. ‘Go on.’
‘I know who he is and Mum says’ – I left a pause – ‘he’s a strange man. Coincidence?’
Lewis opened his eyes wider. ‘Of course it’s a coincidence.’ But his voice was wobbly at the edges. ‘I asked Mum about the axeman and she said Sean’s having us on and they’d never found a foot in a flipflop in with the bananas at the Co-op. Never!’
‘My mum said the same,’ I admitted.
‘And think about it, Fi. Flipflops slide off easily.’ Lewis folded his arms in a big message. ‘And there’s no way a whole family got killed like that and we don’t know. You can’t believe the axeman story.’ He saw my face. ‘Surely?’
‘Fine, he’s not the axeman.’
‘Great.’
‘He’s just a normal man, so we can investigate him for spy practice anyway. Find out why he’s strange.’
‘But he might not like it.’
‘He won’t find out though.’
‘He might be dangerous.’
‘Of course he might be dangerous, Lewis, that’s what strange means!’
Lewis looked at his shoes.
All the Fun of the Fair: A hilarious, brilliantly original coming-of-age story that will capture your heart Page 10