Finding Home

by Garrett Leigh

  Why the hell did I take art again?

  He had no idea. Choosing his GCSE options at the end of year nine seemed so long ago—

  Charlie nudged him. “Just draw something, will you? You’ll be in enough trouble as it is, if Mrs. Parkin reports you.”

  “What do you care?”

  “Fine. I don’t care. Do what you want and end up a loser like Wayne bloody Murphy.”

  “Who?”

  “Enough.” The art teacher had come back. “Charlie, set a good example, please. I expect better of you.”

  The reprimand went over Leo’s head, but Charlie frowned, clearly rattled. He hunched over his work, blocking Leo, and didn’t speak again for the rest of the lesson.

  Leo entertained himself by sketching the waist-length French plait of the girl in front of him. When that was done, he slumped forward on the table, pillowed his head on his good arm, and took in his classmates—the girls first, all nine of them. A blonde across the room shot him a shy smile. Leo rolled his eyes and looked away. Attention from girls came easy. Shame he didn’t want it.

  He turned his consideration to the boys—just four in total, minus Charlie—two blonds, a redhead, and a boy with such short hair it was hard to tell the colour. None of them held Leo’s interest. Not like Charlie.

  Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.

  His leg was so close, Leo felt his body heat everywhere, and considered what it would feel like for real, if their legs actually touched, even with the barrier of their school trousers.

  Fuck.

  Leo sat up and forced himself to shift away from Charlie. Across the room, the blonde girl was glancing his way again, except she wasn’t looking at Leo, she was looking at Charlie, and Charlie was grinning right back. An odd pain flared in Leo’s veins. He’d never seen Charlie smile like that, eyes shining, teeth pure white against his tanned skin. Why hadn’t he seen Charlie smile like that?

  ’Cause you’ve only known him a week, douche bag.

  The bell rang for the end of the lesson. The classroom burst into life, stools scraping the floor, bags hitting the benches. Leo stretched his good arm over his head. Despite his preoccupation with Charlie’s smile, he’d half dozed off. He stuffed his sketchbook into his bag and watched Charlie do the same with a little more care. “What lesson do you have next?”

  Charlie shot Leo a surprised glance. “Double maths with Mr. Rogers. Same as you.”

  “How do you know what lesson I have?”

  “Reg asked the school to give me your timetable, in case you got lost or forgot—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Leo got the picture. Bloody Reg. He’d been like a rash since Leo had puked on his shoes in the doctor’s surgery. Like half carrying him to the car and putting him to bed had meant something. It hadn’t, save the fact that Leo was too much of a pussy to face his own skin. “I’m not going to get lost.”

  “Whatever.” Charlie fished a packet of chewing gum out of his bag and handed them to Leo. “If you’re gonna smoke on the way home, use these. Mum can smell fags a mile off.”

  It was on the tip of Leo’s tongue to say that he didn’t give a witch’s tit if Kate knew he smoked, but he was fast discovering that being a twat to Charlie was no fun. Instead he followed Charlie out of the classroom and into a bustling corridor. Students barged and shoved. A sports bag hit Leo’s bandaged arm, and he grunted. The scar tissue was already sore from his adventure over the fence. He wanted to rub it, but pride stopped him. No one here knew that he was half human, half burned-up zombie.

  They were halfway across the quad when Leo saw the blood dripping down his hand.

  Charlie pushed open the door to the maths block. Bloody Leo. Reg had said from the start that school was a bad idea for him, and Charlie, though he’d quietly fought in Leo’s corner, was beginning to believe he’d been right. Wayne feckin’ Murphy. Seriously? Nice one, Leo. Why don’t you buddy up with the skanky stoners behind the library while you’re at it?

  The thought made Charlie shudder. He’d smelt weed on Leo a few nights ago, he was sure of it . . . almost. The other side of his brain was convinced he’d dreamed it. He’d woken every night in the past week, consumed by a compulsive need to check on Leo, only to find Lila already with him, and Leo wouldn’t smoke weed with her in the room, right?

  Of course he wouldn’t. Leo’s weird moods gave Charlie whiplash, but no one could doubt his affection for Lila.

  “Charlie.”

  “What?” Charlie stopped walking and turned around. Leo had hardly spoken in days, but it felt like he wouldn’t shut up today. Then he found Leo right behind him, clutching his left arm to his chest. Charlie frowned. Leo’s left arm was the one he wore a bandage on. “What’s the matter?”

  Silence. For a moment, Charlie thought he’d imagined Leo calling his name, and then he noticed Leo’s wide eyes and ashen skin, his teeth biting into his bottom lip, and the thin line of blood trickling down his left hand. Shit. Charlie’s stomach churned. “Have you cut yourself?”

  Leo shook his head. He looked like he might be sick too. “I need to get out of here.”

  “‘Out of here’? Do you need to see the nurse?”

  “No, I need to go.”

  Leo started to back up. Charlie caught his good arm. “Go where? Are you going home?”

  In answer, Leo wrenched himself free and turned away. He was by the door before Charlie caught up and grabbed him again.

  “Wait. I’ll come with you.” The words were out before he could stop them, even though he knew Leo intended to escape far more than the bustling corridors. Knew Leo was about to lead him down a path he’d never thought to travel. “Come on. I know somewhere we can go.”

  He ducked out of the maths block without waiting for Leo’s response and led the way to the sports pavilion, and snuck round the back. There was a gap in the tree behind the old wooden building that took them to a disused railway track by the canal. He picked a path through the bushes until they came to the bridge. “Come on,” he said. “We can sit by the water.”

  “Under the bridge?”

  It was the first time Leo had spoken since they’d left school grounds. His voice was hoarse and tired, and Charlie slowed to let him catch up. “Yeah. All the bunkers used to come here before the council built the bandstand in the park.”

  “You never did, though, did you?”

  “What do you think?”

  Leo made a sound that could’ve been a snort of laughter, but there was no humour in his face as they came to the sacred spot beneath the bridge—dark, sheltered, and covered with graffiti.

  Charlie dropped his bag and sat down by the water, leaning back on the blacked-out bricks of the bridge. Leo hesitated a moment before he did the same.

  “You’re going to get in trouble for this,” he said.

  Charlie waved his concern away. “Doubt it. Rogers is a dozy idiot. He wouldn’t notice if the whole class didn’t show up, and even if he does, I reckon we can blag our way out of it.”

  “Yeah?” Leo unzipped his coat and slipped his good arm out of its sleeve. “What are you gonna say?”

  “Dunno. That you were tired or something, probably. It is your first day and all.”

  Leo said nothing. Was he regretting his decision to come to school?

  “Are you going to sort your arm out?”

  “Hmm?”

  “Your arm,” Charlie repeated. “It’s still bleeding.”

  Leo looked down at his arm and slowly began to peel away his coat sleeve. His school jumper came next, then his shirt sleeve and bandage, both stained an ominous red.

  Charlie swallowed hard, but the sight of Leo’s blood was just the start. Oh God, his arm. From his elbow to his shoulder, Leo’s arm was utterly ruined, a marbled mess of scarred flesh . . . burned flesh.

  Leo’s flesh.

  His body.

  His skin.

  Leo.

  “Stop fucking staring.”

  Charlie jumped. “I’m not.”


  “Bollocks, you aren’t.” Leo snorted. “Do you think I don’t get enough of that? Bloody doctors poking and prodding me.”

  “I’m not staring,” Charlie insisted, though he had been. “And I’m not prodding you, am I? I’m over here.”

  “Whatever.”

  Leo’s voice had lost its fire. He shifted and angled his body away while he did something to his arm, shoulders hunched, head bowed. Even with his diminished view, Charlie could tell it hurt. He let Leo be awhile and considered the dingy spot Charlie had picked to hide out in. Dank, dark, and littered with rubbish, it was hardly the best place for first aid. Still, Charlie had observed Leo enough to reckon it was this or nothing.

  Leo hissed, pained and low. Charlie chanced a hand on his other arm. “Is it really messed up?”

  “Dunno. It’s so bloody I can’t see.”

  Charlie steeled himself and clambered over Leo’s legs to crouch by the water. His stomach churned. Leo was right: in his elbow joint, there was nothing to see but a smeared mess of blood. “We should clean it.”

  “We?”

  Charlie ignored Leo and stretched for his bag. Inside he found the bottle of mineral water Kate insisted everyone left the house with each day, and popped the sports cap. He tipped it over Leo’s arm. It helped a little, but not enough, so he looked around for something to wipe it with. Nothing seemed suitable. Stuff it. He tore a strip off his own shirt.

  Leo’s eyes widened. “What are you doing?”

  “Cleaning you up.” Charlie soaked the scrap of fabric in water, held Leo’s arm still, and laid the wet fabric over Leo’s elbow joint, covering the worst of the blood.

  Leo winced.

  “Am I hurting you?” Charlie asked.

  “No.” But Leo’s shiver said otherwise.

  Charlie took his hands from Leo and tore another strip from his shirt to dry Leo’s arm with. “Are you all right?”

  Leo nodded. “Yeah, sorry. It’s just seeing it . . . makes me . . . you know?”

  Charlie filled in the blanks. Oddly, the more he stared at Leo’s mangled flesh, the less it bothered him, but the blood? He shuddered, glad that most of it was hidden by the scraps of his shirt. “Do you feel sick?”

  “I do now.”

  “Eh?”

  “Hold my wrist again, will ya?”

  “Erm, okay.” Charlie took Leo’s injured arm and gripped his wrist, loosely at first until Leo’s stare seemed to compel him to squeeze tighter and press his thumb into the pulse point thrumming beneath Leo’s warm skin.

  Leo closed his eyes. His head dropped. “Your hands are cold.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Nah.” Leo shook his head. “It’s good.”

  He didn’t say anything more for a long while. Charlie entertained himself by clearing the last of the blood from Leo’s arm and inspecting the new damage. Despite the mess, he couldn’t see much, save a small tear in Leo’s elbow crease. Charlie was no expert, but it didn’t appear particularly deep, especially compared to the original wound. He stared at the mottled mass of scars and skin and pondered the horror behind it. There’d been a fire, he knew that, because Lila’s lungs were damaged from the smoke, but what on earth had happened to Leo?

  By the time three o’clock rolled around, Charlie’s imagination had left him no wiser. He roused Leo with a gentle nudge. “We need to chip. I’ve got to get my bike from school.”

  Leo raised his head and treated Charlie to a bleary gaze. “Where are we going?”

  “Home,” Charlie said. “School’s nearly over. We can’t stay here all night.”

  Leo looked as though he wanted to do just that, but he got to his feet anyway and rolled his sleeves down. He didn’t appear to notice that his arm was now clean. “How are you going to get your bike? What if a teacher sees you?”

  Charlie snorted. “I might be a nerd, but Andy and Fliss went through that school before me, and they taught me every escape route going. Trust me, I won’t be seen.”

  And he wasn’t. He left Leo on the canal path, slipped around the back of the food tech block, and retrieved his BMX. When he got back, he half expected him to be gone, but Leo was there, hands in his pockets, head down, and apparently in a world of his own.

  They made their way home. Charlie kept a sharp eye out for Darren Stroud and his gang, but there was no sign of them, which was odd, but Leo’s silence distracted Charlie from pondering it much.

  Charlie glanced at him and felt a little strange. He’d never bunked off school before, and though he reckoned it unlikely either of them would be missed, nerves still gnawed at his gut. Kate often saw right through him. She’d know the second they got home, he was sure of it.

  Sure of it, and wrong. Kate greeted them both with an absent smile, caught up in a game of Uno with Lila. It was a while before she remembered it had been Leo’s first day at school and said she was going to check on him, and by then Charlie’s shirt was loitering at the bottom of the recycling bin, and Leo was fast asleep, fully clothed—coat and all—on his bed.

  Kate came downstairs from checking on him. “How was today, Charlie? Is Leo feeling poorly again? He’s out like a light.”

  Charlie shrugged. He’d never got to the bottom of what had been wrong with Leo the week before, and he couldn’t think how to explain what had happened under the bridge without incriminating both them.

  Kate took a seat at the table and peered at the history homework Charlie had spent most of the afternoon staring at. “Hitler, eh? I liked studying Stalin better. We have a book somewhere about the siege of Leningrad. City of Thieves, I think. I’ll ask Reg.”

  Charlie rolled his eyes. Kate and Reg were both bookworms—the house was full of them—but Charlie didn’t much care for reading. Comics aside, why read when he’d rather draw? “No, thanks.”

  “I’ll dig it out anyway. You might change your mind. In the meantime, you can tell me what Leo did to his arm today.”

  Busted. Charlie’s heart skipped like the tick of a broken clock. “What do you mean?”

  “I’m putting my mother instinct together with the blood on his coat sleeve, and combining it with the shifty look you’ve had since you came home. Spit it out, Charlie. Whatever it is, I won’t be cross.”

  Charlie believed that, for the most part, but he wasn’t so sure about Leo. Their time under the bridge had been spent mostly in silence, and grassing Leo up felt like an act of betrayal.

  He considered his options while Kate waited, tapping her fingers on the table. A half-truth seemed the only way. “I think he pulled it a bit at lunchtime. I helped him clean it up. It wasn’t too bad.”

  “Did he see the nurse?”

  “He didn’t want to.”

  And you walked home together?”

  Charlie nodded. “Yeah. He was fine, just a bit tired.”

  Kate appeared satisfied, for now at least. She left Charlie to it and got on with dinner, and when Leo appeared in time to inhale his supper and bath Lila, she made no comment, save a casual enquiry about his first day at Heyton High.

  Leo didn’t come back downstairs after he’d put Lila to bed. Charlie let him be. Leo kept to himself most nights, unless Kate or Reg asked him to stay with the family.

  Around ten, Fliss came home from work and summoned Charlie to the attic.

  “What do you want?” Charlie hovered warily by the ladder. He wasn’t often granted access to Fliss’s lair.

  “You need to tell Leo to stop flicking his spliff butts onto the garage roof. Dad’s going up there at the weekend to clean the guttering, and there’s going to be too many to blame it on next door.”

  “Why do I need to tell him? Tell him yourself.”

  Fliss rolled her eyes. “When am I supposed to do that? At the dinner table? Or when he’s bathing Lila? I hardly ever see him, numpty.”

  Lucky Leo, though to be fair, Charlie didn’t see much of Fliss either. “Why are you assuming it’s him?”

  “Who else would it be? You’ve never had so muc
h as a drag on a smoke, have you?”

  She said it like it was a bad thing, but Charlie ignored that. Andy and Fliss had both told him over and over that they’d kick the shit out of him if they ever caught him smoking. Not that it was likely to happen. He’d never seen the attraction in lacing his lungs with tar. “How do you know they’re joints?”

  “Please.” Fliss threw herself into her computer chair and flicked the monitor to life. “I smelt weed on him the day he got here, not that I give a shit what he does. I just don’t want the hassle of Mum and Dad getting all CIA on us again, like they were when Jason stole that Valium from Mrs. Oliver.”

  Charlie remembered Jason. He’d stayed with them for three months a few years ago, but in that time had wreaked more havoc than anyone had been quite able to believe. The last straw had been when he’d burgled the elderly neighbours across the street. Kate and Reg had vowed not to take another teenager after that . . . until Leo. “Leo’s not like Jason.”

  Fliss tossed a distracted glance at Charlie, clearly already engrossed in whatever crap kept her occupied on the internet. “I know that. Leo’s a nice kid. Fucked up, but nice. Which is why you need to stop him getting himself kicked out. Now piss off. I’ve got shit to do.”

  Charlie took his dismissal and swung himself out of the loft. He showered and then slipped into his bedroom, automatically checking on Leo on his way past.

  Leo was asleep again, lights on, curtains open. With a sigh, Charlie swapped the main light for his own lamp that had somehow appeared in Leo’s room, but left the curtains open. He left the door ajar too. Lila didn’t crawl into Leo’s bed every night, but Charlie had got into the habit of making things easier for her not to wake Leo when she did—leaving the landing light on, and clearing the floor of clutter.

  He hadn’t long been in bed when Reg came knocking at his door. Charlie glanced up from his sketchpad in surprise. It was usually Kate who paid him bedtime visits. “Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

  “I was hoping that you would tell me.”